A blog by Tom Sheepandgoats (aka Tom Harley)
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Substituting God for Aliens
Twice aliens have intervened in human affairs, according to the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Once they did it to jump-start evolution, to implant the notion in a certain famished apeman that he could weild an animal bone as a club to wallop the daylights out of a competing clan. Put to that use, the struggle to survive leapfrogged countless generations of natural selection in…
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Critical Thinking Will Not Save Us
What is today known as “critical thinking” is a product of the mindset that adheres to the Darwinian model. Adherents to that model all but have a patent on the phrase. Misunderstanding this, modifying the term to fit their own ends, even those taking their cues from the Bible will speak of how they, too, employ “critical thinking,” as though they are not to be…
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How’s it Going with “the Wicked” These Days?
How’s it Going with “the Wicked” these days? There are plenty of passages to show that ‘the wicked’ (the Bible’s terminology, not mine) do just fine these days, so that one must serve God through love for his ways, not through thinking it will set one up pretty in the short term. For example, Job’s complaint: Why do the wicked live on, Grow old, and…
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Key Ingredients in the Search for God – Isaiah 58
We do ourselves a disservice when we allow ourselves to be driven into dead ends, even if it is the name of education. Humans vastly overstate their conclusions with a confidence often unjustified by the underlying facts. Even “settled science” often turns out to be settled by decree. Conclusions tried and true may turn out to be up for grabs, as in this video someone…
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“Remove the Wicked Person from Among Yourselves”
Favorable government treatment of religion was originally based upon the premise that religion does the government’s legitimate work for them. It improves the calibre of the people, making them easier to govern and more of a national asset. Jehovah’s Witnesses are among the few still fulfilling this premise. As a people, they pay more than their share into the national treasury, since they are honest,…
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What is Hell? (Condensed from Previous Posts)
With a single exception, all instances of “hell” stem from only one of three original language words. Find the meaning of those words, and you’ve found the meaning of hell. Two of those words are Hebrew-Greek equivalents: sheol and hades. They refer to “the place of the dead.” Bad people are said to go there, but so are good people. When the patriarch Jacob was…
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The Song-Writing Dog: Everybody Oompa
We knew from the get-go that our rescued dog had a thing for chasing cats. What we didn’t know was that it had a flair for song-writing. (Sung to the tune of I Am the Walrus) I am lean. My plate is clean. Those cats convene and I am going to nab one. See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they…
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Above Us Only Sky on the Cruise Ship
On the cruise ship vacation not so long ago, a makeshift chorale of passengers sung ‘Imagine’ as melodically as a church choir. Only, it was a chorale extolling the virtues of there being “above us only sky” and “no religion, too”—as though they might sing it in a hospital terminal word with the assurance it would bring comfort to ones in their final hours. I…
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The Righteous One Perishes but No One Takes it to Heart
There is no huge significance that the Doomsday Clock stands at 85 seconds to midnight instead of a minute or two either way. But there is significance for it to stand in any of those spots instead of 10:30 AM or even high noon. That’s probably the way to gauge a verse like Isaiah 57:1: “The righteous one has perished, But no one takes it…
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Pop’s Friends and ‘Agape’ Love
Pop’s friends were invariably those on his bowling team. Or golf. Or the husbands of Mom’s friends. He was amiable and would get along with most anyone. One of his pals had always been controlling of his wife. After she died, he was wracked with guilt. She had wanted a computer when the devices were new. He flat out refused her. Not for any good…