Opus 2026-316: What Is in a Name?

I am constantly surprised when I come across places which I think should be secure from the woke crowd and see that they are penetrated even beyond what I thought were strong walls.  What I’m looking at now is a hymnal that as a general rule I think it’s a great tool for worship and learning music.  It has a good spread of hymns and contemporary type music.  It’s in large print.  It has the chords above the line which helps us guitar players.

So as I turned the page this morning and looked at the song that was the next on my playlist.  It said, “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory”.

Maybe you don’t see the problem.  That is the first line of the song which is common for naming them.  I’ve seen this before, and it didn’t register.  But this morning, as I was looking towards the Fourth of July weekend, I said to myself, “Isn’t the title of this ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic?’”   I looked at the bottom of the page where it tells you the name of the tune, and the tune is called Battle Hymn.  So I went, and I got an old hymnal off the shelf and looked it up and, sure enough, the title in the older hymnal is ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”  The new one is more politically correct, and made less offensive to those who are triggered by any reference to turbulence in life by calling it, “Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory”.

The political correct crowd strikes again.  I’ve noticed this in the wording of hymns where they remove offensive words or change the words to fit the doctrine of the editors.  I don’t know that I’ve seen it this blatant in a title before.

Be on the alert.  Keep your memory engaged because there are people out there trying to slowly transform you’re thinking until it matches theirs.

Get ready to celebrate.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-300: Digital Applications

Three bits of information presented as the result of research have come together in my mind.  I say “presented” because I don’t know how valid the research was.  Just because I want something to be true does not make it such.

The most emotionally satisfying is the documentation of the stagnation and decline in the results of standardized testing since digital technology came into the classroom.  We all have made note of this.  I can remember when they dumbed down the SAT test to improve scores.  I witnessed the decline in the years I was teaching, 1987-2017.  Every time they issued new text books the vocabulary had to be lowered.  The talking heads claimed that research on this went back to 1962.

The most frightening is the effect of AI tools.  The research here was done in the computer industry.  Use of AI seemed to keep the lower levels from growing.  They could do their work using all the offerings of AI but they were stuck in a rut.  The upper levels seem to be able to advance.  Either they were old enough to have developed a deeper understanding of what they were doing or just having the experience let you keep growing.  It isn’t just a matter of productivity but of making advances in quality.

The personal concern came from a discussion of Bible study and the use of digital Bibles.  The talking heads seemed to feel that their learning was being weakened by dependence on the screen.  I think they said computer tools could help your research but the idea was that there was an acutual physical and mental decline.

I find I am watching more videos lately.  Does that have anything to do with my decrease in physical and mental energy?  It seems vaguely that the two correlated in my life.  Of course, correlation does not mean causation but it causes one to wonder.  I think of all the people confined to a bedroom with a TV and slowly sinking.

Does the increased use of technology have an effect on the dementia of Americans?  This would go back to the advent of television.  Is there any research for such a thing?  I know that the visual can effect people. When my son was young we didn’t let him watch a lot of TV but we noticed that when what he watched was animated as opposed to live actors, his behavior changed and the change was for the worse.

My son suggested that it might be due to decreased attention spans which is another area that researchers have noticed.

I am going to reduce my screen time and increase my time with physical books.  It can’t hurt and I am willing for it to help.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-250: Watch the Bandwagon

The Rubio bandwagon continues to roll out the election psyop.  The recent post on Power Line went whole hog on Rubio.  It went so far as to say that J.D. Vance had no constituency and list all of the establishment elements of the Republican Party that like Rubio. It was blatant.

The Marco Rubio that we are seeing now gives me no problems.  As far as i can see he is doing a good job and expressing very pro-American attitudes.  I still have memories of him straying into the center lane of the establishment in the past.  Has he learned his lesson?  Has he genuinely changed?  Possibly.  Is it just a matter of sensing the winds?  Possibly.  He would certainly do better than anything the Democrats have to offer.

At present I still like J.D. Vance.  I also like what I see in Ron DeSantis.  In fact there are a strong group of new faces that deserve time in the sun.  If we can survive 2026 then 2028 will be an interesting year.

The problem we face is that even with a majority in all three positions of power the Republicans are playing uniparty instead of moving the country ahead.  We need even more primaried out. Make sure you let your voice be heard.
    
homo unius libri

Opus 2026-224: Click Bait: Really?

The headline read, “The Great Tribulation: What Matthew 24 really says.”  If I were living in Communist China and all the Bibles had been confiscated or was illiterate, this might be a good question.  In reality it is a bit of a silly question.  If I want to know that Matthew 24 says I don’t need to listen to a podcast that explains it to me.  I can open a Bible, the library has them and most churches would be glad to give you one, and read it for myself.

I am seeing a growing number of these kinds of themes.  One that always cracks me up is someone I have never heard of sharing his favorite Bible translations.  Why would I care what his favorite is?  I would be more curious about his position on the Five Solas or TULIP theory. 

We seem to have lost the ability to think for ourselves.  Let me encourage you to read the book yourself instead of building your thoughts on the conclusions of others.  If you really don’t know enough Hebrew to come to a conclusion, join the club.  Compare translations and explore the context.  You may find that your opinion is as reliable as any “influencer” on the internet.

I have confidence in you.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-148: Click Bait: The Setup Continues

The headline read:  “‘This is a problem.’  Iran war puts JD Vance in a bind before 2028.”

The source was USA Today.  I did not bother reading the post because I could not believe any factual material it presented.  At the same time I did not need to read it to see the psyops going on.  There is an operation in place to demote JD Vance from the position of heir apparent and transfer the blessing to Marco Rubio.

I have been seeing this for weeks.  I don’t know if it is organized or if it is just a case of not-so-great minds running in the same gutters.

I have no major problem with Marco Rubio.  As I have said, he did some stupid things years ago but people can grow.  Donald Trump is an example.  I do have concerns that people who were once never-Trumpers favor him and keep building him up.  He has the feel of being an insider that is waiting to get his chance.

Currently I would go with Vance because he is an outsider.  I wait to see what he does with the assignment to investigate fraud that the president gave him.  It could make him or break him.  Another possibility is that the Rinos and talking heads will ignore any success he has and push Rubio.

Stay awake.  Chart the ways in which psyops are being played daily.  Pray like it makes a difference.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-144: Early Seeds of Modern Education

We often tend to think that the ideas and philosophies we see and hear are somehow original.  Not so.  Most people have heard of H.G. Wells.  When I was a kid we had his Outline of History on our shelf and I remember looking through it.  Evidently that was in his early years before he went to the dark side.  Here is a description of his later thinking,

“By 1933, when he published the shape of things to come, he could see no better way to overcome the stubbornness and selfishness between people and nations than a desperate action by intellectual idealists to seize control of the world by force and established their vision of a universal compulsory educational program.” P. 2

If you know much about the history of the International Communist Party and the National Socialist Party then you know that they instituted just that.  In more recent times we have seen the educational establishment implement similar programs of brainwashing.  Compulsory education plays along with this.

The average teacher probably has no idea what is going on.  Many like children and want to help them grow up.  Discernment and insight are not their strengths.  The people directing education are another story.  They have taken over the power positions from day care to Harvard and are vigorously pushing their agenda.  Be aware.  Do everything you can to defund their efforts and get them fired.

It may be too late for your children so do it for your grandchildren if they are allowed to be born.

Schlossberg, Herbert.  Idols for Destruction.  Nashville:  Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1983.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-090: How about a Dumb-Down

Some temptations roll off my psyche with no pause or penetration.  I was recently looking for a primary source document and at the beginning I saw this message:

“This appears to be a long document.  Save time by reading a summary using AI assistant.”

No.  When a certain terminal destination freezes over.  I would sooner have Joe Biden give me a summary as AI Assistant.  

The invasiveness of this software is ubiquitous.  If you don’t know what that means ask Google.  The irritation is even worse.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-582: Different Worlds

I was reading another post and the author threw in a comment about the “lockdown”.  She was writing from Colorado.  That reminded me of a video interview I had recently watched where they made a big deal about the “lockdown”.  They were meeting in Virginia.  I find myself wondering, “What lockdown”?  I live in Texas.

When people bring it up I remind myself I now live in Texas and we tend to react differently here.  The only issue I remember was the inconvenience of having to change my shopping routines in an effort to avoid mask mandates.  I was mostly successful.  I think our church may have shut down for a couple of weeks but I was traveling at the time and didn’t notice much on the road between San Antonio and Yorktown.  Truck stops in Arkansas are not known for their slavish obedience to the Federal government.  I avoid doctors as much as possible and had no brushes with hospitals during the key time.  I remember being extremely irritated but I never felt like I was being isolated from humanity because I am surrounded by rational people who ignored it all as much as possible.

I have friends in California so I understand there are parts to the country that are brain dead.  I still see people who are wearing masks in their car, even in Texas but they usually generate looks of sympathy.  We have a lady in our church who wears a mask on Sunday but it because she is on heavy chemo and her immune system is bonkers.  She would be doing it before Covid.  I personally think that much of the nation ignored the lockdown mandates unless forced to comply by frantic neighbors.  

I can sense the dark forces trying to get us into another panic.  If they go public I think we will see the same pattern except there will be even fewer who will comply.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-572: Be on the Alert

One of the issues that I think we need to be constantly reminded of, and reminding our self of, is what I’ve heard called Psyops.  This is sometimes called fifth generation warfare.  It’s the psychological manipulation of the population in order to bring them around to the idea that the elites want.  One of the major goals of the elite is to divide people with traditional values and destroy their culture without firing a shot.  People on the right, have certain things in common as a whole.  There are obviously things that they disagree on, however much of the disagreement is not really between them, but it’s the way it is caricatured by the media and the Talking Heads on YouTube.

I’ve seen this as they vilify Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens and now David Wood.  I’ve seen it as they continually try to act like Trump is losing his mind and people that you know have been consistent and solid are becoming flaky.  When we keep seeing it, we start believing it and often we hear it from sources that we thought were reliable, but are turning out to be not so much.

I was watching a discussion between two groups of people that I thought as generally reliable.  I still think they’re generally reliable.  I know there are things I disagree with them on, but their sense of integrity and their attempt to find truth is solid.  That’s true at least for me.  They were discussing the way in which the people on the right are being divided and being turned against each other.  That’s what I’m talking about.  There are so many attempts to make us form a circular firing squad and go after each other.

On the other hand, I saw a podcast by Victor Davis Hansen and he pointed out that the left is actually starting to freak out because there is so much truth coming through on different sources on the Internet that they can’t act as gatekeepers anymore.  He felt very optimistic about the possibility of success of turning the country around.

Which to believe?  Both.  But above all stay on the alert, realize that the people who control the social media platforms are not necessarily on your side.  Be aware of the AI influence.  Be aware of the propaganda that is proliferating everywhere.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-535: Is TDS Congenital?

I’m seeing more and more people who are expressing their latent Never Trump attitudes in just about everything they do.  I have a couple of websites that I have gone to consistently because they were generally conservative and seemed to keep their finger on the pulse of what was happening in the world.  One that I still check every morning is populated by people who never really came out of the closet, but are Never Trumper’s in their hearts.  I’m seeing other people who kind of give backhanded compliments and subtle insults.  I think that TDS maybe something which goes deeper than just political opinions or current emotional myopia.  I think it may be genetic.  Congenital is a medical term for conditions that are genetic rather than environmental.

I’m wondering if over the years we haven’t had a process of micro-evolution going on where people who have this TDS gene, been drawn to each other, produced children and perpetuated this trait.  I wanted to call it a disability but that seemed unkind.  Think of it as if people who are colorblind would be drawn to other people who are colorblind and over the process of generations, they would produce a population where most people were colorblind.  A mental attitude that refuses to accept Trump could be expressed in other areas of life, and we just didn’t notice it until the catalyst appeared.

I’m wondering if this genetic material is still at work in the psyops that we see going on all around us.  I’m watching people attack Tucker Carlson and Candice Owens because they have express opinions that were critical of Israel.  I don’t follow either one of them so I can’t really comment, but I will do it anyway.  What little I have heard that they’ve said over the years has been very solid.  It used to be this was considered the exercise of free speech and debate.  Now it’s the heresy of stepping outside of orthodoxy.

The country is being divided.  It’s nothing new.  It’s happened before.  I think it’s time for something to shake us up so that we again start crossbreeding.  Things like color blindness exist all around us.  I would be willing to admit that some of that color blindness results in some of the obnoxious styles and fashions we see, but generally speaking it’s spread out enough that it doesn’t make any significant difference in our culture.  It would be nice if we could breed the TDS gene out of our system also.  It’s too late for our opinions of Donald Trump, but it might make a difference 100 years from now, assuming we’re still here.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-533: Organic YouTube

Even if you’re not aware of it, you are struggling with the invasion of YouTube videos by AI.  Sometimes it’s relatively obvious.  All those cute little babies that have the expressions of celebrities with mouths that are matched perfectly with the dialogue?  They can’t be real.  That much is obvious.  At other points I find myself listening to what would be instructional videos and after a while, I realize that this is not a human being trying to communicate with me.

In the future, the AI is going to continue to get more sophisticated.  That in itself is not the end of the world, but it certainly could influence the value of what we’re hearing.

I think we could draw a parallel between the food we eat, and the ideas we consume.  One of the theories of the health nuts is that modern foods are causing the obesity, epidemic and contributing to general ill health.  It couldn’t be that we are eating too much and moving to little.  They would lay it on the additives and the GMO plot.  Processing takes the healthiness out of the food.  It makes it artificial.

And the food industry they have come up with things like “organic” and “free range”. The terms in themselves are relatively meaningless.  There is no federal legislation that binds you to give a definition of what is really organic and what isn’t.  I remember watching a video on free range chickens and it was rather amusing to see how little was required for that label.  It wasn’t much.  I remember somebody pointing out that grass fed beef pretty much can apply to anything on four legs that is not a pig or a lamb.  It would be hard to find a cow that had not eaten grass sometime in life.

Foods are theoretically labeled organic to help the consumer differentiate between what is healthy and what isn’t.

I might suggest that we have an organic title for YouTube videos.  In fact, the term organic might be good because it would imply that there was actually a living organism that contributed.  I don’t know how you would enforce this.  I don’t know how you would know for sure.  I still think it’s a good idea.

I would not want to forbid AI generated content.  I am for freedom of the press and freedom of speech, even for computer programs.  After all, they were originally written by humans and designed by humans.  At the same time I think we have a right to know the source of what we’re getting.

So how about a “organic” label for what you watch or for what you read?

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-519: Conditional or Unconditional

I am so fed up with people who cherry pick scripture to reinforce their theological traditions.  Take the following verse,

(Psa 132:11 KJV)  The LORD hath sworn in truth unto David; he will not turn from it; Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne.

They will use this verse to try to say that God made a promise and He will never go back on it.  That works fine if you are one of their gullible disciples but if you take the time to do a little thinking you go looking for another guru.  More likely you ignore what you find.  If you would simply read the next verse you would find this,

(Psa 132:12 KJV)  If thy children will keep my covenant and my testimony that I shall teach them, their children shall also sit upon thy throne for evermore.

It is almost like the “if” word becomes invisible.  It is clear that the promise made was conditional.  If the descendants of David did not keep the covenant then the promise was revoked.

Guess what?  They did not keep the covenant.  Time to ask Amazon for a return label.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-515: AI Virus

I wrote about an MIT study that showed using AI support causes damage to your ability to think.

I showed it to someone who worked in computer security and he said that he sees it in his managerial group and they are trying to push it amongst the ones who actually do the work.  It is spreading like wildfire and wildfire is malignant.  

The thought came to me that the AI programming may work very similar to a virus.  It may somehow move from person to person, causing brains to shut down, causing emotional and mental intellectual damage, and those people, because they don’t want anybody else to get by without the benefits that they’re getting, will force it on others, therefore spreading the destruction.  We need to develop a way to treat this illness.

As we move forward, society may divide into two groups.  One group will have their brains watered down by AI and will be tools of whomever controls the AI.  The other group will be like the Amish and will live a separate and parallel existence.  Whether they are allowed to live that separate existence is doubtful so they may have to find ways to fight the virus.  It may be to compete.  Some people will have to volunteer to be guinea pigs.

The guinea pig will be someone who understands what’s going on and who volunteers to use the AI tools, which we know will lower their IQ, and seek to find ways to block or counteract it.  It would be scientific research and these would be heroes of the human race.  If it can be done there is hope.

The parallel track would need to use AI to compete with the speed of contamination in order to counter attacks that they are using on the normal people.  Other than that, it wouldn’t be necessary.  Well, that and the fact that the AI group will not be satisfied to allow normal people to continue being normal.

If the machines take over it won’t necessarily be because they are smarter as much as the elites that control them have made sure that we are dumber.  Same difference if you are a cog.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-480: Did You Notice?

Have you noticed yet the small changes that have been made in the dynamics of written English?  I am sure there are more than I see but let me list a couple.  

It used to be that you were expected to put two spaces after a period and after a colon.  You were also supposed to capitalize the first word after the colon.  One reason I noticed this was at some point my word processing software made the change which had it “correcting” my typing.  I had to dig into the inner workings to change the setting.  

Why the changes?  The basic reason is to save space on the computer disk.  Everything you type is recorded in 0's and 1's.  Even a single space takes up room.  Over a long document that can add up.  They totally overlook the fact that they were originally double spaced to make communication easier.  It alerted the reader that a new thought was beginning.  We live in a day when saving space on a disc is more important than clarity in writing.

You can make your own decision on the bigger reason for the change.  I would say it is a both/and situation.  It saved the technology people money and it gave them more control over the population by increasing ignorance.  It was a twofer.  

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-468: New terms: Academic Brain Dysfunction

In my thought journey, I keep coming across people who have certificates on their wall and letters behind their name who think they have the right to pontificate on major issues.  When I go to see my doctor, which I did recently, I choose the doctor not because he has certificates, but because he has impressed me that his mind and his understanding have grown beyond his degrees and his official status.  I go to see him because I feel he is unusual in the field of primary care medicine.  I will continue to work with him as long as he continues to keep thinking.

Other doctors I have been around take the company line, swallow it hole, and spew back the nonsense that they have been told.  They show no evidence of thinking it through themselves.  They show no evidence of reading or paying attention to what’s happening in our society.  This is true in just about every area of study.

I fight this most in the area of my biblical studies and my theology.  The current burr under my saddle in theological terms would have to do with the immutability of God.  Put in simple everyday language, that means that God does not change.  I agree with that statement because the Bible has statements like this,

(Mal 3:6 KJV)  For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.

To paraphrase a quote from Princess bride, I keep wanting to say, “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”  The reason for that is that there are numerous places in the scripture where it talks about God changing his mind.  In the King James that is often built around the word “repent” .  One of the classic lines that proceeds Noah finding grace in the eyes of the Lord is this verse,

Genesis 6:6 (KJV) And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

Now, I don’t care what your theological persuasion is.  You may be a total atheist.  But when someone repents of something that means they change their mind.  It means they have a different idea than they had before.  It would seem that it is possible for God to have different thoughts.

Is God immutable?  Yes if you understand it in the proper way.  But that does not mean that He is a dead piece of stone.  Several places in scripture God mocks the idols of the pagans.  He talks about them having eyes, but they cannot see; feet, but they cannot walk; mouths but they cannot talk and so forth.  The implication is that He, the living God, can see, walk and talk.  Now when you see things they interact with your neurons and make your brain perceive something that wasn’t there before.  That is literally, change.  I understand that God is not physical so He does not have nurons, but if God is different from the idols because He can see, and He can feel and He can hear, every time He does one of those things He is changing.  So don’t give me this nonsense that God cannot “change”.

I started watching a video by someone who had impressed me once, but has been losing ground ever since and he got off on this idea that God cannot change.  He was taking it all the way to the wall.  His statements were without any kind of waiver or qualification.  He even quoted a famous theologian, one that I had heard of, one that I stopped listening to a long time ago when he declared war on non-Calvinists.  That theologian really got worked up and said that if there is one molecule anywhere in the entire universe, that is a maverick molecule, outside of the total control of God, then all our theology, all of our beliefs, everything about who we are as Christians is meaningless.  Excuse me.  My God is bigger than that.  What if God made that molecule a maverick?

The problem with being an academic is that you think your theories are above the facts.  How someone with many books to his credit, and I’m sure multiple degrees, could declare that everything is void if there is one spec out of place has an undue respect for his own insight.  I would encourage him to stay in his office and write out deep thoughts on sticky notes and post them on his window so that he doesn’t have to look out and see the real world.  I would even encourage for him to make videos and post them.  One of the great things about YouTube is, I don’t have to watch.

I’m sure this rant will continue in other places of the times.  Until then, keep your brain in gear and your Bible open.  It is amazing how well those two concepts work together.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-426: Click Bait: We Are All Going to Die

I was only able to read the first part of the headline, but it was truly frightening.  I think we have now reached the point where we know there’s no chance of living to a healthy old age.  The target today was baking soda.  As I said, I could only read the first part of the click bait, but it was clear that they were going to do an expose on the benefits and the dangers of baking soda .

You realize if they take away your baking soda, you lose your chocolate chip cookies?  I’m not enough of a chef to know what else is involved, but it would really drastically change our lives.  Add that the fact that baking soda has been used, I would guess, for centuries if not millennia and the human race seems to have survived.  Not so anymore.  Now some agency or government entity or Talking Heads Internet Guru has decided that they need to look into the dangers of baking soda.

I would say the next target may be water, but there are enough people who are already paranoid and driven to bottled water that I think we’ve already arrived.

Stay tuned.  Your water will kill you.  The air you breathe will kill you.  Too much salt will kill you.  Eggs will kill you.  Coffee will kill you.  Now you can add baking soda to the list.

When will they claim that reading blog posts is deadly?

In memoriam. 

homo unius libri 

Opus 2025-420: Sugar Coated Evil

I had a conversation recently with a very nice lady.  She seemed to be gentle and kind and wanting the best for everyone.  She was soft spoken and I’m sure that she could have given you a good presentation on how we should love our enemies and how God is love and so forth.

She was what I am calling sugar coated evil.

The issue that got us going was homosexuality.  She had a friend, possibly just an acquaintance, who had been to seminary and was giving her some song and dance about how the Old Testament was geared for those days and had nothing to do with us today.  She had several examples, but the one that stood out to me was the condemnation of homosexuality in the Old Testament.  She seemed totally unaware that Paul also addressed this in the book of Romans.  She mentioned how Jesus never talked about it.  She was listening to this seminary graduate.

All I could really tell her that she could hear was, “You’ve been lied to.”  I don’t know if she heard even that.  I don’t know if she understood what I was saying.  I’m relatively sure she didn’t accept it.  I turned to Romans and read verses in chapter one where Paul is very specific about homosexual behavior.  I told her that in some of the list of actions that will keep us out of heaven he also addresses it.  The only answer she had was that if they were born that way, and God made them that way, then it can’t be wrong.

I pointed out to her that God made me also and I’m certainly not perfect.

We ran out of time, but I see this kind of thinking going on when we deal with Islam.  Islam is not a religion of peace.  There may be some uninformed Muslims whom we would consider moderate, but generally speaking they probably don’t have any idea what the Quran says.  I who cannot read Arabic and have no indication of what it actually says, can read in the different translations that it is not a religion of peace.  And yet we have all these people who want to believe that it’s just a few radicals that are causing the problem.

I would say that they are “sugar coated evil”.

People like to act like they know what they’re talking about but they are generally lazy and don’t want to be confronted by what makes him uncomfortable.  I have yet to meet anyone who has read the Quran.  It is readily available in many translations and can be read in your spare time.  I read mine on a month of vacation in preparation to have to teach it in seventh grade history.  It didn’t keep me from doing anything I wanted to do on vacation.  The same is true of such things as the Communist Manifesto.  The information is available, but people are too comfortable to access it.

Beware of the sugar coating.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-387: Professional Faith

As I was thinking about being able to understand the Bible and how important it is to me I got to thinking about a young man I knew when I was teaching middle school.  He was Muslim.  He was a great kid.  He was a good student.  His parents were really decent people.  He would’ve been an example of what people talk about when they talk about moderate Muslims.

I asked his parents if I could question him about Islam.  They said no problem.  So we had a few conversations.  In one of them I asked him about the Quran.  I wanted to know if he could read it since he spoke Arabic.  His answer was, “No”.  I said why not if you speak Arabic.  He said because the Arabic in the Quran is so old and archaic that he can’t understand it.  He could read the words out loud, but he had no idea what they meant.

This is so common among major religions that originated in the Middle East.  I think you could repeat this with most Muslims.  They might be able to quote things they memorized.  They might be able to read the words out loud if they actually could read.  But mostly they depended upon the guy up in the front who was doing the preaching and teaching to understand what the Quran said.

We had a similar problem with the Jews in the time of Jesus.  Very few Jews actually spoke Hebrew.  They spoke Aramaic and Greek.  They could not read the Bible in the original language, and so they had professionals who would tell them what the professional felt the congregation needed to know.  They had to rely on the teaching of these experts in order to know what their holy books said.

Fast forward to the time of the Middle Ages.  At that point the main Bible available to believers was the Latin Vulgate.  Since most people could not read Latin, it would require professionals to tell them what the word of God said.  They were forced to just know what the experts wanted them to know and you know how easy it is to tailor things if you’re in charge of the media.

Today we have run into a similar problem in protestant churches.  It is not a problem of truth available but sloth and arrogance.  Pastors do not encourage people to bring their Bibles and the preaching served up often has very little to do with a text that was announced.  In this case you can’t blame the pastors totally.  In America today we have a plethora of Bible translations that are readily available.  Take your pick.  Any one will do.  The word of God is available today.  Unlike history if you’re not aware of what God is saying it’s on you, not on the professionals.

Rise above the herd.  Access the source.  Don’t settle for being a part of the mediocre masses.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-372: Here They Come Again

It is time to get your short term memory dusted off.  The control freaks of our culture are at it again.  They are gearing up to cripple your liberty with another Covid scare.

It is starting out of sight.  We have a lady from our church who fell and broke her hip.  The surgery was successful but they are keeping her in rehab.  Her husband was told that she would not be allowed to have visitors because Covid was back.  Unless you have a loved-one in one of these institutions you would not notice.

The press is starting to plant stories.  Will RFK, Jr. be able to head it off?  I don’t know.  He is one man in an organization out to sabotage his efforts.  Recently we got word that he had removed the vaccine from the regime for infants.  A wise and timely move since they were not in any danger from the virus and do have serious side effects from the vaccine.  

Get ready.  Start practicing.  Repeat after me, “No.”

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-369: European Gluten

We are in a wave of gluten intolerance.  I am forced to accept that there is something to it.  The queston is, “Where did this come from?”  I don’t remember anything about it when I was a child.

I remember reading somewhere a comment by RFK, Jr.  He said that he was gluten intolerant until he started eating bread from Europe.  I think the inference was that American farmers spray something on the wheat that causes this problem.  If so it should be easy to research and find out.  Go to it Bobby.

I have a different question that is generated by the weird wires of my brain.  Whatever the American farmers are using it has a purpose.  Europe also grows wheat.  Europe has similar problems to the Americans.  What are they using to control the problem? 

My assumption is that what they use also has side effects.  We just are not hearing about them.  I asked myself what the side effects could be and came up with a suggestion:  It makes people stupid.  Consider how Europeans seem to be on board with socialism and governments that use term “democrat” while being authoritarian.  What would cause an entire continent to have their thinking processes dulled to the point that they would put up with the nonsense.  

Enter European gluten.  I suggest that whatever they are using is causing the masses of Europe to be naive and incapable of logical thought.  I wonder if the same substance is being sprayed in the blue cities of American causes them to continue to vote for Democrats in spite of the obvious results.

Something to think about.

homo unius libri