Try some of my regular articles in the ASA Christian Engineers and Scientists in Technology (CEST) newsletter at the above weblink. It is more of the same zany stuff you can either strongly agree or disagree with but it won’t leave you lukewarm!

I wonder whether my articles on technical subjects at http://www.en-genius.net and http://www.how2power.com are read by anyone. Or the ones at

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/cest/

on engineering from a biblical outlook. The web statistics say they are being accessed, yet is there a single person who has gone through them carefully enough to understand them? Ich weiss nicht. Because I have, so it seems to me, made some advancements in power electronics, I have no evidence that the world has picked up on any of it, except a magnetics consortium who asked to reprint an article in their magazine on magnetics design optimization.

Yet I am not surprised that technical advancement in the world is so slow. I have basic, important concepts in my analog circuit design books that were known at Tektronix decades ago yet have not become widespread in electronics engineering. Jonathan has been blessed to have been exposed to them, so he might well become an analog hot-shot if he sticks with it.

“… me not getting Mr. Boniwell for senior high school English class. College English classes were a total joke, and didn’t require one to be able to write or even to spell.”

Boniwell taught senior high-school English as though it were ivy-league college English at Brown U. where he came from. The Greek and Latin etymology was well worth it, but the many assigned books from the genre of the Theater of the Absurd were, well, absurd. So Boniwell was a mixed bag. He used to do radio performances in Portland of Egdar Allen Poe stories and had a piano and organ at right angles in his apartment which he would play simultaneously.

My college freshman introduction to English was taught by some lunatic who joined the Hopi Indian tribe. It showed me early that English majors are fit to drive taxi cabs, if that. If I were Provost Maximus, I would abolish English departments (and education depts) entirely and distribute what little they teach into the other fields, since all use or are involved in the use of language and in teaching. That would leave the university faculties with fewer perverts.

I didn’t know the ACC Journal was on the web. We had a small but zealous readership. People of the kind who liked the ACCJ were generally inclined to live in a bigger box than the ACC was (or is) in, though the ACCJ seemed to be helpful along the way. Joe Haring never was editor; he only thought he might be but did nothing. Jim and I did all the work.

Interesting and insightful – and maybe even insiteful to some. I wonder how many in admin in GSH have read this posting. It is a description of a microcosm of what is happening to America.

Recently, I perused a sermon of Lloyd-Jones in print that addressed the mystery of the incarnation – of Mary and her conception. This is not a topic for beginners and I was hoping that Jones would exercise some carefulness in avoiding the many spurious assumptions that people drag into it. I was somewhat disappointed, though for a popular sermon, it mainly stayed on track.

Jones insisted that Joseph had nothing to do with Mary’s conception, and from the standpoint of the usual kind of activity, the scripture is clear that this did not happen. However, this does not mean that the genome of Jesus did not contain any contribution of Joseph’s genome. Jones did not venture to try to explain, if Joseph was so utterly isolated from the conception as he claims, why Matthew bothers to trace his otherwise pointless and irrelevant genealogy. Jones (after much dithering around) did emphasize that the whole thing is a mystery, though that does not keep people from speculating – and making spurious assumptions – about it.

So, out of all the consultants in the world, instead of picking a team of surgeons or hospital administrators, they got a bunch of zoomies. Brilliant! Do you know how much that cost? Somebody probably got a good kickback on that.

At the crux of the matter is lower pay for hands-on professionals and cutting back on staff. Meanwhile, the insurance companies have made more, and increased their rates on everything. The equipment makers and drug makers make more.

It is obvious that physicians and health professionals should be paid more, and the people above them should be paid less. And the people at the top of the system need to actually care and be qualified to fix the system. But we have a society where kickbacks prevail, greed and selfishness have corrupted everything that should be good, and the insurance mafia is running health care in the USA.

One argument against socialized health care is that it would cut back on the compensation of physicians (of course, it would not have to if it was set up correctly, which we all know would never happen), but it sounds to me like the good old privatized insurance mafia is already doing that, and collecting a fat cover charge on everyone.

I applaud what you do, and have done, Ken, because I would never survive for a week in that type of bureaucratic environment.

You have always been a hero and role model to me, even when you taught me how to run that antique printing press in the basement of the church. You also taught me some good photo tips.

I really enjoyed reading this post. It served to further highlight many of the issues that I have been exposed to already and some that I have not, but are easily believable. I also realized that I never replied to a FB post you left many, many months ago, so I apologize for that.

As time goes by I’ve been able to eliminate a handful of potential capacities of practice (things like OB/GYN were never really an option) and I’ve been pleasantly surprised about my excitement about anything related to surgery thus far.

I don’t think Mindy and I are going to be able to make it up to Oregon/Washington this summer, but I do look forward to being able to take you and Betsy out to dinner one of these days so I can properly pick your brain.

Jeremiah Pamer

Laying aside the indefensible view that the flood was planetary, just where it occurred is an interesting question. The mainstream view is that it was in Mesopotamia and that the Garden of Eden was at the mouth of the Euphrates River – that is, where the mouth was a few thousand years ago, about 50 miles out to sea.

The undersea explorer who found the Titanic (Robert Ballard) has been looking for it in the Black Sea.

The most intriguing possibility that I have recently encountered is that it occurred in the Tarim Basin of eastern Turkmenistan (or NW China) and that the Garden was to the west of it, on the Pamir Plateau. Although people live on the Plateau nowadays, it is a long ways up for an idealistic setting (and not far from K-2). Yet the four rivers named in scripture flow out of it.

On a more biochemically-researched basis, a common drug we use down here for worms and parasites, mebendazole, appears to be decades more effective than taxol in blocking mechanisms that allow cancer growth. I do not recall the details, not being a biochemist, but it was fascinating and can be found with a little web-searching.

Maybe some highly effective deterrents to cancer are already in use but knowledge of them is not widespread. Perhaps that’s what the head of the NCI was hoping for …

As I said in my previous post, I do NOT think very much in the categories of systematic theology. I think more in the categories of what has happened historically among God’s people.

“Ultimately one needs to compile in their mind or on paper what they believe on a given topic.”

Certainly, but how this is done varies, and the way it is done in “systematic theology” is not the only way. One quickly discovers this by reading scripture itself. It is not organized in the manner of systematic theology. Why not? God chose to give us his revealed truth in a historical context and not the manner of the Forum in Athens.

“… systematic theology is part of the picture but is not the entire picture. JI Packer made that very clear to use in his class on systematic theology.”

I agree, and Packer is one of the better systematic theologians. My emphasis is that there is more that is revealing of God’s truth than can best be expressed in the manner of systematic theology. That is why I have, for the last dozen years, pursued these other paths less traveled, and to much benefit.

Truths, no, but the (well-known) historic controversies, very much so, or more to the point, by a pagan Latin-Babylonian mindset, which is generically Babylonian-Greek paganism. That is why the apostolic church quit attending papal church councils in the mid to late 300s AD. They refused to accept excessively rationalized theology speculating on the nature of the Trinity or the natures of Christ. It is not that they were anti-trinitarian; they simply refused to be drawn into what most of the mainstream church of today is hip-deep in. They thought more like Hebrews than Greeks.

A serious reading of the neglected church history makes this clear. Too bad that Allison (apparently) did not bring out the viewpoint of the ancient apostolic churches. I wonder if he even mentions such major names as Vigilantius or Columba in his book, or anyone at all from the ancient British Culdee church, the bulwark of Christianity for the first few centuries in the West. The Church of the East, sometimes referred to as the Syrian church, was immense and dwarfed the papal church but is given scant attention nowadays. Whoever heard of or Lucius of Antioch?

I am saying not uncertainly that there is much important missing history that exists, is not contested as genuine history, and is routinely ignored. It does not fit into the pigeonholes of mainstream theology. (This also applies as much to OT history.)

It is not only right theological theory that is important but an entire outlook on Christian life that puts it in the proper perspective. This is found in the apostolic church, not the papal church from which most theology nowadays is taken. This is a serious, ongoing error. Outlook and motivations guide where theological interest goes, and the mainstream theology of our time reflects the interests and motivations of the papal tradition. This happens entirely within the box of widespread theological thinking and few venture to wonder of there is anything outside this box.

No question about it. Don Rickles, the funny man, was a caricature of his self-absorbed NY-Jewish self, though he does communicate the character of his character strongly. Sutherland is from Canada (Nova Scotia, if I remember right), is a versatile actor, and plays the hippie tank driver role well enough to make the film a cult classic.

Telly Savalis, as “GI Joe” should also be mentioned as a perfect fit for the stereotype of a tough-guy Army sergeant.

Several lines from that movie have found their way into our discussions, for use when needed, if repeated mimicking the voice of the actor:

Oddball (Sutherland) about CrapGame (Rickles): “He [the NY Jew] thinks a hero [gyro] is some kind of a sandwich.”

Viewing a bridge they need, to Moriarity, his side-kick, the technical guy:: “It’s a beautiful bridge, and it’s gonna be there.”
Next, a German fighter plane bombs the bridge, “There you go Moriarity, with them negative waves so early in the morning.”

Questioned by Lt. Kelly about what he was doing with a tank in need of repair, taking it easy: “I’m just soaking up some rays, eating some cheese, having some wine, enjoying a beautiful day.”
Then Eastwood questions him about why he wasn’t working on the tank: “I just drive ‘em; I don’t know how they work.”

Eastwood line, recruiting members for the bank heist, and with a doubtful Sgt. Joe (spoken slowly and softly, Clint Eastwood style):

“They’re ALL with me, Joe.”

I wonder what those were. Most Americans have a very distorted view of American history, a history most acquire in the state-run youth brainwashing institutions where (along with far too many “private” schools) such history is little more than propaganda and apologia for the ruling class. Christians in particular are widely beguiled by the teachings about the United States (not colonial America, a very different polis) as being godly, yet in reality, it was a coup pulled off by a few wealthy landowners.

For instance, few people know that the person whose signature is most prominent on one of the “sacred documents”, John Hancock, was a tea bootlegger and made his money undercutting the tea imported by the British. The Boston Tea Party was not held to protest a rise in the tax on tea but a reduction in it by King George. The reduction left no profit in bootlegging and the bootleggers revolted.

The meeting in Philadelphia was a secret meeting of the coup organizers of high-level Freemasons who are, in propagandistic language, the Founding Fathers. America as a society under God ended in 1789. After that, it has been largely a history of how the Money Power has taken over the country, creating war after war to enrich themselves.

The sad fact is that the mainstream herd of Christians never catch on – they never wake up to the existence of actual history because they do not know it and do not even know that they do not know it.

I am not condemning theology as a whole, nor even a systematic account of it, but I am saying that the most important aspects of the biblical worldview are not found (much, at least) in it. I have read extensively enough in systematic theology books (and have a few on my bookshelf) also also OTHER MATERIAL that I can say this. It is the other material that is lacking for those theologically inclined to stay inside the box of convenient and common theological thinking. Run with the herd and get the mediocre results of the herd.

The forgotten history, found in some of the books I listed, will not appeal to people who have been conditioned to avoid any truths that fall outside their preconceived theological concepts. I read far more church and Bible history than systematic theology and it has given me a perspective that I could never have obtained from a stack of systematic theology books. So my point is that systematic theology is LIMITING – far too limiting. It is not a source of new or neglected primary material. It is a commentary on existing well-digested material. It is based on a certain intellectual orientation that traces back to the rationalizing arguments of the Middle Ages. It is more papist and Greek than Christian and Hebrew in its approach to truth.

Systematic theology has its place in one’s development, but then it is time to move on …

As for the author’s categories themselves, I do not find any of them to be representative of the views of people I know (or me) who have given a large amount of attention to the issue. For instance, the categories of natural and supernatural are not even biblical categories. They trace back to paganism, where what Nature did not do, the gods did in lieu of Nature. This dualism of nature and supernature is found nowhere in scripture and leads to such views as Deism. In scripture, God does not fit either category of being in or out of the creation. He functions in both contexts. So the author has a strike against him in failing to distinguish between biblical and pagan categories of thought. This does not put him in a good light relative to the claim that he respects scripture. If he does, then why does he subject it to pagan categorization?

“… providentialism holds God to have created the world with such intricacy that unusual events are built into the creation and no event violates the natural laws that God built into the world …”

The language of this pigeonhole assumes a deistic view of God’s relationship to the creation in that the creation is given some kind of independent operation, by its own self-sustained laws, apart from God. (A reading of MacKay would help here!) Yet scripture very clearly says that God is not only the creator but also the sustainer of the creation, who wills into being every event in it. Consequently, it is paganistic to even talk of “violations” of “natural laws” as though Nature has an autonomous will that is controverted by the gods (or God, to Christianize paganism). How do we even know about these laws? Through science – through observation of the world and deductions about it. Because they are learned this way, what we know of as “natural law” is for us descriptive, not prescriptive. To God, the ultimate truth of the laws are simply facts about his character in how he sustains the universe. Apart from God, they have no independent existence.

Consequently, God never needs to “violate” natural laws – ever. To do so is to act in a way that violates his own character and makes him inconsistent. The great feature about Yahweh that had the Israelites’ attention was his covenant faithfulness. (There is that Hebrew word again.) They could rely upon God to act faithfully according to the covenant and they could rely upon and even predict how he would act because he was not fickle like the gods. This is the great guiding feature of God’s interaction with the creation, writ large upon the Bible, starting with God’s interaction with his created nation of his chosen people. It is the starting point in approaching the subject and was the starting-point of modern science in the minds of the early scientists.

“… supernaturalism believes that God created the world with intrinsic laws that
govern its normal behavior, …”

Yes, this is an accurate rendition of the pagan view of nature, with God = gods. What is different in the biblical view is that these laws are an expression of God’s character. They have no autonomous existence as though the creation would continue to function according to them without God.

“… yet God interacts with the system and is not bound by the normal laws that govern the system;”

This view upholds the pagan view of Nature (and the laws of Nature) being independent of the gods, and that God is sufficiently separated from the creation that he only “interacts” with it rather than sustains its very existence.

“… occasionalism holds that there are no automatic laws that govern the behavior of the universe, but that God is active at every moment in its operation, so that unusual occurrences (miracles) are simply a part of the normal behavior of God in the universe.”

This is much closer to the biblical view though what is unusual about “miracles” is what the observer considers unusual. Miracles in scripture are not merely “unusual events” but are intended to authenticate that a message is from God, for the miracle is intended to impress upon the observer the fact that powers not held by the observers are involved in connection with the message. Miracles thus have no necassary connection to “violations” of natural law (God’s character). What is violared is the expectation of the observer who has been conditioned in life to expect or not expect certain kinds of events. That they occur does not mean that something fundamental about the universe has to have been overturned.

Please pardon my lengthy response. This subject pushes one of the buttons on my panel that is painted red.

I cannot blame you for not following philosophical blather about time “fully”. Most of the time the philosophers themselves do not know what they are talking about, though they know how to sound profound in saying it. It seems you have found an example of this.

You have not recalled MacKay correctly. Labels do not help identify what people think either. Leave them to the bureaucrats to use to pigeon-hole people in their limited models of mental reality instead. MacKay’s main point has to do with the kind of logic people think in when trying to resolve the problem of divine sovereignty and human responsibility. Few people can follow his argument because it involves a kind of logic that is unfamiliar generally in the culture, yet it shows up even in scripture.

You said you met Bill Craig, so you must know something about what he has to say.

Read my review again. The B series of time is defined as the static definition, or tenseless definition of time, as compared to the dynamic, or tensed time. By static, it is meant that time does not transpire except for how we perceive matters. We define time in relational terms, rather than seconds, hours, days, and years being a concrete entity. All events in time are equally existent, including the past, present and future. This is in contrast to the dynamic definition of time, where only the immediate moment exists. Philosophically, the lingo is fairly complex, and as I said in the review, I’m not sure I followed every argument fully.

Regarding MacKay, it has been years since I’ve read him, but I’ve never been convinced that he offers any solution at all. His is more a psychological explanation, which can’t explain how God can foreordain yours and my responses, and yet not be morally complicit with our responses. I find his explanation to be crypto-Arminian, which suggests that God knows (how he knows, MacKay offers no explanation) but doesn’t ordain all that occurs. God remains passive in the events of history. Perhaps I have misinterpreted MacKay, but I probably won’t retrieve his book from my shelves and re-read his argument as there are better thinkers. Paul Helm’s book on Providence, I am convinced (as well as Collins) is the best book on providence from a philosophic perspective. Read it, then we can discuss those issues. Ken

I do not know what Bill Craig says about anything so I do not know where I stand relative to his views.

What does Helm mean by a “static” view of time?

How does he provide a better resolution of the tension between God’s sovereignty and human free-will than MacKay?

The scriptures very clearly come down on both sides of the eternity-history fence. God-in-eternity is not to be made identical to God-in-history but both are the same being, yet one travels along with us in time (in the OT with Israel, in the incarnation of the Messiah) and for the other, the whole of our space-time is a given fact. Philosophers who opt for one or the other are one-eyed Jacks who will (and do) have horrendous problems reconciling God’s sovereignty and human free-will. The logic used to deal with these subjects is too often the classic Aristotelian logic familiar in our culture, though it is inadequate. For more on this, see

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1999/PSCF9-99Feucht.html

I once talked with Bill Craig, long ago.

The Internet social networking websites should be avoided. They are goldmines for human intelligence gathering. Do not suppose that you “have nothing to hide” unless you have no assets nor a prospective corpus delicti traceable by the Rulers.

For more on this, see

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27643

“”In light of that technological reality, we are gravely worried by the court’s
conclusion that records about you that are collected by Internet services like
Twitter, Facebook, Skype and Google are fair game for warrantless searches by the government.”"

As for the chattering class, George Will won’t tell you anything highly worthwhile. He will tell you only what David Rockafeller wants you to know,
and think. Judge Napolitano does not, like Will, have any Money Power affinities and tells it more like it is.

A person’s choice of information sources tells much about how far they have
progressed in understanding the nature of the social order. One notable omission from the list is

http://www.globalresearch.ca

Some others I have on my list (in no particular order) are:

http://www.dailyreckoning.com
http://www.rense.com
http://www.thedailybell.com
http://www.newswithviews.com/Vieira/edwinA.htm
http://home.hiwaay.net/~becraft/
http://www.oftwominds.com
http://www.infowars.com
http://www.joelskousen.com
http://www.larouchepub.com
http://www.beforeitsnews.com
http://www.richardkinnaird.com
http://www.augustreview.com
http://www.cryptome.org
http://www.the intelhub.com
http://www.viewzone.com
http://www.truthistreason.com
http://www.truthfrequencynews.com
http://www.foreignaffairs.org
http://www.copi.com/articles

Foreign news sources:

http://www.russiatoday.com
http://www.aljazeera.com
http://www.indiatimes.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/

Other important or tantalizing sources:

http://www.skolnicksreport.com
http://www.feuchtblog.net

Book list comments:

Quantity is no substitute for quality, of course. It is better to selectively read
(and re-read) than to be on an infoholic binge.

I would question the value of reading:

The Systematic Theologies of
Horton
Turretin
Bavinck
Shedd
Dabney
Reymond
Erickson (maybe???)

Sytematic theology books are written by theologians who feel compelled to tell you what everybody thinks on every topic, usually in rationalistic arguments that leave the most important facts about Christianity to lie moldering in forgotten texts on the history of the forgotten church, a history which does more to enlighten the theology of the historic church than a pile of systematic theology books.

Books I could recommend, in no particular order:

Just a Farm Boy, Sam Feucht (This book is not for everyone!)
Truth Triumphant: The Church in the Wilderness, Benjamin G. Wilkinson
The Grand Deception, Dennis Feucht (- nor is this one.)
The Grand Consipracy, Dennis Feucht (for everybody)
The Captive, Mary Rowland
God and the Ancient Chinese, Samuel Wang, Ethel R. Nelson
The Two Babylons, Alexander Hislop
The Books of Jasher, 1 & 2 Esdras, and Tobit
The Drama of the Lost Disciples, George F. Jowett
Missing Links Discovered in the Assyrian Tablets, E. Raymond Capt
Celt, Druid, and Culdee, Isabel Hill Elder
The Story of Celto-Saxon Israel, W. H. Bennett
The Glory of the Stars, E. Raymond Capt
Tracing Our Ancestors, Frederick Haberman
Judah’s Sceptre and Joseph’s Birthright, J. H. Allen
The Mystery of the Gentiles, Ted Weiland (!)

Some of us who are alert to the nature of social reality do not find it strange at all! Facebook, Twitter, and other Internet social-networking sites are data-collection gold-mines for intelligence operations. The CIA is known to plug into them. You are wise to avoid them entirely.

“The greatest value of Foxe’s Book is in his discussions of the martyrdoms around the time of bloody Mary. There is prolific language against the Papists and popery, all of which should NOT be forgotten by the present day church. The Romish church has not changed significantly since the 16th century, and we shouldn’t forget that. The Pope and his minions have not made a kinder gentler church that has learned its lessons.”

Correct, and anyone who has any doubts about this can begin by reading The Secret History of the Jesuits by Edmond Paris.

Beyond that, if one reflects a little, one realizes that one way to forget it is to draw one’s historical theology from people who themselves only get it from the papal stream of history and not the wilderness church.

It sounds to me that you have become an “infoholic”. Running a lot of information through your brain is no substitute for thinking.

It is best to follow, from the time of Constantine onward, the history and theology of the true church, a church nearly forgotten by Protestants in our time. Too bad this author simply ran with the herd instead!

Michael Ruppert has not been at his best in recent years. He was much better when he had more active CIA and other covert links, having come from a CIA family involved in spying since WW II.

Blaming Bush Jr. for what happens on Wall St. is somewhat incredulous because he is too dense to have been behind any such events. He looked puzzled down in Florida when SS agents informed him of the World Trade Towers incident, showing that he was a theater prop, nothing more. The Wall St. events are engineered by the top-level Wall St. people at the top investment banks. It’s that simple. They are the only people in a position to do it.

It is not so complicated once you understand in some detail the nature of the Power Elite. They of course know that they can sucker govt leaders in these countries into taking the money from the IMF. This puts the leaders and the elitists in cooperation to sack the indigent farmers and taxpayers.

It is not the U.S. government per se that is the source of evil but the Money Power elitists behind the scenes who control and use the UN, IMF, World Bank and Washington to carry out their plans of world conquest.