God, Evil, and the Childish Fantasy

In Isaiah chapter 45, God is speaking to Cyrus, the king of kings, ruler of the Persian empire. God tells Cyrus that He will prepare the way for Cyrus to conquer the world, remove all obstacles from his path, and provide him with opportunities he could not dream of. In so doing, God is doing what is necessary to create the conditions of a future where everyone will know of God. Then comes the real heart of the message, "I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things."



Eli Rips, the scientist who discovered the Bible code, brings up this verse to Michael Drosnin, self-aggrandising journalist from the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. This encounter covers roughly one whole page of the first Bible code book:

Even within a world created by an
all-powerful and benevolent God, there can be a struggle between good
and evil, whose outcome is uncertain," says Eli Rips.

The Bible code may be a set of
probabilities. The sealed book might hold all our possible futures.
Each predicted event appears to be encoded with at least two possible
outcomes.

Rips agrees that the Bible code might
have a positive and a negative strand, two opposing statements of
reality intertwined: "As in court, an Advocate, and an Accuser."

"Possibly there are two opposing
statements always encoded to preserve our free will, and it may be
that the Bible code is written as a debate," says Rips.
"According to the Midrash, the world was created twice – it
was first conceived from the point of view of absolute judgment,
right and wrong. Then God saw that the world could not exist this
way, that there was no room for human imperfection, and he added
mercy.

"But it's not like mixing hot and
cold water and getting luke-warm, it's like mixing fire and snow and
each preserves its separate existence. That may be the two strands in
the Bible code."

Rips, however, does not believe that
there are two encoders. "The Bible must have been encoded all at
once by one mind," he insisted. "But it may encode two
different points of view."

He opened the Bible to Isaiah 45:7,
and read it to me: "I am the Lord and there is none else, I form
the light, and create the darkness; I make peace and create evil; I,
the Lord, do all these things."

For Rips, as a mathematician and as a
devout Jew, there is no need to ask the question, Who is the encoder?

The answer is obvious. The encoder,
the Advocate and the Accuser are all one. It is God.

For me, it was not that simple. I had
proof there was a code, but not proof there was a God. If the Bible
code came from an all-powerful God, he would not need to tell us the
future. He could change it himself.

The code seemed, instead, to be from
someone good, but not all-powerful, who wanted to warn us of a
terrible danger so we could prevent it ourselves.

The Book of Revelation states that the
Final Battle will come by surprise, like a thief in the night. In
fact, the words that come right before Armageddon are, "Behold,
I come as a thief."
The Bible is a warning of sudden and
inevitable doom.

But the real message of the Bible code
is just the opposite. A warning is encoded in the Bible so that we
can prevent the threatened Apocalypse.

The truth is hidden in the last
chapter of Daniel, the verses that describe the "sealed book."

They reveal that the secret book was
designed to be found now. This year, 1997, in the ancient Hebrew
calender 5757, is encoded with the words, "He sealed the book
until the time of the End." Right above that the hidden text
states, "for you, the hidden secrets." And crossing "5757,"
again those same words, which also mean "for you, it was
encoded."

But who was the encoder?

[86-7]

Again and again Drosnin returns to his mantra "the code is just probabilities," so he can write off bad predictions and sell more books, or maybe there's something more to it. Absent God (he advocates a computer writing the code in book one and aliens writing the code in book two), Drosnin must find some way to fudge the existence of the code and its foreknowledge. If it is aliens then that explains perfectly why there are missed predictions, because while these aliens may be hyper intelligent they certainly are not omniscient, so they can get stuff wrong occasionally. Of course, he never addresses the question (raised in the documentary I posted here) why would aliens use their ability to see the future to record highly specific events about human history and put these predictions in the holy book of a small nomadic tribe 3000 years ago encoded in such a way that no one would know about it until 3000 years later? If God created the code, then it makes perfect sense why the code would exist in the Bible, but if aliens did it, why should they care? It would be like me seeing the future of an ant colony and giving encoded messages to the ants in a form they couldn't understand. Why should I care what ants do anymore than aliens should care what I do?



The Hebrew word being translated as "computer" in the book (the original encoder, before the alien theory in the sequel) is the word "thought." When the code says "made by computer" it really says "made by thought," which makes perfect sense if God created the code, but that doesn't work if you have to fudge the existence of the code into an atheistic framework, so you need alternate translations.



All this is very interesting, but the heart of the matter is found in the second section: "If the Bible
code came from an all-powerful God, he would not need to tell us the
future. He could change it himself.

"The code seemed, instead, to be from
someone good, but not all-powerful, who wanted to warn us of a
terrible danger so we could prevent it ourselves."

That's a pretty powerful theological assumption underpinning Drosnin's desire to write God out of the picture. As I said in a video I made in 2007, the standard argument is something along the lines of "If God exists why doesn't he turn my hangnail into an orgasm? Since my hangnail isn't an orgasm, therefore God doesn't exist." At the time I called it "the non-problem of evil."



Since this is an election year that is a referendum of the welfare state I could just as easily call it "the problem of laziness." "If God exists then He could do things for me, so why should I have to? Since I have to do these things, therefore God doesn't exist." Michael Drosnin basically says the exact same thing "If the Bible code came from an all-powerful God, he would not need to tell us the future. He could change it himself." You can almost hear the author whining "But I don't wanna change the future, why can't God do it for me? Because he's stinky, that's why! I have to change the future myself, so God doesn't exist, aliens did it!"










So, who is the encoder? You might as well ask, "If the teacher already knows the answer why do I have to answer it? It must be because the teacher doesn't exist." Why do we have to do things instead of having God do everything for us? Why do we have to do things instead of having allmighty government do everything for us? For our own protection why don't we let the robots sequester us away where nothing bad can ever happen to us? Who is Keyser Soze?



Michael Drosnin is not the only one with trouble accepting the answer. From the back of the book:

 

The quote Rips read to me from Isaiah
45:7, in which God Himself clearly states He is both good and evil,
caused a nation-wide furor when it was quoted by a rabbi in Bill
Moyers' 1996 PBS series, "Genesis." It was striking that
the statement was such a surprise, and so controversial, because it
was not hidden, but openly stated in a 2500-year-old book of the
Bible, both in the original Hebrew, and in all standard English
translations including the King James Version. If after several
millennia most people still did not know, and could not accept, what
was plainly stated in the Bible as the words of God, how could they
accept a hidden code in the Bible?

[172-3]

If Michael Drosnin cannot get around his childish fantasy of God doing everything, thus freeing Michael Drosnin of all thought and responsibility, what hope does he have of accepting God as the author of the code? What hope do millions of people have if they cannot themselves accept God's message to king Cyrus in Isaiah?



Maybe we should look to Job before we can ask why evil exists. Where we there when God created the world? Can we comprehend things from God's perspective from our vantage point here on Earth in these finite bodies?



Who are we to demand answers from God?



Just as a parent wants their child to grow up one day, God wants us to grow up too. A parent lets go of a child's hands so the child can walk on their own. Sure, the child will fall, several times, before learning to walk, but the child will never learn  to walk if the parent never lets go. Just like a teacher asking a question to a student, God asks us to do things He could easily do for us so that we can learn on our own. It is the most rewarding thing in the world to watch your child grow to become an adult, an experience made all the better because of the hardships faced along the way. If we are made in God's image why should it be any different for Him? The most rewarding thing for God would then be watching us overcome the problems we must face and grow into our full potential. Sure, God could do everything for us, but then what would be the point in creating us?

What Real Heroes Look Like

Afghanistan: A soldier rushes out into the open to draw fire away from his brothers in arms. From the cameraman:



" I got a hit a total of 4 times. My helmet cam died and i made it down the mountain on my own. I was also hit in the side of my helmet and my eye pro was shot off of my face. We were doing overwatch on the village to recon and gather intel. I was point heading down the face of the hill with the LT. when we got hit. the rest of the squad was pinned down by machine gun fire. I didn't start the video until a few mins into the firefight for obvious reasons. I came out into the open to draw fire so my squad could get to safety."



"A round struck the tube by my hand of the 203 grenade launcher which knocked it out of my hands. When I picked the rifle back up it was still functional but the grenade launcher tube had a nice sized 7.62 cal bullet hole in it and was rendered useless. "

F-22s Scramble Over Central Jersey

Stock Image



Between 10:55 and 11:20 AM two F-22s had to intercept two aircraft that violated restricted airspace in New York during the UN General Assembly meeting. The planes were redirected to Central Jersey Regional Airport (a tiny little place with a single runway). The pilots may have been having radio trouble. The FAA is looking whether to prosecute them or not. (from the AP)



Here is 18 seconds of poor quality video I got of one of the jets:

Muslim Brotherhood/ Al Qaeda Takeover

The attacks on sovereign US soil in Egypt, Libya, and Yemen from the coordinated attack by Islamists was not incited by a fourteen minute Youtube video made by a convicted meth dealer in California. These attacks are part of a plan initiated in 2005 to make criticism of Islam illegal all over the world. The video (uploaded in July) was used as a convenient excuse for an attack on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11.



Sovereign US soil was attacked (an act of war). Four Americans were killed including one of only six US ambassadors ever killed. We cannot surrender the US Constitution and replace it with sharia law. We cannot sit idle while our freedom is slaughtered on the alter of appeasement.




Representative Louie Gohmert (R. Texas) respondes (23 minutes):

The 9/11 Bible

Yesterday was the eleventh aniversary of 9/11. Here is a video produced by the History Channel that really moved me.






Of all the items found among the rubble was a Bible fused to a piece of steel. The Bible was open to the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew Chapter 5. Could this be God's message to America after the attacks? I don't know, but of all the verses it was this that the Bible was opened to by the falling towers.



38 "You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.'

39 "But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.

40 "If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him ahve your cloak also.

41 "And whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two.

42 "Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.

43 "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.'

44 "But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you,

45 "That you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

46 "For if you love those you love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

47 "And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so?

48 "Therefore you shall be perfet, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

The Future

Why does the future matter?





I got an email from one of the Integral operations that seems to be becoming more cult-like (including the creation of an "Integral community", which seems very tribal, almost like a regression to first tier, and an article and video "why Integral people should vote for Obama"). The question asked "why does the future matter?" I was going to write on it yesterday, but I was tired so I saved it for today.



As Ken says “The way you approach the present isn’t just determined by the way you approach the past, but by the way you approach the future. The richer conception of the future you have, the richer your life in the present becomes.” There is also audio that goes with the quote where Ken talks about different schools of futurism. What's really interesting is toward the end, after talking about how quickly technology is advancing, Ken asks the question "what problems do we want to solve first?" Do we want to advance technologically really fast and solve problems with world hunger and environmental degradation, or do we want to advance interiors first? Seeing as how most people's interiors are seriously lagging behind do we really want to have someone at level two or three (communist China or some two-bit dictator) acquiring technology to make nuclear weapons look like toys? Perhaps the imperative is to get the majority of people to a stage that recognises human rights before we develop computers that can enslave humanity or superplagues that can wipe us all out.



I don't know if Ken (or the Integral "community") would agree, but this seems like a clarion call to me. It rings out like a night watchman "don't let Iran get the bomb!" We are talking about a group of people who believe that the messiah won't come until they kill all the Jews; a group of people who believe dying in the cause of global domination is a one way ticket to a paradise filled with hookers. This is a group of people who tore down neighborhoods inside Tehran to make processional boulivards so when the messiah comes in their lifetimes his multitude of chariots could have enough room. The Iranian people have come on hands and knees three times begging US aid and support to overthrow the Mullahs and three times the US flipped them off while hundreds were murdered in the streets. These are dangerous, evil people and we cannot let them have control of the future. It is better to decapitate their regime now than wait for the Third World War after they get nukes.



At the same time I am reminded to seek guidance from A Course in Miracles. These are two passages from the urtext*:

Your instability and his weakness have resulted from bad karmic choices, and your relationship NOW is crucial for the future. (36)

[Edgar Cayce] did not realize that it is only what [the mind] is building NOW the really creates the future. The past, in itself, does not have the ability to do this. Whenever we move from one instant to the next, the previous one no longer exists. (78)

What we do now, our thoughts and actions, is what creates the future. As the original email asked "what future we are imagining for ourselves, for the integral movement, and for the impact of the integral vision on our shared future?" The future we imagine is the future we will act upon. The future is a reflection of the choices we make now, and we will not be able to escape the consequences of those choices.



So, what future are we imagining for ourselves and the integral movement? Anyone who is familiar with The Urban Mystic knows what I foresee for the future. I predicted the "Arab Spring," the NDAA and NDRP, and the behavioural modification viruses. So far all the predictions I made in 7 Days have come true, and there are only two left:



1. False flag terror attack on US soil. The Department of Homeland Security infects small government activists with the brain eating virus at the New Year's celebration in NYC to make them look like terrorists. The idea is to get the public to demand the government to crack down on small government people so it can take over all of our liberties. This event has not happened yet. ETA: 31 December 2012.



2. US military stages coup d'eta. The word gets out that the attack in NYC was staged by DHS, not a terror group, and in response factions in the US military loyal to their oath to uphold the Constitution and defend the United States from all enemies foreign and domestic attempt to decapitate the US government to root out the corruption once and for all. This event has not happened yet. ETA: February 2013.



I'm not happy that viruses that mimic the effects of antipsychotic drugs are really being considered (or already exist), or that the President has given himself the authority to execute any American citizen without due process simply by saying that person is a "terrorist." I don't want a military coup, but unfortunately that is the future I am invisioning. Let's face it, the world has really gone downhill fast since 9/11 (the eleventh anniversary is tomorrow) and I can't see a way out unless drastic measures are taken right away. We have to get the statists out of office and restore the authority of the Constitution as invisioned by the founders. If past is prelude, the future ain't looking too bright.



What am I foreseeing regarding Integral? Well, it's leaders are already pretty far left and they are largely endorsing the biggest statist in US history for president (someone whom I said in 2008 would be like four more terms of Bush when people cried McCain would be four more years of Bush. I was right.). Will more people reach second tier in the year ahead? Possibly. There's already been major forces stirring in the American psyche with the big successes of the Tea Party in 2010 and the less specacular results of the Occupy Wallstreet folks (I said they should have occupied Washington instead), as well as the huge groundswell in Ron Paul supporters, with even Mitt Romney saying he wants to audit the Fed due to overwhelming pressure from the Dr. Paul crowd. Things could start looking up in 2013, if we do what is needed to get America on track (by first not reelecting Obama, then forcing Romney to act more like Ron Paul), we could help the Iranian people (who are overwhelmingly pro-US and pro-West) get out from the yoke of their oppressive medieval leaders with a truly democratic Iranian Spring in 2013 (unlike the Arab Spring, that saw the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and now Syria).



What am I foreseeing for myself? That is none of your business.



Always love.









 *The unedited, original version of A Course in Miracles as released on the Internet. The Circle of Atonement says ""A Course in Miracles Urtext Manuscripts" is a printed version of the Urtext, the original typescript that was typed by Bill Thetford from Helen Schucman dictating her notes to him. It includes approximately 50,000 words that are not included in the familiar FIP version. The Urtext includes extensive discussions of the Bible, sex, possession, Freud and other topics which were edited out of other editions. There are over 2,400 footnotes to Bible references and variant ACIM readings."

The War Against Boys

Christina Hoff Sommers discusses the war against boys, feminism, and
gender equity at this University of Pennsylvania Law School event. I should note I have talked about this issue myself many times.


Runs 33 minutes.