Dale offers the prompt “Halloween” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.
We don’t celebrate Halloween anymore. Long ago, we used to carve pumpkins and go trick or treating with our young children. But that was long ago.
Although I don’t have any Halloween images, I do have some fall photos to share.
Most people don’t want elephants in their living rooms. If we have any and we don’t know they are there, it’s because we have a blind spot. It’s not that we don’t bump into those elephants multiple times. We do, but we can always come up rationalizations to explain why the walls keep moving about without having to admit that there are elephants in our living rooms.
While chasing out my own elephants, I ran into Cornelius Hunter whom Rebekah Davis has interviewed multiple times on her YouTube channel, Examining Origins. Hunter is a philosopher of science and a biologist. He is also a Christian, but for scientific reasons he is neither a creationist nor an evolutionist.
That means evolutionists don’t like him, because he allows for evolution to be false. They think he is compromising with creationism. That also means creationists don’t trust him, because he allows for evolution to be true. They think he is compromising with evolutionism even though he has shown that evolution has been scientifically falsified so many times that it is useless as a model of origins.
Theological Naturalism
Theological naturalism is neither atheism nor skepticism. Rather, it is a naturalism that arose out of Judeo-Christianity polluted over the millennia with Gnosticism and Greek philosophy. It is a naturalism justified by ideas of God as too omnipotent, too good, or too omniscient to be bothered with our messy (think, evil) world. Such involvement would damage His dignity.
Theological naturalism puts God on a pedestal. It is a theological position that removes God from His messy creation by handing His creation over to the idols of natural law and chance. It is a theological position that rejects Genesis 1-11 where we are told how evil entered the world.
As Hunter puts it in his book, Science’s Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism:
The move to [theological] naturalism is neither atheism in disguise nor a scientific discovery. Instead, the move to naturalism was mandated largely by thinkers within the church. Religious skeptics gladly accepted the move, but their position has always been a parasitic one.1
Hunter notes that in spite of evolution being a failed scientific model, few want to reject it. They reason (correctly) that if they did reject it, the only alternatives would be some form of creationism, but any form of creationism, biblical or not, would bring God too close to the messiness of the universe.
Science As Useful Modeling
Hunter wants to separate science from theology or metaphysics. He points out that science is much easier to do than metaphysics. In science you make a public statement. Then you make vulnerable predictions from that statement, that is, predictions which are falsifiable. Others check the predictions against reality. If the model survives these checks, it can be provisionally accepted – not as true, but as useful – until a better model with tighter predictions comes along.
Bottom line: a scientific model or theory makes useful predictions.
Metaphysics and theology on the other hand go after a bigger prize that is more difficult to achieve. They want truth. Often they only rely on reason to get that prize. That is, they don’t want to rely on revelation such as that provided in the Bible. All they are willing to use to ground their rationalizations are mere assumptions that they think must somehow be true. But mere assumptions lead one into all kinds of nonsense.
Getting back to those elephants, my take away from Hunter is to recognize the difference between science and metaphysics. As soon as I confuse them, I’ve got an elephant in my living room. To get rid of these elephants I have to see them for what they are: theologically motivated rationalizations masquerading as useful science.
______
After coming home loaded with booty from the battlefield doing a lot of damage chasing this, that and the other thing King Nimrodwannabe finally got a good night’s sleep.
When he woke in the morning he recalled that he was dreaming of trying to catch something that ran this way, then – when he almost had it – that way and then – when he almost had it again – some other way. If it weren’t that he was just waking up, all of this running around would have exhausted him, but quickly the dream drifted away into the land of forgetfulness where dreams love to vanish.
However, the vague recollection that he dreamed at all bothered him enough to gather his wizards and witches with their wands and black cats so they could retrieve the dream from the land of forgetfulness and then interpret it. He knew this task was way beyond their abilities, but he wanted to see just how much nonsense they would try to feed him this time.
It was Halloween, after all, their favorite time of the year when they expected to get a royal treat perhaps even a share of the booty, but this year Nimrodwannabe had a trick or two of his own to play.
______
Denise offers the prompt word “trick” for this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Daniel 2:7-9 KJV – 7 They answered again and said, Let the king tell his servants the dream, and we will shew the interpretation of it. 8 The king answered and said, I know of certainty that ye would gain the time, because ye see the thing is gone from me. 9 But if ye will not make known unto me the dream, there is but one decree for you: for ye have prepared lying and corrupt words to speak before me, till the time be changed: therefore tell me the dream, and I shall know that ye can shew me the interpretation thereof.
All of these limericks were originally posted to Esther Chilton’s Laughing Along With A Limerick during the month of October 2025. Some I have slightly modified. I’ve even added titles which I hear limericks are forbidden to have.
I’ve added two photos for those who prefer a picture to a thousand words of nonsense.
Crazy Love
“That is crazy!” I thought though it’s true
like the fact that the blue sky is blue
like a gift from above
like a message of love
like an answer just waiting for you.
Prompt word “crazy” October 6, 2025
Be Careful Whom You Follow
When I followed, you said, “Follow through,”
but I followed. What more should I do?
“Well, I gave you a map.”
Like a rat in a trap,
yes, I followed, but why didn’t you?
Prompt word “follow” October 13, 2025 (slightly modified)
Moon Cheese With Bread And Wine
Although some say the moon’s made of cheese,
is there wine and fresh bread with that, please?
Are there olives as well
and soft moonbeams to tell
of that night with the warm light through trees?
Prompt word “bread” October 20, 2025 (slightly modified)
Dusty Dust
So much dust! Can a sneezer now trust
all the dust that a sneezer now must?
When I sneeze I will say
to the dust: Blow away!
But it stayed since it’s just dusty dust.
Prompt word: “dust” October 27, 2025
Dale offers the prompt “autumn color” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Prompt.
These are photos of the forest preserve in northern Illinois when we used to live there a few years ago.
Where I am now in the Carolinas, the trees haven’t started changing yet.
______
Joe was a mathematician.
Among his many skills he could tell you which infinity was bigger than the other. If you told him that you doubted such a skill had much value, he’d entertain you for a longer period of time than your patience could tolerate with a sequence of axioms, lemmas and theorems that justified the value of his results.
However, as Joe approached the end of his life the infinite number of infinities, lined up like idols starving for sacrifices, that used to spice his life gave way to an unexpected and undeserved heart of flesh that seemed as if it had just begun to beat out of nowhere. He laughed at all the arguments he used to drill into unwilling ears hoping they might forgive (knowing they had already forgotten) all that he told them.
But, whether they forgave or not, Joe wished that all of them could find the heartfelt joy he now felt, a joy worth far more than any number of dubious infinities.
______
Denise offers the word “spice” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Dale offers the prompt “from an unusual perspective” for this week’s Cosmic Photo Challenge.
The unusual perspective I used is getting so close to the object that I tend to forget just what it was originally.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 