Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

• Genesis 11:1-9

Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by eating ceremonial foods, which is of no benefit to those who do so. We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.

• Hebrews 13:7-10

“Dewey also takes from Darwin the idea that nature as a whole is a system that is in a constant state of change; an idea that itself echoes the philosophy of the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. When Dewey comes to think about what philosophical problems are, and how they arise, he takes this insight as a starting point.
“Dewey discusses the idea that we only think when confronted with problems in an essay entitled Kant and the Philosophic Method (1884). We are, he says, organisms that find ourselves having to respond to a world that is subject to constant change and flux. Existence is a risk, or a gamble, and the world is fundamentally unstable. We depend upon our environment to be able to survive and thrive, but the many environments in which we find ourselves are themselves always changing. Not only this, but these environments do not change in a predictable fashion. For several years there may be a good crop of wheat, for instance, but then the harvest fails. A sailor may set sail under fine weather, only to find that a storm suddenly blows up out of nowhere. We are healthy for years, and then disease strikes us when we least expect it.
“In the face of this uncertainty, Dewey says that there are two different strategies we can adopt. We can either appeal to higher beings and hidden forces in the universe for help, or we can seek to understand the world and gain control of our environment.
“The first of these strategies involves attempting to affect the world by means of magical rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices. This approach to the uncertainty of the world, Dewey believes, forms the basis of both religion and ethics. …
“The alternative response to the uncertainties of our changing world is to develop various techniques of mastering the world, so that we can live in it more easily. We can learn the art of forecasting the weather, and build houses to shelter ourselves from its extremes, and so on. Rather than attempting to ally ourselves with the hidden powers of the universe, this strategy involves finding ways of revealing how our environment works, and then working out how to transform it to our benefit.”

• Sam Atkinson (senior editor), The Philosophy Book, Big Ideas Simply Explained

John Dewey (1859-1952) made his first mistake, like many others in his day, of following Charles Darwin.  I do not disagree that the world is in a constant state of change.  From my studies of Thermodynamics, the world’s clockwork is winding down.  Darwin did not have the science knowledge of today.  He only observed and theorized, theorized incorrectly.  Entropy cannot go in both directions so that the world can create great complex system of ever decreasing entropy so that it gets to a point that the natural law reverses itself and starts in the other direction.

Dewey, in only having cursory intellectual knowledge of religion, sees a worship of gods being irrational, as many people repeat today.  He accepts the worship of gods as an option, just not one that a rational man would or should take.  Yet, by his limited intellectual knowledge and no spiritual knowledge, his idea of how religion works fails to fit Christianity completely, if at all.  We worship God, but there are no magical rites and ceremonies.  The sacraments are followed as remembrances only, not carrying any magical properties, although some denominations hold to the absolute requirement thereof.  While God commands us to give of our first fruits, this is again not a “magical” thing.  The tithes, offerings, and such keep the church doors open and provide a means for Christians to gather together.  If there is any commanded “sacrifice” for the Christian, it is as a living sacrifice, a total dedication to God.

Not quoted above, Dewey also felt that religions worshipped these “powers” to extract fortune.  It seems that the prosperity gospel purveyors have tried to use Dewey’s definitions to draw people back to God for the proverbial pot of gold instead of trust and belief leading to a life-giving relationship with God.

With these errors in Dewey’s thinking, there is no wonder that he rejected what he thought was a lack of intellectual thought.  While in reality, Christianity is the culmination of a combination of intellectual and spiritual awakening.

Yet, the alternative that Dewey suggests is the clarion call of the earth’s destruction.  It is the Tower of Babel all over again.  And for the most part, the modern things being done in the name of our mastering the changes in this world seem to be good things that are prudent things to do.  Yet, it will be a road to our own doom.

Let’s look at our new towers.

The League of Nations was created after World War I.  It failed miserably in preventing World War II.  Many state that the United States not entering it was the cause, but too many in the USA focus on precious “us” and not the history that led to World War II.  The League had no teeth.

The league has been followed by the United Nations, but the UN is fraught with flaws.  There has hardly, if ever, been a time without conflict.  The major powers have such differing agendas that anything worthwhile gets vetoed by one side or the other.  Yet, the UN has a plan of a one world government as being the solution to all the above.  Why do we think this will work?  The wars between nations will simply become civil wars within the one world government.

Of course, the one world government concept, which is one of the prophecies of the End Times, gained popularity and a “deadline” to save the planet from Climate Change.  This is our greatest challenge, and it is based upon observations and extrapolations based on those observations.  There is little true science that says that once we have crippled the entire world financially and industrially to rid ourselves of a carbon footprint that we will not continue down the road of Climate Change to an ultimate end anyway.  All the world will have to join in, and China and India will not comply.  The rest of the world will not want them to comply when compliance requires, essentially, to shut down industry until the system can be retooled yet retooling takes money to do and money stops flowing when industry is shut down.

The reason that we will rely on China and India is that our toys will not be made, those toys to keep us distracted from the real issues that are approaching and are already here.

God, in His long-suffering and patience, has allowed us to destroy ourselves.  Why?  For the sake of the last of humankind who will seek Him in the midst of destruction at every turn.

The world governments and the one world government will not save us.  They will simply propel us toward oblivion that much faster.

Only God can save us.  Some state that the Climate Change people are wrong in that God will save this planet, but I am not sure.  God may simply create a new heaven and a new earth.  God may hit a reset button and return us all to the Garden of Eden.  But God promises a new heaven and a new earth, regardless of the mechanism.

And there lies our only hope.  Turn to God, our only power of everlasting salvation.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.