Corruption, Conspiracy and a Book Giveaway

 

Tahe release of more of the Epstein files brings to my mind, how the Bible told us how Babylon works many years ago;

"17 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, 2 with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk.” (Rev. 17:1-2).

Babylon specialises in corrupting the powerful.

The term conspiracy or conspire is used dozens of times in the Bible. There are also references to many direct conspiracies involving government and religious officials, where the word is not directly used, but are still examples of clear conspiracies. This evil way of the world is woven throughout the Bible, and is even a central aspect of the most important part of the Bible, the unjust crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ himself.

John Calvin and Charles Spurgeon both noted that dark, evil conspiracies are a common part of how power works in our world. I believe one or even both of them noted that we would be foolish to ignore this.  

Yet if you look at an evangelical dictionary of theology you won't even find this vital biblical topic mentioned (at least not the ones I reviewed). The Catholic Catechism barely mentions it. Many pastors say the topic is not an area of Christian concern. Even though conspiracies often happen even in churches, either against the pastor, or by the pastor using his power against people unjustly, or in other ways. Some prominent Churches have been shown just recently to have engaged in dark conspiracies.

Old Christians books discuss the topic of conspiracy, to varying degrees. But as far as I know, an extensive theology of how evil works, including conspiracy, is not a topic of modern theologians. Maybe if it was the modern Church would be much less gullible to the corruption of power in our world.

Hence, I addressed this in detail in my book, Like a Roaring Lion.

To help promote the book I am going to run a short competition. The prize will be a copy of the book. If you live in Australia the postage will be covered in the prize, so you will get the book and postage for free. If you live overseas, I still want to include you in the competition, but postage can get expensive. So, if someone from overseas wins, I will evaluate the postage and perhaps we can split it. If it is not too much I will cover it though. I am running this competition myself, as I have committed at getting better and doing publicity for my writings. Hence, my budget it not expansive, but I want to include as many people in it as possible still.

Here is the competition, it is simple. Share this post and comment. The best comment wins, by that I mean the best biblically based reflection. I will be running the prize over a few different platforms, so once I have the leading entries I will put them in a new blog or Substack and explain why I chose the one which wins.

God bless you, and may the best post win.

License to Preach

 

I think this suggestion by Scott Morrison is interesting. Why?

Because just a few days ago I was thinking about the new hate speech laws, and how they are very old school English. What I mean, is that they reminded me of what the laws of speech were like prior to about 1689 (though general free speech was not really enshrined fully and protected till a bit later).

1688 was when William of Orange took control of the English throne, and in 1689 he made the proclamation of tolerance, stopping persecution of most English protestants. This put an end to Catholic control in England, and the throne remained a guardian of both Protestant religion, and toleration of Christian differences, to varying degrees from that point on.

Prior to that licences for preaching were common. John Bunyan, the famous Baptist author of Pilgrim's Progress, was jailed for preaching without a licence. Many preachers, preacher's wives, and Christians were persecuted for seeking to gather outside of licenced churches, under unlicensed ministries. Baptists, Congregationalists, Shakers, Presbyterians and more were all targeted under these laws.

The kind of churches we take for granted today, where people meet freely of their own choice and discernment, were far harder to run, and often persecuted before 1689.

Tim Grant and myself several years ago wrote about how this changed, and how the BAPTIST theology of liberty of conscience was utterly necessary to making this change. This was a doctrine which existed among the early Church and Church fathers, but passed into obscurity under the state churches of Christendom.

Prior to the revival of this doctrine, Anglicans and high church theologians of most types were decidedly anti-liberty of conscience. Part of what changed this was the Baptist commitment to refuse to bow to state sanctioned rules about who could preach and what could be preached. Another core part of the success of this doctrine was that powerful Anglicans became convinced of the doctrine of liberty of conscience by engagement with Baptists, and they had the power to make it legally protected. John Locke and the Earl of Shaftesbury were two notable examples.

Most of the Church has forgotten how we got to where we are. What is worse is that even the Baptist Churches have forgotten their legacy and are increasingly moving in a direction that is anti-Baptist.

The book Tim and I wrote a book covering this was called Defending Conscience. Because of the context in which we wrote Defending Conscience many people might think this is just a book about the Covid days and the crisis around that. It is not, what Tim and I both saw was the trajectory of our society and the heavy handed and authoritarian response to Covid was merely a symptom of that. Many other Christians saw the same thing. It is frankly disturbing how many did not see this.

I'm not even a little surprised at Morrison's authoritarian suggestion. That man did more to undermine liberty in this nation than any PM before him.

I don't think most Baptist churches can reclaim their legacy of liberty of conscience, and by that I mean their dogged advocacy for it in society. Why? Well, you know what they say about old wine skins, don’t your. But I believe Christians of all types who have appreciated that legacy and want to reclaim it, could learn a lot from that book about how to do so.

I suspect that it will be Christians of varied denominations, maybe even some not denominated yet, that take up that cause successfully. History shows this is usually the case.

Note, for interest sake John Locke predicted that liberty of conscience or wise toleration could not survive in a multicultural society. This was one of his core arguments in his Letter Concerning Toleration. How did he know this? Because all things, including nations, work according to certain principles or laws of determination. You can't have it all, as they say.

Evolution is Dead, But Its Corpse Will Hang Around A While

Several years ago I asked a friend of mine to come and preach at my church. He is a skilled evangelist, in fact, he taught me how to evangelize when I was a new Christian. He is also quite a capable apologist, as all good evangelists need to be. During his message he said something that really caught my attention. He mentioned that some atheists like to argue that religion is the cause of all wars, but in reality, the Encyclopedia of Wars shows that religion is only the cause of 7% of wars.

Why did this get my attention? Because I immediately recognized this was an argument based on Vox Day’s 2008 book The Irrational Atheist. It was not completely correct, the number is 6.98%, and it was Vox who calculated that number based on the Encyclopedia of Wars and his own extensive military history readings. But it was unmistakably an argument based on Vox’s book.

I asked my friend after the sermon if he had read or heard of Day’s book The Irrational Atheist. He had not. Had no idea who Day was and had never read the book.

This story is relevant to our review here, because it highlights how influential Vox Day is, how influential his ideas especially are, and also how they are often very effective. You hear much less today about how much war is caused by religion, have you noticed that? You are more like to hear people say that all wars are bankers wars, or the result of imperialism or something like that. This is in part because of Day’s 2008 book. It changed the cultural understanding of what the fundamental causes of war are, and took away one of the so-called New Atheists favourite weapons.

The reason he was able to do this was simple: he did the math. He did what none of us thought to do, he sat down and actually calculated, to the best of our history knowledge at the time, how many wars were known to be caused by religion. And this simple examination pulled apart the threads of a powerful rhetorical argument against Christianity.

Vox has done this again with Probability Zero: The Mathematical Impossibility of Evolution by Natural Selection.

The premise of Vox Day’s argument is relatively simple: if something happens in the physical world then it can be quantified. This is a simple enough concept. The way it applies to Day’s book is as such: if evolution is happening, what is the average rate of evolution? This is the thread which Day has pulled on to bring down the whole Evolution by Natural Selection edifice. A simple question to an evolutionary biologist in a debate in 2019, that could not be answered, has turned into a demonstration of the impossibility of evolution via any proposed natural means. The mechanisms simply do not work. They do not have the horse power to achieve what we were told they could achieve.

I recommend that every Christian, and non-Christian, who is interested in the origins debate, in apologetics, or in understanding the way our world works, should read this book. Because Day has effectively put the nail in the coffin of evolution by natural selection. Genetics was always going to be a threat to the naturalistic evolutionary argument, because it was going to allow the theoretical claims of Darwin’s theory to be examined by direct observations of the genes of living organisms. But we just had to wait for the data to be properly analysed, and now it has been.

The mechanisms proposed to seek to make the evolutionary hypothesis possible do not work. As another good book on this subject notes (Origin, by Graeme and Geoffrey Messer) evolution is not a recent theory but was originally proposed by the ancient Greeks, who believed in spontaneous generation, and also that all life evolved from simple forms to more complex forms. What Darwin did was propose the mechanism that made this origins hypothesis compelling, and allowed it to become the dominant academic theory of the diversity of life on earth. What genetics has done is show that Darwin’s mechanism is not powerful enough. What Day and Tipler have done is lay this out for us. The Messers (they are brothers) even note in their book that the theory of evolution by natural selection is the last hold out of the ancient Greek scientific established left to be turned over. And they predicted that as more data is collected it will be. They were right, Day and Tipler have done just that. And rather elegantly too.

Despite the title of this book, Probability Zero, at its core MITTENS (the mathematical impossibility of the theory of evolution by natural selection) is not a probability argument, though the book does go into probability to some degree. Rather Day’s argument is a capability argument. It is a complete deconstruction of the ability for evolution to explain the diversity of biological life through natural means. It is rather simple, really. We now know, from genetics, how long it takes for genes to be fixed in various populations, this can be called the rate of evolution. And the rate at which natural selection fixes genes is far too slow to account for the amount of genetic differences between Humans and Chimpanzees and really anything else. Even the fastest recorded fixation events in history fall far short of being able to make up the time problem. I encourage you to read the book so you can see how Vox Day uses Mick Jagger, Genghis Khan and lactose intolerance to show that naturalistic evolution just cannot achieve what has been claimed by secular scientists for 170 years that it could achieve.

To explain it very simply. You do not need to be an engineer or a physicist to know that if I told you that I travelled from Sydney to Melbourne in 60 minutes, there is not a car on the planet that could have gotten me there. To travel that distance another means is needed. The laws of physics and mathematics require it. You just can’t get around this fact. Natural selection (plus parallel fixation, gene drift, sex selection, etc which have been added since by other biologists) is effectively the car, or vehicle, that Darwin proposed as driving evolution. But it does not have the horsepower. It falls far short, and this is not theoretical, but observed. This has been confirmed by know fixation rates.

For evolution by natural selection to work, just for humans and chimpanzees, you need to explain how on average about 40 genes were fixed per generation, in every generation, from our proposed common ancestor, when it takes something like 1600 generations to fix a few genes, and we know this for a fact now. And this time frame and length of generations is being generous to the naturalistic argument. Vox uses a number of 1600 generations to fix genes, from E. Coli, and this includes parallel fixations (hence why I note a few genes). This is being generous, because even though humans have many more mutations per generation, than E. Coli, the fixation rate is much slower, because of the birth rate barriers, less defined generations length (this is where Mick Jagger is relevant, read the book to see why), and other issues. This is important. Day is not arguing that large amounts of mutations don’t happen, we know they do, about 40 or 50 per human, per generation. His argument is about those mutations which are fixed, that is mutations which are required to distinguish humans from chimpanzees and other animals. This fixation takes far too long, for evolution by natural means to be capable of producing.

This is just a fact. A fact well demonstrated in this book.

As noted, this is not a probability argument but is rather a capability argument. Genetics has now demonstrated that the mechanisms that have been proposed to drive evolution by natural selection cannot have possibly done so. Just as you know I cannot drive my car to Melbourne from Syndey in 60 minutes, nor an even more powerful car like a Bugatti Veyron. It is not possible.

This book is not written by the usual creationist crowd (who I really appreciate) nor is it written by the Intelligent Design crew (who are also great), but comes at this from a different perspective, that surpasses the probability arguments, or appearance of design arguments, that creationists often rely on.[1] That is what makes this book so valuable to read. While some probability arguments against evolution do exist in the book, they are not the core of the argument. Atheists and naturalists like to brush aside probability arguments by simply saying they are irrelevant, because, as they say, “We are here. Hence evolution must have happened.” This is a tautology, using our existence as evidence of their theory is simply dishonest, and lazy. However, it is also common. Hence, the book’s examination of the actual capabilities of natural selection and all the epicycles biologists have proposed to bolster their theory over the decades is its most important contribution to this debate. Probabilities are abstract and therefore many people cannot comprehend their significance, even if they are conclusive. Showing the observed natural fixation rates are too slow to vindicate Darwin’s theory is much more tangible. Everyone can understand how it is impossible for a car to drive from New York to L.A. in an hour. But that is effectively what proponents of evolution by natural selection are claiming has happened to create biodiversity. And we know this could not have happened. It is a certainty.

The book is not very long, and therefore it is not a massive read.

Day’s and Tipler’s writing style is clear and accessible. Day often uses humour, too, which is good.

You also do not need to have a degree in science, mathematics, or anything like this to understand the vast majority of the book. However, there is some stuff in there for the trained mathematicians and scientists to chew on, which bolsters the strength of the book. I won’t pretend that I could follow all the math in the book, I never studied it beyond high school, and even there not at a high level. But this did not stop me from being able to understand the vast majority of the book, and its implications. So, this book is accessible to the general reader.

I should also note that Vox proposes an alternative theory called Intelligent Genetic Manipulation, to explain what is more likely to have happened. So, he is not just attacking academic structures, but is also constructively making claims about better avenues of scientific research for scientists to engage in. This is helpful.

I suspect, that Probability Zero will have a similar effect on Darwinism that Vox Day’s earlier work, The Irrational Atheist, had on many other atheistic arguments, especially about what causes wars. This is because the concept is just so elegantly simple. Again let me state it: what is the average rate of evolution, and is there enough time for what Darwin claimed happened? The answer is it takes at a minimum over a thousand generations, though the average rate of fixation is much higher, and hence there is nowhere near enough time for Darwin’s mechanism to achieve such diversity of life. Simple. Now, it is simply a matter for people to access the book and share it with others.

You can’t get it on Amazon anymore*, but you can at NDM Express where both the ebook and the hard cover are available. I highly recommend you read this, because creationists have been predicting for years that the genetic data we are collecting would one day prove that evolution by natural selection in the sense of goo to you change was going to be shown to be impossible. They were right, and they were vindicated by someone who simply did the math.

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Notes:

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[1] These arguments are often correct by the way. But still, there is more that needs to be demonstrated.

*correction, it has been reinstated to Amazon. 

Real Liberty

 

It is not an accident that the government which has ramped up immigration more than any other government in our history, also has brought in the most restrictive speech laws in our history.

1)     They have already shown by their actions that they want to radically change this country.

2)     They know that most Australians, even people who have emigrated from other countries recently, don't like how quickly they are changing this country.

So, there was a need to make it harder for people to oppose their policies. As far as I know it is still allowable to criticize government policy. But the trajectory is towards less and less ability or freedom to do so.

Freedom or liberty, despite what some constitutions and philosophers say, is not really a human right. It is not something that most peoples have experienced in history, or even something that most peoples have conceived of, really. It is not something that many peoples in the world today have experienced, either. 

Liberty, rather, is a fruit, specifically a fruit of righteousness. Psalm 119:45 shows us this, "And I will walk at liberty, For I seek Your precepts." There is the kind of liberty to do what you want, which is really libertinism, which is really just anarchy. And there is the liberty to live as we were intended to, which is true liberty. Righteous liberty. This liberty means to live free from the constrain of evil.  

The problem we have today is that we forgot the difference, and the more our society moves away from its Christian foundations the more we are losing the liberty to live as we were intended to, by our creator. You can still do basically whatever you want, in many ways our society is still libertine, even more libertine really. But true liberty is shrinking. The ability to live free from the constraints of evil is disappearing.  

We forgot where our liberty really came from as a people, and hence we are losing it. I suspect most Australians won't care too much until they are no longer able to afford to do the things they want. That day is approaching, but we have so much slack and wealth in our society, that it has not hit people hard yet. At least not most people. Though younger Australians are already feeling it harder. And some others are starting to fall off the treadmill, it will be some time before this increases to where it effects most people in significant ways. But that day will come.  

Our nation is going through a process of refinement. Are you looking to God, or to politicians to bring us out of this? Are the politicians you think can help bring us out of this looking to God? If not, I don't see how they can bring back liberty. They would not really even understand what liberty actually is.

Keep Up the Good Fight*

I woke up with a really sore back yesterday morning. Its not the first time recently. For the last few days or week my back has been good, but over the last couple of months many mornings it has flared up bad, and has taken a long walk on the treadmill to stabilise. It comes from an old injury, that I thought I had healed, but it has flared up again. 

But yesterday morning was different. It was worse than it had been for ages. I don't know why, but it felt awful. My usual stretches barely helped. It really hurt, but I wanted to go to church. We are on holidays and I wanted to visit a particular church. But I actually wondered if I could physically do so. Personally, the level of pain was so intense I wondered if it was a spiritual attack. 

I also didn't want to hobble into church, as I was visiting another fellowship on my holidays. I prayed over it, tripled my stretches, paced in my office to loosen it up, and got into my car with a very sore back. 

Once we got to the Church, we found a park, and I got out of my car with my family and was able to stand and walk with a little twinge in my back. As we got to the front of the Church, I saw a man, likely in his late 50's or early 60's, who was hobbled by serious back pain. But he was walking purposely towards Church. He was only a metre or two in front of us at this point, and he slipped over at the front entrance to the Church. It was raining and the level had a hidden slight change at the entrance. 

Myself, and the two ushers saw him fall over, and we immediately went to help him. He stood up himself, and I handed him the two items he had dropped when he fell. He was fine, joyful and he walked into church, where I later saw him sitting with his family. 

Here I was wrestling with my pain, while at much the same time of the morning this man had obviously been doing the same, but with a far worse level. Lesson learned, as seeing him gave me real perspective. 

For some reason my back did not hurt at all again yesterday. 

Church was a blessing. The message was very solid, and grace filled. We also ran into old friends. 

You never know the battle some go through just to get to church. Some I know, because as a pastor people tell me. Others you never know. Some you experience yourself. 

Never give up the battle. It's always worth it to fight through it.

*I will be back to regular writing soon. Just enjoying an extended break with my family. God bless you all.

The International Law Joke

 

Let's just all agree international law does not exist, should not exist, and cannot exist. 

Law is a matter for sovereign powers, and there are no sovereign powers with global legitimacy, only powers that claim it and can back it up with force. Sovereignty does not exist beyond the nation-state. Everything beyond that is simply arrogation of power. 

So crying international law is meaningless. By international law every US president since WW2 would be in trouble. None are, because they just say, nope, don't agree. Because international law is a fiction. 

International law is what major powers use against weaker powers or losing powers. That's it. No more. 

Really, there is only power, and submission to a higher power. 

And Trump, and his government, do not believe in powers higher than their authority. Neither have previous US governments for decades, they just didn't make it so obvious. 

Now, that it is clear that international law was always a joke, a bad joke, a silly joke. Then we can start to face this world as it really is: major powers do what they want. Minor powers try to stay useful and out of their way...if they are smart. But our leaders have not been smart for some time. 

I hope Australia learns this lesson quickly. In a world where major powers don't pretend to follow any rules, we are foolish as a nation to try and dictate to larger powers (which our leaders bang on about too much), and we are doubly foolish to try and hold to international agreements that limit our ability to build stuff, make stuff, and dig up stuff.

It's time our government looked to serving the interests of Australians. The world did not just change, it changed a while ago. But our leaders act like we live in the old pretend rules based order. That order died with Bush jnr, Trump just put an exclamation mark on it. Really, it never really existed, powers just took advantage of other nations with it, while they could. 

Aussies need to adapt to this new more honest/brazen power dynamic. Cancel the crazy expensive social systems and put that money into making this country strong enough to face the new world, or risk being another Venezuela. If Venezuela had have focused on being strong rather than squandering their wealth on socialist programs, maybe they could have resisted what just happened, successfully. 

When you cut through all the propaganda, Venezuela's real mistake was being a resource rich country near an aggressive world power...and acting like that wasn't a big deal. It was. We'll see more stuff like this happen in coming years. The return of great power politics is here. And the great powers of the past saw weak lands with resources and took them before another did. And we have a lot of resources. And no amount of welcome to countries will stop a major power doing to us what just happened if they feel the need. Only strength will.