Understanding prayer via faith and reasoning

In the news one reads that people ask for prayers in time of hardship, for themselves and for others, such as loved ones. Some if not many of those requests are sincere and justified. Some are sincere but not justified, and others are insincere. The great worry is who exactly are they recommending praying to? Here is where I want to use an analogy to help you to better discern what is really going on and to understand genuine, effective prayer.

Genuine, effective, justified prayer is directed to God alone. Now, some of you may ask, wait a minute, what about traditional cultural prayers that are directed to presumed divine entities other than God? Remember, as I have always stated, I am not critiquing traditional faiths that are not monotheistic. However, many, if not most, modern people, particularly those who have access to the media, are hypocrites who try to artificially cement together some sort of New Age "belief" where they believe in God when it is convenient, but they subordinate God's reality and primacy to pieces of crazy quilt chunks of "other faiths," resulting in pure idolatry that they punctuate with supposed belief in God. In essence while they state God on occasion with their mouths, they venerate the works and beliefs of their own hands and thus are idolaters. This is particularly true of those who claim (in Star Wars kind of voices) that the "force" is with them. That is a thinly disguised idolatry where they feel they can manipulate power that is "available" to them. So I thought of this analogy to help you, especially young people, who have been raised on a diet of believing in theoretical cartoon super heroes but not the real God.

When one prays to God, one can put in front of God your wishes for resolution of a matter, but you realize that God may or may not respond to your hopes as you may wish. So in this sincere and justified prayer, you know that God is in control, and that he will do what he will, and that even disappointing results will yield at some point that you cannot see good fruit and grace. Grace is given to those who pray in this way, with a sincere heart, to God, not as a "reward" for obeying, but because that IS the way it "works."

When one prays to some sort of "forces" in the "universe," and worse, actually perform deeds and works to try to invoke the powers of those forces, one is, of course, treading on the ground of witchcraft, sorcery, idolatry, fraud, self deception and danger. Here is the analogy to help you. Most defenders of such beliefs use the expression that they are "tapping into" this or that "force" or "gift." The English language idiom "tapping into" means to insert a device by which one can siphon off a flowing product. Thus people who harvest tree sap for making syrup "tap into" the tree. People who steal TV cable service "tap into" the legitimate cable with their own connection leading to their own TV. People who listen in on phone conversations "tap into" the telecommunications signal. New Age believers and other idolaters most closely envision themselves "tapping into" electricity, just like plugging an appliance into the electrical wall outlet.

So here are the two problems with that imagery. One is the obvious that they are all "tapping into" not divine "universal" forces but simply strongly concentrated manmade or otherwise created "forces," and by no means are they tapping into anything divine or of God, not even his smallest fingernail's worth. When one plugs an electric fan into the wall, one is using a manmade plug to insert into a manmade socket in a manmade wall to access manmade wiring that carries man generated electricity (that you receive manmade bills for and pay with manmade money) all generated by a manmade power plant. So their understanding of how the universe is bogus from the get go because they are mixing apples and oranges in their own verbiage and understanding. The "forces" of the "universe" are not "just like" "tapping into" "something." When one prays to "forces" and attempts to invoke them through works, deeds and thoughts, you are, by definition, working only with manmade devices. You are not surrendering to God your problems, your hopes, and your faith, and "allowing" God to respond as he will. You are simply juggling, fruitlessly, manmade concepts, devices and efforts.

So that is the faith part of the faith and reasoning balance. Faith is understanding and believing that there is God alone, God who is in control and who will respond, even if you cannot see, cannot fully believe yet, and cannot comprehend his reasoning. As the man said to Jesus, "Lord I believe, help my unbelief." Faith is being at that starting point of genuine belief, even though one needs assistance, from God himself, and from others in the genuine faith community (which is why the pathway of the genuine saints is often studied by those seeking to develop and strengthen their own faith). "Tapping into forces" is not faith. It is idolatry, which is to attempt to give godly powers to devices and imaginings of one's own making. There is an entire industry and self delusion about "tapping into" "one's own" "inner" whatevers, including presuming one has one's own "godliness." I think not, and I have yet to meet a single person alive today who has had a genuine godly thought in him or her. Godliness comes only from God himself, I mean, duh. "Tapping into" forces or one's self leads away from God, not toward him.

Therefore, let's give the person who is "tapping into universal forces" some credit in this next part of the analogy. Let us suppose he or she (I use expressions like 'manmade' for brevity and also for ease of reading by those who do not have English as their first language) responds to my criticism of the plugging an appliance into the manmade electrical power generator and he or she says, "Fair enough, what you say is accurate. But what do you say if I change my thinking so that I'm not tapping into a manmade electrical outlet, but tell you that my imagery is tapping into the power of natural electrical forces in the universe, such as lightning, or the electric field of the planets, etc." You see, there is the problem. Even a sincere minded person such as this imaginary dialog partner continues to try to "tap into" something that is mindless. Do you really want to try to wield supposed power from a lightning bolt? Or imagine that you are gathering in your hands the electrical force field that is in theory emitted from Pluto or whatever? First of all, this person is assuming that like maple syrup that such fields truly exist and they exist in a divisible and usable way. How does a person using reasoning and logic respond to this preposition? Reply, "OK, all powerful one, hand me some gravity. Just break off a piece for me to carry around and use."

Quickly the logical person perceives that no power in the universe can be "tapped" or "utilized" without a manmade device. The only way someone can "hand you some gravity" is to build devices that allow you to experience forces of gravity, or punch you in the face and abuse you until your battered body hits the floor due to gravity. Neither is very godly. You see, using logic and reasoning you are able to not get swept away in a bogus analogy but say, "Well, hang on, how exactly would that work?" And you remember that the "forces" in the universe are emitted due to natural activities, and any "tapping" of them is not divine, but good old machinery if done in reality, and good old idolatry if done in one's mind.

Again, giving the person credit for being sincere, although totally lacking in genuine faith and understanding, imagine that he or she says, "Well, alright then. You've got me there. But that does not explain ESP." (What self puffed up people call being "psychic" nowadays). Erm, um, sorry, but oh yes it does. What do you "tap" into your supposed ESP or "psychic" power with? A human brain. And we all know the human brain is far from all powerful or divine. I mean, you can't even explain migraines but you think that because some ESP power is a reality that this is somehow evidence that you wield divine ability or "tap into" "universal forces?" I think not. Again, just like tapping the maple tree to get the sap to make the syrup, the human body and all of its parts are a created thing, not divine. Those of you who have been reading my God the All Knowing series understand how a human brain (no matter how presumably "smart" the person is) cannot be compared to God's All Knowing. See, a person cannot "tap into God consciousness" because the human brain is limited by not only its obvious size and other flaws but its structure as, like the tree, a created object. God exists outside of time, outside of matter, and outside of energy (aka "forces") and thus cannot be understood nor can he be "accessed" by any created object, such as a brain in a body, since those are totally in the world of matter, energy and time.

Just to go a little further with this, again, anticipating what the person might respond to this, consider angels, genuine angels. They were created by God and abide in his realm, where there is no matter, energy or time. That is why they are able to receive and share in God's beatific vision. But just suppose for argument's sake, in order to help you to understand this crucial point, for some reason, to show this to you, God took an angel from heaven and put him into a human body on earth. That angel would no longer be able to receive or share in God's inner being since the angel is now within "incompatible with God hardware," to use a computer term. Any created object, particularly the human body, is incompatible with "tapping into" God. Totally. Those of you who are geeks and wonks can probably best appreciate this understanding. God is outside of time, matter and energy, and humans would be an input/output device that is entirely bound by time, matter and energy. Angels are entirely outside of human and universe constraint in that they are created, but they are created by God outside of time, energy and matter.

So no, not even genuine powers of ESP demonstrates any "tapping into" of supposed "universal forces," since it is simply an evolved trait of animals too, akin to what we call animal instinct. It's a survival trait and what is a survival trait? An ability that helps a biological being (created not divine) to survive (its matter and energy continues to exist for a period of time). Voila!

The scales certainly should be falling from some eyes now. It is so abundantly clear that prayer is directed toward God and God alone, and can not and should not be confused with even impressive attempts, all of which are manmade or man controlled, to "tap into" natural energy in the universe (energy being created by God but not of God or angels at all) or to vaunt their own biological survival traits, such as ESP, which again are survival traits because they assist in achieving a measure of time (time) of life (matter and energy), again which is totally not of God. Created by God, yes, "of God," no. Prayer is the only I/O "device" that bridges the totally incompatible hardware of humans (time, matter, energy) and God (eternity, always being, no matter or energy, those being only some of his creations but not what he "dwells" within.) And prayer only "works" because you are not attempting to manage God's reply, his "output."

I hope you have found this to be helpful.

Congratulations to Rep. Henry Waxman

As I've mentioned I'm an old time conservationist, with my degree in Environmental Sciences from an Ivy League university, and Rep. Henry Waxman has been on my radar for many years, for his wholehearted and reliable interest in and support of legitimate environmental causes. So I was pleased to hear and congratulate on his winning the chairmanship of House Energy and Commerce Committee. I'd send him an email through his site, but alas, I do not live in his district! So my more public congratulations will have to do. Those on the right who shudder should have a little more faith. Rep. Waxman, despite being called on at least one web site, amusingly, a "Young Turk" is, more like me, one who has been concerned about the environment before the fads of "greens" and "carbon credits," based on many mature years of very diligent thought and concern about how to address problems with our environment. I hope that he can combine his maturity of experience with badly needed new fresh momentum for genuine progress in energy and environmental matters at this critical juncture in time. Again, congratulations.

Capitalism/financial crisis: Auto industry crisis

I agree that it is an essential component to have the continued existence and, hopefully, restored economic health of domestic auto manufacturers. Full disclosure: I drive a '97 Toyota RAV4 (the last time I was able to afford to buy a new car, since my Wall Street career cratered shortly after), BUT my stepfather was a loyal GM dealer mechanic, we remain loyal "Chevrolet" fans, and my first cars included Chevies.

For this quick installment on the financial crisis and the structure of true capitalism, I offer one suggestion to the domestic car manufacturers. I totally agree with Congress that you need to do some humble and visionary restructuring before asking for bailouts, which would be more good money after the bad, otherwise. No jobs get preserved long term if one is simply pursuing a failing strategy. That has been the fundamental problem for several decades now.

Having said that, and while I support fuel efficient and alternate fuel cars, a "worthy cause" should never be the only driver of one's consumer strategy. In other words, don't write a business plan just to appeal to theoretical "greens." You need to develop your business plan together with your hoped for future consumers directly, not "special interest" advocates, no matter how worthy may be their cause and their singular viewpoint. I have my Ivy League university Bachelor of Science in environmental sciences, and I can tell you, this generation of "greens" are terrible economists, business people or even intellectuals or visionaries. Thus they cannot represent your hoped for consumers.

Therefore I offer one suggestion (among many that I have up my sleeve, ha). One is to take a leaf from how the aircraft manufacturers plan product and book orders. One component of your new business plan should be to put a new emphasis on placing future orders for product with corporations, government entities, agencies, not for profits, and other organizations who might be interested in buying a fleet of cars. This would include companies who already have fleets, but also those who have not considered doing this. Here is where there is new opportunity. I think some major corporations should consider developing fleets of cars for business, not only to replace plane business travel, but as a job benefit in lieu of wage increases that may not be possible. For example, even minimum wage earners would experience a great increase in their personal prosperity if they had use of a company car. So I think you should develop that idea and pitch it to corporations, and then design or identify what of your product line would be ideal for that niche market of fleet purchaser, and then book future product orders. Having those product orders on your books, you then know how to retool and, obviously, you know what automotive product is most appealing to both existing and new market niches of customers.

(By the way, well paid talk show hosts driving your various expensive loaner cars and bragging about their relationship with you, while their listeners cannot afford your product, hardly enhances your marketability or your product appeal. In fact, I find that approach personally repugnant, listening each week to the talk radio hosts gloat about how you kiss their rear ends and loan them fancy cars to drive, while I pray that my '97 car lasts until I get my next substantial paycheck).

I've thought about this idea for quite a while and already know the usual objections, and I can assure you that there are very agreeable solutions to all of the likely objections. This approach would be something like win-win-win-win-win for producers-customers-workers-low wage earners-the stability and growth of the economy.

I hope that all of my readers find this modest suggestion useful!

Financial crisis (17) Obama "policy" totally wrong

Obama et al are totally wrong about energy “policy”

I’ve written about this before under general topics of energy and natural resources. Today, the day before election, I want to repeat what I have said and link it directly to the damaging and frankly stupid ideas of Obama and the Democrat party regarding energy, natural resources and the environment. This is also a tutorial in part of the Capitalism/Financial Crisis series.

How do humans 1) stay alive and 2) create prosperity? They do it through the extraction of natural resources from the earth. That is the whole point of the earth having natural resources, to use them to promote and maintain life, and to add to the well being and prosperity of all. Life would not have emerged on a planet that did not have natural resources that would continue to sustain it, I mean, duh, think about it. It’s not like humans are the “intruders” and “exploiters” of natural resources; life would not have started and continued at all on earth if the natural resources necessary for advanced life forms did not exist in the first place. Old time environmentalists, those of us who used to call ourselves conservationists, knew that all along. It is the last two generations of modern humans who have become so illogical and strange in their beliefs, stemming from, I reckon, a conscious or unconscious self loathing of humanity and a depressive anti-life outlook and ultimately mental disorder. I find it incredible that I have to explain this, but I don’t mind, especially for the young people, who have no choice in how they were raised and had malpractice in their education.

Without trees, and once humans discovered how to create fire (rather than waiting for lightning to strike somewhere), humans would have had no chance to evolve and live. Animals have fur or feathers, and also through migration and natural selection, live only in areas where they can maintain body temperature. Humans cannot do that. Babies chill and freeze very easily when the sun goes down in most of the earth’s surface, as do adults. Humans would never have existed without trees to burn for heat, and later for cooking. People learned how to make tree firewood burn hotter and last longer by creating what is called charcoal, which is not really the rock coal, but is blackened tree wood. Much of the world, including Haiti, still rely totally on charcoal for both heat and cooking, and suffer great poverty because of the shortage of energy. So I’m not talking about cavemen from millions of years ago here. People cannot live without fuel for heat and cooking. Here is another example. If you read about the American Revolutionary War, you will read that soldiers from both sides, Americans and British, froze in huge numbers during the war because of shortage of wood. Sentries froze at their posts, often every half an hour, due to the lack of firewood for heat. Energy is not an “option” and to consider natural resources to be something that should be left in the ground and not used because of some strange new age belief that humans are “unworthy” and somehow “resource exploiters” is outrageous.

Coal and oil are the result of hundreds of millions of years of vegetation, and animal life, that lived the natural course of their lives, died, and became a part of the earth. But instead of decomposing into the soil, they decomposed and were pressed by the weight of the earth into coal and into oil. If you look at coal you can often see fossils of those very plants and trees. Think of coal as super firewood and super duper charcoal, and oil as the liquid forms. Coal is a “rock” that is formed from plants, trees and organic material such as animals; while oil is the liquid form (hence the joke that oil is from dinosaurs). Oil is often found mingled in a layered rock called shale, and this is called “oil shale.” I’m really oversimplifying the science but this is a history lesson, not a science textbook. The discovery of coal by early modern humans was revolutionary, allowing even the poor to be reliably warmed and have access to cooking. Yes, coal was first mined for individual basis of heating. When I was a child playing in my back yard, I’d often find small pieces of coal scattered in the garden. My mother explained that not that long ago people had coal delivered to their homes and farms and that was what they burned for heat and for cooking, and they would dump the burned coal in their backyards, which was what I was finding.

Half of the energy generated in the United States today comes from coal, and we have the largest supply of coal reserves in the world. We are blessed in that regard, not cursed, obviously. Yet you’d never know that the way certain liberals and I don’t know how else to describe them but “moderns” have demonized coal, rather than thanking God for the richness of this land. People try to rationalize their irrational thoughts and feelings about coal and other forms of energy as being “dirty.” OK, let’s think about this. Liberals tend to be in charge of the media, such as Hollywood entertainment. We see endless films about “superheroes” who have heroic “powers,” who fly spaceships in the future, and fight for good against aliens or whatever. Yet, humans are considered by liberals as being too stupid to learn how to mine coal more safely, with less environmental damage, and more cleanly. We are supposed to develop ESP and super hero powers, flying all around the universe with our great wisdom, yet be too dumb ass stupid to figure out how to properly use the God given blessing of coal, despite the fact we have already demonstrated great improvements in the coal industry, with even better plans on the table.

The same thing is true about nuclear power where the USA has made a near fatal decision to not build nuclear power plants, or update the existing ones, for the past several decades. Humans with their “great wisdom” are supposed to find “cures for cancer and HIV/AIDS,” fly around the solar system as great astronauts “looking for life on Mars,” develop “ESP and super powers” (especially when ridding one’s self of “thetans” ha ha ha) and so forth, all while looking like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, yet humans are too damn stupid to figure out with better technology how to keep nuclear plants safe and dispose of the waste. Americans have swallowed that insult despite the fact that France supplies most of their energy through nuclear power plants (and Jerry Lewis did not design them). The very liberals who convince every child to want to be a “rapper,” a “ho,” a “superhero,” or a “mutant ninja turtle,” (to say nothing of being an “American Idol”), so that now eighty percent of kids want to grow up to be “famous,” don’t think that Americans are smart enough to figure out how to use nuclear energy safely, cleanly and cheaply. (It would have been cheap if Americans had not aborted that industry several decades ago, now the start up again costs all of us much more than it should have).

Who are the real idiots?

So Obama is “against” nuclear power plants. Obama is “against” coal and, in his own words, would tax any new coal power plants into bankruptcy and closing because *boo hoo hoo* “It emits that CARBON.”

Miners, and those of you who pay such high prices for fuel commuting to work, trying to raise your family, or make a living, any of you who vote for Obama when he has a cartoon character’s intelligence about energy and policy, you are at the very least seriously deluded, and at worse not so smart. I cannot believe that the Union endorsed Obama in May of this year. HOW DUMB IS THAT?

Let me close this posting with addressing what I mentioned up front, which is that the way to prosperity is through wise use of natural resources. This goes back to the root of the financial crisis of capitalism, where too many people tried to make too much money doing fake things in fake jobs. A country grows in prosperity when it creates real value out of the ground, rather than passing around imaginary dollars doing imaginary jobs. That is why no country remains prosperous once it loses its manufacturing base. There are two types of jobs, those that build something and those that serve something. In the 1970’s many wise people (myself included) worried that manufacturing (including agriculture) jobs were disappearing and being replaced with “service” jobs (entertainment, food, hospitality). When one is a farmer or manufacturer one is taking something with nominal value (the dirt, a mine, a piece of wood) and “finding” money in it by spending time making it usable by others. A service job, however, leaves nothing lasting, since it is doing something, not creating something. A country cannot ever be prosperous, or even survive, when all they have is service jobs. This is why China is on top now, because they gladly accepted all the agricultural and manufacturing jobs that were exiled and driven out of the United States. They will rise and be stable and prosperous because they will never allow themselves to be fooled into having only “service jobs,” as the United States did, of its own doing. I have worried and clucked over the shuttered farms and factories in this country for the past thirty years, and all people have cared about is who I loved (simple answer now, which is no one, I've loved no one at all for a long time now) and who I might have been in some mythical and demented belief in “past lives.” Well, welcome to your one and only real life. Rather than listening to me you are voting for someone who wants to speed up the decay and demise of this country since he doesn’t even understand the most basic lessons (such as above) about how economies work, and how humanity survives. I totally despair of how the demented dummies have taken charge (in both parties, since both Democrats and Republicans are infected with depressive new age delusions and total lack of understanding how to use faith and reasoning to make good life affirming decisions).

NJ /developer evaluate energy windmills in ocean

I'm inclined to think they should not do it.

Why is USA pressuring Saudi oil production?

The USA has had thirty years to develop nuclear power and abandoned it due to liberal pressure and conservative weakness. The USA has oil resources but shrill voices on both sides are unable to find agreement on reasonable and environmentally clean increase in drilling. The USA has abundant coal but seems unable to commit to understanding what percentage of our energy should come from clean and safe processing of coal. Hydrogen and water, of course, have always been essentially "free" yet research in those areas are very late in starting. And of course elitist environmentalists view "green technology" as first and foremost the way to limit freedoms of other people and to line their own pockets with "green" and I don't mean vegetation. The USA has a lot of nerve to pressure Saudi to increase production of the ONE treasure that they have from God, which they must steward for their own people's needs into the future and not to enable the USA who has an abundance of resources and yet is so ungrateful to God and so handicapped in their ability to be wise stewards.