OK, so not everyone's a liar

 Even if everyone else is a liar, God is true.

-- Romans 3:4

Jesus saw Nathan'a-el coming to him, and said of him, "Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!" 

-- John 1:47

Limners of another kind

Poets are limners of another kind,

To copy out ideas in the mind;

Words are the paint by which their thoughts are shown,

And nature is their object to be drawn.

-- George Granville

The lighted fool

 

 

The queen, my lord, is dead.

MACBETH
She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. ...

Richard Bentley's "Big Crunch"

"There might arise some vertiginous motions or whirlpools in the matter of the chaos, whereby the atoms must be thrust and crowded to the middle of those whirlpools, and there constipate one another into great solid bodies."

-- Richard Bentley (1662-1742)

Scrutinous, like The Ancient of Days

 

  Age is froward, uneasy, scrutinous,
Hard to be pleas'd, and parsimonious.

-- John Denham

A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him . . . the judgment was set, and the books were opened.

-- Daniel 7:10

When you hand the religion beat to the libertarians

 

This stormy night

 Let them sleep, let them sleep on,

'Till this stormy night be gone,

And th' eternal morrow dawn;

Then the curtains will be drawn;

And they waken with that light,

Whose day shall never sleep in night.

-- Richard Crashaw

Paul in Romans 3: Let God be found true, though every man be found a liar

 This whole thing is priceless, but this is perhaps the most telling part:

Stephens-Davidowitz analyzed data from the General Society Survey which is one of the authoritative sources for information on the behavior of Americans. Extrapolating data from that survey, men said they use 1.6 billion condoms every year while women claimed to use 1.1 billion. If 2.7 billion condoms every year sounds like a big number that’s because it is. Unfortunately, the actual number of condoms sold is just 600 million per year.

The upshot is that people exaggerate a lot, and in large numbers ("Man, I have a lot of sex! Look at all these condoms I use! Yeah, I practice safe sex!"), which may help explain why the presidential race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is as close as it is.

The polls clearly demonstrated exaggerated support for Joe Biden and exaggerated distaste for Donald Trump, except for a couple of firms' product which showed a tight race in the final days of the campaign.

Rasmussen Reports, for example, in its daily poll conducted only in the last week before the election, found either Trump or Biden ahead nationally, flip-flopping from day to day but only to +1 or +2. The final Rasmussen poll had Biden +1, whereas the final national average of polls calculated by Real Clear Politics had Biden +7.2. 

The provisional outcome Biden +2.9 is more consistent with the narrower polling spread from the final week than with the final "lying" national average of Biden +7.2: Biden/Harris 50.6% (253 Electoral College) vs. Trump/Pence 47.7% (214 EC).

On the other hand, Biden's average predicted support of 51.2% was nearly dead on, overshooting by only 0.6 points. But Trump's predicted support of 44% undershot by 3.7 points (47.7%).

Exaggerated support for Biden was the lie which dominated the predicted polling spread, and exaggerated lack of support for Trump was the lie which dominated the predicted share of the vote.

So there were two "lies".

For whatever reasons it was more fashionable to express support for Biden than for Trump. That so-called "shy Trump supporter" phenomenon much talked about in the final days of the campaign appears to be confirmed and on display. More people appear to have lied when they said they supported Biden than when they said they supported Trump. A fair number of Americans who actually supported Trump may have lied and said they supported Biden.

Or . . . 

maybe it wasn't exactly a lie and they just changed their minds.

Or maybe they just didn't vote. I mean, c'mon, in Michigan there was a huge turnout but nearly 2 million people who still could have voted didn't. What about that? Could be a lot of Biden supporters not voting in the end, right?

Or maybe the pollsters tampered with the polling and lied about it to promote Biden! A lot of these polls are in fact overweighted AWFL anyway (affluent, white, female, liberal), so arguably some of them overstate support for Biden. 

Or maybe someone is tampering with the voting results and the results saying Biden won by +2.9 are a lie! Maybe Biden really did win by more.

Or maybe he actually lost! What about that?! Software glitches. Ballots in ditches. Military ballots in dumpsters. Antifa faggots beating up Trumpsters.

How will we ever know for certain?!

I don't think we will. Somebody's lying about something, and only God knows who, what, when, where and why.

At least I hope so. And I do mean that. I honestly do.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Because the Bible tells me so.

If they say the moon is blue . . .

O church men are wily foxes 

More crafty than jugglers' boxes . . .

If they say the moon is blue 

We must believe that it is true 

Admitting their interpretation. 

-- William Roy, Jerome Barlow, Rede Me and be Nott Wrothe, for I Saye No Thinge But Trothe, 1528

It's so typical of Christian enthusiasts to focus on John and accept it at the expense of the Synoptics

This writer is clearly an enthusiast who gets messages from God, and is especially enthusiastic for the "eternal life" idea as found in John 3: 

'... in the New Testament, eternal life is THE dominant concept and central to the “earthly” ministry and divinity of Jesus Christ'.

In John, eternal life is a matter of belief in Jesus (John 3:15f.).

In the Synoptics, however, about which the writer says nothing, eternal life is a matter of keeping the commandments, divestiture of possessions with distribution to the poor, and following Jesus (Matthew 19:16ff; Mark 10:17ff; Luke 18:18ff; also Luke 10:25ff. where showing mercy to a mugged foreigner is showcased. Luke is, after all, a gospel in transition from Jewish gospel to universal gospel).

Obviously the Synoptic teaching presupposes discipleship in the eschatological setting of the historical Jesus with all its urgency, which by the time of John has all but disappeared. It attracted few, because it was so hard.

The way of belief was easier, and came to attract many.

Which version is "central to the 'earthly' ministry"?

I think that's obvious, but not to an enthusiast. 

LOL, Redding California's Bethel Supernatural School of Ministry experienced a shortfall in enrollments of ~1,000 due to Wuhan virus pandemic restrictions

 "Virus restrictions reduced our school by about a thousand students", said Chris Vallotton in a video attached to the story, here, about Beni Johnson calling face masks "freaking stupid".

Yeah, it was the restrictions, not the virus.

That's the ticket.

 

"Since early September, 274 coronavirus cases have been confirmed at the Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry."

Gee, no supernatural healers were available with enough skills at Ground Zero for Christian supernaturalism to stop the virus dead in its tracks.

What. A. Shock.

Anti-Christian Pope Francis rebuked by fellow Catholics for his same sex civil unions recommendations recently made public

Catholic leaders condemn Pope Francis’ endorsement of same-sex unions   :

Cardinal Raymond Burke, a frequent critic of Francis, said the pope’s comments should be “rightly interpreted as simple private opinions of the person who made them.” “Such declarations generate great bewilderment and cause confusion and error among Catholic faithful,” Burke, a member of the Vatican’s highest court, said in a statement Thursday on his website. He added that Francis’ views were contrary to Catholic teachings.

Bishop Thomas Tobin, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, also agreed with Burke that the pope’s statement “clearly contradicts what has been the long-standing teaching of the Church about same-sex unions.” “The Church cannot support the acceptance of objectively immoral relationships,” Tobin said in a statement. “Individuals with same-sex attraction are beloved children of God and must have their personal human rights and civil rights recognized and protected by law. However, the legalization of their civil unions, which seek to simulate holy matrimony, is not admissible.”

Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler, Texas, went even further, calling the pope’s gay support “confusing and very dangerous,” according to the National Catholic Reporter.

If you're looking for happiness from politics, you're looking in the wrong place

How small, of all that human hearts endure,

That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.

Still to ourselves in every place consign'd,

Our own felicity we make or find:

With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,

Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.

The poetry is Oliver Goldsmith's, but Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) wrote it.

Rod Dreher, author of Live Not By Lies, thanks Van Halen for the memories

 

Fortune has an inclination to be ill to the ill

Then let the greedy merchant fear 

For his ill-gotten gain;

And pray to gods that will not hear,

While the debating winds and billows bear

His wealth into the main.

-- John Dryden, The Twenty-ninth Ode of the Third Book of Horace, Englished

Care not for any man

It is folly to seek the approbation of any being, besides the supreme; because no other being can make a right judgment of us, and because we can procure no considerable advantage from the approbation of any other being.

-- Joseph Addison

Yes, the New Testament is full of ideas torn from their eschatological milieu and misused by utopians, communists and other ideologues

But academically rigorous this is not.

Wisconsin priest says Catholics can't be Democrats, rips into Father James Martin SJ, says 60m aborted stand at gates of heaven barring their entry

Father James Altman, here:

“Here is a memo to clueless baptized Catholics out there: You cannot be Catholic and be a Democrat. Period,” Altman said in the video posted Aug. 30. “The party platform absolutely is against everything the Catholic Church teaches, so just quit pretending that you’re Catholic and vote Democrat. Repent of your support of that party and its platform or face the fires of hell.”

A million dollars won't make any difference to your $1 Labor Day hamburger, except that it might buy you new teeth with which to eat a $10 steak instead

 

 

 

 

Suffice it then, thou money god, quoth he

That all thine idle offers I refuse;

All that I need I have: what needeth me

To covet more than I have cause to use?

-- Edmund Spenser

Though diseased, yet shall you live

Though every human constitution is morbid, yet are there diseases consistent with the common functions of life.

-- John Arbuthnot (1667-1735)