My problem with posting

…is that I have all these ideas for things I’d like to say, but they come while I’m out living my life, and by the time I get back to a computer, I’ve forgotten what exactly I wanted to say. So I don’t say anything.

I also have the occasional idea while I’m here at the keyboard, but it’s never very well developed. And I don’t like the idea of thinking out loud, as it were, here on the Internet, so again, I don’t say anything. I’ll try to get over the mental block I have about that.

So much to be said, and it has to go somewhere.

On another note, the Sharks qualified for the playoffs last weekend, so my playoff beard starts this week – I’m shaving for church Sunday, but thereafter I will have a goatee until their playoff run has ended.

Of course

Why would it be showing anywhere near where I am?

via trying to grok

I’ve been doing laundry today

…to wash the stink of the Owens era off all my Cowboys gear.

I finally get to wear it again, after three long years.

Science vs Religion, revisited

(Please see the post below and its comments, if you haven’t read them)

My point in my previous post was really not about the End Times; I mentioned Revelation simply because that was the show History Channel was running. If it had been their show on the Exodus, the Ten Plagues and the parting of the Red Sea (likely to air in the next few weeks, with Easter & Passover approaching), I would have focused the post on that. My point was that the producers of the program were trying to find natural explanations for supernatural events.

I had no questions. I was not wondering about what is to come, or what is “the Truth” – that’s covered:

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.

John 14:6 (NASB)

There was a question in the post, but only as a rhetorical device, repeating the apparent basis for the show before providing my own response. I can’t believe I have to write that, but having received a comment that said, “this entry might … answer some of your questions”, with a link to another blog, apparently it’s necessary. That blog, incidentally, can be reached by replacing “thephant” in “thephant.wordpress.com” with “navedz”, the specific post referenced can be found by searching that site for “Dajjal the deceiver”, and was posted in early January, if I remember correctly. But I’m not linking a typical islamic screed.

Anti-American? Check:

DAJJAL with “one eye” in today’s time means “new world order”, a concept initiated by former President of United States George Bush Senior…

…whatever the United States says “is the law”. No question, no argument. Hence this is considered the “one eye order”.

…all so-called civilized but in fact criminal minded people joined hands together to fight against Allah…

Anti-Jew? Check:

Dajjal will be a Jew.

…

That he is a Jew is confirmed from another hadith, which says that his followers will be mainly of Jewish religion.

Note: That post indicates “Dajjal” is equivalent to the Antichrist; emphasis in original removed.

I’m curious why my commenter wrote here under two different names. I’m assuming it’s only one person, by the content of the second comment, but two different identities? What were we trying to hide in the first response?

The second comment (responding to my reply to the first comment) says that he “wanted to let [me] know that as in [the B]ible, there are prophecies for the end of times in islam.”

Well, duh. All religions everywhere (as opposed to cults) have fairly clear belief systems regarding the world’s origins, its end, and why things happen as they do in between those times.

And I see no reason to “do a comparative study,”

…even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.

2 Cor 11: 14-15 (NASB)

You are free to believe what you want, but I Will Not Submit.

Science vs Religion

So I’m watching the History Channel right now, and they are running another of their apocalypse nights. This particular show has them going through Revelation, looking for explanations for what could happen that would fit with these prophecies. In other words, is there something out there that we know can happen, and if it did happen, would be readily identifiable as one of the signs mentioned in John’s prophecy?

The thing is, they are looking at it all wrong. They want a scientific, natural basis for a supernatural event. For Christians, there really doesn’t need to be some explanation that fits with all the laws of physics as to why any of these things should occur. God created the world and set the rules that it follows as far as orbital mechanics, chemical reactions, genetic inheritance and whatever else you want to think of, so it’s nothing for Him to cause an event that apparently violates any or all of those. That’s the whole point of faith – you can’t explain everything that happens in natural terms.

Don’t get me wrong – any or even all of these events could happen the way these scientists propose on these shows; there’s certainly nothing that prevents God from using these apparently natural mechanisms to achieve His ends. There just isn’t anything that requires Him to, either.