God, Aliens, and Other Stuff

  Hypothetical union attorney Joe Blough mesmerizes the office with his rhetoric. Image by author using ChatGPT Let’s set up a modern hypothetical You open the newspaper or navigate to your favorite digital news source and see this headline: “Joe Blough of the Truth and Patriotism Party Alleges His Opponent Has Committed Fraud.” But Joe presents no actual evidence. You and all the readers know that Joe himself has been indicted twice for fraud, but it never stuck. Joe is charming and popular, the chief attorney for a large union. Despite rumors of moral lapses, Joe has spread a lot of money around his city. He has made powerful enemies, but even more friends. In fact, he has been nominated by the TPP governor of his state to be a federal judge. A lot of people lower in the economic stratum have followed Joe’s career, because some have been shafted by him, including you. You know what he’s really like, but the average citizens of your city, county, and state don’t follow the...

Kim Clement often preached and prophesied from behind a piano. He had a slick, seductive style. Image from the Christian Post. This is an update of an update, a repeat of a former post about Kim Clement, a revered so-called prophet of the New Apostolic Reformation, a pro-Trump, RW, dominionist religious movement. This post is really about false prophets in general, because Clement’s error has been repeated by a large cabal of networking “prophets” with untold thousands of followers, all praising Donald Trump to the heavens as a David and a “man after God’s heart.” I invite you to read what Clement said about Trump and compare that to my remarks reflecting actual historical facts, which will be in brackets.  I’m writing today from a much later historical perspective, which only serves to strengthen my point. The more time goes by, the deeper we get into the years of Trump governance, the more ridiculous Clement's prophecy becomes. By the way, I occasionally have prophetic dreams...

The connection between Genesis 1―4 and Skinwalker Ranch   Image by author using ChatGPT This is a connect-the-dots article. If you had asked me 20 years ago why there was suffering in the world, I’d have answered that it’s because we live in a fallen world. Meaning, Adam and Eve “fell,” or sinned, so death reigned from Adam to Moses, not just in human souls, but in all of nature; but God gave us a means of atonement through the Law. Meanwhile, we are all born with the stain of original sin, and we need the waters of baptism or the forgiveness of Jesus to cleanse sin away. Catholics and Protestants alike dub this Original Sin. All humanity is born with it. Dot number one, the Genesis serpent “Every source has a purpose,’ writes Lauren McCormick for Bible History Daily . “A document created by a government, ruler, or institution is not simply a neutral record of everything that happened. It reflects the concerns and priorities of the people who produced it. So the impor...

Image by author using ChatGPT I’ve lived in some fabulous places in my 81 years. I grew up in Los Altos in a house built in 1950 in the burgeoning San Francisco Bay Area. We moved in before the landscaping was finished when I was 5. Our street was short with two courts, yet there were lots kids to play with. For a few years, there were orchards on either side of our street, but of course, that didn’t last. You can Google it. 283 Sunkist Lane, Los Altos, CA, listed by Redfin at almost $6M. Yes, that’s an M. Million. What kind of people live on that street now? For a few years after college, I lived in Lexington, Kentucky, working for the Kentucky Geological Survey on the UK campus. I loved the many racehorse farms, the green, open fields and pastures, and the curvy, two-lane roads lined with stone fences and wild lilies. A gentle mist blanketed the grass in the morning. After Kentucky, I got a job as a geologic draftsperson for the California Division of Mines, working in the Ferry ...

Medium editor Brian Rosta proposed a writer’s challenge for the publication The Second Half (of our lives) ― “What I Wish I Had Known at Forty.” My answer to that is a montage of three occasions when I got great advice or insight in the first half of my life that carried me through the second half. I describe three different phases of my development, where I received illumination that has persisted through the years. All Bible quotations are NIV, copied from biblegateway.com. Number one. A dad’s important lesson Image by author using ChatGPT I was four or five years old around 1949 or 1950. My father was an airline pilot, so he was away a lot, and I guess he wanted a little father-daughter time, so he took me with him to downtown Los Altos, California. We were just outside a store, waiting to go in, but had to step back to allow an elderly man being pushed in a wheelchair to pass out first. I blurted out, “Oh, no, a wheelchair,” and scowled appropriately. The man and his aide loo...