DISCERN HOW TO LEARN 26 JAN 2014

DISCERN HOW TO LEARN: intellectual investigation vs. speculation. There is a time for every purpose, a time to keep & a time to cast away, a time to build & a time to break down. Truth & facts function as scaffolding upon which to build systems of thought. Info is like a map to take us from pt. A to pt. B. If it proves true, you keep it, until the info (map) proves obsolete. To throw away est. fundamentals, or worse yet, never to learn the fundamentals, is like burning a useable house down without any replacement plans nor the knowledge on how to build a house. Yet, time & time again, I see people reject all history, all science, all established Biblical doctrine without any knowledge of the fundamentals nor proper replacements. They replace these est. bodies of knowledge w/ their own speculation.

Once, when asked to teach a public high school history class, I scouted ahead of time to see the class dynamics on a day prior to my teaching date. Their teacher had told the students that their Amer. history book was poor (which it wasn’t), so the class never looked at it. High school history class consisted of students sitting around & BSing on some past issue which they knew nothing about…it was truly the blind leading the blind. This period of speculation was called learning history.

Students (incl. ones I taught) parrot the phrase “history is all lies”. Some Christians have said, “Science is all lies.” I say, ignorance does not equal intelligence. Let’s not disregard verifiable facts & discoveries in favor of speculation. Our thoughts should conform to reality, rather than using imaginative thoughts to conform “reality” to our own thinking. Faith is not the opposite of science, for instance, the ancient writer of PS 8:3 observed nature, “When I consider thy heavens…the moon & the stars…” Yahshua often used nature to teach lessons, for instance in MT chapters 4, 6, & 13 and MK 13. Once we learn what the textbooks says, we have a framework, a base, from which we can discern discrepancies. I’ll give 2 examples. Say we learn Kepler’s law that explains how the planets slow down as distance from the sun increases. Now we try to apply that to any galaxy observed, & we discover Kepler’s law fails 100% of the time, it doesn’t match the flat rotation curves (graphs of speeds) observed, the distant outside stars are not slowing down. Say we learn from standard history that the Amer. revolutionists were against the Br. East India Co., for instance throwing their tea into Boston harbor. Then we observe the anomaly that they adopted the BEIC’s flag as the American flag. To comprehend these two anomalies one needs an understanding of Kepler’s law, galaxies, the British East India Co., the American Revolution, etc. If one has no concept of these things, one lacks the intellectual power to understand how the model taught is defective.

Speculation provides no safety, no protective guardrail or palisade, but allows spirits of deception to control & confuse a person. Many people who have little concept of the Bible or Christ’s teachings are vocal about rejecting it all entirely. Ignorant of real history, they are afraid to re-affirm the old time faith because it seems to be the cause of our modern problems & a spiritual dead end. The truth be known, the old spiritual truths were lost before all this modern confusion.

Recently, an article was sent to me on theoretical time travel using a wormhole. The writer concluded, “As with all speculative science stories, it’s important to keep things in perspective. This finding would have far-reaching & serious consequences for Internet encryption & quantum computers, among other things — assuming these wormholes really do exist. But, equally valid, the fact that this theoretical construction appears to violate known physical laws also suggests that, alas, maybe the particular wormholes in the study just don’t exist.” What I enjoy about this, is that the author is separating speculation from proven facts, & is willing to discuss issues based on an understanding of the issues. The next informed person may disagree, but at least the discussion is based on informed viewpoints.

Although I will grant you, speculation is exciting. In my early teens, I was fascinated by Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone, later replaced by The Outer Limits. Both had numerous speculative shows on time travel. In my early school yrs., H.G. Well’s The Time Machine caught my fancy. When I saw how his books were so prophetic, it made me wonder whether Time Machines are not a possibility. Indeed, Dr. Ronald Mallett (like Back to the Future’s Doc Brown) invented a time machine (called LOTART) which he got a provisional patent for in Aug. 2003. The machine creates a time loop (in contrast to the straight line of past-present-future that we experience) by using a circular beam of laser light. Physics has discovered nature’s “time machines”, which may or may not be useable for time travel, which incl.: Einstein’s work showing how time slows as mass speeds up allowing for travel to the future, Gott’s Cosmic Strings when they pass each other, Thorne’s wormholes w/in our universe, Kurt Goedel’s closed time loops in a rotating universe, and then of course black holes. While black holes have such strong gravity that they keep their light inside, binary stars, one normal & one black have shown us visually where the black hole is as it sucks its partner’s light into itself. I have several books written by those who claim time travel, as well as Andy B. who lives near here was a speaker at the Free Your Mind Conference last year where I spoke. Movies like the Philadelphia experiment get one thinking. Having discernment about time travel is the kind of subject for which we need to have an education in physics & the relevant theories & details.

Intellectual investigation is rewarding, & this post is written to encourage people to use solid info rather than running wild with speculation, lest one get misled by Spirits of deception.