Savage Utopia

“Understanding Creation” on SU

jjrobinson2 — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 23:29:50 +0000

1 Corinthians 1:22-25
22Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24 but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.

Now we have groups with different names, but mostly the same misunderstandings. Adherents of Science want the Universe to be a somewhat limited puzzle, ultimately explicable by some combination of mathematics (including statistics), physics, and the heroic exertion of personal intellect. In Religion, on the other hand, some practitioners insist that God perform as required whenever the correct ceremonial affectations are presented. Others demand that His Universe must be a static diorama of the creations of a fully comprehensible God.
But the Universe was not designed for the convenience of human understanding. Creation is the work of a Mind beyond anything we can know how to ask about or even imagine (Ephesians 3:20-21)!
This is a boundless mystery of wonders to be explored, but we have to know where to look (James 1:5).

Danger Living Room: Dinner Time

jjrobinson2 — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:52:53 +0000

America got to the table even later than usual. He had actually done this on purpose, hoping to miss the tiresome “blessing” that Dad always made them say before meals. He was dismayed to find Dad still bowed, speaking the blessing aloud. As usual, Dad was being drowned out by the din of the dinner table.
The older children were all complaining loudly about China. China had found some books on magic tricks and gambling. Many of the others now claimed he had cheated them out of all their allowance money.
Iran sulked at the far end of the table, picking at his food. Before too long, he gave up the pretense of eating, and started playing with his growing collection of plastic motor boats. Several of the other children called for Dad to put a stop to this, since Iran was supposed to be passing the gravy.
It would have done little good for Dad to intervene in any case. It was a very large table, and by the time anything Dad said was relayed to the other end, the messages passed from child to child would have borne little resemblance to what he actually said. Worse, some of the naughtier children would entertain themselves by making up things to add, or change the pronouncement completely.
Russia amused himself by slipping a handful of strike-anywhere matches he had found in the garage to Iran under the table. For good measure, Russia had dipped the heads in one of Dad’s gas cans.
Iran thought this was a great idea, and now busied himself with setting fire to the table cloth. Although this would presumably have threatened Iran before anyone else at the table, he convinced himself that it would get Dad’s attention, and felt absolutely sure Dad would move to his end of the table if he made a big enough scene.
Dad ended his mostly fruitless attempt to conduct the “blessing”. He abruptly rose from the table and walked out of the living room, even though he hadn’t touched his food. A few of the smaller children later said they thought they saw tears welling up in Dad’s eyes. America and some of the older children sneered at this, and assured everyone that Dad was never at the table to begin with. This mystified the other children, since America was sitting right next to Dad at the table.
Before long, everyone got bored with spitting, cussing, throwing food, and pulling each others’ hair, and started to get up from the table. Just as they started to move, however, Iran and his plate and toys were suddenly engulfed in flame! Other children frantically doused Iran and the table with their water glasses, and got the flames out before too much damage was done. Russia and China laughed so hard they nearly fell out of their chairs. America, Britain, France, and several of the children at the other end of the table started to scold them, but only halfheartedly. Clearly everyone was enjoying the silly spectacle, and they didn’t want to become unpopular.
Eventually the excitement wore down. Somebody handed Iran a couple of ice cubes for his burned fingers, and everyone went outside to play.

To Be Continued….

RT @samaritanspurse: Today is Independen

jjrobinson2 — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 21:05:17 +0000

RT @samaritanspurse: Today is Independence Day in South #Sudan! “It will be a day of freedom, justice, and peace.” http://ar.gy/TYL

RT @ap:Casey Anthony may be released fro

jjrobinson2 — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 13:45:50 +0000

RT @ap:Casey Anthony may be released from jail in late July or early August. #breakingnews |No, that’s>your

I guess TweetDeck, HootSuite,&Live Write

jjrobinson2 — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 17:57:51 +0000

I guess TweetDeck, HootSuite,&Live Writer aren’t much riskier than the SN’s themselves.

It remains to be seen whether HootSuite

jjrobinson2 — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 17:24:57 +0000

It remains to be seen whether HootSuite is more intrusive than TweetDeck.

The HootSuite experiment.

jjrobinson2 — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 17:18:30 +0000

The HootSuite experiment.

-An Amateur Summary of the Bible: 1.

jjrobinson2 — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 21:12:35 +0000

1. What is the Bible “for”? Why do we need it? Salvation? Rescue? From what?

Romans 3:23-24 (NIV1984)

²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

Romans 6:23 (NIV1984)

²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It should be fairly obvious to most of us by now that the way we have been conducting our business as a sentient species doesn’t actually work. If some combination of warfare, politics, written legal codes, and “salesmanship” could yield a permanent, constructive, productive civilization, it would have certainly done so by now.

We learn from God’s Word that He knew before the beginning what would happen to us if we tried to build our own world without Him—destruction. We would become eternal slaves to sin and death.

For reasons we may never understand, God loved us too much to let us suffer this unimaginably horrible fate without a fight ( John 3:16 )—even though we chose to rebel against Him ourselves. To save us, He had to explain something to us we can’t understand even though we aren’t listening—to show the unknowable to the unteachable. Yes, this thing we call Salvation is completely impossible, which means we really need to get started as soon as possible.

The Bible is the written part of this impossible Plan—provided for us by God through the ultimate act of service by His Son, Jesus Christ, revealed and explained and taught to us by His Holy Spirit ( John 14:26 ).

2. What (or more importantly, WHO?) is the Bible “about”? What is it telling us? Why is this important? Why does it seem to some people like just a collection of stories and commandments?

3. What are we supposed to do about it? What is this “faith” Christians keep talking about? Why is it important?

—1st Look at Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream

jjrobinson2 — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 17:13:26 +0000

Amazon.com: Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream (9781601422217): David Platt: Books.

Now we’re getting somewhere….
I have read 2 chapters so far. I don’t often have much interest in books “about” God’s Word. This is important.

—”The possibility of recriticality is not zero” [ Fukushima ]

jjrobinson2 — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 14:41:10 +0000

URGENT: Spraying boracic acid eyed to prevent recriticality at No. 4 reactor | Kyodo News.

[via New Scientist, Kyodo News]
I missed this news item from Wednesday until this morning.
“Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday it is considering spraying boracic acid by helicopter to prevent spent nuclear fuel rods from reaching criticality again, restarting a chain reaction, at the troubled No. 4 reactor….” [my emphasis]
I thought one of the principal and most comforting safety factors in modern nuclear power systems was that criticality was supposed to have been made impossible. In fact, I was under the impression that the nuclear reactions used to generate power were carefully controlled to keep them sub-critical. Now we are told that under certain circumstances, the geometry of the spent fuel rods in storage at Fukushima could not only allow a criticality incident [although hopefully not a fission-bomb-like explosion] , but that criticality in the storage pool at reactor 4 might happen AGAIN?!
I supposed we should add this to the growing list of design deficiencies in the Fukushima nuclear plant. Are there any other surprises we need to know about?