The Day the Thinking Stopped

Bruce Charlton asks an important, deep, philosophical question: “Why did so many people take stupid pills last year?” He phrased it more kindly:

h ttps://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2021/04/why-now-why-did-2020-have-to-wait-until.html

Modern totalitarianism is, therefore, so effective because modern people have outsourced their thinking to The System.

If modern people were to think, really to think; then the current totalitarianism would not be possible; because people would observe for themselves, evaluate for themselves, would notice.

The kind part is he believes that people are still thinking in any factual capacity. The sad truth is that people have been trying very hard for years now, to NOT think about what they do because the correct answers honor Christ. That is why the totalitarians have been so effective… because people know they’re lying and don’t care.

In hindsight, this has been a long time in coming. Women being placed in authority and government/Church leaders reducing Christianity (and all religions generally) into pick-your-own faith traditions happened only by many people consciously rejecting the correct way of doing things, while assuming they’ll still be able to achieve the desirable results of a society worth living in.

When wicked men swapped out the last vestiges of normal life, the belief continued that results were separate from behavior. There was the initial fear-mongering, true, but what I’ve seen in urban Commiefornia since Christmas is that people have come to accept face diapers and social distancing as normal.

Romans Chapter 1 spells out what is happening.

v. 18-20 “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities.his eternal power and divine nature.have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

Hebrews 11:1 says it differently: “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see”. How were Christians such capable scientists while the East languished? We both had observable reality but Christians believed there was something unseen behind it all… consequences, patterns, a CREATOR.

It did not take long for science to reduce itself to the visible, of course. Observation and experimentation, testing and refinement of theories. A process so inhuman that many futurists expect it to be done entirely by computer algorithm in the near future.

It never will be, because computers cannot glorify God.

v. 21-23 “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.”

Images such as Chinaballs and Dr. Fauci, who does an amazingly good job of being a blank slate for whatever lie concerning COVID that you favor. The only thing he’s consistent and certain about is that no longer needing him will destroy all humanity.

That’s not science, that’s the court astrologer bluffing his employer. Also, idolatry.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.who is forever praised. Amen.

And there it is. The thinking of the people has become futile because they consciously abandoned God. Demonstrated most spectacularly by “male and female” being turned into “anything butt!”

Enough theory, let’s have an example!

Scientists Are Reporting Hostility From Their Own Churches. Why?

h ttps://www.christianitytoday.com/better-samaritan/2021/april/scientists-are-reporting-hostility-from-their-own-churches-.html

By Drew Rick-Miller, 1 April 2020

April Fool’s Day is cancelled because how does one mock Current Year? Here, look at this graph of perennial influenza outbreaks then tell me we have a pandemic:

When I say people took stupid pills, this is exactly what I’m talking about. They think that graph is reality instead of the CDC rebranding the flu as Coof-Coof. They celebrate the end of annual influenza while simultaneously abandoning all social behavior in terror, because face diapers are simultaneously perfect and useless.

And then I’m supposed to do something funny for April Fool’s Day? Our fools are EVERY day!

Anyway. Scientists.

The author, Drew. Kinda pudgy, doesn’t get much sunlight. I expect a sheltered life.

Drew Rick-Miller is Co-Director of Science for the Church, a ministry that seeks to strengthen the church by engaging science. Previously, he spent over a decade as a grants officer at the John Templeton Foundation. Drew studied literature and physics at Northwestern University before attending Princeton Theological Seminary (M.Div.) where he met his wife, a Presbyterian pastor.

I’m sure Drew is very smart, which means he understands his Bible, which means he rejected God in order to marry that rebellious woman. This is a good example of how rejecting God can start a downward trend. Drew can’t be too logical or consistent in his theology without recognizing what a mistake he made!

.How was I treated in the church as a scientist? Man, that’s a trigger question for me. The simple answer is, not very well. Sadly, our long history of often experiencing rejection or simply being ignored is disillusioning for me..

.I have encountered more hostility as a scientist in a world of Christians, than I have as a Christian in a world of scientists..

Two scientists, two replies to how they are received in our churches, and neither reflects well on the Body of Christ. It is no wonder that many scientists keep their heads down and don’t draw attention to their day jobs. But that does not mean they are absent in our churches.

The only way Drew can believe those sentiments are genuine is that his job requires such beliefs to exist. A director of “Science for the Church”, remember? I’ve been a lifelong Christian and I’ve never seen anti-science attitudes in any church of any denomination, ever. What might be the situation here?

1. The scientists were upset that their evolution and related Godless beliefs were not accepted.
2. The narrow-minded Bible-thumpers couldn’t handle alternative viewpoints.
3. The scientists were hated for being men, not for being scientists.

The winner is… Number 3!

My father is one such scientist, a traffic engineer whose job it is to make sure you can get in and out of the parking lots of shopping malls. My mother recounts the story.I was quite young at the time.of his offering of time and talent. Our church was renovating their parking lot. Dad was not particularly active in the church at the time, but he willingly offered to help. His offer was met with silence. No matter the intent, the silence communicated that his vocation, his offer of ministry, did not matter to the church.

It wasn’t his vocation that was rejected… it was him, an ordinary man, trying to muscle into the spotlight! I do not doubt that the pastor would have happily hired Drew’s father as a laborer because hired help are not family and therefore, no threat to his position as Anointed Leader of God’s Church.

This bears repeating: the church turned down free, professional-level assistance because accepting it would have shown respect to a layman. That’s another example of how rejecting God leads to stupidity.

That happened to me also. It happened that my church at the time wanted to do something that was exactly my career field. I offered help and in return, not even a smile from the church elder I approached. And I was a tithe-paying regular!

Pew estimates that nearly 13% of the American workforce is found in one of 74 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) professions. Sociologists Elaine Howard Ecklund and Christopher Scheitle have found that about 12.4% of evangelicals and 11.9% of mainline Protestants claim that their occupation is science-related.

The number of STEM professionals in the church could grow, significantly. Barna found that over 50% of youth group teens “aspire to science-related careers..

Because they seek to find God in the equations? No, because girls are being pushed into STEM. Intentionally recruiting women because “throw rocks at boys” is not a derp happening in a vacuum. It’s Original Sin. The STEM-pushers reject how God created us and as a direct consequence, became foolish in their thinking. They’ll end up with untrained men and single-mother-medical-doctors.

The question, then, is how do we treat the scientists, both current and aspiring, in our pews? And why do so many report hostility or rejection?

You will not answer that question without first asking, why does the Church hate men unless they’re in the band Pastor Limelight and the Elders? And asking second, “why are you raising your daughter to be a scientist instead of a mother?”

Biology says men can’t have babies and old women can’t have healthy babies, if any. That means society’s women needs to marry young and get busy. Where’s your love for science NOW, Dads of Daughters?

The Priesthood of all Scientists
Martin Luther laid the foundation for how many Protestant churches understand ministry. It is the entire body of Christ.not just the work of the professional clergy.that composes the “priesthood of all believers.” This includes the farmer and barber as well as the teacher, engineer, and the neuroscientist. They all do ministry, but that may not always be obvious. It might take a little imagination to understand the priestly work of the STEM professionals within our churches.

That’s not Protestantism. Laymen can do the work of priests, yes, but that does not mean all work is priest-work.

A good number of them seek to read the book of nature, the other book that God the Creator has written for us. They stand in the lineage of Christians in the sciences who have sought to understand God through both Scripture and the natural world. They study God’s handiwork in biochemical processes and in how stars form and in the laws govern the smallest imaginable particles. They seek to understand how life works and how nature interacts with nurture. In a paraphrase of 17th century astronomer, Johannes Kepler, they think God’s thoughts after him.

None of that is ministry. None of that is priestly work. None of those examples, frankly, challenge the human soul. Our sciences are very precise when it comes to subatomic particles in other galaxies… but as soon as you approach the human condition, you get lies like “birthing person”.

That is where science fails. It cannot make moral judgments. Most people today love science and reject God because science tells us how while God tells us No.

There are inevitable consequences for doing what ought not be done.

Another portion of these STEM professionals teach what those investigations into the book of nature have revealed. They inspire our children (and us) with the magnificence of the created order, nurture our curiosity, and make space for inquisitive minds to learn more about the God who created and continues to create. Their images and narratives can inspire us to worship.

STEM itself is a trap of Godlessness. It is a reduction of science to exploitable and marketable skillsets. EVERY career honors God… how much honor depends on your attitude, not “discovering the secrets of the cosmos”. Attitude becomes very important when your career’s only moral principle is “I must know”.

Probably the largest number of them seek to glorify God by applying science to address real needs.

Probably the largest number of them want a paycheck. That, too, is Godly. Earn your food!

They play major roles in the effort to heal the sick, provide food for the hungry, build shelter for the stranger, and fix broken things. They create the technologies, energy solutions, materials, and medicines that have helped improve the quality of life for the Earth’s 7.8 billion people. They also help identify where technological progress is misaligned with human well-being.

So we see here that the ministry of the scientist is in discovery and teaching about the glories of God’s handiwork and in the ways they use their God given talents to contribute to human flourishing.

Drew, that’s the problem. Our society no longer seeks God unless God is useful toward the end product. We wants results, not methods! That’s why science is failing right now, because its practitioners threw out God to focus on results. We are warned against that. Matthew 6:31-33 “…Do not worry, saying, .What shall we eat?. or “What shall we drink?. or “What shall we wear?. For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

We can have all the science and engineering in the world and still lose the material progress we’ve made since our caveman days. Exhibit “A”: Amazon warehouse workers.

Segue

Amazon denies stories of workers peeing in bottles, receives a flood of evidence in return

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Amazon is trying a new tactic in its endless PR battle against stories of its exhausting and exploitative working conditions: outright denial. It’s not working.

When replying to a tweet from Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) complaining about the company’s union-busting tactics and the fact that some of its workers are forced to “urinate in water bottles,. Amazon’s official Twitter account responded: .You don’t really believe the peeing in bottles thing, do you? If that were true, nobody would work for us..

..after Amazon sent out its ill-judged tweet, reporters who cover the company’s labor practices practically lined up to soak the firm with evidence. These included English journalist James Bloodworth, whose 2018 book Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain documented his experience of low-paid work for companies including Amazon:

I was the person who found the pee in the bottle. Trust me, it happened. https://t.co/U76UlDRWSO

. James Bloodworth (@J_Bloodworth) March 25, 2021

Here.s Will Evans from The Center of Investigative Reporting:

Peeing at Amazon – or not being able to – is an actual thing. Here’s what workers told me. https://t.co/D0lp4pdQ5D https://t.co/eqFiS8WZbG pic.twitter.com/RVLOYezGvE

. Will Evans (@willCIR) March 25, 2021

And Lauren Kaori Gurley from Motherboard. (Gurley also wrote a story with photographic evidence, including numerous examples from the subreddit for Amazon delivery drivers.)

As a labor reporter who covers Amazon extensively…I can say Amazon delivery drivers not having a time or place to pee is one of the most universal concerns I hear about https://t.co/pG81MDf5TU pic.twitter.com/h3pGhOok1y

. Lauren Kaori Gurley (@LaurenKGurley) March 25, 2021

And Ken Bensinger from BuzzFeed News:

Amazon claims its workers don’t pee in bottles; defenders say it’s an urban legend. But these photos sent to me by a former driver for a former @amazon contractor called Synctruck in a California facility suggest strongly otherwise. https://t.co/hp4zCqOxRO pic.twitter.com/StHNvV9B1x

. Ken Bensinger (@kenbensinger) March 25, 2021

And Alex Press from Jacobin, who shares a much grimmer anecdote of an Amazon worker who suffered a seizure in one of the company’s facilities:

my first response to this was to laugh because it’s such a ridiculous tweet but honestly, this is infuriating. here are the type of texts Amazon workers send me https://t.co/7hW5miBob8 pic.twitter.com/bENxlqzsPa

. Alex Press (@alexnpress) March 25, 2021

The Intercept added yet more evidence to the mounting case against Amazon with a new report published on Thursday detailing not only more cases of drivers urinating into bottles, but also resorting to defecating into bags. And the most damning reveal is that Amazon was made aware of this because it began reprimanding employees for the behavior when the bottles and bags were left inside Amazon delivery vehicles…

Hiring Pajeet and Harambe undid about four centuries’ worth of Progress in sanitation science. The problem, sir, is not in the pipes.

Other evidence includes the high injury rates in Amazon warehouses (7.7 serious injuries per 100 employees); employees dying from COVID-19 after complaints the company wasn’t doing enough to mitigate risks from the virus; widespread union-busting; production targets that treat humans like robots; and gruesome anecdotes like the story of the Amazon worker who died from a heart attack and who, say colleagues, was left on the work floor for 20 minutes before receiving treatment.

The largest, most impressive logistics chain in human history… and you’d have a better life by swimming in the Ganges River.

End segue

But I don’t think the pandemic has changed much for how our churches engage all of the others who read the book of nature and try to apply that knowledge to every aspect of God’s majestic creation. If anything, the pandemic has occupied so much of our attention, they have simply been ignored.

Which is a shame because these STEM professionals among us bring a plethora of knowledge and skills and kingdom-oriented intent to church. They seek to be good Samaritans with their God-given abilities. How can we undo the past hostility and rejection? How do we flip the script and tell them they matter to the church?

The congregation of my early childhood did not convey to my father that his engineering talents mattered. And in my lifetime, he has never been active in church. I can’t help but wonder how different it could have been if they had asked him to help with that parking lot.

People have taken stupid pills because they have consciously rejected the God of Truth. Until society recognizes both the concept of Eternal Truth and how we tend to live in rebellion against it, society is trying to do calculus while assuming 2+3=23.

They say they want science. Like God, however, good science requires behavior modification from valuable lies to unpleasant truths. As scientific knowledge continues to grow and confirm the rightness of God’s decrees, humanity discovers that it would rather be lied to by devils.

For a closing example, Zman did a Sunday post about dissident Christians and dissident atheists coming together:

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That is the main point of [my] show this week. Secular people need to get more comfortable talking about religion, but dissident Christians need to reexamine their hostility to certain dissident topics. The fact is a large majority of white people consider themselves Christians. On the other hand, a large majority of dissidents long for a return to tradition. There is no reason why religion should not be an integral part of dissident politics, even if many dissidents are not religious.

“We can have religion without being religious.” Zman is normally a better thinker than that. Certainly, we Christians are not going to change God’s hostility to ‘certain dissident topics’.

This exchange from the comments drives the point home:

.While I disagree with him on several things, notably the possibility of political ethnostates in the current era (which, admittedly, could change due to events), but Greg Johnson has made the best argument yet in this area. The case for White nationalism/identity is a MORAL one. This is how to bridge the gap between Christians and secularists, I think, and is happening to some degree..

“Greg the Sodomite makes the case for morality . great, just great. Surely there must be non-degenerate writers and intellectuals making the moral case for Whites, if in fact we need a moral case to exist and have preferences. If it’s difficult enough to form an alliance with race-conscious Christians as it is, how much harder will it be when we’re offering a buggerer as our moral guide.”

“I do not have a clue as to whether Johnson is homosexual or not. Regardless, the morality of White identity/nationalism is an excellent and persuasive argument to reach people. No, we do not need a moral argument to exist but it is certainly there and a way to span the gap.”

Tolerate sodomy in order to cooperate on white nationalism? That’s stupid. How does one build a strong ethnostate without insisting on the father-led nuclear family for a building block? The result may be desirable but forcing the result without the correct methods… here, enforcing healthy sexual norms… is a blind staggering from one tyranny to another.