Where I live, things have gotten out of hand with the temperature these days. If your students have to put up with any heat at all, you might want to consider making your own delicious treats, or, better yet, put the students to work on this delicious chemistry project. I assure you it is quite edible at the end.
All you need is a fairly sturdy blender, and a few people who like ice cream. There are many ways to make these delectable treats, and here I will offer a few of them, though combinations for additional flavors will be limited only by our imagination(s).
First, the basic frappucino "floorplan" includes ice and milk. Be careful to add just enough milk to help the blender chop up the ice a little. Then add two heaping scoops of your favorite ice cream, or you can whip them all together if you start with a small amount of ice cream, adding as you go. This part of the experiment controls the "thickness" of the drink, so don't overdo it out of (quite understandable) ice cream zeal, or you will put the motor to the test, and maybe tend to overheat the poor mechanical worker.
If you put a little ice cream in with the milk and ice, this may make the job a little less noisy at first, since the ice cream provides a cushioning effect for the ice, which when being chopped quite naturally will jump up and down hollering -- (they get noisy) wouldnt you?
Then comes the fun part -- Additives. Depending on which kind of ice cream you opt for, you will want to add different flavors. For instance, if you decide to toss two large scoops of cookies and cream into you milk and ice base, then you might wish to toss in a handful of something that goes well with chocolate -- like handful of those small and addictive peanut butter cups that come in a 2 lb. bag. At the end, you may need to add a little more milk to thin out the batch, using the "frapee" button to whip your drink into a frothy and sweet masterpiece.
This is culinary chemistry at its finest.
Below I will list a few combinations you might wish to try, or at least think about using to develop your own better combinations.
If you go with vanilla ice cream, you can add almost any flavor you want, including the addition of fresh fruit combinations, like strawberries, pineapple, cherries or whatever flavor you like best. Fruit combinations are almost unlimited, and if you are careful, you can even add a vegetable of two in a sweet fruit mix (with vanilla ice cream it makes a strawberries and cream, or peaches and cream flavor no child should be without (no adult either for that matter). The veggie you can sneak in without notice if it is the right kind.
The flavor I prefer involves coffee, so adults may wish to skip this one for kids, though the amount needed is very slight for the flavoring. I use either vanilla or (preferably) cookies and cream (ice cream), then add one tablespoon of freeze-dried coffee -- it matters not which because the additives overrun anything but the most basic "coffee flavor" -- then I toss in a handful of junior mints -- one of my favorite mints, though peppermint patties work just as well and I imagine cable car mints would do just as well. Andes mints (flat mints) I have not yet tried, but suspect they can make anything taste good.
If you do not like mint (most people do), consider simply using the cookies and cream with coffee, and perhaps you might want to add a little spice -- cinnamon or nutmeg -- from the spice cabinet, but go light on it. You cannot "un-add" a spice if you put too much in, but you can always add more later if you don't land enough in the mix the first time.
When you chop the ice, you will want to select a slower speed from the buttons on the left side of your blender. As the cubes become smaller, you can work your way to higher speeds, and smaller fragments, until you puree them at the end. My mint-coffee frappucinos were a raging hit in the neighbor where I grew up, before ere a starbuck's existed.
I know from experience that most of the fun is in the making of it, of which children have no end when you call for suggestions, and allow them some input into the recipe formation process. It also gives all the tasters a little boost for studying (or else running about outside) and no one ever died from a tasty treat overdose so far as I know (at least not in one sitting).
Other possible flavors to add include syrups (you can buy almost any flavored syrup at the store now), and anything used for baking -- from chocolate chips (white chocolate and maple chips exist too), and of course stores carry every imaginable flavor of ice cream to start with. So you can even make yours a pralines and cream frappucino. You can also buy flavored creamers -- they have hazelnut, irish cream, and the like -- to use for flavoring.
I like mocha-mint frappucinos, and probably always will. But I have never had one I didn't make, with a few other sets of little hands to help. Days that are too hot can always have cool surprises. Clean-up is a breeze too (if you do it right).
Experience tells me you will need a considerable number of plastic cups, and dishing out the goods represents the messiest part. I usually ended up making two blenders full before the ice cream was gone and many small mouths were lit by smiles. The neighborhood had quite a few youngsters, and I was a fairly fast chef.
Older children can, of course, come up with some pretty great ideas on their own, and you may want to put the teens in charge of clean-up. But the first time around, some adult should call the shots, until everyone has an idea of how the frappucino routine is supposed to work.
And whatever you do, avoid drinking your frappucinos too fast -- lest you encounter the Brain-freeze to end all brain-freezes. Never freeze your brain. We already have global warming, and do not need to add cerebral freezing to our mix of environmental disasters.
And remember, you can go as fancy as you want, or just keep it simple. Some folks just like strawberries, milk, ice, and vanilla ice cream. This makes a fresh-strawberries and cream frappucino. Oranges and peaches are good for this too. Or Experi-mint and enjoy, like I did.
Ice-treats can help you beat the heat.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Bush and Cheney Still Haven't Found Them: Silver and Gold as Weapons of Mass Instruction
National obedience to the law of God has the interesting side effect that it ends up aiding and abetting the cause of the Gospel in ways one might not at first suspect. When this happens, the Bible becomes a weapon of mass instruction (where the Bible uses "instruction" as a synonym for wisdom and discretion, as in the Proverbs). A short explanation is in order.
The Bible teaches that when one borrows money, he must have sufficient collateral -- something he can use to give to the person who loans him money -- which is of equal or greater market value than the loan he borrows. This guarantees that the guy loaning the money will get it back even if the borrower finds out that the future does not favor his economic welfare, making him unable to repay the loan.
In other words, he needs to be able to present the borrower with an economic hostage. This enables the borrower to go on about his business without the money he has loaned with every reasonable expectation that the loan will be -- or else already has been -- repaid. The Bible calls this "surety." Today, we might simply call it "insurance." The word "sure" shows up in either case, in the word chosen.
Likewise, when nations print paper money or coins, they are effectively taking out a loan from the people with money already in their hands. This requires surety. So just what exactly is the government supposed to use for surety for the entire economy? The Bible says they should do this buy using money which has either real value in it (make coins out of silver or gold and use that as your money -- this is called "monetizing" precious metals), or else they should insure the money they print by holding a value equal to that of the dollar in gold or silver as a way to insure that, should the money for whatever reason become valueless (as when people stop accepting it for payment), that each person holding the (now) worthless paper can now redeem it for it's stated value in silver or gold from the government.
This is called "redeeming" the symbolic money (paper dollars or other currency) for real or universal money (the gold or silver). Gold and silver never lose their value, except the Bible records only one instance where silver became as "common as stones" in Israel because Solomon had flooded the local economy with a surplus of gold from Ophir and other nations.
Now by insuring your economy this way, two things happen. First, the economy becomes very fruitful -- it grows because foreign investors will plunge their money into an economy where they have their investment already insured. They value gold dollars over non-gold currency of any other kind. Businesses buy insurance already, spending billions every year on a kind of "price insurance" in the form of futures contracts to try to maintain STABLE prices over specified periods. This is called "Hedging."
Why do businesses pay so much for insurance? They thrive in stable economies, where everyone does exactly what he or she promises -- "I will deliver these good to your warehouse on next Tuesday at 4 p.m." If the delivery does not show up on time, the company depending on the shipment schedule may face many angry customers, who also build schedules and figure in that shipment arriving on time. Angry customers equals lost business.
So businesses put a premium on stability and predictability, spending a great deal of money to provide various kinds of surety or insurance, so they have happy customers, and protect their good name. In Business, your reputation precedes your profit. This is why the decalogue places "thou shalt not steal" right next to "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."
Thus, nations which follow the biblical mandate to secure their economies with gold and silver find that business will thrive there, and investors heap money into it. The dollar of that nation backed by precious metals itself becomes a highly valued commodity.
So what does this consequent prosperity have to do with the Gospel? Well, I'll just take a wild stab at this one. First, redemption forms the heart of the Gospel, in what many have called the "Great Exchange," wherein the Lord Jesus, the Great High Priest and Good Shepherd laid down His life for his people because they were deep in debt, and need surety, a way that someone GUARANTEES that the price (wages) of their sin (likened to debt in the Bible) will necessarily be paid. The Lord Jesus by His once for all sacrifice paid the price to satisfy fully the wrath and justice of God, and removed the sin of his people altogether (called "expiation") by eradicating their indebtedness to God. This forever establishes them in God's favor, and removes any possibility of a punitive penalty being imposed upon them for their future sins as well.
This is eternal security, called "surety" in the Bible. It comes by redemption, which is -- unsurprisingly -- typified or portrayed in the Bible by silver. The price paid for the betrayal of the Lord Jesus, resulting in redemption for His people, was exactly 30 shekels of silver, the going price of a slave on the open market in the days of the apostles. Jesus died the death of a slave, who was king of kings (and whose formal charge read "King of the Jews") to free those enslaved to sin all their lives.
Now only those who truly and fully rely upon the surety of Christ for the payment of their sins can have any true interest in it, because the work of God does not tolerate any man-made admixture with it. If you would be saved by your own works, then you must provide the infinite surety God requires (good luck with that).
This is only accomplished by what the Bible calls repentance and faith, which some have called the "twin sisters of conversion." Saving faith in Jesus Christ not only acknowledges, but rests upon altogether, the redemptive work of Christ, counting on Him alone to justify (acquit) a man before God, and not from anything we have or can do. This faith the Bible represents as gold, because of its many characteristics, which each has in common with the other.
Gold has several characteristics, traditionally five, which give it its nearly universal appeal. For the sake of length, two will have to suffice here.
First, gold is malleable; it is quite soft in pure form, and you could bend a small bar with your fingers if inclined. The seven lampstands, called the Church of the Lord Jesus are made of pure gold, represented by the gold of Havilah (for the gold of that land is good), and that of Ophir -- Havilah and Ophir were brothers. The gold produced there was of especially pure quality in its natural form.
Today this matters little, since our technology enables us to purify any gold to an extraordinary degree compared with ancient times. But the Church is to be soft and malleable in the hands of the Mastercraftsman who shapes and molds the saints to a vessel suited to putting on display God's glory (which was in the holy of Holies in the Temple, near the lampstands).
This is the nature of saving faith. It makes those otherwise stiff-necked and stubborn in their own ways malleable to the Lord, and given to doing His will rather than their own.
Gold is also (obviously) of great natural beauty. The beauty of saving faith is that of a quiet and calm spirit, set upon doing good works with a good eye (charity or largeness of heart) toward others, and great care for the preferences that God has in all of life (the fear of the Lord), especially in matters of the worship and government of the Church (holy matters even more than common ones). The Bible calls this "the beauty of holiness" (i.e. the beauty of the saints). This gives them great value in the sight of God.
In each case, saving faith in Jesus Christ makes the saints like gold (valuable and glorious) to their Redeemer. Whereas those who remain in their sins are said to be "worthless men," while the Lord Jesus explicitly wants "profitable servants." He ordered the making of golden lampstands, so we already knew this, didn't we? And each is of precisely the same pattern as the others, since God wants each church to show the same dominical pattern as all other true churches, rather than all manner of liturgical or governmental diversity. He requires outward catholicity or uniformity.
When Christ was asked whether it were lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, He responded with an inquiry of His own, "Whose inscription do you see on the coin?" Now, the Lord's House is His gold and silver also. So when you wish to know if this or that is a true church of Christ, the question is the same: when you look to its people and leaders, whose image do you see? Are they profitable servants to the Master to whom they render the tithe in money?
When Jesus finished the saying, "Therefore give to God what is God's," He implied that that which bears God's image properly belongs to Him (as it is with Caesar and the coin). The Lord wishes His people to use money to acquire people (mammon is for building God's kingdom). Thus, profitable servants are those who bring others into it.
Nations which provide for the redeeming of what is inherently worthless (virtually) on its own, by providing surety for it in the form of gold and silver, show that what is worthless is redeemable by that which is of great inherent value. This is the Gospel in brief. National economies which follow the biblical pattern become very valuable and stable very quickly, like a man with a calm spirit who does what he says he will, and promotes the welfare of his neighbor as well as his own (the standard of living rises for everyone in the economy so governed).
The Gospel has a like effect on the lives of the saints governed by Christ, who rely upon Him alone as their surety before God in this life and the next. But this good news must come from the golden lampstands, to transform nations. Although it is the duty of the chief civil authorities to require those under their authority to do justice in economic affairs, and to so order them accordingly, yet true value must begin where God lives, in the house of the redeemed, and in the house of faith and instruction.
For "The mouth of the righteous is choice silver," and "like apples of gold in settings of silver is an answer timely given."
For those homeschoolers interested in history, a great way to study it is to follow the development of money, which means gold and silver, through history. This provides a neat focal point on which the Bible has much to say, and around which you can group other ideas you will learn there. One commentator always said, "Follow the money," if you want explanations for why this or that happened. There is some genuine merit in this, since money never fails to motivate men.
Here is a link to a brief history of gold, beginning in the ancient world that might help you create some other great study ideas.
http://www.onlygold.com/TutorialPages/HistoryFS.htm
The Bible teaches that when one borrows money, he must have sufficient collateral -- something he can use to give to the person who loans him money -- which is of equal or greater market value than the loan he borrows. This guarantees that the guy loaning the money will get it back even if the borrower finds out that the future does not favor his economic welfare, making him unable to repay the loan.
In other words, he needs to be able to present the borrower with an economic hostage. This enables the borrower to go on about his business without the money he has loaned with every reasonable expectation that the loan will be -- or else already has been -- repaid. The Bible calls this "surety." Today, we might simply call it "insurance." The word "sure" shows up in either case, in the word chosen.
Likewise, when nations print paper money or coins, they are effectively taking out a loan from the people with money already in their hands. This requires surety. So just what exactly is the government supposed to use for surety for the entire economy? The Bible says they should do this buy using money which has either real value in it (make coins out of silver or gold and use that as your money -- this is called "monetizing" precious metals), or else they should insure the money they print by holding a value equal to that of the dollar in gold or silver as a way to insure that, should the money for whatever reason become valueless (as when people stop accepting it for payment), that each person holding the (now) worthless paper can now redeem it for it's stated value in silver or gold from the government.
This is called "redeeming" the symbolic money (paper dollars or other currency) for real or universal money (the gold or silver). Gold and silver never lose their value, except the Bible records only one instance where silver became as "common as stones" in Israel because Solomon had flooded the local economy with a surplus of gold from Ophir and other nations.
Now by insuring your economy this way, two things happen. First, the economy becomes very fruitful -- it grows because foreign investors will plunge their money into an economy where they have their investment already insured. They value gold dollars over non-gold currency of any other kind. Businesses buy insurance already, spending billions every year on a kind of "price insurance" in the form of futures contracts to try to maintain STABLE prices over specified periods. This is called "Hedging."
Why do businesses pay so much for insurance? They thrive in stable economies, where everyone does exactly what he or she promises -- "I will deliver these good to your warehouse on next Tuesday at 4 p.m." If the delivery does not show up on time, the company depending on the shipment schedule may face many angry customers, who also build schedules and figure in that shipment arriving on time. Angry customers equals lost business.
So businesses put a premium on stability and predictability, spending a great deal of money to provide various kinds of surety or insurance, so they have happy customers, and protect their good name. In Business, your reputation precedes your profit. This is why the decalogue places "thou shalt not steal" right next to "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."
Thus, nations which follow the biblical mandate to secure their economies with gold and silver find that business will thrive there, and investors heap money into it. The dollar of that nation backed by precious metals itself becomes a highly valued commodity.
So what does this consequent prosperity have to do with the Gospel? Well, I'll just take a wild stab at this one. First, redemption forms the heart of the Gospel, in what many have called the "Great Exchange," wherein the Lord Jesus, the Great High Priest and Good Shepherd laid down His life for his people because they were deep in debt, and need surety, a way that someone GUARANTEES that the price (wages) of their sin (likened to debt in the Bible) will necessarily be paid. The Lord Jesus by His once for all sacrifice paid the price to satisfy fully the wrath and justice of God, and removed the sin of his people altogether (called "expiation") by eradicating their indebtedness to God. This forever establishes them in God's favor, and removes any possibility of a punitive penalty being imposed upon them for their future sins as well.
This is eternal security, called "surety" in the Bible. It comes by redemption, which is -- unsurprisingly -- typified or portrayed in the Bible by silver. The price paid for the betrayal of the Lord Jesus, resulting in redemption for His people, was exactly 30 shekels of silver, the going price of a slave on the open market in the days of the apostles. Jesus died the death of a slave, who was king of kings (and whose formal charge read "King of the Jews") to free those enslaved to sin all their lives.
Now only those who truly and fully rely upon the surety of Christ for the payment of their sins can have any true interest in it, because the work of God does not tolerate any man-made admixture with it. If you would be saved by your own works, then you must provide the infinite surety God requires (good luck with that).
This is only accomplished by what the Bible calls repentance and faith, which some have called the "twin sisters of conversion." Saving faith in Jesus Christ not only acknowledges, but rests upon altogether, the redemptive work of Christ, counting on Him alone to justify (acquit) a man before God, and not from anything we have or can do. This faith the Bible represents as gold, because of its many characteristics, which each has in common with the other.
Gold has several characteristics, traditionally five, which give it its nearly universal appeal. For the sake of length, two will have to suffice here.
First, gold is malleable; it is quite soft in pure form, and you could bend a small bar with your fingers if inclined. The seven lampstands, called the Church of the Lord Jesus are made of pure gold, represented by the gold of Havilah (for the gold of that land is good), and that of Ophir -- Havilah and Ophir were brothers. The gold produced there was of especially pure quality in its natural form.
Today this matters little, since our technology enables us to purify any gold to an extraordinary degree compared with ancient times. But the Church is to be soft and malleable in the hands of the Mastercraftsman who shapes and molds the saints to a vessel suited to putting on display God's glory (which was in the holy of Holies in the Temple, near the lampstands).
This is the nature of saving faith. It makes those otherwise stiff-necked and stubborn in their own ways malleable to the Lord, and given to doing His will rather than their own.
Gold is also (obviously) of great natural beauty. The beauty of saving faith is that of a quiet and calm spirit, set upon doing good works with a good eye (charity or largeness of heart) toward others, and great care for the preferences that God has in all of life (the fear of the Lord), especially in matters of the worship and government of the Church (holy matters even more than common ones). The Bible calls this "the beauty of holiness" (i.e. the beauty of the saints). This gives them great value in the sight of God.
In each case, saving faith in Jesus Christ makes the saints like gold (valuable and glorious) to their Redeemer. Whereas those who remain in their sins are said to be "worthless men," while the Lord Jesus explicitly wants "profitable servants." He ordered the making of golden lampstands, so we already knew this, didn't we? And each is of precisely the same pattern as the others, since God wants each church to show the same dominical pattern as all other true churches, rather than all manner of liturgical or governmental diversity. He requires outward catholicity or uniformity.
When Christ was asked whether it were lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, He responded with an inquiry of His own, "Whose inscription do you see on the coin?" Now, the Lord's House is His gold and silver also. So when you wish to know if this or that is a true church of Christ, the question is the same: when you look to its people and leaders, whose image do you see? Are they profitable servants to the Master to whom they render the tithe in money?
When Jesus finished the saying, "Therefore give to God what is God's," He implied that that which bears God's image properly belongs to Him (as it is with Caesar and the coin). The Lord wishes His people to use money to acquire people (mammon is for building God's kingdom). Thus, profitable servants are those who bring others into it.
Nations which provide for the redeeming of what is inherently worthless (virtually) on its own, by providing surety for it in the form of gold and silver, show that what is worthless is redeemable by that which is of great inherent value. This is the Gospel in brief. National economies which follow the biblical pattern become very valuable and stable very quickly, like a man with a calm spirit who does what he says he will, and promotes the welfare of his neighbor as well as his own (the standard of living rises for everyone in the economy so governed).
The Gospel has a like effect on the lives of the saints governed by Christ, who rely upon Him alone as their surety before God in this life and the next. But this good news must come from the golden lampstands, to transform nations. Although it is the duty of the chief civil authorities to require those under their authority to do justice in economic affairs, and to so order them accordingly, yet true value must begin where God lives, in the house of the redeemed, and in the house of faith and instruction.
For "The mouth of the righteous is choice silver," and "like apples of gold in settings of silver is an answer timely given."
For those homeschoolers interested in history, a great way to study it is to follow the development of money, which means gold and silver, through history. This provides a neat focal point on which the Bible has much to say, and around which you can group other ideas you will learn there. One commentator always said, "Follow the money," if you want explanations for why this or that happened. There is some genuine merit in this, since money never fails to motivate men.
Here is a link to a brief history of gold, beginning in the ancient world that might help you create some other great study ideas.
http://www.onlygold.com/TutorialPages/HistoryFS.htm
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Genesis and Marine Biology: A Word About Dolphins, Other Smart Swimmers, Clams and Such
Genesis 1 (vv. 21-23) opens the chapter on the very beginning of whales, dolphins and other sea creatures, on the fifth day of the creation week, in these words:
"And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day."
Now dolphins are "cetaceans," and not fish. If you call them fish, they will resent it. You see, they EAT fish, and dolphins do not wish us to think them cannibals. What will the whales say if they hear such rumors? Dolphins can swim at surprisingly fast speeds, and love to interact with people. You will notice above that "God blessed them," and that this blessing consisted in the efficacious command to "be fruitful and multiply, fill the waters and the Seas," and that the Seas of the world have already been mentioned.
From this passage, and the immediate context, we may learn several things about dolphins. First, they have not been around for "millions of years," but showed up one day before Adam and Eve did. Why before, and not AFTER? One might think this seems a bit inappropriate to those made in God's image to find themselves beaten to the game by the dolphins, who, although they are quite cute, and very funny (and boy are they smart), are not made in the divine likeness as we are.
This happened because God always follows His own rules. We have been told already what God was doing. He first created the heavens and the earth, and then began dividing this from that (to set each domain in order), and then began to fill each domain with the proper kind of animal. God was setting in order all things.
Now the Lord plainly likes dolphins and whales, and all their cousins. He blessed them, and then later called them (together with the rest of His new work, "very good."). Now the Bible refers summarily to all the creatures of the sea as "fish," even though obviously clams do not swim well, or have fins. But they do go well in chowder, and qualify as seafood. The reference simply names the inhabitants of the waters (seas), using the same language as the beast of the earth, "creatures which moveth" [either] "on the earth" or else "in the seas."
In other words, God divided the cosmos into three realms, and then filled each one systematically with inhabitants, and the inhabitants of the sea simply get called "fish," since this names the majority of them by sheer numbers. This way, after the fall of man, when God gave us fish to eat also (not just vegetation), we would have enough to share with the whales, dolphins and sea lions, and still have plenty to go around. This answers the question of whether red sauce came before or after the fall. Chances are fair that we already had white wine before we could eat fish, however, since it goes well with fruit and veggies too. And you can always cook with it.
But the time of the Lord Jesus and the apostles, fish was a main part of the diet of the middle east. In fact, Peter and Andrew made a living catching fish in nets to sell at the local markets, probably between Bethany (where they lived, just a short way from Jerusalem) and the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, as you go west to the coast. The closer you get to the water, the fresher the fish you buy gets, unless you preserve them with salt, as was the custom in those days. This makes them taste like sardines, but you can later cook (boil) the some of the salt out of them, when you get ready to eat them.
God forbade the Israelites to eat whales, dolphins and whatever else did not have BOTH fins AND scales, narrowing down their meals to just what we ordinarily call "fish." Leviticus 11:9-10 reads,
"These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat. And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters [note: this is the precise language of Genesis 1 again], and of any living thing which is in the waters [this part is added and new -- to explain the first by separating that which moves in the water from those creatures which do not -- like clams, to include anything one finds in the waters], they shall be an abomination unto you ...."
Now Genesis 1:28 gives Adam and Eve (and us today) dominion over whales, dolphins, sea otters and all other sea creatures, and Genesis 9:2 reiterates this promise to Noah and his family -- a kind of "second Adam," who exits the Ark with the new creation in miniature. These then spread out across the earth and multiply to fill it once again. The sea creatures did not need to take up space on the Ark of course. These were exceptions from the general destruction upon the earth God wrought in Noah's generation, which was primarily a curse aimed at the wickedness of men. God did not intend to punish clams for the sins of men. Sea creatures that died in the Flood were something like what we call "collateral damage" today.
Dolphins are quite closely related to whales, especially those poor creatures, the Orca, who have been dubbed "killer whales." They in fact very rarely attack people, and much prefer almost any meal found in the waters to you. They would rather eat any kind of fish than you. You are decidedly yucky to sea creatures, and even sharks have to get extremely hungry before you taste okay. Sharks that bite humans are usually just tasting, and when they find out what a lousy meal you are, they swim away in most cases. The big problem is that scuba divers look like seals or otters (in shiny black "snack suits") to many larger sea predators.
Shamu may look rather intimidating for size (and those big pointy teeth), but killer whales are usually quite people friendly -- but a little unpredictable. Dolphins, on the other hand, are always people friendly. And if you play with them, they are more likely to adopt you than try to eat you.
Now dolphins can outswim you, and sometimes it sounds as though they are laughing in the water when they make noises. They are a playful lot, and they even playfight in the water with each other, or else try to "ride the waves" inland like surfers do. They are also known to playfully "harrass" other sea creatures, apparently for fun, like sea turtles and others.
Dolphins are extremely intelligent, which has given rise to all kinds of myths and stories about them which range from doubtful to fairy-tale like in quality. Dolphin trainers find them easy to train, and they will work for fish. But they don't like tartar sauce.
Dolphins do not like sharks, and one kind, the bottle-nosed dolphin, will ram, and can kill, sharks that get too close. They have even been known on occasion to kill sharks -- by ramming them in their soft underside near what would be the ribcage with people -- when pesky sharks circle too close too people.
Porpoises are much like dolphins, but smaller and a bit more compact, and not quite as tame or people-friendly. They aren't fish either, but do not seem as smart as dolphins, though they do resemble them fairly closely. But porpoises have "flattened, spade-shaped teeth distinct from the conical teeth of dolphins." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porpoise). <-- Here, you can learn all about porpoises. The wikipedia entry for dolphins says that they are: ".... aquatic mammals which are closely related to whales and porpoises. There are almost forty species of dolphin in seventeen genera. They vary in size from [four feet] and [88 lbs, in the case of the] Maui's Dolphin, [and] up to [30 feet and ten tons in that of] the Orca or Killer Whale. They are found worldwide, mostly in the shallower seas of the continental shelves, and are carnivores, mostly eating fish and squid. The family, Delphinidae, is the largest in the Cetacea[n class] ...."
Dolphins do appear able to talk to each other, and animal behaviorists have long studied them to try to decipher just how they communicate with each other. They use three types of sounds -- which anyone who has visited MarineWorld will have noticed -- they sound like clicks, pulse-burst sounds, or else emit a sound similar to a whistle. Moreover, it is quite interesting to note that when the smartest (most subtil, or shrewd) of animals -- the serpent -- showed up in Eden talking, Eve did not blink an eye. One would have expected a shriek, followed by a gasp "Ah! A talking serpent, quick honey, get a broom or something heavy to hit it with!", but no such emotive language occurs.
She chats with him as though this sort of thing happened on a regular basis. Some have speculated that the linguisitic capacities some of the smarter animals seem to possess may have originally been far greater, before the curse upon all creation. There is nothing in the list of divine curses imposed which suggests that it was intended to be exhaustive. And there are good examples of things which did not exist in Eden, which are now curses, which God also did not mention in this list. Think of hurricanes, tornadoes, and all manner of deadly natural disasters. We know from the Bible that there was no death before sin; therefore, there were no deadly disasters of nature, or of anything else, before sin.
This means these are included in the divine promise that the day ye shall eat of it, ye shall surely DIE, though not mentioned by name. Did animals originally talk? Serpents did. Why not the others which show extraordinary, though most probably greatly muted (under the curse) intellectual capabilities? Was Balaam's donkey an example of an animal wherein God temporarily removed the curse imposed in Genesis to restrain the prophet's madness [for this is what the NT calls it]? It is at the very least, an interesting question. Even some chimps seem to be able to learn sign language, and can communicate this way with people, though on a limited scale.
After all, the proverbs DO command us to learn from the ant, lion, badger and other friends. Would we not be able to do this better if (originally), we could have chatted with them? Why is there nothing special mentioned about a talking serpent? The best explanation is the obvious one: this was typical or ordinary -- before the fall. Just because we do not NOW experience X does not imply (necessarily) that Adam and Eve did not.
So far as today goes, you cannot talk much with dolphins, though they can understand linguistic commands well when trained -- especially if you are holding the fish. Oh, the power of fish to befriend the dolphins! But you can swim with them, as some of these photos show.
Now Numbers 34:6 refers to the Mediterranean as the "Great Sea," as was commonly done in the ancient world. Today, one can find dolphins swimming off the eastern and southern coastline, as they tend to swim along shorelines some distance out, mostly playing and hunting for yummy fish. Wouldn't you?
There is good reason to suppose that their ancestors probably did the same things, while people traveled up and down those same coasts, from Sidon to Carthage and Carthage (in northern Africa) to Caesarea Philippi, buying, selling, delivering and retrieving goods. Exactly which kind of sea creature -- though a whale of some sort and not a fish -- had swallowed the prophet Jonah whole -- we do not know. We do know that he was headed for a port in Tarshish (Spain), in an effort to flee God's command to go the other way to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, around the late 8th century B.C. (Nineveh was sacked and destroyed by the Babylonians in 712 B.C. as divine retribution for ransacking Samaria in 722, only 10 years earlier).
Jonah ran away because he was -- we find out later -- afraid that God would convert them, and a whale - maybe one of Shamu's great grandparents -- swallowed him whole until he got entangled in seaweed and prayed after 3 days and 3 nights. Here, "the sign of Jonah," (meaning a miraculous work of God) shows us how God even uses sea-creatures to preach the gospel of Christ, who was slain by the wicked, and rose from the dead after being 3 days and 3 nights in the tomb of a rich man, Joseph of Aramithea.
This is consistent with the way God uses all creatures, which He endowed with wisdom from the first, to teach men our duties and what virtues we fail to show (and are reproved for this even by the lower creation). In this way, general revelation fortifies God's special revelation. If you don't believe me, ask Balaam's (fairly articulate) donkey.
There is one other important idea from the Bible to consider. The kinds of creatures God made originally have relatives which continue all the way back to the antediluvian world -- before Noah's flood. And we have not by any means exhausted the catalog of such creatures. Many live FAR beneath the ocean's surface, and have stirred the minds of men to fancy and speculation for centuries -- esp. pirate tales and maritime stories include all manner of alleged sightings and mythical claims. And there may be a kernel of truth in some of them for all we know.
The book of Job seems to recount creatures of very large proportions, and doubtless there are many smaller ones, we have yet to see. We do have fossils of dinosaurs, creatures of extraorinary size and strength -- though many of these are badly reconstructed in all likelihood -- which roamed the world of Noah's day and before. Were ALL of these killed in the flood? We simply do not know. If there are ones that did not, are they friendly? I hope so. If not, I hope they go well with tartar sauce. Whatever they are, God gave us dominion over all of them; and we know that dolphins are among the friendliest.
Here is a great power-dolphin photo shot [My favorite so far], nature's answer to the jet ski:
http://www.hickerphoto.com/data/media/45/dolphins_ws11.jpg
There are lions in the ocean too, sea lions. Here is a great sea-lion mugshot up close:
http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm
Here is a woman being overrun by playful dolphins:
http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm
This is how dolphins shake hands:
http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm
Dolphins cannot actually fly, but try telling Wilbur and Orville here.
http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm
If they can fly, sea lions can too. Apparently, sea lions are very competitive. This is what happens when sea lions try to be birds:
http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm
God made dolphins very fast, powerful swimmers, since they did not have jet skis when the world was brand new.
http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm
Dolphins have smooth, shiny skin. See?
http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm
Key Largo, Florida has a really cool educational camp for children (Dolphins Plus, Inc.) that allows you to swim with the dolphins, and learn all about some of God's more interesting sea creatures. Let's face it. We all want to swim with the dolphins and sea lions because they are more fun than a barrel of monkeys. School groups are welcome to visit too.
You can visit the Dolphins Plus, Inc. site at: http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-education.htm#blast (or you can call them Toll Free: 1-866-860-7946).
Homeschoolers can have their students go to a nearby amusement park, to spend a day of fun watching all kinds of sea creatures in captivity, to take notes and write a report on the favorite animal of their choice. Zoos are good for this too. And obviously, you will want to have some good research sources to help students explain their observations better.
The report should specify at least three primary characteristics which make their chosen animal special -- different from all the other animals -- and the older students should be required to follow a particular source noting format, either the MLA or Chicago style (see the latest edition of Kate Turabian's Manual of Style online).
The younger students should simply work on saying in print, as accurately as they can, just what they most like about their chosen animal. For young minds, cultivating enthusiasm for learning is more important than the quality of any one product, since the latter will improve over time with the former. Focus on vocabulary growth for the younger (word choices) and comparing and contrasting concepts with the older.
Contrasting concepts with animals might take the form of the question, "Why does this animal have THAT feature and not other animals? What does it do that helps the animal live well? This will inevitably demonstrate the goodness of God, Creator of all (since features adapt, but do not evolve). Recall that adaptation is not evolution, nor is genetic variation within animal kinds. Both of these occur, because God so intended by design; but neither implies evolutionary development by themselves.
These are necessary to evolutionary views, but NOT sufficient. Neo-Darwinism requires variation WITHOUT the genetic borders that prevent one kind of animal from developing into another. And Molecular biology has clearly falsified this need. If you wish to swim with the big fish, school is in. See Dr. Michael Denton's Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, for a critical, scientific (and devastating) evaluation of Neo-Darwinian mythology by a molecular biologist.
But these limits set by God, and genetic variation within them (flexibility or adaptability) are entirely consistent with the biblical outlook. God's goodness and wisdom teach us to EXPECT that he would enable animals to replace themselves with genetic variation to help keep any one species from becoming extinct. This is like diversifying your assets in the marketplace, so that if one or more stocks fail, the others might not. If we are that smart, How much more the One who made us!
Hence genetic variation as a demonstration of God's goodness to preserve what He has made, and His wisdom to show us how we ought to do likewise in our own affairs (diversification leads to preservation). The Proverbs teach the same, but that is a post for another day.
"And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day."
Now dolphins are "cetaceans," and not fish. If you call them fish, they will resent it. You see, they EAT fish, and dolphins do not wish us to think them cannibals. What will the whales say if they hear such rumors? Dolphins can swim at surprisingly fast speeds, and love to interact with people. You will notice above that "God blessed them," and that this blessing consisted in the efficacious command to "be fruitful and multiply, fill the waters and the Seas," and that the Seas of the world have already been mentioned.
From this passage, and the immediate context, we may learn several things about dolphins. First, they have not been around for "millions of years," but showed up one day before Adam and Eve did. Why before, and not AFTER? One might think this seems a bit inappropriate to those made in God's image to find themselves beaten to the game by the dolphins, who, although they are quite cute, and very funny (and boy are they smart), are not made in the divine likeness as we are.
This happened because God always follows His own rules. We have been told already what God was doing. He first created the heavens and the earth, and then began dividing this from that (to set each domain in order), and then began to fill each domain with the proper kind of animal. God was setting in order all things.
Now the Lord plainly likes dolphins and whales, and all their cousins. He blessed them, and then later called them (together with the rest of His new work, "very good."). Now the Bible refers summarily to all the creatures of the sea as "fish," even though obviously clams do not swim well, or have fins. But they do go well in chowder, and qualify as seafood. The reference simply names the inhabitants of the waters (seas), using the same language as the beast of the earth, "creatures which moveth" [either] "on the earth" or else "in the seas."
In other words, God divided the cosmos into three realms, and then filled each one systematically with inhabitants, and the inhabitants of the sea simply get called "fish," since this names the majority of them by sheer numbers. This way, after the fall of man, when God gave us fish to eat also (not just vegetation), we would have enough to share with the whales, dolphins and sea lions, and still have plenty to go around. This answers the question of whether red sauce came before or after the fall. Chances are fair that we already had white wine before we could eat fish, however, since it goes well with fruit and veggies too. And you can always cook with it.
But the time of the Lord Jesus and the apostles, fish was a main part of the diet of the middle east. In fact, Peter and Andrew made a living catching fish in nets to sell at the local markets, probably between Bethany (where they lived, just a short way from Jerusalem) and the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, as you go west to the coast. The closer you get to the water, the fresher the fish you buy gets, unless you preserve them with salt, as was the custom in those days. This makes them taste like sardines, but you can later cook (boil) the some of the salt out of them, when you get ready to eat them.
God forbade the Israelites to eat whales, dolphins and whatever else did not have BOTH fins AND scales, narrowing down their meals to just what we ordinarily call "fish." Leviticus 11:9-10 reads,
"These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat. And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters [note: this is the precise language of Genesis 1 again], and of any living thing which is in the waters [this part is added and new -- to explain the first by separating that which moves in the water from those creatures which do not -- like clams, to include anything one finds in the waters], they shall be an abomination unto you ...."
Now Genesis 1:28 gives Adam and Eve (and us today) dominion over whales, dolphins, sea otters and all other sea creatures, and Genesis 9:2 reiterates this promise to Noah and his family -- a kind of "second Adam," who exits the Ark with the new creation in miniature. These then spread out across the earth and multiply to fill it once again. The sea creatures did not need to take up space on the Ark of course. These were exceptions from the general destruction upon the earth God wrought in Noah's generation, which was primarily a curse aimed at the wickedness of men. God did not intend to punish clams for the sins of men. Sea creatures that died in the Flood were something like what we call "collateral damage" today.
Dolphins are quite closely related to whales, especially those poor creatures, the Orca, who have been dubbed "killer whales." They in fact very rarely attack people, and much prefer almost any meal found in the waters to you. They would rather eat any kind of fish than you. You are decidedly yucky to sea creatures, and even sharks have to get extremely hungry before you taste okay. Sharks that bite humans are usually just tasting, and when they find out what a lousy meal you are, they swim away in most cases. The big problem is that scuba divers look like seals or otters (in shiny black "snack suits") to many larger sea predators.
Shamu may look rather intimidating for size (and those big pointy teeth), but killer whales are usually quite people friendly -- but a little unpredictable. Dolphins, on the other hand, are always people friendly. And if you play with them, they are more likely to adopt you than try to eat you.
Now dolphins can outswim you, and sometimes it sounds as though they are laughing in the water when they make noises. They are a playful lot, and they even playfight in the water with each other, or else try to "ride the waves" inland like surfers do. They are also known to playfully "harrass" other sea creatures, apparently for fun, like sea turtles and others.
Dolphins are extremely intelligent, which has given rise to all kinds of myths and stories about them which range from doubtful to fairy-tale like in quality. Dolphin trainers find them easy to train, and they will work for fish. But they don't like tartar sauce.
Dolphins do not like sharks, and one kind, the bottle-nosed dolphin, will ram, and can kill, sharks that get too close. They have even been known on occasion to kill sharks -- by ramming them in their soft underside near what would be the ribcage with people -- when pesky sharks circle too close too people.
Porpoises are much like dolphins, but smaller and a bit more compact, and not quite as tame or people-friendly. They aren't fish either, but do not seem as smart as dolphins, though they do resemble them fairly closely. But porpoises have "flattened, spade-shaped teeth distinct from the conical teeth of dolphins." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porpoise). <-- Here, you can learn all about porpoises. The wikipedia entry for dolphins says that they are: ".... aquatic mammals which are closely related to whales and porpoises. There are almost forty species of dolphin in seventeen genera. They vary in size from [four feet] and [88 lbs, in the case of the] Maui's Dolphin, [and] up to [30 feet and ten tons in that of] the Orca or Killer Whale. They are found worldwide, mostly in the shallower seas of the continental shelves, and are carnivores, mostly eating fish and squid. The family, Delphinidae, is the largest in the Cetacea[n class] ...."
Dolphins do appear able to talk to each other, and animal behaviorists have long studied them to try to decipher just how they communicate with each other. They use three types of sounds -- which anyone who has visited MarineWorld will have noticed -- they sound like clicks, pulse-burst sounds, or else emit a sound similar to a whistle. Moreover, it is quite interesting to note that when the smartest (most subtil, or shrewd) of animals -- the serpent -- showed up in Eden talking, Eve did not blink an eye. One would have expected a shriek, followed by a gasp "Ah! A talking serpent, quick honey, get a broom or something heavy to hit it with!", but no such emotive language occurs.
She chats with him as though this sort of thing happened on a regular basis. Some have speculated that the linguisitic capacities some of the smarter animals seem to possess may have originally been far greater, before the curse upon all creation. There is nothing in the list of divine curses imposed which suggests that it was intended to be exhaustive. And there are good examples of things which did not exist in Eden, which are now curses, which God also did not mention in this list. Think of hurricanes, tornadoes, and all manner of deadly natural disasters. We know from the Bible that there was no death before sin; therefore, there were no deadly disasters of nature, or of anything else, before sin.
This means these are included in the divine promise that the day ye shall eat of it, ye shall surely DIE, though not mentioned by name. Did animals originally talk? Serpents did. Why not the others which show extraordinary, though most probably greatly muted (under the curse) intellectual capabilities? Was Balaam's donkey an example of an animal wherein God temporarily removed the curse imposed in Genesis to restrain the prophet's madness [for this is what the NT calls it]? It is at the very least, an interesting question. Even some chimps seem to be able to learn sign language, and can communicate this way with people, though on a limited scale.
After all, the proverbs DO command us to learn from the ant, lion, badger and other friends. Would we not be able to do this better if (originally), we could have chatted with them? Why is there nothing special mentioned about a talking serpent? The best explanation is the obvious one: this was typical or ordinary -- before the fall. Just because we do not NOW experience X does not imply (necessarily) that Adam and Eve did not.
So far as today goes, you cannot talk much with dolphins, though they can understand linguistic commands well when trained -- especially if you are holding the fish. Oh, the power of fish to befriend the dolphins! But you can swim with them, as some of these photos show.
Now Numbers 34:6 refers to the Mediterranean as the "Great Sea," as was commonly done in the ancient world. Today, one can find dolphins swimming off the eastern and southern coastline, as they tend to swim along shorelines some distance out, mostly playing and hunting for yummy fish. Wouldn't you?
There is good reason to suppose that their ancestors probably did the same things, while people traveled up and down those same coasts, from Sidon to Carthage and Carthage (in northern Africa) to Caesarea Philippi, buying, selling, delivering and retrieving goods. Exactly which kind of sea creature -- though a whale of some sort and not a fish -- had swallowed the prophet Jonah whole -- we do not know. We do know that he was headed for a port in Tarshish (Spain), in an effort to flee God's command to go the other way to Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, around the late 8th century B.C. (Nineveh was sacked and destroyed by the Babylonians in 712 B.C. as divine retribution for ransacking Samaria in 722, only 10 years earlier).
Jonah ran away because he was -- we find out later -- afraid that God would convert them, and a whale - maybe one of Shamu's great grandparents -- swallowed him whole until he got entangled in seaweed and prayed after 3 days and 3 nights. Here, "the sign of Jonah," (meaning a miraculous work of God) shows us how God even uses sea-creatures to preach the gospel of Christ, who was slain by the wicked, and rose from the dead after being 3 days and 3 nights in the tomb of a rich man, Joseph of Aramithea.
This is consistent with the way God uses all creatures, which He endowed with wisdom from the first, to teach men our duties and what virtues we fail to show (and are reproved for this even by the lower creation). In this way, general revelation fortifies God's special revelation. If you don't believe me, ask Balaam's (fairly articulate) donkey.
There is one other important idea from the Bible to consider. The kinds of creatures God made originally have relatives which continue all the way back to the antediluvian world -- before Noah's flood. And we have not by any means exhausted the catalog of such creatures. Many live FAR beneath the ocean's surface, and have stirred the minds of men to fancy and speculation for centuries -- esp. pirate tales and maritime stories include all manner of alleged sightings and mythical claims. And there may be a kernel of truth in some of them for all we know.
The book of Job seems to recount creatures of very large proportions, and doubtless there are many smaller ones, we have yet to see. We do have fossils of dinosaurs, creatures of extraorinary size and strength -- though many of these are badly reconstructed in all likelihood -- which roamed the world of Noah's day and before. Were ALL of these killed in the flood? We simply do not know. If there are ones that did not, are they friendly? I hope so. If not, I hope they go well with tartar sauce. Whatever they are, God gave us dominion over all of them; and we know that dolphins are among the friendliest.
Here is a great power-dolphin photo shot [My favorite so far], nature's answer to the jet ski:
http://www.hickerphoto.com/data/media/45/dolphins_ws11.jpg
There are lions in the ocean too, sea lions. Here is a great sea-lion mugshot up close:
http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm
Here is a woman being overrun by playful dolphins:
http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm
This is how dolphins shake hands:
http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm
Dolphins cannot actually fly, but try telling Wilbur and Orville here.
http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm
If they can fly, sea lions can too. Apparently, sea lions are very competitive. This is what happens when sea lions try to be birds:
http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm
God made dolphins very fast, powerful swimmers, since they did not have jet skis when the world was brand new.
http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm
Dolphins have smooth, shiny skin. See?
http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-gallery.htm
Key Largo, Florida has a really cool educational camp for children (Dolphins Plus, Inc.) that allows you to swim with the dolphins, and learn all about some of God's more interesting sea creatures. Let's face it. We all want to swim with the dolphins and sea lions because they are more fun than a barrel of monkeys. School groups are welcome to visit too.
You can visit the Dolphins Plus, Inc. site at: http://www.dolphinsplus.com/dolphin-education.htm#blast (or you can call them Toll Free: 1-866-860-7946).
Homeschoolers can have their students go to a nearby amusement park, to spend a day of fun watching all kinds of sea creatures in captivity, to take notes and write a report on the favorite animal of their choice. Zoos are good for this too. And obviously, you will want to have some good research sources to help students explain their observations better.
The report should specify at least three primary characteristics which make their chosen animal special -- different from all the other animals -- and the older students should be required to follow a particular source noting format, either the MLA or Chicago style (see the latest edition of Kate Turabian's Manual of Style online).
The younger students should simply work on saying in print, as accurately as they can, just what they most like about their chosen animal. For young minds, cultivating enthusiasm for learning is more important than the quality of any one product, since the latter will improve over time with the former. Focus on vocabulary growth for the younger (word choices) and comparing and contrasting concepts with the older.
Contrasting concepts with animals might take the form of the question, "Why does this animal have THAT feature and not other animals? What does it do that helps the animal live well? This will inevitably demonstrate the goodness of God, Creator of all (since features adapt, but do not evolve). Recall that adaptation is not evolution, nor is genetic variation within animal kinds. Both of these occur, because God so intended by design; but neither implies evolutionary development by themselves.
These are necessary to evolutionary views, but NOT sufficient. Neo-Darwinism requires variation WITHOUT the genetic borders that prevent one kind of animal from developing into another. And Molecular biology has clearly falsified this need. If you wish to swim with the big fish, school is in. See Dr. Michael Denton's Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, for a critical, scientific (and devastating) evaluation of Neo-Darwinian mythology by a molecular biologist.
But these limits set by God, and genetic variation within them (flexibility or adaptability) are entirely consistent with the biblical outlook. God's goodness and wisdom teach us to EXPECT that he would enable animals to replace themselves with genetic variation to help keep any one species from becoming extinct. This is like diversifying your assets in the marketplace, so that if one or more stocks fail, the others might not. If we are that smart, How much more the One who made us!
Hence genetic variation as a demonstration of God's goodness to preserve what He has made, and His wisdom to show us how we ought to do likewise in our own affairs (diversification leads to preservation). The Proverbs teach the same, but that is a post for another day.
Let There Be Light: The Bible, Gemstones and You
What is an emerald? A website I found says that this term describes "1. a rare variety of the mineral beryl that is green because of its chromium content and is valued as a gem. [or else] 2. [Any color that is a] clear, deep green."
One could get far more technical and lengthy, but this will do well enough. The website also has a fantastic shot of a beautiful emerald worth seeing here: http://www.emeralds.com/
One could get far more technical and lengthy, but this will do well enough. The website also has a fantastic shot of a beautiful emerald worth seeing here: http://www.emeralds.com/
Today's post is the most theological yet. It declares the goodness and glory of the Lord God Almighty just the way the Bible does. If you believe in the Lord Jesus with all your heart, then today's post is about you. This emphasizes the biblical descriptions of the righteous and the resurrection unto glory, often portrayed in the Bible as like precious gemstones.
Proverbs 20: 15 says --
There is gold, and a multitude of rubies: but the lips of knowledge are a precious jewel.
By precious jewel, the Bible means this: http://www.gemstone.org/gem-by-gem/english/sapphire.html
Proverbs 3 reads:
My son, forget not my law; but let thine eart keep my commandments: .... Blessed is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding. For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.
Thus, wisdom is more to be desired than [click here]: http://www.gemstone.org/gem-by-gem/english/ruby.html
The Book of Job (28:19) adds of wisdom: "The topaz of Cush cannot compare with it; it cannot be bought with pure gold."
That means wisdom is better than .... http://www.gemstone.org/gem-by-gem/english/topaz.html
And the whole Church of the Lord Jesus (Revelation 21) looks like this:
http://www.gemstone.org/gem-by-gem/english/amethyst.html
http://www.gemstone.org/gem-by-gem/english/garnet.html
http://www.gemstone.org/gem-by-gem/english/aquamarine.html
http://www.gemstone.org/gem-by-gem/english/peridot.html
http://www.gemstone.org/gem-by-gem/english/agate.html
http://www.gemstone.org/gem-by-gem/english/pearl.html
http://www.gemstone.org/gem-by-gem/english/jade.html
Well, you get the point, and can look up the other stones on the site with such fabulous photos given here.
My suggestion for homeschoolers today, is that you help each of your students pick a favorite gemstone, whichever he or she likes best -- this is half the fun -- and write a short report explaining both 5 characteristics of his or her favorite stone, and five reasons why God chose precious (expensive and beautiful) stones (gems) to stand for the righteous in the Bible. There are many more than 5 in each case, and this will require them to think about the world around them, about the beauty of color, the goodness of God, and the reasons that God uses for the choices He makes in the Bible. A first helpful hint to get you started has to do with light.
In other words, this is an exploratory way to learn to think God's thoughts after Him, and see the goodness of the One who gave Himself for His people -- up close. It has God's stamp of approval in advance, so explore away.
This is called "mineralogy," and forms a subset of the more general field of "geology." "Gemology" refers to the art and science of cutting precious and semi-precious stones to exact specifications, to make them as beautiful as possible. Gemstones, the Bible tells us, are "for glory and for beauty."
If you wish to shorten the time it takes to find a suitable stone for each of your students, younger ones respond well to a choice made for them which begins with the same letter as his or her name. For instance, if you have a student named "Christianna" who happens to be quite pretty, you might choose for her a "citrine" like this:
http://www.gemstone.org/gem-by-gem/english/citrine.html
If it's "Danielle," then try a diamond perhaps, like this [which incidentally come in almost every color -- including pink and blue]. And, of course, they must because Danielle is such a beautiful name]:
http://www.gemstone.org/gem-by-gem/english/diamond.html
Here are some great links to get you started:
http://www.theimage.com/gemstone/tourmaline/tourm5.html
http://www.theimage.com/gemstone/tourmaline/tourm4.html
http://www.theimage.com/gemstone/sapphire/sapphire.html
http://www.theimage.com/gemstone/garnet/garnet.html
Here is a famous ruby at the Smithsonian:
http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/ruby/index.htm
NOVA has a really cool sapphire photo with some facts and figs [here] -- btw -- the only difference between a sapphire and a ruby is color; they are both made of corundum, and the red kind gets its own name -- ruby -- since these were especially prized for their beauty in the ancient world. But rubies and sapphires are siblings. Here is the dazzling CORundum photo I found:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/diamond/gp15sapphire.html
Here is the famous hope diamond: [This is a great research topic, and wikipedia has the goods on it]. To see it go here:
http://www.mccullagh.org/photo/1ds2-5/hope-diamond-3
To research it go here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_diamond
Another great page for research, and all manner of gemstone pictures, is this one:
http://www.galleries.com/minerals/gemstone/class.htm
A few biblical places to start are:
The opening declaration of Genesis, "Let there be light," Noah's rainbow; Joseph's -- why a prophet's coat -- of many colors, the proverbs of Solomon concerning sayings of the wise (gemstones are -- quite curiously -- a pictorial form of self-reference in the proverbs), the pearl of great price, the glory of the Risen Christ, and the many descriptions of the church, the wise, the Word of God itself, and the righteous throughout the Bible (which use gemstone pictures), and Revelation 21 should draw special attention for its manifold reference to precious gems.
Have fun on your treasure hunt. May there be light there too.
P.S. feel free to ignore the obligatory evolutionary time scale inherent in all modern geological teachings, a subset of which is the study of precious and semi-precious stones. The earth is not nearly as old as they suppose (using uranium to date the planet at 4.51 billion years). I can blog on that at length another time, but suffice it for now to note that since the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species (1859), textbooks indicating the age of the earth have it doubling about every 15 years (to make room for the time needed to accomodate their philosophical prejudices). This isn't just crude cheating. It borders on pathetic.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Astronomy on the Horizon: A Total Eclipse of the Moon Tomorrow Morning
Watching the heavens and their movements forms an ancient pasttime. The Babylonians did this with considerable interest, and became noted for their abilities -- sometimes better than others -- to make forecasts that would actually indicate where this or that celestial body would appear under some special condition in advance -- a star (often a planet like Venus since they could not tell the difference well) might appear brighter at this or that time of year, etc. Many other civilizations did likewise, from the early Egyptians to the Greeks. People have always been fascinated by the heavens. And well they should be.
The Babylonians (or "Chaldeans" later), the people from whom Abraham came originally -- for he lived in "Ur of the Chaldeans" -- conflated (mixed together) the biblically-forbidden are of astrology with the biblically-warranted science of astronomy. Christians -- buy a telescope and knock yourself out. Study the heavens all you want, for "the heavens declare the GLORY of God" (Psalm 19) -- The first of these, astrology, seeks to foretell the future by (falsely) assuming that the positions and relations of star clusters (constellations) set the course of human destinies. Stars do not, of course, do this. God does.
Galileo Galilei liked telescopes, and used them to study the moon, in order to gather evidence to show that the earth travels about the Sun in a day when this was not commonly known or accepted. This was astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus,' "Heliocentrism" or "Heliocentric model," which contrasted sharply with the teachings of Rome at the time. He was placed under house arrest for a time by Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (later one of the "Pope Piuses"), for his "eccentric and subversive" views.
In any case, tomorrow, astronomers will have their telescopes out in force, as the earth's shadow ("penumbra") overtakes the moon completely. Surprisingly, when this happens, not one of the angels yells, "Down in Front!" This process -- a lunar eclipse -- can only occur during the cycle of a full moon, and it can be spectacular. Here is a brief post telling the short, but fairly inclusive, story of what happens when we get a lunar eclipse.
"A total eclipse of the Moon occurs during the early morning of Tuesday, August 28, 2007. The event is widely visible from the United States and Canada as well as South America, the Pacific Ocean, western Asia and Australia. During a total lunar eclipse, the Moon's disk can take on a dramatically colorful appearance from bright orange to blood red to dark brown and (rarely) very dark gray.
The Babylonians (or "Chaldeans" later), the people from whom Abraham came originally -- for he lived in "Ur of the Chaldeans" -- conflated (mixed together) the biblically-forbidden are of astrology with the biblically-warranted science of astronomy. Christians -- buy a telescope and knock yourself out. Study the heavens all you want, for "the heavens declare the GLORY of God" (Psalm 19) -- The first of these, astrology, seeks to foretell the future by (falsely) assuming that the positions and relations of star clusters (constellations) set the course of human destinies. Stars do not, of course, do this. God does.
Galileo Galilei liked telescopes, and used them to study the moon, in order to gather evidence to show that the earth travels about the Sun in a day when this was not commonly known or accepted. This was astronomer, Nicolaus Copernicus,' "Heliocentrism" or "Heliocentric model," which contrasted sharply with the teachings of Rome at the time. He was placed under house arrest for a time by Cardinal Robert Bellarmine (later one of the "Pope Piuses"), for his "eccentric and subversive" views.
In any case, tomorrow, astronomers will have their telescopes out in force, as the earth's shadow ("penumbra") overtakes the moon completely. Surprisingly, when this happens, not one of the angels yells, "Down in Front!" This process -- a lunar eclipse -- can only occur during the cycle of a full moon, and it can be spectacular. Here is a brief post telling the short, but fairly inclusive, story of what happens when we get a lunar eclipse.
"A total eclipse of the Moon occurs during the early morning of Tuesday, August 28, 2007. The event is widely visible from the United States and Canada as well as South America, the Pacific Ocean, western Asia and Australia. During a total lunar eclipse, the Moon's disk can take on a dramatically colorful appearance from bright orange to blood red to dark brown and (rarely) very dark gray.
An eclipse of the Moon can only take place at Full Moon, and only if the Moon passes through some portion of Earth's shadow. The shadow is actually composed of two cone-shaped parts, one nested inside the other. The outer shadow or penumbra is a zone where Earth blocks some (but not all) of the Sun's rays. In contrast, the inner shadow or umbra is a region where Earth blocks all direct sunlight from reaching the Moon.
If only part of the Moon passes through the umbra, a partial eclipse is seen. However, if the entire Moon passes through the umbral shadow, then a total eclipse of the Moon occurs."
If you want to read more from this site, go here: http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/LEmono/TLE2007Aug28/TLE2007Aug28.html
All students should learn what a "penumbra" is, and be able to use "penumbral" in a complete sentence. This can be used as a simple synonym for "shadowy," (poetically, most often) or in its more technical sense, as you see above. They should also try to come up with important ways to distinguish "astrology" from "astonomy."
Genesis tells us that God gave the stars (as well the other heavenly bodies) for "signs, seasons, months and years." The intended point is that the provide an objective (not earth bound) way to measure the passing of time, instead of doing things "old school," by merely using one king's list to compare against another -- which is helpful if -- and only if -- you already know some fixed point in time when this or this king in at least one of the lists actually reigned. Reported eclipses, solar or lunar, since they happen only at certain times, which can be known from reported observations by historians like Herdotus, help historians determine just when this or that king ruled. This helps historians fix times and places more accurately.
Of course, God knew we would have a problem keeping our times and season in order, so we have help by His kindness from the stars, sun and moon. Technically, the Sun is just a fairly ordinary yellowish star. But it happens to be just in the right place -- if it were 1% closer to Earth we would be -- in scientific terms -- "toast," and if it were 1% further -- we would be "Iceberg city." The goodness of God then shows up in the least details of astronomy and the other sciences as well.
So man the telescopes, and have fun at tomorrow's lunar party. But it happens "not so bright" and very early -- 2:52 AM (PST) to 4:22 AM. So bring the coffee.
A few other good astronomy terms to know are (I have included a few wikipedia links for help):
precession
constellations
solar eclispe
asteroid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid
meteor (meteoroid)
solar flare (this can be a bit spectacular too) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_flare
equator
prime meridian
galaxy (galactic)
Milky Way http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_way
comets (see Halley's comet) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley%27s_comet
Aurora Borealis (the "Northern Lights")
For a complete glossary of astronomy terms, go here:
http://www.solarviews.com/eng/terms.htm
For some great galactic photo shots, check this out:
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Allah Crock-bar: The Bible and Mohammed's Theological Legacy
Apologists for Islam can be found today in many places. Politicians do not hestitate to affirm under politically correct pressure from the left, that "Islam is a peaceful religion," with no evidentiary warrant whatever. These people have (obviously) never read the Qu'ran. Pluralism and education have never really been the best of friends, and a little research goes a long way in undoing this oft-repeated, and quite silly notion.
Nevertheless, the ruthless and prolific bloodshed of the so-called "prophet" of Islam (though interesting in its own right) does not form the substance of this particular post. It should have everyone's attention where Muslims live, however, since they believe themselves duty-bound to follow his (aggressively murderous) "ethical" example.
If this does not scare you, it is because either you cannot read [so you are not now reading this, though someone might be reading it to you], or else you are very naive and do not watch the news (or both). Incredibly, as the wikipedia article on Islam reports: "In Muslim tradition, Muhammad is viewed as the last and the greatest in a series of prophets—as the man closest to perfection, the possessor of all virtues." This borders on delusional, and requires a kind of historical and intellectual dishonesty guaranteed to fail the canons -- any canon -- common to western historiographic traditions.
But this post has a more limited scope. Here, the theological system promoted by his followers, that of the Qu'ran -- the Mein Kampf of Islam -- and the Hadith (or Ahadith), together considered their "holy books", make for the proper object of the investigation at hand.
If you wish to read up on the horrors, and typical abuses of modern Islam, you can find a representative sample of them here: http://www.amprpress.theology_of_islam.htm/. Please note the other options at the bottom of that page if you wish to read more.
This (http://www.abcog.org/cislam2.htm) is an excellent discussion of the form and substance of the Koranic theology by exegesis and exposition.
The Qu'ran's Doctine of the Bible
Nevertheless, the ruthless and prolific bloodshed of the so-called "prophet" of Islam (though interesting in its own right) does not form the substance of this particular post. It should have everyone's attention where Muslims live, however, since they believe themselves duty-bound to follow his (aggressively murderous) "ethical" example.
If this does not scare you, it is because either you cannot read [so you are not now reading this, though someone might be reading it to you], or else you are very naive and do not watch the news (or both). Incredibly, as the wikipedia article on Islam reports: "In Muslim tradition, Muhammad is viewed as the last and the greatest in a series of prophets—as the man closest to perfection, the possessor of all virtues." This borders on delusional, and requires a kind of historical and intellectual dishonesty guaranteed to fail the canons -- any canon -- common to western historiographic traditions.
But this post has a more limited scope. Here, the theological system promoted by his followers, that of the Qu'ran -- the Mein Kampf of Islam -- and the Hadith (or Ahadith), together considered their "holy books", make for the proper object of the investigation at hand.
If you wish to read up on the horrors, and typical abuses of modern Islam, you can find a representative sample of them here: http://www.amprpress.theology_of_islam.htm/. Please note the other options at the bottom of that page if you wish to read more.
This (http://www.abcog.org/cislam2.htm) is an excellent discussion of the form and substance of the Koranic theology by exegesis and exposition.
The Qu'ran's Doctine of the Bible
An Islamic website expresses the traditional view of the Koran thus:
"The Quran is the only divine Book extant in its original text, and is, therefore, the only source of Guidance from God for all mankind."
Muslims insult the Christian God by beginnin their religion with the assumption (dogma) that the Bible (having lost its autographs to history) very quickly became corrupted, and that (by implication) Christians simply stood by and did nothing about it, never comparing one copy against others to see which readings most closely matched to reproduce the original reading of the autographs. This is absurd in the extreme, and the evidence countermands the claim, denying the basis for the very existence of Islam.
A. The Quranic Doctrine of the Word of god Begins with a Simple Non-Sequitur.
There is no reason to think that a faithfully translated book -- without the originals in existence -- could not serve as "The source of divine Guidance for all mankind." If each concept in the originals is accurately expressed in an extant translation (or set of translations), then no substantial, conceptual difference between the autographs and copies presently exists. In this case, the meaning of God's Word (as originally given) is preserved intact. We have early copies in several languages for such comparisons, including many copies in the the original [Koine] Greek tongue, as well as Coptic, Syriac, Latin, Ethiopian and the like.
Thus, even if one could show this or that flaw in any one translation (at present), this does nothing to impugn the real and essential, protected purity of God's Word in history, via the tens of thousands of manuscripts we have available from which to reconstruct the New Testament.
B. Confessional Integrity Favors the Biblical View of the Bible.
The system of theology found in the good translations tells against the corruption view in favor of the current teachings of the Bible about the Bible itself (biblical bibliology). Historically, when exegeting the texts of the 16th and 17th centuries, Christian scholars have found it both possible and enlightening, to produce from them systematic theologies, found in standards like the Westminster Confession of Faith, which demonstrably display the mutual consent of all the parts. This underscores in practical and confessional ways the biblical verity uttered by the Lord Jesus, "The Scripture cannot be broken."
C. The Impossibility of the Contrary Tells In Favor of A Biblical Bibliology.
The systematic character of the original sayings of the autographs can be demonstrated from the impossibility of the contrary to the Christian outlook, as this post presently will, in the case of Islam, and has done in the past regarding other theological and philosophical systems. This system of theology includes the absolute preservation of God's Word in all history, past, present and future, together with our improving understanding of it as God sanctifies his people. This shows up as confessional progress in the churches of Christ.
D. The Teachings of The Bible Unanimously and Self-Consistently Testify Against the Qu'ran's Corruption View.
Psalm 12:6 -- "The words of the LORD are pure words [not were pure, but now corrupted]: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times [i.e. perfectly pure].
Psalm 19:7-8 -- "The law of the LORD is perfect [not "was" or "will be" perfect], converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.
Isaiah 55:11 -- "So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."
The efficacy of the Word of God is tied to its purity; the corruption of it, by adding to it the word's of mere men, or subtracting from it its other essential and mutually confirming parts, ruins its ability to do as God had intended it. God converts and restores men by His pure and holy Word. The Lord Jesus calls this, "Making the word of God void" [of no effect], just what he accused the pharisees of doing, who, by their many traditions of men, added to the word of God. Thus, the Lord rebuked them, and proved them liars (Prov. 30).
E. The Pslamic texts above repeatedly declare the purity of all God's Word in the PRESENT tense, meaning they must be true at all times, or else they never were true in the first place. They cannot be false at some point and time -- as Islam's doctrine of biblical restoration implies -- without being false at all times. Thus, the Qu'ran stupidly and most foolishly declares the God of the Bible a liar.
Conversely, if these biblical doctrines are true -- and they are, so that the contrary is impossible - then Islam's restoration doctrine MUST be false. For "the Scripture CANNOT be broken." God will not permit it, and has sworn by His holiness that this will never happen. This forms the basis for His special and providential care, with which He shields His written Word from the corruption of men, and the malice of Satan; for the welfare of His Church depends upon it.
F. God is able to guarantee this because He - unlike Allah -- is sovereign, and need not correct His own failure to preserve the work He completed (the canon of Scripture) by A.D. 70. This renders the Qu'ran both false, and unnecessary, in the first place. The only way to attack this position is by impugning the sovereignty and integrity of the Almighty, either explicitly or implicitly. I urgently recommend making better choices.
G. The early church fathers copied almost the entire New Testment, by quoting it profusely throughout their own writings (minus 17 verses). This fact, and the closeness of the quoted readings (in most cases) simply defies the corruption theory.
H. Moreover, we can say against the textal corruption view of the Bible that ancient historians -- probably to a man or woman -- in the vast majority of universities simply reject it outright. Most who reject the Christian message do so on an entirely different basis than this. They hold instead that the Christian message evolved over time, between the time of the events alleged in it, and the time authors put them in writing - NOT afterward. Form, redaction and other naturalistic forms of Gospels criticism, proceed upon a basis which excludes the "textual corruption" claims of the Qu'ran.
Muslim apologists often thereby (accidentally) concede the debate with Christians in citing this or that example of a historian employing such "western" methods to denounce as unhistorical or inauthentic some passage in the Newer Testament. This is the gnat-camel problem in the extreme. Once a Muslim apologist grants "expertise" or "authority to falsify" any text of the New Testament, he has forfeited the match, undermining the putative reason for the existence of the Qu'ran at the outset.
I. For the original Bible to have appeared in A.D. 70 as the Qu'ran now does, within 6 centuries, this would have required an extraordinarly accelerated pace of textual corruption not seen even in copies of secular texts of the ancient world (Herodotus, Thucydides, etc.), where demonstrably far less care was taken to match the translation details necessary to convey accurately in copied form just what the earlier authors said.
But even less time is allowed for this process of corruption since the Bible was finished originally in or just before A.D. 70 and its earliest copies appear from A.D. 120-125 (the John Rylands Manuscript, designated "P52" - for papyrus number 52), and A.D. 155 (the Chester Beatty Papyri). By the third century's end (A.D. 300), full copies of all the New Testment books had circulated for some time. So the Qu'ran needs nearly complete corruption of the New Testament (they might be able to show some 20% overlap -- at most -- in places where Quranic authors actually borrowed ideas from Christian sources), as well the Old, within about two to two and a half centuries.
This is extremely improbable for even the least attended, and worst attested, works of antiquity, let alone their chosen of target of the very best attended -- scribal copyists took greater care because they believed they were copying the very Word of God -- and attested (the NT alone boasts more than 35,000 manuscripts used for reconstruction). Nothing like this exists for any other work of the ancient world, from Plato and Euripides, to Tacitus or Polybius. And historians are quite sure we know what they wrote and believed. How much more the Bible?
This leaves the Qu'ran in the extremely precarious position of teaching a process of corruption, which [allegedly] utterly ruined not only the Bible's teachings and texts, but also the citations of all the early church fathers as well -- and then it left no historical record behind by which we might trace its invisible progress through the Church, or find any of its sources. This is not just textual corruption, it is magical and unbelievable. So much so, that no scholar of which I have ever heard actually believes it. And it does bring to mind the phrase "historical lunacy." Perhaps the original documents were never actually copied, and just got blown up by a suicide bomber.
J. The Koranic view of the Bible also has important implications for their view of God. On the "textual corruption" view of things, God is unable (or inconsistently unwilling) to protect His originally-given Word; instead, evil men prove able to corrupt what He goes to great lengths to establish, giving Himself the extra task of having to fix it later. The alleged deity should simply have used his "great power" to protect what he had written at the outset, to avoid looking like the god of "white out," and all pencil erasers.
K. On the Qu'ranic view, God let His Church -- Cristians -- falter and wander into corrupt doctrines for many centuries, until the advent of the Qu'ran. Yet, Protestants of the reformation even affirm that the Church always had the pure Word of God available to it. The reason for the need of reformation was not a corrupted Bible, but people who began to ignore, and then opposed, the clearer and more basic teachings of the Bible -- just as the Pharisees and Sadducees had opposed the Lord Jesus and the apostles.
If corrupt men, who managed to kill the Son of God (because the Scripture cannot be broken which foretold His death by their hands, and then His resurrection) could not corrupt the text in the days of the Lord Jesus -- though they opposed the word of God strenuously -- what makes Muslims think that God would permit less pernicious and able men to do it later?
L. How Sovereign is Allah?
If the cosmos really had a god that incompetent, who has to rewrite everything each time evil men gain the upper hand (even though the historical record says this did not happen), what guarantee does any Muslim have that Allah can accomplish any of his Quranic promises, or is willing to, because (in case Muslims haven't noticed), we still have no shortage of evil men on this planet -- people willing to blow up important things, spread the good cheer of I.E.D's, and wreak all manner of literary and logical havoc with people's minds in the name of religion. Is the Qu'ran presently at risk of corruption by evil men? And if not, then how was the Bible so [allegedly] vulnerable?
Our brief study then finds that the Qu'ran's doctrines regarding the Bible and its alleged "corruption" (not development) prove both outlandish, and counterfactual, in the extreme. One could scarcely overstate how badly erroneously the Qu'ran pontificates at this point. As noted only very briefly, it implies its own internal contradictions regarding ecclesiology and the doctrine of God's sovereignty, between bibliology and history, and between many other several categories of theological dogma.
God surely deserves much better, than to be slandered this way from the pen of a false (semi-literate) prophet, who could not have passed a basic university course in history or logic.
Our study will continue -- if God is willing -- to examine a few other areas of Islamic dogma, critically examining the logical and evidentiary features of its popularly professed system of theology, if one can call it a system.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Presuppositional Rejoinder to Persian "Enlightenment"
Zoroaster or Zarathustra, also referred to as Zartosht, was an ancient (ca. 6th-century B.C.) Persian mystic and prophet, and a religious writer-poet. The hymns attributed to him form the scriptural basis of the religion called "Zoroastrianism."
The World Mythology and Legend (2d ed.) Encyclopedia offers a few of the following helpful summary details. According to tradition, he was born when his mother was only 15, having come in contact with the sacred "Haoma plant." As soon as he was born [the story goes], he could talk, and spoke with the "good God, Ahura mazda." At the age of thirty, he had his first vision, and began to teach the "Good Religion," as it was then called.
He held that Ahura Mazda created the created the world, as was in conflict with the evil spirit, "Ahriman," over whom the forces of Ahura Mazda would gain victory in a battle of good versus evil, in which evil would be destroyed. The wikipedia article on Zoroastrianism identifes its fundamental precepts as the following:
The World Mythology and Legend (2d ed.) Encyclopedia offers a few of the following helpful summary details. According to tradition, he was born when his mother was only 15, having come in contact with the sacred "Haoma plant." As soon as he was born [the story goes], he could talk, and spoke with the "good God, Ahura mazda." At the age of thirty, he had his first vision, and began to teach the "Good Religion," as it was then called.
He held that Ahura Mazda created the created the world, as was in conflict with the evil spirit, "Ahriman," over whom the forces of Ahura Mazda would gain victory in a battle of good versus evil, in which evil would be destroyed. The wikipedia article on Zoroastrianism identifes its fundamental precepts as the following:
1. There is one universal and transcendent God, Ahura Mazda, the one uncreated Creator and to whom all worship is ultimately directed.
2. Ahura Mazda's creation - evident as asha, truth and order - is the antithesis of chaos, evident as druj, falsehood and disorder. The resulting conflict involves the entire universe, including humanity, which has an active role to play in the conflict (see #3 below).
3. Active participation in life through good thoughts, good words and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep the chaos at bay. This active participation is a central element in Zoroaster's concept of free will, and Zoroastrianism rejects all forms of monasticism.
4. Ahura Mazda will ultimately prevail, at which point the universe will undergo a cosmic renovation and time will end (cf: Zoroastrian eschatology). In the final renovation, all of creation - even the souls of the dead that were initially banished to "darkness" - will be (re)united in God.
5. In Zoroastrian tradition, the malevolent is represented by Angra Mainyu, the "Destructive Principle", while the benevolent is represented through Ahura Mazda's Spenta Mainyu, the instrument or "Bounteous Principle" of the act of creation. It is through Spenta Mainyu that Ahura Mazda is immanent in humankind, and through which the Creator interacts with the world. According to Zoroastrian cosmology, in articulating the Ahuna Vairya formula, Ahura Mazda made the ultimate triumph evident to Angra Mainyu.
6. As expressions and aspects of Creation, Ahura Mazda emanated seven "sparks", the Amesha Spentas, "Bounteous Immortals" that are each the hypostasis and representative of one aspect of that Creation. These Amesha Spenta are in turn assisted by a league of lesser principles, the Yazatas, each "Worthy of Worship" and each again a hypostasis of a moral or physical aspect of Creation.
Other characteristics
The symbol of fire: The energy of the creator is represented in Zoroastrianism by fire and the sun which are both enduring, radiant, pure and life sustaining. Zoroastrians usually pray in front of some form of fire (or any source of light).
Proselytizing and conversion: Parsi Zoroastrians do not proselytize. In recent years, however, Zoroastrian communities in both Iran, Europe and the Americas have been more tolerant towards conversion. While this move has not been supported officially by the priesthood in Mumbai, India, it has been endorsed by the Council of Mobeds in Tehran.
Inter-faith marriages: As in many other faiths, Zoroastrians are strongly encouraged to marry others of the same faith, but this is not a requirement of the religion itself. Some members of the Indian Zoroastrian community (the Parsis) contend that a child must have a Parsi father to be eligible for introduction into the faith, but this assertion is considered by most to be a violation of the Zoroastrian tenets of gender equality, and may be a remnant of an old legal definition (since overruled) of Parsi.
However, to this day, some priests will not perform the Navjote ceremony - i.e. the rites of admission into the religion - for children of mixed-marriages, irrespective of which parent is a non-Parsi. This issue is a matter of great debate within the Parsi community, but with the increasingly global nature of modern society and the dwindling number of Zoroastrians, such opinions are less vociferous than they previously were.
Death and burial: Religious rituals related to death are all concerned with the person's soul and not the body. Zoroastrians believe that on the fourth day after death, the human soul leaves the body and the body remains as an empty shell. Traditionally, Zoroastrians disposed of their dead by leaving them atop open-topped enclosures, called Towers of Silence, or Dokhmas. Vultures and the weather would clean the flesh off the bones, which were then placed into an ossuary at the center of the Tower. Fire and Earth were considered too sacred for the dead to be placed in them. While this practice is continued in India by some Parsis, it had ended by the beginning of the twentieth century in Iran. In India, burial and cremation are becoming increasingly popular alternatives.
A Rational Assessment of Zoroastian Doctrines.
Zoroastrians, of course, want us to think that they do not worship fire, but only use it as a medium or channel, as a symbol and a point of focus, much like the crucifix in Romanism. This has always been the pagan excuse for idolatry in prayer, and was precisely that view against which the second commandment in the Bible is directed. No mediation of prayer by any person or instrument whatever, does the Bible acknowledge, but One. Just as it is written: "for there is but One God, and one mediator between God and man, The Man, Christ Jesus." (2 Timothy 1:15).
Various man-made religions propound a view of the world,explaining disparate aspects of human experience separately. Worldviews explain. They try to explain, as a singular unit of thought, all the various events and phenomena we experience, in a unified, comprehensive, and coherent manner.
The fundamental problem with man-made worldviews stems from the fact that they necessarily form in a piecemeal fashion, bit by bit, one explanation of one aspect of reality at a time. This means that inevitably, one explanation (of this or that feature of reality) finds itself, by logical implication, at odds with the other explained features it purports to describe accurately.
These numerous dialectical tensions, or basic and irresolvable internal conflicts, wave the man-made certificate in full view of any audience willing to notice when each such (makeshift) worldview sports its "man-made" credentials.
One, and only one, worldview is different. This is that system of theology derived by properly handling the many texts of the 66 books of the canonical Bible. It carries the sure sign (sine qua non) of divine origin, in explaining -- when presupposed all at once in its entirety -- consistently all the many parcels of reality requiring explanation. This feature of the biblical worldview shines most brightly when set over against an alleged competitor for comparison.
To that comparison, I will now proceed, in a brief and final section of this post I will call "Zoroastrianism v. The Word of God." While the conclusion is foregone of necessity, for "there is no wisdom, no insight, no plan, which can succeed against the Lord," the details are instructive enough to warrant the assessment.
Problems in the Zoroastrian worldview.
1. Theistic dualism renders it impossible to know whether the god of evil -- in this case "Ahriman" -- has in fact deceived us into believing that the "evil god" is in fact the "good God." Without a self-authorizing legal code, a standard providing a great deal of information to explain what kind of world this is (a thoroughgoing metaphysical outlook), how we know what we know (a justified epistemology), and how we should live our lives (a comprehensive ethical standard) -- which alone provides the foundations for logic, science and morality -- there is simply no way to distinguish self-consciously and accurately the two "gods" in a world like that of Zoroaster, which allows the free will and power afforded to the evil god we see in this religion.
2. Zoroastrians wander between two gods, and many gods (bi-theism and polytheism), for its Scripture names other gods allegedly on the side of either rival deity. Polytheism has its own set of unique problems in violating the explanatory principle of Ockham's razor. In the context of worldviews, this means, "never add more gods than is necessary to explain what you must." The gods of any and every polytheistic system end up with conflicting attributes, goals, and personalities sufficient to destroy the possibility of order in the first place.
Destructive titans who do not sleep, but fight continually with world-making (or destroying) power, simply do not provide the calm and serene conditions we see on our planet where the sun comes up day in and day out -- the uniformity of nature (by name) -- which forms the metaphysical basis for doing inductions in reasoning, and of the sciences.
In short, if this world were a cosmic WWE wrestling match between deified beings, if the bad guys didn't survive, what hope do we puny mortals have of dodging the asteroids one god might hurl at another? This simply does not look anything like a polytheistically conflicted world, of the sort described in the Zoroastrian (or for that matter, Hindu, Greco-Roman or Mormon) worldview.
In the biblical worldview, God has enemies, but no rivals. He is absolutely and singularly sovereign. Satan is on a very short leash, and can do nothing without God's permission, which might affect the Kingdom of God on earth, or in heaven - as the book of Job renders clear. The polytheistic (multiple conflicting deities used for explaining different aspects of reality) problem simply does not exist here.
Additionally, polytheisms can never adequately explain all the various events and phenomena we encounter since they have different numbers of gods. This represents a telling admission. Do we simply need a "god of the wind," or do we need a different god for the east wind, the west wind, or even the various territorial winds, characteristic tradewinds common to different regions, nations or even jetstreams (current existing only at much higher altitudes)? Each polytheistic faith answers these questions, differently -- thus admittedly arbitrarily -- and none in the end can explain everything (the cosmos generally and its particular phenomena).
Is it adequate to have a god like Poseidon, who rules the seas - what of the lakes, rivers, resevoirs, tributaries, aqueducts and the like? Polytheisms either overdo it, naming over three hundred thousands gods -- as with Hindusim -- rendering the faith highly impractical since no one can sacrifice to ALL of them, without going bankrupt in attempting to corner the cattle qand goat markets - and (according to the faith) this may arouse the wrath of the overlooked deities - or else they do not appoint enough deities and leave many aspects of human reality simply unexplained and unexplainable -- an admission that the worldview cannot do what others could (if they had more gods).
Also, religions like these seem confused at what to do with man-made phenomena like the internet. Is there a god of the internet? Should there be? Or has the divine council simply appointed no one to the post yet? When appointed,will the god of the internet also rule ethernet connections, and wifi portals, or merely ordinary landline connections with all software also outside his proper jurisdiction.
A comparison of the various domains left unguarded and unexplained in one polytheism, with those of another quickly illustrate the haphazard and piecemeal fashion in which such religions are composed. They regard "gods" who do not exist, who biographies are pseudo-pious fictions at best, and superstitious lies at worst (deadly idolatry). This is evident both from what they do, and do not attempt to explain in their defined roles, as reveled by any quick comparison.
Some religions, like Jainism, instinctively recognize the need for unity among the diverse "gods" as explanations of this or that feature of the real world, and so offer the patchwork explanation that these are each merely "forms," or "emanations" of the one True God.
This obviously belies the point since the gods in the systems mentioned have mutually incompatible histories and attributes. If they are all merely aspects of the One True God, then this one God is grossly self-conflicted (multi-schizophrenic in the extreme) with more personalities than Cybil raised to the 35th power. This band-aid rescue mission does more harm than good.
Since neither bi-theism, nor polytheism, can in fact explain why the world is as it appears, how we know what we know, and how we ought to live our lives, this leaves only one remaining option: Ethical monotheism, and one with a comprehensive legal code sufficient to provide, by implication and explication, to guide us properly in all possible human relations. The Christian worldview alone provides this.
Zoroastrianism then, provides conflicting explanations of various features of the world, arbitrarily chooses which to attempt to explain (i.e. the problem of evil) and which not, offers a bi-theistic explanation incapable of even defining evil accurately (since we do not have an objective way in which to distinguish Ahura Mazda's ethical character from Ahriman's with any confidence), and thus even if one destroys the other, we do not know which one met an end, the good God or evil demon.
Additionally, there is no guarantee that some other deity will not later turn against the victor, putting us right back at square one (no discernible or final solution to the problem of evil). And this faith simply offers no comprehensive legal code sufficient to govern all aspects of human relations -- nor does it even claim to -- at the personal, familial, national, ecclesiastical and international levels. Thus, it is by implication, a self-admitted failure as a world-view, and religion, since in the end it explains nothing, creates problems it cannot solve, leaves us with no ultimate knowledge of anything, and offers not ethical help either.
This is true with all man-made, or nonbiblical, religions. And yet some world-view must be true and knowable, since the contrary claim could not be true and knowable, on its own terms. The claim that "nothing is true" (or any view that implies this) cannot itself be a TRUE claim. If one admits truth but not knowability (or holds any view which implies this), then the claimant cannot KNOW that his claim to final indeterminacy is in fact true. He doesn't know, and yet he KNOWS that he doesn't know "the final answer." This leaves him affirming and denying the very same proposition. "No one knows for sure" simply cannot be known by anyone for sure. So the truth both exists and is knowable and at least someone (the Bible says in fact everyone) knows the truth about God to some extent, since the light of nature which reveals him clearly and effectively portrays His goodness, wisdom, power and eternity.
God cannot fail and so any attempt on His part to reveal himself to all necessarily succeeds. All men know that he exists and has these attributes, but they insist on distorting and redefining what these mean, by placing them within the context of a false worldview which they just made up as the epistemological soup du jour.
Nevertheless, the Christian worldview shows itself by the self-authorizing Word of the Living God, to be the one true religion, and that the contrary to its claims (in each and every case) proves logically impossible -- arbitrary and self-eliminating -- self-deceived Persian mystics nothwithstanding.
For "all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hid in Christ" (Col. 3:2).
Rome's Precious Forgery: And Now A Word From Our Sponsors About Lorenzo Valla and the Donation of Constantine
The fourteenth century was hard on almost everyone. Between the Black Death, the Hundred Years War, and a host of other pestilences, famines, and skirmishes (where people lost important appendages, and did not have medicare), it rather made the U.S. Depression of the 1930's seem a bit more like a stock market rally. But important trends on the rise would soon raise the standard of living across Europe, and later the entire West.
Trade routes were reviving across Europe, and occasional faires formed their commercial junctions, in places long forgotten since the Fall of the Roman Empire. Universities had begun to grow up as places of learning, which began to rediscover not only the logic of Aristotle (as with the Scholastics or "Schoolmen" as they are called -- like the more famous William of Ockham or Thomas Aquainas), but also the classical literature of the Greco-Roman world.
By the next century, the beginnings of the Renaissance in Italy (and elsewhere) clearly began to show forth their colors. Trade and learning advanced under the guidance of new technological innovations, both on the farm, and among the developing guilds. Strangely, the political conflicts so often disrupting civil life in Italy, also gave rise to a competitive academic spirit that breathed new life into apologetics, the art and science of defending one's position.
In the middle of one such current sat a notable Italian humanist (and budding literary critic), named Lorenzo Valla. Probably his most lasting effort consists in exposing a forgery today commonly known as the "Donation of Constantine." A relevant excerpt from the wikipedia article on this discovery and exposition reads:
"The Donation of Constantine (Latin, Constitutum Donatio Constantini or [else] Constitutum domini Constantini imperatoris) is a forged Roman imperial edict, devised probably between [A.D.] 750 and 850. The precise purpose of the forgery is not entirely certain, but it was clearly a defense of papal interests, perhaps against the claims of .... the Byzantine Empire ... "
".... in his [Valla's] treatise De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione, [he affirmed] that the Donation must be a fake by analyzing its language, and showing that while certain imperial-era formulas are used in the text, some of the Latin in the document could not have been written in the fourth century. Also, the purported date of the document is inconsistent with the content of the document itself as it refers both to the fourth consulate of Constantine (315) as well as the consulate of Gallicanus (317)."
The wiki commentator adds:
"More recently, scholars have further demonstrated that other elements, such as Sylvester's curing of Constantine, are legends which originated at a later time."
And the moral of the story is ... you may wish to think twice about attending a "church," or confessing to a person who represents such a group, known for the spiritual equivalent of yellow journalism, and really bad history. Can their theology really be that much better?
Many such fabrications have been made known for hundreds of years, and still, the faithful flock still shows up for the shearing. As late as 1870, the Roman society declared the "infallibility" of the pope -- rather than Valla's "forgery of the popes" (which has much the better evidence) -- whenever the holey fodder chooses to speak "ex-cathedra."
This is simply an abomination; there is no clever, funny or quirky way to put it. The man who presumes to speak as though he were God thinks he is God. If any one said such things, we would immediately think him insane, extremely egomanical, or simply a blasphemous charlatan, or -- if one's logic is good enough and his heart stout enough -- all of the above.
Personally, I would sooner believe that he is actually a tennis shoe than a deity. If he is infallible, at any time or place, then I am the sole owner of all Denny's restaurants, and supreme commander of all tire stores.
Trade routes were reviving across Europe, and occasional faires formed their commercial junctions, in places long forgotten since the Fall of the Roman Empire. Universities had begun to grow up as places of learning, which began to rediscover not only the logic of Aristotle (as with the Scholastics or "Schoolmen" as they are called -- like the more famous William of Ockham or Thomas Aquainas), but also the classical literature of the Greco-Roman world.
By the next century, the beginnings of the Renaissance in Italy (and elsewhere) clearly began to show forth their colors. Trade and learning advanced under the guidance of new technological innovations, both on the farm, and among the developing guilds. Strangely, the political conflicts so often disrupting civil life in Italy, also gave rise to a competitive academic spirit that breathed new life into apologetics, the art and science of defending one's position.
In the middle of one such current sat a notable Italian humanist (and budding literary critic), named Lorenzo Valla. Probably his most lasting effort consists in exposing a forgery today commonly known as the "Donation of Constantine." A relevant excerpt from the wikipedia article on this discovery and exposition reads:
"The Donation of Constantine (Latin, Constitutum Donatio Constantini or [else] Constitutum domini Constantini imperatoris) is a forged Roman imperial edict, devised probably between [A.D.] 750 and 850. The precise purpose of the forgery is not entirely certain, but it was clearly a defense of papal interests, perhaps against the claims of .... the Byzantine Empire ... "
".... in his [Valla's] treatise De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione, [he affirmed] that the Donation must be a fake by analyzing its language, and showing that while certain imperial-era formulas are used in the text, some of the Latin in the document could not have been written in the fourth century. Also, the purported date of the document is inconsistent with the content of the document itself as it refers both to the fourth consulate of Constantine (315) as well as the consulate of Gallicanus (317)."
The wiki commentator adds:
"More recently, scholars have further demonstrated that other elements, such as Sylvester's curing of Constantine, are legends which originated at a later time."
Valla was educated in Rome, where he learned Latin and Greek, and shortly thereafter, attended the University of Padua. Like Roger Bacon before him, Valla was extremely bright, and had quite a few ideas of his own, which was not always a healthy habit in the era of the Inquisition. He also accurately held that the "Apostle's creed" did not originate in the first century as a specific creedal formula. In the spirit of Voltaire, he once published a letter making fun of the prevailing (scholastic) legal procedure of the day, and lost his job. Both for this personality quirk, and for other reasons, he rather bounced from university to university for a while, staying to teach only for short stints.
Valla began circulating his treatise in 1440, and [surprise!] Rome criticized it sharply, even preventing its formal publication, until Martin Luther and his band got hold of it in 1517. Valla presented his case so forcefully, and with such acumen, that it won the day both then and now. Later scholars in fact much strengthened his thesis, that the Donation was provably forged. And it was well-known that Rome had employed it for hundreds of years to manage dissent, and promote its own declared authority and self-interest.
Martin Luther and others employed his exposition of the Donation in vigorous apologetic (and mostly successful) efforts against the lies of Rome so common, not only in the past, but in the days of the De Medicis as well, when papal nepotism was common enough (i.e. popes appointed family members as successors to the post). These empty Roman affirmations have not abated, and Rome continues lying to a world sleeping blissfully, willing to credit a virtual propaganda factory as a legitimate church, full of blasphemy and idolatry -- did I mention lies -- to bolster its own self-proclaimed "authority," in what is probably the biggest public relations coup in the history of mankind.
In truth, Rome has the same real authority over the consciences of men and women as the Oakland Raiders football team, the local Lions Club, Les Schwab Tires Co., and Denny's Restaurant. Yes, the pope can speak Latin. So could Lorenzo Valla.And the moral of the story is ... you may wish to think twice about attending a "church," or confessing to a person who represents such a group, known for the spiritual equivalent of yellow journalism, and really bad history. Can their theology really be that much better?
Many such fabrications have been made known for hundreds of years, and still, the faithful flock still shows up for the shearing. As late as 1870, the Roman society declared the "infallibility" of the pope -- rather than Valla's "forgery of the popes" (which has much the better evidence) -- whenever the holey fodder chooses to speak "ex-cathedra."
This is simply an abomination; there is no clever, funny or quirky way to put it. The man who presumes to speak as though he were God thinks he is God. If any one said such things, we would immediately think him insane, extremely egomanical, or simply a blasphemous charlatan, or -- if one's logic is good enough and his heart stout enough -- all of the above.
Personally, I would sooner believe that he is actually a tennis shoe than a deity. If he is infallible, at any time or place, then I am the sole owner of all Denny's restaurants, and supreme commander of all tire stores.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Lessons From History About Systematizing Things: Of Algorithmic Procedure and The Rosetta Stone
Most people have some idea of who Napoleon Buonaparte was. He met his defeat at the battle of Waterloo in 1815, at the hands of one General Wellington. What they do not know about Napoleon is that he was something of a Renaissance man, at least in spirit. He had sent, a few years earlier, an expedition of scientists, archaeologists and scholars of many sorts, into Egypt -- with his invading army -- to discover whatever they might for the cultural posterity of Europe.
Yes, this was considered unusual at the time too. Wiki has it that:
"In March 1798, Buonaparte proposed a military expedition to seize Egypt, then a province of the Ottoman Empire, seeking to protect French trade interests and undermine Britain's access to the British Raj. The Directory [the French Government], although troubled by the scope and cost of the enterprise, readily agreed to the plan in order to remove the popular general from the center of power.
An unusual aspect of the Egyptian expedition was the inclusion of a large group of scientists assigned to the French expeditionary force: among their discoveries was the finding of the Rosetta Stone. This deployment of intellectual resources is considered by some an indication of Bonaparte's devotion to the principles of the Enlightenment ..."
Later, many of his contemporaries decided to create a kind of educational database, an encyclopedic project aimed at empirical discovery and (hopefully) eventually a kind of systematizing of the sciences. This all began when one of Napoleon's armies made a fascinating discovery.
Modern Egyptology was born of those efforts, and with the discovery of a very important artifact, known simply today as the "Rosetta Stone." Up to this point (1799), Students of ancient Egypt had a nagging problem which hampered their efforts significantly. No one could read hieroglyphics, the more ancient script in which the majority of then-known Eyptian artifacts of antiquity had inscribed upon them. The Rosetta Stone changed all this. It placed in parallel three languages, two of which were Egyptian, and one Greek. Scholars could read the classical Greek, and used it to decipher the others.
Wiki says that, "[Jean-Francois] Champollion could read both Greek and Coptic [a later Egyptian language], and figured out what the seven Demotic signs in Coptic were. By looking at how these signs were used in Coptic, he worked out what they meant. Then he traced the Demotic signs back to hieroglyphic signs."
Below I have paraphrased the wikipedia article's introductory paragraphs on the Rosetta Stone:
"The Rosetta Stone was created in 196 B.C., as a Ptolemaic era "stele" [inscribed flat stone] written with the same text in two scripts corresponding to two different ancient Eyptian languages, known as "hieroglyphic" -- the priestly script, and "demotic," (the tongue of the ordinary people), as well as in classical Greek.
Discovered by the French in 1799 at Rosetta, a harbor on the Mediterranean coast in Egypt, it enabled the deciphering of hieroglyphic writing in 1822, long after its discovery, by Frenchman Jean-François Champollion. Comparative translation of the stone assisted in understanding many previously undecipherable examples of hieroglyphic writing. The text of the Rosetta Stone is a decree from Ptolemy V, describing the repealing of various taxes and instructions to erect statues in temples.
The Stone is 114.4 centimeters high at its tallest point, 72.3 centimeters wide, and 27.9 centimeters thick (45 1/16th in. high, 28 7/8ths in. wide, 11 in. thick). Weighing approximately 760 kg (1,676 pounds) .... and is dark grey-bluish-pinkish in color."
The last paragraph means, "Do not drop it on your foot."
Jean-François Champollion was a significant contributor to "The Enlightenment" project, which was supposed to end up as a comprehensive and systematic guide to the arts and sciences, under the guiding editorship of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. Wiki adds, The "Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers" (English: "Encyclopedia, or a systematic dictionary of the sciences, arts, and crafts") was an encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1766, with later supplements and revisions in 1772, 1777 and 1780 and numerous foreign editions and later derivatives.
Its introduction, the Preliminary Discourse, is considered an important exposition of Enlightenment ideals. The Encyclopédie's self-professed aim was "to change the way people think."
The work comprised 35 volumes, with 71,818 articles, and 3,129 illustrations. The first 28 volumes were published between 1751 and 1766 and were edited by Diderot - although some of the later picture-only volumes were not actually printed until 1772. The remaining five volumes were completed by other editors in 1777, along with a two volume index in 1780. Many of the most noted figures of the French enlightenment contributed to the work including Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu. The single greatest contributor was Louis de Jaucourt who wrote 17,266 articles, or about 8 per day between 1759 and 1765."
For reasons I have mentioned many times before, it was not possible to mesh the various theories of the sciences, and philosophies of the arts and crafts into one system. This became apparent fairly late in the game and the project was abandoned.
The surprising feature of history to me comes from the fact that the Reformation tradition, a parallel, Christian tradition to that of the Renaissance - Enlightenment, had lost momentum (for various reasons) long before the great discovery of Napolean's army at Rosetta.
What I have proposed in the HLA project amounts to a Christian counterpart to the failed Encyclopédie of Diderot and D'alembert. It amounts to a continuation of the confessional project begun both in Great Britian and Germany during the Reformation, but dares also an application of the system of theology found in the Bible to the many fields of science. Not only this, but it also predicts, and could enable many new fields of study, not presently recognized or known, both in biblical, as well as rational and empirical studies.
The Wikipedia program, a somewhat global and encyclopedic project itself, does not pretend it will systematize anything, and is quite helpful in many ways, for the value of its empirical and historical orientation to the subject matter it details.
An interesting application of the lesson taught by the Rosetta Stone's historical revolution in Eyptology (and ancient history more generally) to biblical algorithmic studies, would be the implementing of several algorithmic searches conducted in paralell langauges -- perhaps Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic -- simultaneously, with the results of each lingsuitic search cross-referenced to obtain the full canonical view of any one topic.
One would not need to know any one of the languages well in order to conduct such a search successfully, but would only require a cursory knowledge, since online tools like Aramaic dictionaries -- with full explanations on the use of such words (by people who DO know the language well) -- are readily available. Moreover, some biblical scholars have already undertaken these kinds of studies (notably Joachim Jeremias and others have translated many portions of the NT into Aramaic).
It seems to me that the better Encyclopedia project -- one which can be well systematized (set in order) needs a better Rosetta Stone. This could help give the project a useful shove in the right direction, and a host of good, multilingual sources (like the famous stele) are already available online. And what is not now, will become progressively more accessible in the future. Sources like the wikipedia cannot but help as well.
Yes, this was considered unusual at the time too. Wiki has it that:
"In March 1798, Buonaparte proposed a military expedition to seize Egypt, then a province of the Ottoman Empire, seeking to protect French trade interests and undermine Britain's access to the British Raj. The Directory [the French Government], although troubled by the scope and cost of the enterprise, readily agreed to the plan in order to remove the popular general from the center of power.
An unusual aspect of the Egyptian expedition was the inclusion of a large group of scientists assigned to the French expeditionary force: among their discoveries was the finding of the Rosetta Stone. This deployment of intellectual resources is considered by some an indication of Bonaparte's devotion to the principles of the Enlightenment ..."
Later, many of his contemporaries decided to create a kind of educational database, an encyclopedic project aimed at empirical discovery and (hopefully) eventually a kind of systematizing of the sciences. This all began when one of Napoleon's armies made a fascinating discovery.
Modern Egyptology was born of those efforts, and with the discovery of a very important artifact, known simply today as the "Rosetta Stone." Up to this point (1799), Students of ancient Egypt had a nagging problem which hampered their efforts significantly. No one could read hieroglyphics, the more ancient script in which the majority of then-known Eyptian artifacts of antiquity had inscribed upon them. The Rosetta Stone changed all this. It placed in parallel three languages, two of which were Egyptian, and one Greek. Scholars could read the classical Greek, and used it to decipher the others.
Wiki says that, "[Jean-Francois] Champollion could read both Greek and Coptic [a later Egyptian language], and figured out what the seven Demotic signs in Coptic were. By looking at how these signs were used in Coptic, he worked out what they meant. Then he traced the Demotic signs back to hieroglyphic signs."
Below I have paraphrased the wikipedia article's introductory paragraphs on the Rosetta Stone:
"The Rosetta Stone was created in 196 B.C., as a Ptolemaic era "stele" [inscribed flat stone] written with the same text in two scripts corresponding to two different ancient Eyptian languages, known as "hieroglyphic" -- the priestly script, and "demotic," (the tongue of the ordinary people), as well as in classical Greek.
Discovered by the French in 1799 at Rosetta, a harbor on the Mediterranean coast in Egypt, it enabled the deciphering of hieroglyphic writing in 1822, long after its discovery, by Frenchman Jean-François Champollion. Comparative translation of the stone assisted in understanding many previously undecipherable examples of hieroglyphic writing. The text of the Rosetta Stone is a decree from Ptolemy V, describing the repealing of various taxes and instructions to erect statues in temples.
The Stone is 114.4 centimeters high at its tallest point, 72.3 centimeters wide, and 27.9 centimeters thick (45 1/16th in. high, 28 7/8ths in. wide, 11 in. thick). Weighing approximately 760 kg (1,676 pounds) .... and is dark grey-bluish-pinkish in color."
The last paragraph means, "Do not drop it on your foot."
Jean-François Champollion was a significant contributor to "The Enlightenment" project, which was supposed to end up as a comprehensive and systematic guide to the arts and sciences, under the guiding editorship of Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert. Wiki adds, The "Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers" (English: "Encyclopedia, or a systematic dictionary of the sciences, arts, and crafts") was an encyclopedia published in France between 1751 and 1766, with later supplements and revisions in 1772, 1777 and 1780 and numerous foreign editions and later derivatives.
Its introduction, the Preliminary Discourse, is considered an important exposition of Enlightenment ideals. The Encyclopédie's self-professed aim was "to change the way people think."
The work comprised 35 volumes, with 71,818 articles, and 3,129 illustrations. The first 28 volumes were published between 1751 and 1766 and were edited by Diderot - although some of the later picture-only volumes were not actually printed until 1772. The remaining five volumes were completed by other editors in 1777, along with a two volume index in 1780. Many of the most noted figures of the French enlightenment contributed to the work including Voltaire, Rousseau, and Montesquieu. The single greatest contributor was Louis de Jaucourt who wrote 17,266 articles, or about 8 per day between 1759 and 1765."
For reasons I have mentioned many times before, it was not possible to mesh the various theories of the sciences, and philosophies of the arts and crafts into one system. This became apparent fairly late in the game and the project was abandoned.
The surprising feature of history to me comes from the fact that the Reformation tradition, a parallel, Christian tradition to that of the Renaissance - Enlightenment, had lost momentum (for various reasons) long before the great discovery of Napolean's army at Rosetta.
What I have proposed in the HLA project amounts to a Christian counterpart to the failed Encyclopédie of Diderot and D'alembert. It amounts to a continuation of the confessional project begun both in Great Britian and Germany during the Reformation, but dares also an application of the system of theology found in the Bible to the many fields of science. Not only this, but it also predicts, and could enable many new fields of study, not presently recognized or known, both in biblical, as well as rational and empirical studies.
The Wikipedia program, a somewhat global and encyclopedic project itself, does not pretend it will systematize anything, and is quite helpful in many ways, for the value of its empirical and historical orientation to the subject matter it details.
An interesting application of the lesson taught by the Rosetta Stone's historical revolution in Eyptology (and ancient history more generally) to biblical algorithmic studies, would be the implementing of several algorithmic searches conducted in paralell langauges -- perhaps Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic -- simultaneously, with the results of each lingsuitic search cross-referenced to obtain the full canonical view of any one topic.
One would not need to know any one of the languages well in order to conduct such a search successfully, but would only require a cursory knowledge, since online tools like Aramaic dictionaries -- with full explanations on the use of such words (by people who DO know the language well) -- are readily available. Moreover, some biblical scholars have already undertaken these kinds of studies (notably Joachim Jeremias and others have translated many portions of the NT into Aramaic).
It seems to me that the better Encyclopedia project -- one which can be well systematized (set in order) needs a better Rosetta Stone. This could help give the project a useful shove in the right direction, and a host of good, multilingual sources (like the famous stele) are already available online. And what is not now, will become progressively more accessible in the future. Sources like the wikipedia cannot but help as well.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)