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DEFENDING CHRISTMAS

A comprehensive look at everything right about this day.

A comprehensive look at everything right about this day. Merry Christmas to all! Members support this show and all of our others. Thank you.

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21 replies on “DEFENDING CHRISTMAS”

In exodus 28:34 you will notice a very peculiar object spoken of in detail. They are little bells that Aaron, the high priest, is told to weave on his garment. They are supposed to make noise so that the spirit of God that rests over the tabernacle will not kill him when he enters. The bells are played also to this day in every Catholic mass during the consecration of the host, when the spirit is called down to transubstantiate the accidental. So. Isn’t it also very fitting to ring bells on the day in which we prepare ourselves for the son of God to enter into our world as one of us?

Merry Christmas, Bill.

Reference big bang timing: The Big Bang: the birth of our universe, by Paul Parsons, BBC Worldwide, Ltd., 2001, claims the physicists now track the time back to 10^-43rd seconds (one ten-million million million million million million millionth of a second) after the Big Bang “event”. Three other sub-micro second events are also noted.
“Space and time exist as hazy entities, ruled by the laws of quantum physics (probabilistic perspective). The forces of gravity, strong and weak nuclear forces, and electromagnetism exist as a single unified superforce. First phase transition: gravity breaks away from the superforce to become a distinct entity and space and time thus become well defined.”

With schools, politicians, msm and social media, the story and history of this unique American experiment has been tragically altered into something it is not. We are incredibly blessed and fortunate to have been born into a country that was based on it’s people having the power over the government to determine our fortunes. It has, however become more and more the opposite, slowly sliding towards a small group of bureaucrats, and a growing number of citizens, and even non citizens, who vote for their taxpayer handouts. Even the last vestige of defense against such, our right to vote and legal recourse, has been compromised. We must fight this effort to undo what so many have sacrificed to establish and maintain, and that is personal liberty and self determination. If we would simply vote in large numbers, instead of sitting on our ass, we could overcome the fraud, and those who think a all powerful, centralized government is a good idea. Those of you who skip voting and think others will do it for you, you are wrong. Every election, be it local or federal level, you need to vote! You are not being asked to lay down your life for the cause, that has been, and continues to be done by others. How hard is it to put down the remote, turn off the tv and go vote! Freedom is not free, every election has huge numbers of people who fail to vote, and this includes Rebublicans and “Christains” What is your excuse? There is none, and the lazyness angers and sickens me.

PLEASE turn up your volume control! Towards the end of this video I had to hold the speaker up to my ear to hear you, with the volume turned all the way up!

First off, I hope you had a fantastic Christmas. I agree entirely about the importance and greatness of the American version of the holiday (except, of course, for the religious stuff because, well, you know, it’s me, lol).

“Too much of modern physics is a black box with a drawing on the side of a guess as to what is supposed to be going on inside.” – Eddie Galtek

Just some technical notes on the physics:

  1. No actual physicist claims that an intelligent observer, or even a conscious one, is necessary for “observation” to change the outcome of a quantum event. All that is being described are certain kinds of quantum interactions where it’s convenient to use the term “observer” to make the physics less technical, therefore more easily presentable to non-physicists.
  2. Just because it’s not possible given the current state of theory to determine the exact state of the universe prior to the “bang,” it’s certainly possible that new discoveries, new ideas, or both will necessitate new theories that do explain that state. “We don’t know, therefore God,” i.e. the God of the Gaps, has never been a valid argument.
  3. I don’t think you used it in the video, but “big bang” is a common but flawed term for what happened. Better would be “sudden expansion.” Also, though you don’t mention this in the video either, it’s incorrect though, again, common to say that the universe sprang into existence from nothing. It was all there, just in, as far as we have been able to determine to date, a nearly infinitely compressed state. How that state suddenly expanded and, perhaps more importantly, how that state came to be (i.e. what happened before the universe became compressed and then expanded) is something we don’t yet know. But it’s not unknowable.
  4. Remember, we’re less than 150 years, against the backdrop of tens of thousands of years of human civilization, from even knowing that subatomic particles and their even smaller components exist. There’s still time. 🙂

I am probably in sync with your views on religion (and physics), but I must admit that after reading Larry Siedentop’s book Inventing the Individual: The Origins of Western Liberalism [2014; 2017], it appears that the ideas associated with early Christianity (including man as made in God’s image) are almost unique to our Western Civilization and did form the basis for our concepts around political rights and individual human liberty. These early ideas were matured through the work of Medieval legal scholars on into the Scottish/ English/ American Enlightenment (Locke, Madison, et al.). The undergirding impact of Christianity on our world today is further emphasized by Tom Holland in Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World [2019].

On the other hand, I am also still waiting for some qualified biblical scholar and/or historian of first century Rome to constructively critique the hypothesis made by Joseph Atwill in Caesars’s Messiah: The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus: Flavian Signature Edition [2011] that the Gospels are/were a hoax perpetrated by Roman and Jewish aristocratic elites. Atwill supposedly has a follow up book addressing the Pauline letters, but I have not yet acquired or read that source.

Give a read to Creating Christ, How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity by James Valliant and Warren Fahy. They make a compelling case along those lines.

Those foundational ideas can be traced back at least as far as the ancient Greeks, particularly Aristotle and, to a lesser extent, Plato (who actually developed most of the ideas that led, over the centuries through Christian myaticism, medieval scholars, Kant, Marx, and others, to modern denial of the primacy of reality as well as communism – see The Parable of the Cave). There’s no doubt about the Greek influence on early Christianity. It’s been Plato vs Aristotle for thousands of years.

It was tough to have an original idea even then. 🙂

It dawned on me about halfway through that we in the Northern Hemisphere have a “slanted” viewpoint to the world, about 23 degrees as mentioned. For half the globe 21 December is their Summer Solstice! I have friends in NZ who would maybe take slight offense with our North-Centric view of things, although the ones I know personally would just laugh it off as it’s pretty much accepted worldwide since most of the world’s population is in the northern half of the globe. Majority rules, huh?! LOL!!

A wonderful Christmas message, Bill. Thank you.

And a Merry Christmas to not only you, Bill, but to all of you out there. Yes, I’m a day late, but not if you turn the clock back 200 years. Christmas used to be a season of celebration, beginning at midnight on December 25 (though decorating and preparation would begin the eve before,) and culminating on Epiphany/Twelfth Night/January 6. So maybe I’m not late after all!

Bill, I am delighted to hear the story of your encountering the Creator. Life is certainly much better with that awareness, isn’t it? Throughout the course of this election I have consistently told people that if I didn’t have faith that God is still God, I would have given up a long time ago. Blessings to you and yours. Remember, nothing is impossible for God.

Dear Bill.
I listened to today’s episode while preparing a veritable Christmas feast. You are one of a kind. I am constantly inspired by you and full of admiration on so many fronts – your moral courage, the way you articulate what I’m sure many of us are thinking, your decency, passion and your perseverance.
Merry Christmas to you and your lovely Natasha and thanks for the shout out today to those of us who aren’t Americans nor live in America but are standing shoulder-to-shoulder with you all the same in this fight for the retention of freedom and democracy. And Merry Christmas to Scott, Steve and all the other Bill Whittle members.
Best from north of the 49th parallel.
Jill

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