In his campaigns that would give him the whole known world King Nimrodwannabe left once independent and prosperous communities burdened with annual tributes they now owed him. A few of these communities, the expendable ones which weren’t producing much in the first place, were tortured to terrorize their more productive neighboring villages into quick submission.
To maintain dominion over those villages which survived to surrender he brought their best and brightest back to his glorious Babilopolis where they would be educated so they could later serve as his overseers insuring his ongoing will was obeyed back home.
Though Nimrodwannabe was still young he was much too much in a hurry to waste valuable time getting cross with those who challenged him either at Babilopolis or abroad preferring speedy executions to lengthy quarrels. With the only real time he had any control over, since corpses are notoriously impotent, he took everything he could get his hands on even what was not given to him.
The demons reveling with him knew – once those tiny decades of Nimrodwannabe’s life were done – they would get it all not that it would do them much good either.
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Denise offers the prompt word “cross” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
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.
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Hunter, Cornelius. Science’s Blind Spot: The Unseen Religion of Scientific Naturalism (p. 32). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. ↩︎
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.
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.
An important chronological study is Douglas Petrovich’s Origins of the Hebrews published 2021. He traced biblical events from Joseph’s being sold into slavery to the Exodus aligning them with Egyptian history.
Before finishing that study Petrovich realized that he had evidence from Egypt and Sinai that the first alphabet was created by Joseph’s eldest son, Manasseh, after the Israelites arrived in Egypt in 1876 BC. Manasseh knew how to write the Egyptian language and provided a way for the Israelites to now write their own language without having to learn Egyptian hieroglyphics. Those findings led to Petrovich’s first book, The World’s Oldest Alphabet, published in 2016, where he provided evidence that the letters of our alphabet came from the Hebrews.
Not everyone agrees with this idea. For the last few centuries there has been way too much theorizing assuming that little to nothing of what was written in the Bible could have actually happened. These skeptics demanded corroborating evidence outside of the Bible before they would take the Bible seriously as history.
Those promoting such beliefs justified them using arguments from silence. Since they knew of no evidence (except what was in the Bible which they refused to accept), they assumed the Bible must be false. They reasoned: How could some guy named “Moses” – if he ever existed – in the 15th century BC write the Torah without having a script to write it in?
But theories based solely on reason quickly lose touch with reality, because they are grounded not on evidence but assumption. Petrovich brings us back to reality. By the time Moses was writing the Torah after the Exodus in 1446 BC the Israelites already had a script that they had used for hundreds of years since nearly the beginning of their 430 years of sojourn in Egypt.
This evidence of Hebraic writing is also evidence to skeptics that the Israelites did indeed spend centuries in Egypt just as the Bible said they did.
In the video below Petrovich provides an overview of the evidence for these claims.
Petrovich concludes at the end of this video:
So all of this demonstrates that it’s the Israelites who are the inventors of the alphabet and there are amazing inscriptions that attest to this. 58:51
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For those seeking more information, the Associates for Biblical Research provides articles on Douglas Petrovich, reviews of his books, interviews with him and even articles by him. As archeologists they also provide chronological information linking events in the Bible with the history of the Ancient Near East validating the historical reliability of the Bible for those who refuse to take the Bible seriously without such corroborating evidence.
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.
When the Lord told Jonah to tell the Ninevites to repent so He wouldn’t need to destroy them, Jonah got on a boat and fled in the opposite direction. An horrendous storm refused to calm until Jonah was tossed overboard to his death and burial in the belly of a whale.
The cost of disobedience is death.
However, after three days and three nights – after three sunsets and three sunrises – the fish vomited Jonah onto the shore and back to life so the Lord could tell Jonah once again to tell the Ninevites to repent so He wouldn’t need to destroy them. The sight of Jonah – who looked (and likely smelled) like the walking dead – and the reluctant words coming from his mouth freaked out the inhabitants of Nineveh to such an extent that they all repented and were spared against Jonah’s wishes.
It gets you nowhere fleeing from God.
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Denise offers the prompt word “need” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
While trying to fill a six sentence story with words Greg realized he hadn’t a clue what to write that made any sense. A few blocks away neither could Bethany make any progress on her story.
Later that afternoon they found themselves sitting next to each other in a coffee shop in the last two available chairs complaining about their fruitless attempts to come up with decent stories. They whined and laughed while drinking their coffees.
That afternoon in the coffeeshop was how it all started. Over the years came the children, the grandchildren and even stories that made sense.
After re-reading the letter forgotten in a drawer he was cleaning out, Brian decided to tear it into pieces. George died years ago. Sarah was far away. The betrayal was painful, but it transformed into blessings beyond imagining and forgiveness should have settled it long ago.
Then Brian regretted tearing up the letter wondering if he should tape the pieces back together.
To make sure he didn’t, Brian took the pieces to the sink and burnt them.
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Denise offers the prompt word “tear” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
The family of four, Adam and Evie with their son and daughter, stopped for lunch. They each made a choice of drink and foot-long sandwich which was heated and sliced in two. After paying for the food Adam followed his family outside to a table in the park that Evie selected.
A woman, homeless and without food, sat at one of the tables they passed. Before sitting down, Adam took one of the halves of his sandwich and gave it to her.
Blessings flowed through the kingdom of heaven.
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Denise offers the prompt word “choice” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Matthew 25:40 KJV – And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
This completes the Apple Poof Delight tales.
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One of my poems, Light and Dark, was published yesterday in Whispers and Echoes. I am grateful to the editor for selecting it.
After Lilith was gone, those she vanished earlier reappeared.
Professor Weissalles suddenly walked through the door of his home surprising his wife who had spent many evenings in tears over the past months. She ran to him telling him to never leave her again which he was only too glad to promise.
The graduate student, John, who wasn’t sure just what he was, suddenly realized he wanted to be a man which would be easy to achieve since he already was one.
Emperor Dunklematerie’s chief advisor and fallible pilot for the realm apologized for lying to the Emperor about not eating Apple Poof Delight, but with the new and improved Apple Delight Without Poof neither of them had to lie to anyone anymore about how much they ate.
Later that year all of them attended the wedding of Adam and Evie.
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Denise offers the prompt word “pilot” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Yesterday, one of my poems, “Library”, appeared in Whispers and Echoes. I am grateful to the editor for selecting it.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 