The Senseless Debate

Posted on April 10, 2011 by ehurst

The ongoing debate between atheists and Christians is really a waste of time for Christians.

Perhaps I should refine that some. There are all sorts of issues being debated. For example, the matter of whether it is possible to have a moral code without religion. This is a good fundamental question, because it stands on the different assumptions which are central to the debate. The problem is this: By choosing to use Aristotelian logic, Christians have already ceded the field of battle to the atheists.

Granted, it’s easy enough to shoot down the notion of morality sourced in human reason alone, but it depends on the definition of morality. If moral goodness is nothing more than utilitarian seeking of the maximum benefit for the majority of humanity at any given time, then we are left arguing over what benefits humanity. In other words, we keep chasing new chimeras. Now, we acknowledge obeying the moral laws of God will bring to humanity the greatest good possible for the greatest number, but that’s a poor motivation. The whole point of asserting there is a God who revealed His Laws, His standards of morality, is not to simply seek human welfare. Human welfare is simply a by-product.

The point of pursuing morality is it is good and right by definition, regardless of the by-products. The problem you run into is when you approach that from Aristotle’s epistemology, you can’t breathe life into it; you end up with Law, and there’s no room for grace. Without grace, there is no Christ, no Christian faith.

Nor can this be a question of whether this or that representative of Christian faith is actually a genuine born-again Christian. No one outside that person can determine such a thing, so the question is hypothetical when applied to specific individuals. It will forever remain academic and theoretical. Grace is not theoretical, but is a living spiritual principle beyond explanation.

Surely no atheist can claim to be born-again in that sense. That’s the whole point. If an individual does not have a living spirit as host to the Holy Spirit, it won’t matter what is logical. You can’t prove something for which they lack all capacity for interest. Professing Christians at least have the presumption of interest. A genuine Christian has no mere interest, but an inescapable drive to extinguish their human self in favor of the spiritual self. And once again, it matters not at all what is logical.

Christians don’t embrace morality because it gets them to Heaven; they embrace morality because it owns them and they can’t walk away from it. Atheists don’t embrace Christian morality because it doesn’t exist for them. Any morality they have will forever be derived from that which has been revealed, even as they refuse to accept that fact. Even the most horrific utilitarian lack of morality is itself a reaction to the moral nature of the world. Asserting that as a Christian comes across as smart-Aleck circular reasoning to them.

I don’t bother reasoning with atheists about faith because faith is not reasonable. If it were reasonable, it would not be faith. It’s a call to divorce the self from this life, to escape with all speed this awful fallen plane of sorrow, not try to make it somehow better. Of course, by paradox, such an effort to flee this world does make it better, because I’m drawn inevitably to the sort of sacrificial love and caring which makes life better for all. Without that consuming desire to escape this prison, I can’t possibly have power to care about anyone but myself.

Because I love the atheist too, I don’t harass him with something he can’t accept regardless of how it’s offered. Instead, I offer something which is within his human grasp. There is absolutely nothing else I can do for him.

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The Political Lesson from the Tower of Babel

Posted on April 9, 2011 by ehurst

Hebrew narrative was designed to offer one central theme, but provided enough threads to apply to several different areas. So while we draw spiritual and religious lessons from the Tower of Babel narrative, there is a distinct political message, too:

Centralized power and wealth is inherently sinful.

Nimrod was building a giant ziggurat. The language used to divulge his purpose was symbolic; a tower to touch the heavens was not a literal attempt to climb into the sky, but to obtain guidance from the heavens. Doing this required an astrological observatory to obtain precise measurements of the heavenly bodies and their movements. This is no great mystery; astrology was born in that part of the world.

The secondary objective was to enslave the entire human population at that time under this religious-political regime with Nimrod at the helm. Having a single religion, with a single grand aspiration, would help to political unify his domain.

When God announced His dissatisfaction with things, we have to keep in mind there is one glaring sin at work here: He had commanded humanity to disperse and populate the whole world. Huddling on the Plain of Shinar around this ziggurat was not fulfilling that command. Despite the apparent meaning of various English translations, the tone of God’s concern was that they had broken His command, had committed themselves to a path from which there was no return, that there would be nothing to bring them back from yet another self-damnation. This, right after the Flood, which had been an attempt to clean the slate and start over with a very simple setting.

His solution is a glaring light shined upon the nature of their sin. God confused their language, but the word translated “language” carries far more heft than simply how people talk. It’s a word for all the things which identify a group of people in ancient times — language, culture, folkways, customs, means of living, etc. The whole point was decentralizing people into tribes. The primary threat was the centralizing of masses of humanity.

What kind of man was Nimrod to so desire this much power? He was a hunter, one who relentlessly pursued his quarry. This was not the fit image of a man ruling his people. The good leader was a shepherd, the model Jesus chose for Himself, the Good Shepherd. A hunter and warrior was trouble. To make the most of his ambitions, Nimrod needed every body he could get. That astrology temple would be the means to tie them together in one vast nation. It didn’t matter what Nimrod planned to do with such a powerful nation; just having one great kingdom was itself a sin.

God has shown His displeasure with that model of life. His Law of Noah cannot be fulfilled by a great, centrally ruled nation. It can only be accomplished when everyone is broke down into little tribes, scattered and divided. This prevents tyranny and oppression. You’ve seen the symbol of the Roman fasces — the bundle of sticks with the ax. It symbolizes strength in unity, but what sort of strength? That of the rod for beating, and the ax for execution. It’s the unity of domination and cruelty.

Unity under any human ability or talent is inherently evil. God has set the pattern, and will not ever grant long life to any single human government. They will always be torn apart one way or another. Simply trying to find a way past that tendency and seeking political unity is evil by definition. It’s not necessary to have war simply because you aren’t all united. There can be peace in division, so long as folks mind their own business. With large concentrations of wealth and power — they are inseparable — you cannot possibly have peace. That’s a part of the lesson of Babel.

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Trail: Last Day of the Season

Posted on April 8, 2011 by ehurst

The trail is closed for the summer.

Having finally cleared the old trail and added several new sections to replace what the firefighting bulldozer destroyed, there are only two issues which limit the use of it. The first I have already grumbled about: ticks and chiggers. They are inactive below 60° F. Given I still have my mountain bike, it was a simple matter of riding, but not walking, since even the most vigorous biting insects can’t jump on a moving bicycle.

But Oklahoma is home to a very vigorous natural breed of poison ivy. Indeed, it’s favored habitat is shaded sandy forest areas. That describes my trail. They, too, are restrained by ambient air temperatures below 60° F, but it’s been above that at night for a few days now. It takes only a small amount of residual moisture from morning dew and the like to feed this nasty stuff. Oh, and it wasn’t harmed by the fire, since the roots are just deep enough to escape the heat.

This morning I was contemplating taking two laps on my mountain bike, but after seeing the sprouts almost pedal height already, I got off the route before completing the first lap. And the stuff is thick in some areas. It’s one thing to wear protective shoes and pants, but you still have to handle those when you remove them and wash them. I’m clumsy enough to make that a risky proposition. Too risky. Barring some unforeseen interposing event, game over.

The trail is closed for the summer.

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Mind Trap

Posted on April 7, 2011 by ehurst

A mind like a steel trap is not ruled by the Spirit.

Recall the principle of Spiritual Anthropology. For those whose spirits are alive, it is utterly necessary those spirits rule the mind. While it is possible for a sharp mind to grasp certain moral principles from the Law of Noah, just as sharp minds were capable of grasping the intricacies of the Law of Moses, there remains always a frontier of unknowns which simply cannot be discerned on the level of human intelligence.

There have always been wise men capable of thinking through the moral implications of choices within a moral context. They were wise because they had an instinct for spiritual reasoning, and they seldom reacted instantaneously, except to things which had established moral precedent. They absorbed these precedents from revelation, typically of prophets. God has always granted prophets when the people were willing to hear, and plenty of times when they weren’t willing to hear. That’s because the moral imperative has always been His initiative.

God decides what is right, even if we can’t fathom the logic of it. He also holds the prerogative on timing. His is the ultimate plan of events within this realm, and what was right yesterday, for all the similarity in context, could be wrong tomorrow. This is why prophets are a matter of Laws, not necessarily spirit. This is why Balaam could speak the revelation of God without any particular inclination to obey God. Indeed, he was inclined by the big paycheck offered by Balak to do what he could to curse Israel. While he failed, he did possess enough moral understanding to offer Balak a sneaky way of getting Israel to curse herself by breaking the Covenant. Balaam knew the Law of Noah, and it applied despite his lack of education in the specifics of the Law of Moses, which was only freshly written. He knew enough to warn Balak he could not tell God what to do.

Things have not changed that much since then. Our modern Western obsession with human talent and human intelligence is the primary reason we can’t accomplish much, despite the wonders of our vast knowledge of things. We have no wisdom. We don’t even embrace what little we could know of revealed moral wisdom because we have denied the existence of the spirit. It makes no difference we can talk about the spirit academically if we make no allowance for its power. We lack the insight to accomplish even the evil intentions of Balaam and Balak, because we deny the nature of the moral Laws, deny the very nature of the Fall.

The mind of man is fallen. The primary evidence of this is our sense of time. The Spirit Realm does not suffer a time sense; God Himself says He sees things from outside the time sense which dominates our existence. The very nature of the word “eternity” indicates an existence in which time is not a factor. That we cannot really grasp that is all the proof we need that man’s mind cannot breach the barrier, cannot grasp things beyond this fallen realm. So while we debate the virtues of a high or low time preference, moral reasoning pays no heed to such things. The proper spiritual frame of reference is not measuring time, quantifying it and remaining sensitive to synchronicity of events, but is aimed more at when the time is ripe. Ripeness of time is a revealed factor; you know it when it arrives, but not before. The spirit can know, but not the mind.

That we would admire a quick mind shows our orientation away from the Spirit. Prophets faced with a query for the Lord did not always know how long it would take to get the answer. Wise sages of the ancient times did not hurry such things, because they wanted to turn them over in their minds and allow their spirits to speak. We have dismissed this mighty lore of understanding by our intellectual biases. There is no mystery here, except in the sense a mind which is determined to rule cannot hear from the Spirit, who speaks only to spirits. A word from God will never, ever come directly to the intelligence, but only to the spirit.

The mind was granted by God to serve the Spirit-spirit nexus, not to rule the life.

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Firefox 4.0 Simple Build on RHEL 6

Posted on April 6, 2011 by ehurst

Update: This is now out of date. Unless you insist on running FF4 or FF5, please see the update for FF6.

As far as I can tell, there will be no official release of Firefox 4 for RHEL 6 and clones (running Scientific Linux here).

If you scramble around for SRPMs to build FF4 on RHEL 6, you’ll end up with Fedora stuff which is utterly heedless of those of us who prefer stability. In other words, the SRPM is crafted for the latest and greatest, and unless you are an RPM hacker, you won’t get it to work.

The other course is to absorb another Yum repo, in case this the one from Remi. This means you must also absorb the EPEL repository, which has broken my system in the past and often does not have what I need. It also means there will be conflicts if you happen to like the ATrpm repository, since that tends to be mutually exclusive with EPEL. In other words, you must allow the Fedora folks to own your machine or you can’t have any of their stuff at all. It doesn’t help the Fedora folks are serious die-hard fanboys, and not very friendly to those who aren’t.

The point is, when running RHEL or any of the derivatives, it’s best to build Firefox 4.0 for yourself from source. At the same time, you want it as close to the RPM way of doing things as you can get it, by making sure the package you build includes as many of the same build options as are used in the RPMs. That’s because it will tend to reflect the way your system is designed in the first place.

Download the source from Mozilla, the item labeled firefox-4.0.source.tar.bz2 (or whatever is current by the time you read this). The older orthodox build location is /usr/local/src/, but these days you are encouraged to build everything from your user account and login as root only to install. I created a src folder in my home directory, and moved the file there. Then I unzip and untar it, and drop down into the resulting directory (mozilla-2.0).

You’ll need some basic configuration instructions, which comes in the form of a file named mozconfig. After several attempts, I find the following is as close to the Fedora RPM as you can get for RHEL 6:

mk_add_options MOZ_MAKE_FLAGS="-j4"
ac_add_options --enable-application=browser
ac_add_options --with-system-jpeg
ac_add_options --with-system-zlib
ac_add_options --with-pthreads
ac_add_options --disable-tests
ac_add_options --disable-debug
ac_add_options --enable-optimize
ac_add_options --disable-installer
ac_add_options --enable-default-toolkit=cairo-gtk2
ac_add_options --disable-strip
ac_add_options --enable-pango
ac_add_options --enable-svg
ac_add_options --enable-canvas
ac_add_options --enable-startup-notification
ac_add_options --enable-libxul
ac_add_options --disable-crashreporter
ac_add_options --enable-safe-browsing
ac_add_options --enable-libnotify
ac_add_options --disable-necko-wifi
ac_add_options --disable-cpp-exceptions
ac_add_options --disable-updater
ac_add_options --enable-url-classifier
ac_add_options --enable-gio
ac_add_options --disable-gnomevfs

That first line is for machines with at least a dual core CPU. Change that -j4 to a -j2 if you have an older, single core processor. Otherwise, the only thing you’ll lack are a few dependencies even after installing the basic collection of development packages.

The way to do this is note the instructions here, which are a little out of date. Use the instructions for Fedora to add some packages with Yum. Then run the command make -f client.mk — if you are still missing something, the build will error out. By scanning upward a few lines from what you see on the command line, you’ll see the name of the package that’s missing. Sometimes you’ll have to run Yum searches to identify what RHEL calls the package you seek, but I didn’t have much trouble working it out. I recall it was three items, but I didn’t take notes at the time. If you need the kind of guidance I offer here, it’s a good time for you to learn for yourself. C’mon; you can do it!

Once it builds successfully, login as root and type make install, and hit ENTER. Should install nicely with the executable script in /usr/local/bin named “firefox” — just create your desktop applink to that file.

Just in case things don’t work as you like, I recommend you save a backup copy of your old Firefox settings. In my case, I chose to make a copy of the entire ~/.mozilla folder, renaming it ~/xmozilla. The addons for Firefox 3 don’t always work, and you’ll need to upgrade some of them, but on startup the new Firefox 4 will walk you through that.

Enjoy.

Posted in computers | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Geek Wars: Overriding RHEL Defaults in Vim Plugins

Posted on April 6, 2011 by ehurst

Between the RHEL package managers and the upstream providers for Vim, the default formatting options for some file types is wrong and exceedingly difficult to override. (I’m using Scientific Linux 6.0, but they deny changing the Vim packages provided by Red Hat.)

We want it our way, and we will fight until we get it. Most people do not use proper headings in their HTML files, but as long as things work, it’s no big deal. However, when the folks coding some of the most nit-picking purist orthodoxy in the world accommodate bad practices by forcing that accommodation on others, it’s just plain wrong. But I know better than to try appealing to the arrogant code gods for some flexibility. They are infallible, and won’t talk to ordinary users who can’t recite obscure pages of their voluminous documentation. Okay, so at least they write documentation. But it’s far outside the grasp of ordinary users, and the elitist mindset refuses to compromise with folks who simply want to use the software, not worship it. One way or another, you’re going to invest some time or the answers will not come.

I code my HTML files according to a currently accepted standard, known as XHTML Transitional. It renders well in all but a few obscure browsers, and it’s easier for me to remember all the precise details for tagging and so forth. As part of my training, I learned to put what are called “hard returns” at the end of each line, so that no matter what editor I had to use at the time, I could still read my own code and figure out what I did. Soft wrapping does not work for me. Again, it’s a valid choice, well understood and most text editors can work with that.

Except in Vim. I am by no means a Zen Master of Vim, nor do I ever want to be, nor should I have to be. I just use it for what I do. I took the time to learn how to construct a .vimrc and .gvimrc configuration files so I get Vim to behave as I like.

.vimrc
set spell spelllang=en
set spellfile=~/.vim/spellfile.add
set nocompatible
behave xterm
set shiftwidth=3
set tabstop=3
set backspace=indent,eol,start
set incsearch
syntax on
set showcmd
set wrap linebreak textwidth=72
set whichwrap=<,>,h,l,[,]
colorscheme koehler

I have fewer settings in my .gvimrc because it inherits most of the settings from .vimrc. The vast number of options are mind-numbing, and it was no small chore, but I found it worthwhile. But the code gods in their abundant wisdom have forced things which make Vim a real hassle when I use it for writing my HTML files. You see, they have developed this highly complex system of plugins for each file type, and they load after Vim parses my personal configurations. That means their choices cause Vim to ignore mine. It’s all explained here. I am utterly certain the Vim developers know this, and how it affects users, and probably snicker at the idea a really large number of duffers like me are either forced to become code gods themselves to fix it, or suffer in silence with the inconvenience.

I got lucky. I found out about querying Vim to see just where this hassle originates in the default plugin configurations. After poking around a bit, I discovered the problem was down to something which reset the format options from the default. In an open Gvim window, having typed nothing into the new unnamed file, hit the ESC key and then type exactly — :set formatoptions? This returns "formatoptions=tcq". That’s what we like for those of use auto wrapping at fixed line widths.

But for HTML and related file types, that’s broken. If I load one of my HTML files, and perform the same incantations, I get "formatoptions=croql". Aside from a few other details, the missing “t” is what causes my pain. I used another query which pointed which file was doing this. After hitting the ESC key, I typed exactly — :verbose set formatoptions — and found out it was /usr/share/vim/vim72/ftplugin/html.vim.

So I logged in as root and opened that file. At around line 18, I found a batch of code starting with the highly offensive line — setlocal formatoptions-=t — which specifically disables my line-wrap settings. Sure, after I finish a paragraph I can always wrap it with various commands to apply my chosen margins, but soft-wrap is very distracting for me while writing and trying to keep up with the HTML tags. I’d rather re-wrap after making changes. It’s the way I’ve done things since the first DOS editor I ever used, back in 1990. So I changed that file. Opening it in an editor, I used the peculiar Vim way of commenting out that (inserting a double quotation mark) and the next few lines which set those formatting options:

"setlocal formatoptions-=t
"if !exists("g:ft_xml_autocomment") || (g:ft_xml_autocomment == 1)
" setlocal formatoptions+=croql
"endif

I saved the file and test Gvim and all is now working as I like it.

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Danger in Dominionism

Posted on April 5, 2011 by ehurst

There is a very dangerous and heretical movement attaching itself mainstream evangelical Christianity, particularly in America: Dominionism.

Regular readers know how much I despise Aristotelian epistemology as the foundation for trying to understand the Bible. It breeds a literalist mindset just like the Pharisees, and contrasts harshly against the Ancient Near Eastern mysticism of Jesus and His Hebrew background. If you aren’t a mystic, you aren’t a follower of Christ.

Among the various heresies which arise from Aristotelian logical approach to Scripture is Dominionism. Reading the Gospels from a proper Hebrew understanding pointedly shows Jesus denying He had any interest in human politics. In fact, you could find that understanding even if you were crippled by a literalist viewpoint. He says bluntly His Kingdom is not of this world. It’s other-worldly, spiritual, mystical. Since a clear distinction between the Two Realms is rejected by most of Western Christianity a priori, they have to do a lot of verbal and mental gymnastics to avoid having to give up their political ambitions. Dominionists are a type of overtly political Christians — in other words, fake Christians.

Yes, they believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord, but a spiritual birth does not remove a lifetime of perverted cultural and intellectual bias. It makes such a renewal possible, but if everyone you encounter denies the need for it, how likely are you to seek a different answer? So while I don’t deny they are fellow believers, and that I’ll see some of them in Heaven, I am utterly certain they will be embarrassed on the Final Judgment Day.

We are told Christ will return for that Judgment Day after the Father has put all things under His feet. It’s no secret He intends to use the followers of Jesus to accomplish that. But in the frozen brains of the literalists, they can’t see how that is a spiritual accomplishment. To them, it simply has to be a literal, political subjugation of the world to Christian domination — their particular brand of Western middle class Christian dominance. They simply cannot imagine how Jesus meant for us to conquer the world in any other terms. For a Christian Mystic, such conquest is a parabolic or symbolic statement. We conquer by our ability to stomp our own individual fleshly orientation, and become so other-worldly we simply don’t much care what happens to us on this fallen plane of existence. When believers have fully embraced that principle of mortification — not clinging to this life — then we will have conquered the world in spiritual terms. So when some undetermined portion of believers reach some undetermined degree of mortification, and are able to demonstrate that power over this world by how they treat each other in particular, and how they love others in general, then perhaps it will be time for Him to return.

Dominionists take it literally. In particular, they have these seven areas of human existence they intend to take over:

  1. Government
  2. Business
  3. Media
  4. Arts
  5. Education
  6. Family
  7. Religion

These are the folks who founded religious universities with departments in Political Science, Business, Education, and Journalism. They also have various Fine Arts programs, but only the ones they feel are improperly dominated by leftist humanists and libertines. The business of family is a matter of social policy and propaganda, and religion is already obvious. I would be the last to complain about schools offering a cloistered atmosphere for whatever brand of philosophy they espouse. I think we do have way too many atheists, Secular Humanists, and other related viewpoints running almost the entire academic system in the West. But I also think it’s a shame there are no institutions of higher learning devoted to mysticism, particularly Ancient Near Eastern mysticism. You can learn about it, but you have to glean carefully bits and pieces here and there, scooping them out of a flood of Aristotelian assumptions.

And I honestly think the Secular Humanists can have their homeschool programs, along with the Wiccans, and whatever else. I believe in real liberty and freedom. I want everyone to have a chance to pursue the best they know, because I don’t feel the least bit threatened by alternative viewpoints. What I do object to is when the Dominionist colleges operate on the dedicated plan to borg the system so they can rule us all with an iron fist. Make no mistake, these folks are willing to crush anyone who doesn’t agree with them, and I mean that in the most brutal sense of blood and gore. These are not nice people.

This tendency is seen in a lot of other movements with other names, but all of them together are the core of the so-called Christian Right. They are at least as dangerous as the Secularist Left; Hitler was a socialist, not a right-winger. Anything can be used as an excuse for tyranny. Dominionists are simply one brand of evil in politics.

These folks do proclaim a Law of God they intend to enforce, but their literalist reading of the Bible cripples their understanding of how that plays out in daily reality. For example, I have been told they take a hostile view to my assertion you can’t fulfill God’s Laws without a tribal social structure. They really do love the Treaty of Westphalia and so-called Classical Liberalism. This is all part of the intellectual failure of the Reformation, which was a reaction to the intellectual failure of Roman Scholasticism.

The twisted legacy of Western Civilization is collapsing under its own weight, but that doesn’t mean its true disciples can’t still do a lot of harm before it’s done.

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More on Molech: Fear

Posted on April 4, 2011 by ehurst

There’s more to this symbolism of Molech than merely withholding your children from the state. It’s the issue of rule by fear. Molech was worshiped out of fear. There was no love for a god who consumes your first-born son as the price for letting you eat.

While the Hebrew text of Scripture does use more than one word which gets translated as “fear” in English, the most common one (yare’) is a primitive root word, rather ambiguous and requiring a context. One could say the common underlying emphasis is to be intimidated. As already noted in the previous post, the context indicates one “fears” Jehovah in the sense of respect. Sure, He can remove you and every memory of you, if He chose. On the other hand, He’s not interested in terrorizing anyone who is disposed to understand what He requires. Indeed, He makes it a point to promote the image of Himself as quite patient and kind, looking for any excuse to pour blessings on anyone who will simply try to honor Him as God. We get that image reading through the prophetic record.

Molech terrorizes. What little we know of his worship indicates a very ugly religion. If you are on his land, you had better cower in fear at the mention of his name. There is no limit to his demands; nothing you can name is too much. This is just like the modern nation-state. It’s not just the children; it’s the entire gamut of your existence.

The high sounding theory behind the term “public servants” has become an Orwellian lie. You are the servant, and there is no negotiation, so long as the state can foist any claim on the space you occupy. The state has the unilateral authority and you have whatever privileges the state decides to offer. At any given moment, that can change. The only thing which inhibits truly capricious actions at this point is the long legacy of wanting voluminous documentation to constrain the various agents of the state. Given the way government service borgs the whole mind, even the imagination of psychopaths is somewhat restrained by the documented procedures.

As our system of government drifts farther and farther into naked tyranny, as if the head is some unlimited dictator, and the pretense of accountability wears thin as stretch film, we should expect lesser executives to begin asserting totalitarian authority within the limits of their office. Caprice has already begun to rear its ugly head. Even the average policeman has gotten into the act. Stories of police abuse of authority are too many to count these days. Against that, the stories of them receiving just recompense are increasingly rare.

None of this is news, but the point here is Christians in particular are forbidden to become trapped in that pagan terror of the state. This is nothing more than a revival of worshiping Molech. You may not have any actual power in your hands to resist the state, but that does not justify surrendering to the dread of state interference with your calling from God. On the individual level, your embrace of God’s Laws will allow Him to tip the scales of what seems random chance in your favor. If more of us together agree to walk in His Laws, His power to bless according to those Laws will deepen into more areas of our lives.

It’s time to stop trembling before the altar of Molech or the State.

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Rendering Unto Molech

Posted on April 3, 2011 by ehurst

In ancient Palestine, prior to the Conquest by Israel in roughly 1400 BC, there had arisen among the native Canaanites an appalling pagan religion devoted to a god called Molech. The name itself means “king” more or less. The idol for this god was normally a bronze oven, around which this god was formed, and multiple arms rather like the Hindu Kali.

The annual early spring rituals saw this oven fired up and heated until the bronze arms glowed. Then someone from the community of worshipers would place their own first-born infant son in these waiting arms, until all that remained was a smoking corpse. In the quaint terminology of their day, it was called “passing their children through the fire of Molech.” This screaming sacrifice sought to assure a good harvest of crops, and fertile herd animals.

In the standard mystical frame of reference from that part of the world, this scene symbolized the abject slavery of the people to their “king.” He owned them entirely; their lives were subject to his whims. The image was extensible, applying itself to a thousand acts, small and large, throughout the year.

The God of Israel was not like this. You gave your sons to Him symbolically, not in some ghastly ritual. He wanted them alive to serve Him and His covenant in building and maintaining what was truly the best of all possible worlds after the Fall. In the case of Israel, He paid the full price to redeem them from slavery, showing incredible signs and wonders, giving them freedom and their own home land. Then as clear  a revelation as could be offered in human language was handed to them with a full and open explanation as to why this covenant was as good as it gets. As we know from those Scriptures, they spent more of their history in ungrateful violation than in anything resembling even the most feeble compliance. The periods of compliance became increasingly rare. Their ingratitude extended to rekindling the fires of Molech for their children, a deity who had not done a thing for them.

This pagan deity serves as a perfect symbol of the implacable modern nation-state government in the West, and may other places, today. We are expected to render our children to the state, regardless of any expectation of pleasant consequences. Maybe it will turn out well; maybe not. But you and I are offered no real hope beyond bland assurances which are patently false. Nor can the state offer any plausible claims of having taken us from any previous servitude, but demands such servitude a priori from us. There is a fiction we have chosen to go along with this, but from the first day that system was a lie. It has always been the elite ruling us, controlling the entire public discourse and mechanisms for selecting who exercises power.

Molech threatened his worshipers with starvation and disease if they did not fulfill his demands. Sounds like the state, no? You are required to surrender your children as property of the state in a thousand ways. The state will decide if you are permitted to bear that child in the first place, and can change its mind capriciously without any accountability through its many servants. The state will decide where and under what conditions that child will be born, what you are permitted to do with it, feed it, what you must inject into its tissues and when. At the first sign of any irregularities, the state snatches the child from your home, as if you and the child were simply the property of the state, an asset for its comfort and convenience. Such is the logic of the nation-state.

My characterizing is according to the logic of Heaven; this is the way the Bible views things, a parabolic indication of something hard to put into words. This is “thus saith the Lord.” Do not pass your children through the fires of Molech by compromising with the state. You may think you have no options, but if you seek no relief from God by praying for guidance in how to build a better society, you have chosen Molech.

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The Gaga Stamp of Disapproval

Posted on April 2, 2011 by ehurst

Let’s pretend something outrageous. Let’s pretend somehow Lady Gaga saw me, and said I was hot. I’d be horrified, sick to my stomach, insulted. Naturally, it will never happen. Not only do I not appeal to very many women, but I’m not likely to come within several miles of where she’s known to travel. Not if I can help it. Lady Gaga represents a concerted effort to destroy what little is left in modern Western culture. HuffPo rightly said she was the antithesis of “sexy” because she did her darnedest to destroy what it meant. Without dragging this out too long, I’ll cut to the chase: Her sense of taste is so perverse, anything she recommends is by definition a threat to society.

A few days ago it was announced she liked Ubuntu. And in response, a whole slew of new teenaged users began experimenting with Ubuntu. Meanwhile, a large number of Linux technicians are increasingly disgusted with the direction Ubuntu has gone. Sure, it’s high profile and draws a lot of attention to Linux, but so did a handful of other distros over the past couple of decades, and always for the wrong reasons. Linux users despised Lindows/Linspire because it did everything wrong. It still does, and now Ubuntu is going down the same path. At every turn their developers and packagers are defying the best and sanest traditions of Linux. Not in an independent streak of careful thought, but a heedless rush down the first diversionary path which makes it different from the rest, always grabbing recklessly at whatever is currently labeled “cool”. Ubuntu is not good for Linux.

I’m not hostile to the Ubuntu Community, and they shouldn’t care a whit if I am. What once held so much promise has become the plaything of someone I find too often acting like the psychopaths who rule this world. It’s been documented they contribute next to nothing to the core functions of Linux, and precious little to the desktop. Making Linux high profile as they do comes at the awful price of making it something I don’t want to be a part of.

Granted, I still recommend the older release of Lucid Lynx (10.04) LTS. But when that runs out, so will my patience with Ubuntu. The blessing of Gaga is the kiss of death in my eyes. If Linux as it is, and perhaps as it ought to be, is not appealing to the masses, that is as it should be. Lest you think I’m reversing my condemnation of Open Source for not caring about the masses, you miss the point here. The masses I care about are the ordinary folks who can’t afford the best and most expensive; they don’t buy the trendy stuff. Their numbers are growing daily as the oligarchs brazenly suck the lifeblood out of our economy. These more ordinary folks simply want to get things done, and computers tend to help. It doesn’t help if the computer doesn’t do what they need. Open Source does not care what they need; Open Source seems to want all the fame without meeting people where they are. They claim they don’t want the adulation of brain-dead fashionistas, but many lie to themselves, because it feels the same as the love of the fanboys. They want to take credit, or at least take a share in the glow, for anything which puts Linux in the limelight. Gaga has done so, and I’m pretty sure lots of Open Source folks are just tickled. It simply proves my point: The most well known distro of Linux appeals the worst elements in our society.

Let the flames begin, because I really don’t care.

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