The Island of Logic

Well here we are on the threshold of another Memorial Day and we begin to think of the memories of those who have gone before us into eternity, some are family members, some are friends, maybe neighbors or maybe even someone we may not have gotten along with. The fact remains they were a part of our lives long enough to create memories (whether good or bad), and memories have a way of sticking with us, the joys, the triumphs, the laughter, the tears, the pretty, the ugly, the good, and the bad; they all have their own place in the “Hall of Fame” located in our minds, otherwise known as memory. It all brings up the question; “What memories am I creating in the lives of those around me?” Are they memories that those close to me will cherish long after I am gone? Or am I living only for my happiness and only for what I can get out of life, not caring who or what I destroy, or hurt in the process. Whether I like it or not the footprints I leave in the sands of time linger long after I have ceased walking the pathway of life; let’s try our best to leave a path we would not be ashamed to see others follow, let’s leave a path strewn with the fragrant flowers of good memories so that those who come behind us can walk the pathway and be thankful that we were a part of the memories that linger.
This writer is extremely grateful for a special group of people that have blazed a trail that most of have never had walk, I am speaking of course of the men and women of the Armed Forces. My friends I could care less about your political leanings, whether they are to the right or to the left makes no difference; it makes no difference whether you are Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist, Catholic, or even Mennonite for that matter, the fact remains we collectively as a country owe them a debt of extreme gratitude. You may agree with the reasons for the wars being fought, or you may stand diametrically opposed; you may stand opposed to war altogether, or you may see it as the only solution; you may hate or love the President, it’s your choice you’re an American. But my friends, one thing we cannot do is take it out on the men and women of our Armed Forces who without thought to their own safety are asked to put themselves in harm’s way as a way of life. They are asked to fight for you and I whether at home or abroad, whether they agree with the politics behind it or not, and they do it willingly my friends. So on this Memorial weekend lets be thankful for the freedoms we enjoy as a result of their bravery and courage and appreciate the sacrifices being made on behalf of this country. So as you gather with friends and family this weekend please remember to pray for those who don’t have that opportunity because they or a family member is serving our great country, and thank God that we still enjoy the freedoms that we so often take for granted. If you think that the freedoms you enjoy are trivial or really mean nothing I urge you to go to a cemetery where our brave “sons and daughters” have been laid to rest and see for yourself the high cost of the freedom you have had to give nothing to enjoy. And to those of you that think it’s okay for you to treat them with anything other than respect whether in their life or in their death, those that think that it’s okay to protest their funerals, let me say this “it was not okay, it is not okay, nor will it ever be okay”. And in closing to quote one of the great country singers, Merle Haggard; “when you’re runnin down this country hoss you’re walkin on the fightin side of me!” GOD BLESS THE USA!

A court in New Hampshire, recently ordered that home-schooled Amanda Kurowski be sent to public school. The order signed by Family Court Justice Lucinda V. Sandler says the 10-year-old’s Christian faith could use some shaking up—and that the local public school is just the place to do it. So while the child’s lawyers at the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal outfit, filed a motion asking the judge to reconsider, last week Amanda started fifth grade at a local public school.
Amanda’s mother has had primary custody over her daughter since she and Amanda’s father divorced 10 years ago. The father has had long-standing complaints about the effect of home-schooling on his daughter’s “socialization,” even though Amanda has already taken classes at the school and participated in extracurricular activities. But the order appears to be based on the guardian ad litem’s worry about Amanda’s “rigidity on faith.” The order also accepts the same guardian’s conclusion that Amanda belongs in a public school because she “would be best served by exposure to different points of view at a time in her life when she must begin to critically evaluate multiple systems of belief and behavior and cooperation in order to select, as a young adult, which of those systems will best suit her own needs.”
In a state whose motto is “Live Free or Die,” this is an extraordinary line of reasoning. Just how extraordinary might best be appreciated by contemplating the opposite scenario: the reaction that would ensue were a court to order a young girl out of a public school and into an evangelical one so she might gain “exposure” to other “systems of belief.”
We are seeing an ever increasing encroachment of political agenda into religious freedom in this country and regardless of your religious preferences stories like this one should chill us to the bone.
How long will it be before they start telling us which churches our children can attend, or maybe which Bibles we can read, or how long till they tell us that we can no longer send our children to a Christian Day School? While all of this sound far fetched and paranoid and it may well be, the fact remains that up till now I thought Amandas story was to.

Recently IOL had to take on a lib that was commenting in response to Lorenzo’s post “The Separation of Church and State“. I thought that our responses were exceptionally brilliant in this case and would be worthy of an actual post. Shawn actually reminds me of many of the students that I used to have. They had a full knowledge of the facts, but understood no practical application of them. They didn’t have the ability to take their reasoning’s to their logical conclusions. It’s called deductive reasoning, and Shawn doesn’t have it. Here is the conversation below.

Shawn:

Phrase interpreted incorrectly

…

Interpretation incorrect?

Logic?

Where does interpretation intersect with validity? This post proceeds from the assumption that whatever Jefferson meant to say is the correct statement, which is not necessarily true.

The fact is that religion is no different from any other form of organization (it incorporates rank, ideology, and executive centrality); and if one wishes to make the “free speech” argument, then one must recognize the right of other groups to express their views in “public spaces” with displays of symbols.

So how soon after this “wall” is thrown out do we see people standing on the steps of SCOTUS with their fingers hanging over their jeans, and a swastika relief in stone at regional courthouses?

We have a common government, and that common government should only be displaying symbols common to all people, not just the accepted calling cards of the majority.

Jason M:

We do not have a “common” government, and this argument has nothing to do with the First Amendment. Where in the Constitution do you see that our government is a reflection of all people? This is a bunch of drivel. The Constitution does allow all people the right to speech and all religions the right to practice, but it does not in any way respect or reflect the opinions or values of all people. It is built on Judeo-Christian values and our founding fathers made no bones about that. You can see this in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution itself. The wall of separation is to protect religion from Government, but it is not there to protect Government from Religion.

When you have a “living breathing” constitution that bends and molds with the times, you have dead constitution and the rule of law is gone.

Lorenzo:

Shawn, the only problem with your argument is that you can’t change history, no matter how hard you try you can’t do it. I will repeat what I said before the best interpretation, is to see how the people who penned the Constitution lived it out, and I have a feeling when you do you won’t like what you see. Not only did they support a religious framework for the founding of this country they (the federal government) also also purchased 20,000 bibles to be placed in schools,and by the way what do you think the most researched document was for the making of the Constitution? You guessed it the Bible. I really hate it for you, but you can’t change history. http://www.michaelnewdow.com/ContinentalCongress.htm

Shawn:

History cannot be changed, but the future may be salvaged. It is not 1787 anymore.

This country is not bound by the opinions of long-dead men who had no foreknowledge of the immense diversity that would be encountered by the society they founded. This country governs its people, it does not rule. And to govern is to serve the citizens, whether they are of the majority or the minority.

The Constitution being built on similar values to a religion does not make it a propitiation of the religion from which it is derived. The founding document is a legal one. It is law. And as stated in the first amendment to its body, the law cannot ordain a religion with political power.

You are arguing contextualism, which in itself makes the Constitution static and unchanging.

But that brings to mind the first lesson of the exit from adolescence: things change.

Lorenzo:

And yet the further we get away from the Judeo-Christian principles this country was built on, the more we deteriorate as a country and as a society

Jason M:

A Constitution that can be bent and molded with the times without being changed with the amending process breaks down the entire rule of law which keeps a civilized society civil. This is what we see today. We have a President and Judiciary that completely disregard their Constitutional restrictions and do whatever they want. This can only go on for so long, we will either fall into anarchy, statism, or dictatorial rule.

In this day and age we hear a lot of people throwing the phrase “separation of church and state” around like it was the only defining case law for dealing with issues that pertain to religion and government. Anti-religious organizations have used it as an excuse to silence the free expression of religion, and the constitutional rights of those that they feel infringe upon the scope of their particular religious scope of thought. It got me thinking……..Why has a metaphor become so misrepresented in our nation?
No metaphor has had as much on law and policy than Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and state”. Today, this figure of speech is accepted by many Americans as a description of the constitutionally ordered church-state arrangement, and has become the sacred icon of strict “separationist” zealots that promote a secular society in which Christian influences are systematically and decisively stripped from public life. In our own time the court systems have embraced this phrase as a virtual rule of constitutional law, even though the “phrase” is nowhere to be found in the U.S. Constitution.
Let’s explore shall we? …… Okay then, the “wall of separation between church and state” phrase actually comes from a letter written by Jefferson to the “Danbury Baptists” who were concerned that the government (namely the federal government) would be interfering in the religious affairs of the church. Jefferson responds in a letter written New Year’s Day, 1802, he states that “believing with you that religion is a matter that which lies solely between Man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach only actions, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State “. So was Jefferson trying to say that religion has no place in public life? Consider this; Jefferson endorsed using federal funds to build churches and to support Christian missionaries working among the Indians. Jefferson’s intent was to build a wall between the national and state governments, not as some would have us believe, between the church and all civil government. In his second inaugural address delivered in March 1805, he said “in matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the constitution independent of the powers of the general [i.e., Federal] government, I have therefore undertaken on NO occasion to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it; but have left them, as the constitution found them, under the direction and discipline of State or Church authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies”.
The difference in Jefferson’s wall, and the “high and impregnable” wall established in 1947 (Emerson v. Board of Education), and even built higher by the modern Supreme Court, is very, very clear. We only have to look at Jefferson’s record as a public official both as Governor and as President, which shows that he initiated practices and implemented policies that are very inconsistent with wall that is being established today. The wall that has been built today is a barrier that inhibits the activities of both government and religion alike unlike the First Amendment which imposed restrictions, on civil government only.
We must face the facts that the “wall of separation between Church and State” has often been used as an expression of exclusion, intolerance, and bigotry, and has been used to silence people and communities of faith and to exclude them from participation in public life. Today the wall is the poster child of strict separationist rhetoric intolerant of religious influences in the public square, and is being used by Federal, and State courts to justify censoring religious expression in public, stripping public spaces of religious symbols, and even to the extent of wanting to remove crosses from veteran’s graves.
But alas Jefferson’s metaphor has not produced the practical solution that the wall builders intended it to, but rather has done what walls often do, obstruct the view. It has blurred our understanding of constitutional principles. Take away Jefferson’s metaphor, and the “Church and State” debate would probably be more candid and transparent, and the “separationist” movement would be forced to articulate only the assumptions and ideas of their perspective rather gloss over them with a metaphoric slogan. In a pointed criticism of the Court’s use of the metaphor, Justice William Rehnquist said that “the wall is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned”.
The wall of separation was built to keep government out of religion, not to keep religion out of government, or public life, and the high jacking of it by special interest groups and the ACLU just goes to show that we have no understanding or appreciation of our Founding Fathers and what they stood for. We can debate the words and terminology of Jefferson’s metaphor, or the constitution for that matter but the intended meanings and interpretation are found in history, and in the lives of those who wrote them. You want to know what they meant, look at how they lived it out and applied it to their life and time.

On May 30, 2009 students at Santa Rosa High School in Milton, Florida made a statement to the ACLU and in fact to the world, saying enough is enough. Members of the graduating class of 2009 expressed their objections to ACLU restrictions on statements of religious faith at their school by rising up en masse at their ceremony and reciting the Lord’s Prayer. The incident has been virtually ignored by media outlets throughout the region, according to officials with Liberty Counsel, a legal team representing Principal Frank Lay and teacher Michelle Winkler in their battle with the ACLU, which had complained that faculty and teachers were talking about their beliefs.
Nearly 400 graduating seniors at Pace, a Santa Rosa County school, stood up at their graduation, according to Mathew Staver, president of Liberty Counsel. Parents, family and friends joined in the recitation, and applauded the students when they were finished, Staver said that “Many of the students also painted crosses on their graduation caps to make a statement of faith,” the organization reported.” Neither students nor teachers shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate,” said Staver, “The students at Pace High School refused to remain silent and were not about to be bullied by the ACLU. “Schools are not religion-free zones, and any attempt to make them so is unconstitutional,” he said.
In a time when we see Republicans folding like cheap umbrellas this sort of thing is not only refreshing it is very encouraging. Just maybe the future isn’t as hopeless as we sometimes make it out to be, maybe some of our younger generation has been paying attention. What this country needs is politicians, parents, adults, people like you and me to have the courage to stand up along side these students and say “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH” we refused to be bullied by groups like the ACLU (which could easily be called anti-Christian liberties union) and if you want to sue us go ahead, but if you’re going to sue one of us, you’re going to have to sue us all, because united we stand.
Santa Rosa Class of 2009, you have done something the rest of us wish we had the courage to do. You have proved that there might be hope for our future after all, I salute you, and keep standing true to your convictions other will eventually follow. GOD BLESS.

    Lately we have been hearing talk about whether we in fact are a “Judeo-Christian” nation. On may 4th, 2009 Congressman J. Randy Forbes (R-VA), introduced House Resolution (H.RES.397) in the House of Representatives to the 111th  Congress, stating; “ Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation’s founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week in May as ‘America’s Spiritual Heritage Week’ for the appreciation of and education on America’s history of religious faith. Whereas religious faith was not only important in official American life during the periods of discovery, exploration, colonization, and growth but has also been acknowledged and incorporated into all 3 branches of the Federal Government from their very beginning;”. This got me thinking; Are we or aren’t we a Christian nation?
    Recently, President Barack Obama claimed while in Turkey that “we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, or a Jewish nation…,” Newsweek stated that this is “The End of Christian America,”. We are constantly hearing of what once were considered religious liberties now being taken away, such as “voluntary” religious activities at public schools, the Gideon’s have lawsuits against them brought on by the ACLU for passing out Bibles to school kids. And the list goes on and on…
    Worse than all of those things is the brazen push by special interest groups in this country to get the government to deem unnecessary or even outlaw some of the things that have made this country great.
    In 2002 a copy of the Ten Commandments was removed from a courthouse in Montgomery, Alabama after the Supreme Court “decided it violated the “Separation of Church and State”, And yet John Jay the first Supreme Court Justice said, “..No human society has ever been able to maintain both order and freedom; both cohesiveness and liberty apart from the moral precepts of the Christian Religion applied and accepted by all classes. Should our Republic ever forget these fundamental principles of governance, men are certain to shed their responsibilities for licentiousness and this great experiment will surely be doomed”.
    When the Washington Monument was completed in 1884 an aluminum capstone was placed on it with the names of the engineers, the Commission, and the words “ Laus Deo (Praise be to God)”, recently however the piece has been rearranged in such a way so as to hide the reference to God. Oddly enough when Washington took the oath of office as our first President, he revealed his reverence for the Bible by kissing it. And, he added to the oath at the end, “So help me God,” establishing a precedent which every subsequent President has, of course, followed.
    Officials at the Veterans Dept. recently put a stop to the “voluntary” flag folding service during military funerals, because they mentioned God. The wording on the “Flag Certificates” was changed to remove the word “God” , and went even further by saying that the text from the “Pledge of  Allegiance” would be censored from it as well because it contained the words “one nation under God”. And yet Alexander Hamilton in a letter to James Baynard in 1802 said “I now offer you the outline of the plan they have suggested. Let an association be formed to be denominated “The Christian Constitution Society” its object to be first: The support of Christian Religion. Second: The support of the United States.”
    The brand new “Capitol Visitors Center” in Washington (which could quite easily be termed a $621 million dollar shrine to politically correctness) has conveniently left the phrase “In God We Trust” out of its depictions of the “House Chamber and Speakers Rostrum”, also in its reference to “article 3 of the Northwest Ordinance” which states “Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged”, has decided to leave out any reference to religion and morality stating instead that “..schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged”. And yet one after another our Founding Fathers have stated that if we are to succeed as a nation it will be because of our trust and dependence on God and not in spite of it.
    Benjamin Franklin said “ he who introduces into public affairs principles of primitive Christianity, will change the face of the world”.
    John Jay our first Supreme Court Justice said “Providence has given unto our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers”.
    Charles Carroll one of the signers said this “without morals a public cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion whose morality is so sublime and pure…are undermining the solid foundation of morals, its best security for the duration of free governments”.
    So are we, or aren’t we? The debate will rage on as time passes but one thing is sure: our nation was and still is a Christian nation as far as this writer is concerned. It doesn’t matter what they do they can’t erase history. George Orwell has so correctly said “ He who controls the past, controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past”, it is imperative that we never lose the awareness that we all have a responsibility to God and to this country to uphold the principles on which this nation was founded.
    Samuel Adams in a letter to James Warren in 1779 stated “A general dissolution of these principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America, than the whole forces of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external invader”. Our nation is as Godly as we are, and I for one am not ready to throw in the towel just yet. John Adams in talking about the Constitution said this, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the governance of any other”. And while the majority of the “people” seem to fall in the latter category, those of us that don’t have a God given responsibility to make sure that America never forgets its rich and Godly heritage, so I salute you Congressman  Forbes, keep up the good work I for one am behind you. GOD BLESS

Related Links:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=hr111-397

I am going to delve momentarily into what I believe is the highly controversial subject of the age of the universe. I am going to take a position that many Christians may believe is almost sacrilegious. I have been giving this subject quite a bit of thought and study lately. The accepted secular opinion is that the age of the universe is somewhere around 13 billion years and most Christians believe the age of the universe is somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years. I am beginning to believe that both of these opinions have some truth to them. Let’s get one thing straight before we get started, “God created the universe”. This is really without dispute. Intelligent design is the only logical explanation for all of this. The mathematical probability of the Big Bang theory or unintelligent design is simply far too enormous to be even accepted by any logical person. The only argument that should exist is between the agnostic and the believer of a caring Creator. The accelerating expansion of the universe and the left over energy of the “Big Bang” have been proved and are without dispute. I however do not believe that these two evidences prove the Big Bang theory, but they are the result of God’s creation of the universe. God created the universe sometime between 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. However when God created the universe he created time before there was time, or maybe stated in a little better way, God created the history of time when he created time. This I believe can be simply proven by looking into the night sky. If we as Christians believe that the age of time is 6,000 to 10,000 years ago end of story, then this simplistic view can be disproved by the viewing the stars and galaxies in the night sky. With our naked eye we can see galaxies that are 10s of millions of light years away. If the age of time was exactly 6,000 to 10,000 years of age there would only be a hand full of stars visible to us. So when God created the universe he created the history of light. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to believe that He also created the history of fossils, geological events, meteor impacts, ice ages, etc., which are really also part of the history of light. To believe that the only source of geological monuments (Rockies, Grand Canyon, etc), oil, fossils, etc. is the Flood; is simply stupid. Another opinion some Christians have is that God created universe around 13 billion years ago and then created our solar system 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. I believe that this theory is disproved by Genesis 1:3 KJV “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” and Genesis 1:16 KJV “And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.” The simplest explanation is then, God created the history of time when he created time. In looking at the current accelerating expansion of the universe we can fairly accurately predict the beginning of this history of time and that is a little over 13 billion years ago. There will also be an end to time (Revelations 1:8 KJV “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.”). Time is finite, eternity is infinite. What makes eternity infinite is the absence of time. Peter tries  to explain it II Peter 3:8 “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” in other words time means nothing (or does not exist) in eternity. Now to throw away some of my previous assumptions, if time and space themselves are made relative by large gravitational forces while light is a constant as predicted by Einstein’s Theory of Relativity then our predictions of the age of the history of time may be quite substantially inaccurate. God may have stretched the space/time continuum to the point that we result in our current predictions. Which also means, that in theory, time travel is possible. Maybe we will never really know the age of time in the universe until time ends for us, but it sure is fun to try?? Maybe a more appropriate title for this blog entry is the difference between the age of time and the age of the universe. Age of time, according to our calculations, 13 billion plus years. Age of the universe 6,000 to 10,000 years relatively speaking. :)

In times of  pain
We don’t understand
Why, Lord, why me?
I can’t even stand

But always remember
God is in control
And in times like these
He’s guarding your soul

God is always there
Through thick and thin
And in troubled times
You can only win

When the storms of life
Pound us near and far
Remember Christ, look at his hand
And see His nail scar

God Himself died for you
He won’t leave you now
Thank Him that He’s in control
And gladly before Him bow