WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT CHRISTIANITY?

“WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT CHRISTIANITY”

10 years ago Dinesh D’souza wrote “WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT CHRISTIANITY”. In it Dinesh D’souza writes that religion is on the upswing all around the world. He reminds us that Christianity is still the fastest growing religion with Islam second and that secularism is losing the battle. To us in the West that doesn’t seem right or true but Dinesh proves it out with statistics. Christianity is losing ground in the US and Europe but gaining in all the rest of the world. China and India have the fastest growing Christian populations for example.

It's a good read.

http://www.thedivineconspiracy.org/Z5253P.pdf

Why is this so? How can un-provable beliefs in the likes of miracles and impossible events be winning over secularism and plain old facts?  Being a "Just the Facts Mam" guy I was curious.

Dinesh writes {The Reverend Randy Alcorn, founder of Eternal Perspective Ministries in Oregon, sometimes presents his audiences with two creation stories and asks them whether it matters which one is true. In the secular account, "You are the descendant of a tiny cell of primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach three and a half billion years ago. You are the blind and arbitrary product of time, chance, and natural forces. You are a mere grab-bag of atomic particles, a conglomeration of genetic substance. You exist on a tiny planet in a minute solar system in an empty corner of a meaningless universe. You are a purely biological entity, different only in degree but not in kind from a microbe, virus, or amoeba. You have no essence beyond your body, and at death you will cease to exist entirely. In short, you came from nothing and are going nowhere?' In the Christian view, by contrast, "You are the special creation of a good and all powerful God. You are created in His image, with capacities to think, feel, and worship that set you above all other life forms. You differ from the animals not simply in degree but in kind. Not only is your kind unique, but you are unique among your kind. Your Creator loves you so much and so intensely desires your companionship and affection that He has a perfect plan for your life. In addition, God gave the life of His only son that you might spend eternity with Him. If you are willing to accept the gift of salvation, you can become a child of God:' Now imagine two groups of people—let's call them the secular tribe and the religious tribe—who subscribe to these two worldviews. Which of the two tribes is more likely to survive, prosper, and multiply? The religious tribe is made up of people who have an animating sense of purpose. The secular tribe is made up of people who are not sure why they exist at all. The religious tribe is composed of individuals who view their every thought and action as consequential. The secular tribe is made up of matter that cannot explain why it is able to think at all.}

The religious tribe’s “animating sense of purpose” is the key I feel to religion winning out over secularism. Science’s ignoble facts and reasoning provide us with all sorts and kinds of life improving luxuries and comforts. Nothing is wrong with that. But what is the why?

Religion is the why.  It provides the rhyme to the reason. Religion makes sense of reasoning - gives it a rhyme. Facts are one thing. Reasoning is another but the rhyme which makes sense of the reasoning is hope in something beyond oneself – religion – or the “animating sense of purpose”. As I would argue at AA meetings, our ability to reason and free will are the God given tools we have but it is how we use them that will determine how we go through life.

Arthur Brooke of American Enterprise Institute in defining the basis of what makes capitalism work came up with the term “earned success”. 

He stated in his book, “The Battle”, “Knowing as we do that earning success is the key to happiness,...” we should as a society enable it. Please note that he talks of earning success. Not success given to you or money for that matter. 

It is my idea that this act of earning is what triggers the mechanism in the brain which makes us feel happiness and it is that definition of “Happiness” that the founders thought of, as in the “Pursuit of Happiness”.

http://www.aei.org/publication/the-secret-to-human-happiness-is-earned-success/

Brooks went on to say this. “To truly flourish, we need to know that the ways in which we occupy our waking hours are not based on the mere pursuit of pleasure or money or any other superficial goal. We need to know that our endeavors have a deeper purpose.”

So now I’ve talked about the human desires for an “animating sense of purpose” and lastly to a “deeper purpose”; why are these important to us?

I read an article recently about how religious or spiritual thoughts cause the brain to release endorphins stimulating the brain into a sense of well-being and pleasure. The article compared this religious endorphin release to thoughts about sex, drugs, and thoughts of peace and love etc. all of which release these endorphins.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/sex-drugs-ancient-scrolls-scientists-9356777?service=responsive

The article equated the good religious expressions with the bad – with a Lutheran woman reading the bible in Minnesota to an ISIS member contemplating violence. This endorphin secretion is again the tool, how we use it – for hope or self-destruction – is our own choice. The point is that the very thing – this thought of hope – while on the face of it may not be sensible or factual is the very thing that allows people to overcome insurmountable obstacles and perhaps the key to man progressing though history. Ironically the key to what makes Darwinism possible is religious fervor.



Regards, Bob Carr
Live Dangerously, Tell the Truth
glhotdogs513@gmail.com
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Earned Success

What Will Make America Greater?

Earned Success
Arthur C. Brooks has been talking about “Earned Success” as being the magic ingredient for a long time now. So what is it? What makes “Earned Success” the magic elixir for curing America’s ills?

How did the caveman earn success and hence feel good about the world? Probably by beating an animal to death and thus feeding himself and family. Probably after learning about fire and cooking over it he felt amazingly secure and successful warming his toes over the fire after a delicious Tyrannosaurus Rex Burger. He probably won the Daddy of the Week award.

Zoom forward a couple millennia and we see money is now the tool we use to beat to death our food and what not: and the chasing down and the killing of it is the free enterprise system. That is how we now measure our success. That is how we win the Daddy of the Week award.

In our civilized world we use money as the measuring tool for our survival and greatness. It is what gives an individual the chance to test his strength in the struggle for success against others without the blood and gore. But the struggle and competition remain and it is my stipulation that it is the struggle that matters. It matters more than the measuring stick, be it money a gun or a club.

People that say we can just give someone money and food and clothes and education and cell phones and anything else we think necessary and then expect that person to be happy is badly mistaken as we have seen in the last 40 years. You see it at Christmas with a 5 year old who is happy with 1 or 2 presents but gets bored after 10. If a person had to earn those things as a measure of his/her success then that is something they value and will protect.

 I still value the little hand made from scratch balsa wood bi-plane my father helped me make. I remember the smell of the paint to this day and I have that plane on my dresser. It took a long time to make and it was one of the few times I shared with my Dad and in a way I feel I earned his respect for finishing that little plane. That is how I earned success at 7 and writing about it at 67 is how I earn it today. Both have nothing to do with money. Oh well.

Anybody at any age can find and succeed at something.

Again as I keep bringing up there is the idea here of a connection to reality that is deeply felt when you lay your hands on something and build it. That connection goes to the deepness of the feeling of earned success.

Sitzfleisch

Sitzfleisch in German means the ability to sit and think a problem all the way through. Since few do that anymore the meaning has morphed into a negative meaning of being able to sit through for a long time a boring lecture or of getting “the ticket” because you were able to wait in line for twelve hours. You could say some Trump supporters had “Sitzfleisch” the ones waiting for hours to get into the Trump rallies.

Along those lines. One good way to bettering America is for those who once could think, to start that old habit up again and for those who have never been taught, shame on the education system and their parents for not demanding they be taught how to. Time to get the education system back to that basic - post haste. Time to teach children and everyone else not what to think but how to think.

When talking of genius Michio Kaku defined it as “The force of will to make all the mistakes necessary to get the right answer.” Later he said: “What matters is you keep your eyes on the prize.” From the movie/documentary Einstein. That implies sitting and thinking problems through (sitzfleisch) then doing something constructive about your conclusions.

Not many people today are willing to sacrifice all the luxury things that take our minds off our problems in order to solve our problems, hence back to Kaku’s idea of our force of will to make all the mistakes to get the right answer” and to “keep your eyes on the prize”.

The problem today is the lack of necessity for sitting and thinking a problem through and getting up and out and earning your success. Today that is all taken care of for you by the government.

All except the “earned” part of success.

It is that selfish pride in earning their success individually that selflessly drives society on to greater things, together they are what made America great. Putting the emphasis back on individuals and creating opportunities for them to earn success will help them make America Greater.

Hope + Hawking

It seems our individual responsibility to find that “something” we can do and do it - earning our success. I’ve found that there is always something that needs doing and by the doing I find others things to do and soon I find something I really like doing and seem good at and by doing that I earn the happiness I measure my success by.

It is the government’s job to help us in this our struggle by keeping the rules of the game the same for everyone when possible but to get out of our way as we try. It is our job to demand that right.

With the last election I've felt that joy of earned success.

Regards, Bob Carr
Live Dangerously, Tell the Truth
glhotdogs513@gmail.com
231-728-3455