1 Chron 12:32 report, 49: Further thoughts on cultural suicide

There is an old saying, that "whom the gods would destroy, first they rob of rationality."

As we follow up from the last post, that thought comes to mind, especially on reflecting on for instance this July 27th Barnabas Fund discussion on the recent decisions and actions of the UK Government, which begins:

A shift has been taking place in government ministries as to the terminology used to describe the terrorist threat faced by Britain. The Foreign Office has advised ministers to abandon the use of terms such as “War against terror”, “Islamic terrorism” and “Islamist terrorism”. The idea is that these terms antagonise the British Muslim community and increase tensions with the wider Muslim world. Using military terminology is seen as counter productive, contributing to the isolating of communities from each other. According to proponents of this shift, such terms imply a conflict of religions and link Islam, the religion of peace, with terrorism and radicalism. The widespread use of such terms serves only to alienate and radicalise more Muslims who would otherwise be happy to integrate into a cohesive British society. Terrorists use the sense of crisis engendered by the discourse on a clash of civilisation and a war against Islamic terrorism to recruit supporters who feel that Islam is being attacked and that Muslims must defend themselves. Abandoning such terms, according to the Foreign Office, will avoid empowering the terrorist’s narrative and weaken the trend to radicalisation . . .

This resort to perspective two as noted last time, gets even more interesting when we observe the also cited opinion of the UK's Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Ken Macdonald:

London is not a battlefield. Those innocents who were murdered on July 7, 2005 were not victims of war. And the men who killed them were not, as in their vanity they claimed on their ludicrous videos, 'soldiers'. They were deluded, narcissistic inadequates. They were criminals. They were fantasists. We need to be very clear about this. On the streets of London, there is no such thing as a 'war on terror', just as there can be no such thing as a 'war on drugs' . . . The fight against terrorism on the streets of Britain is not a war. It is the prevention of crime, the enforcement of our laws and the winning of justice for those damaged by their infringement.

First, let us state the obvious, as a reality-check: Terrorism is a tactic and sometimes even a strategy used in a war, in which the side resorting to such atrocities feels itself unable to otherwise force the other side of the war into compliance with its demands. As Clausewitz said, war is a continuation of politics by other [i.e. physically violent] means.

It gets even worse:

In a [BBC-UK] Radio 4 “Start the Week” programme on 2 July 2007, the philosopher John Gray and the historian Eric Hobsbawm agreed that it was wrong, dangerous and unfair to use the term “Islamist” because it implied a strong link to Islam . . .

Now, let us recall: what did former Jihadist Hassan Butt have to say on the matter recently?

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network - a series of British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology - I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.

By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this "Blair's bombs" line did our propaganda work for us.

More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology . . . . though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim[s] across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice . . . . the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel . . . . Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion: they are considered to be one and the same.

For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).

Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world . . . . this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief.

In Dar ul-Harb, anything goes, including the treachery and cowardice of attacking civilians . . . . [sorry for the resort to many levels of emphasis, to help us see what is plainly so hard to see]

Plainly, the two views are utterly incompatible on the basic facts. The key question is: which is more credible, why?

The answer -- though painfully bitter and disquieting -- is actually not too hard to find. For instance, let us consider Bin Laden's declaration of war of 1998, which begins:

Praise be to Allah, who revealed the Book [i.e Quran], controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book: "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)" [i.e Q 9:5, the notorious sword verse]; and peace be upon our Prophet, Muhammad Bin-'Abdallah, who said: I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but Allah is worshipped, Allah who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders . . . [From the Hadiths]

Plainly, the Jihadists are -- and have long been -- acting in the declarative name of Islam, and they do so by appealing to foundational Islamic texts and patterns of history from the example and explicit teachings of Mohammed on, and towards an unmistakable agenda of global subjugation under an Islamist, theocratic state.

Just as Mr Butt summarised.

Thus, it is both appropriate to use the suffix, ISM, that implies that here Islam the religion is viewed by the Jihadists as grounding an ideology with a global agenda; and, to note that the Jihadists have a direct -- though perhaps debatable -- claim to being authentically rooted in the "plain" foundational teachings, examples and texts of the Islamic faith. [This is in sharp contrast to the teachings of Jesus and his disciples, who definitely saw a legitimate place for even a pagan state and kings, e.g. Tiberius and Nero, as God's servants to do us good by upholding justice, cf. Rom 13:1 - 10 and Jesus' remarks about rendering to God and to Caesar.]

Bin Laden et al then draw in the affront to the presumed honour of Allah, his warriors, his people and his law, which now motivates the renewal of the Jihad at this time:

The Arabian Peninsula has never -- since Allah made it flat, created its desert, and encircled it with seas -- been stormed by any forces like the crusader armies spreading in it like locusts, eating its riches and wiping out its plantations. All this is happening at a time in which nations are attacking Muslims like people fighting over a plate of food . . .

First, the Crusades (indefensible as they were, though it should be noted the earlier Jihads that provoked them were just as bad) ceased sometime between 1300 and 1600, depending on what one counts as a "Crusade." The United States came into existence in 1776, and ever since its first confrontations with Islamic states at the turn of the C19, has made it plain that it is not acting in the name of a Crusade. But of course, rhetorically, the allusion is powerful in the Islamic world, and it is also powerful in appealing to western guilt-feelings and third world resentment over the West's history of imperialism, oppression and slavery. [No similar repentance or regret over the Islamist history of imperialism, oppression and slavery is to be found in the document! In short, the root objection is not to conquest, imperialism etc, but to who is "winning" just now.]

Likewise, whatever one may wish to debate over the merits on the facts and issues of the situation in Iraq etc, it has never been a simplistic issue of "attacking Muslims." (Think about the intent and sad outcome of the Oil for Food programme (and its precursors dating to 1991), to make provision for the need of ordinary Iraqis, and the credible evidence of subversion of that programme by the Baathist regime and the further credible evidence of associated corruption of regulators and diplomats. Then, compare Mr Bin Laden's further claims.)

Let us therefore now compare the just above with Mr Butt's further report:

For decades, radicals have been exploiting the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern secular state - typically by starting debate with the question: "Are you British or Muslim?"

But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology.

They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex truth that Islam can be interpreted as condoning violence against the unbeliever - and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace and hope that all of this debate will go away.

This has left the territory open for radicals to claim as their own. I should know because, as a former extremist recruiter, I repeatedly came across those who had tried to raise these issues with mosque authorities only to be banned from their grounds.

Every time this happened it felt like a moral and religious victory for us because it served as a recruiting sergeant for extremism . . .

Where does he therefore place his hope for a shift?

. . . A handful of scholars from the Middle East have tried to put radicalism back in the box by saying that the rules of war devised so long ago by Islamic jurists were always conceived with the existence of an Islamic state in mind, a state which would supposedly regulate jihad in a responsible Islamic fashion.

In other words, individual Muslims don't have the authority to go around declaring global war in the name of Islam. [NB: We should ask -- But, is a declaration of jihad by plainly irresponsible, oppressive and reckless states as many we could name, any better . . . ?]

But there is a more fundamental reasoning that has struck me as a far more potent argument because it involves recognising the reality of the world: Muslims don't actually live in the bipolar world of the Middle Ages any more.

The fact is that Muslims in Britain are citizens of this country. We are no longer migrants in a Land of Unbelief . . . .

But more than that, on a historically unprecedented scale, Muslims in Britain have been allowed to assert their religious identity through clothing, the construction of mosques, the building of cemeteries and equal rights in law.

However, it isn't enough for responsible Muslims to say that, because they feel at home in Britain, they can simply ignore those passages of the Koran which instruct on killing unbelievers.

Because so many in the Muslim community refuse to challenge centuries-old theological arguments, the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern world grow larger every day.

I believe that the issue of terrorism can be easily demystified if Muslims and non-Muslims start openly to discuss the ideas that fuel terrorism.

Crucially, the Muslim community in Britain must slap itself awake from its state of denial and realise there is no shame in admitting the extremism within our families, communities and worldwide co-religionists.

If our country is going to take on radicals and violent extremists, Muslim scholars must go back to the books and come forward with a refashioned set of rules and a revised understanding of the rights and responsibilities of Muslims whose homes and souls are firmly planted in what I'd like to term the Land of Co-existence.

First, let us note that Mr Butt here acknowledges that it is "a handful of scholars" -- out of doubtless hundreds of thousands -- who are trying to resolve the theological issue of the link between classical Islam and violent Islamism we have seen above. That is itself sobering on what the real face-value message of the foundational texts and examples is, and it is very consistent with the noted fact of silence on the part of those who wish to indeed live at peace with their neighbours in the UK. So, we must wake up and face some plainly unwelcome, bitter facts.

But also, there is some hope: the obvious triumph of reformation and progress (e.g. through the rise of modern science), liberation and democracy over the sad history of the West going back to classical times, holds out hope that any civilisation that responds to the stirrings of conscience within in light of the force of the facts without, can find a road of reformation if it is willing. And so it comes back to the ever-present challenge of facing the bitter facts and determining to find a better way.

In short, we too must first face these bitter facts and demand that our Muslim neigbbours do the same with us, and police the extremists who use their faith as a rationale for violence, murder, terrorism and other forms of extremism.

Otherwise, they will be guilty of enabling behaviour for that extremism and will ultimately suffer the consequences if there comes a day on which we face an attempted doomsday, knockout strike [as we discussed last time] -- or even simply a sustained enough steady drip of atrocities that provokes a predictable determination to root out the problem once and for all.

Such an observation may not be fashionable or politically correct, but it is sadly, regrettably, credibly all too well anchored by the facts across 1400 years.

So, will we now wake up and face then do something constructive about the admittedly bitter facts, before it is too late? END
_________

UPDATE, July 30: Fixing some typos and some remarks and links on the transformation of the West, plus comments and a link to Wiki on the Iraq situation and the implications of the Oil for Food Programme.

1 Chron 12:32 Report, 48: Suicidal Decadence and Folly -- how Democracies die

Regular readers will know that, in recent weeks [and months], I have paid parallel blog visits to Dembski's Uncommon Descent, and to the Barbados Free Press [cf. esp. here and here].

As I ponder the visits and the outcomes, especially in the latter case -- I have been, without explanation, put on permanent moderation, i.e. one step short of an outright ban, in a context where a concerted series of one-sided, misleading and in some cases plainly slanderous accusations have been made against me -- and by direct extension, against Evangelicals. [E.g., cf. the notion that Evangelicals blindly support Israel in alleged "genocide" against Palestinian Arabs -- in a context where of course there is no organised mass murder but an actual population increase largely due to immigration form Jordan from 1967 - 1994, when the Palestinian Authority took over control of much of the Territories; cf. here, and especially here, which last discusses what actually happened at Durban on the literal eve of the 9/11 attacks, and which of course did not appear in our local news headlines.] (NB: On the pattern over the past week or so, several commenters had had enough of being repeatedly and even predictably on the short end of the material facts and their implications on the Middle East situation and on the issue of Islamism in the Caribbean, but were repeatedly unwilling to face the credible facts. Cf. here and here for some balancing remarks.)

On reflection on such saddening developments, I have been led back to Barbara Tuchman's thoughts in her classic The March of Folly: i.e. how powerful nations can kill themselves through folly and decadence; often in the teeth of sound counsel to the contrary. For, as the sad tale of Alcibiades and Athens plainly demonstrates, Democracies can die, and they usually do so through suicide by corruption of the power elites and decision-making process. By decadence and folly in short.

Nor is that suicidal combination a mere coincidence -- a point that connects the world of the First Century uncomfortably to our own:

RO 1:18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

RO 1:21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

RO 1:24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator--who is forever praised . . . .

RO 1:26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful [perverted] lusts . . . . RO 1:28 Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them . . .

Sadly, all that has changed in this list as we look at today's West [including here in our Caribbean home region] is the technology of the images -- now, largely electronic, print and film, and the sophistication of and rationale for the lying myths [cf. here, here and here] that distract us from the actual obviousness and reasonableness of seeing God and his handiwork in the cosmos, in life around us, in our minds, and in our consciences. [Cf here.]

Truly, we have no excuse!

Acts 27, the account of Paul's voyage to Rome, is aptly illustrative on how such spiritual folly makes the leap to unwise, through of course duly "democratic," community-level decision-making:

AC 27: 5b. . . we [in our first ship] landed at Myra in Lycia. 6 There the centurion found an Alexandrian ship sailing for Italy and put us on board. 7 We made slow headway for many daysWhen the wind did not allow us to hold our course, we sailed to the lee of Crete, opposite Salmone. 8 We moved along the coast with difficulty and came to a place called Fair Havens, near the town of Lasea.

AC 27:9 Much time had been lost, and sailing had already become dangerous because by now it was after the Fast. So Paul warned them, 10 "Men, I can see that our voyage is going to be disastrous and bring great loss to ship and cargo, and to our own lives also." 11 But the centurion, instead of listening to what Paul said, followed the advice of the pilot and of the owner of the ship. 12 Since the harbor was unsuitable to winter in, the majority decided that we should sail on, hoping to reach Phoenix and winter there. This was a harbor in Crete, facing both southwest and northwest. and had difficulty arriving off Cnidus.

Of course on setting out on this miniature march of duly democratic folly -- the voice of the technocrats and the moneyed classes had duly spoken, and the ill-informed majority heeded it instead of the counsels of prudence, inducing the Centurion to go with the majority -- they were hit by a wicked early winter storm, and ended up in shipwreck on the north coast of Malta, barely escaping with their lives because of the gracious intervention of God.

How telling is that "the majority decided," even as we now set out on deifying Democracy and associated debate and rhetoric-manipulated opinions!

(NB: Many of us -- given the sad failing of our education system on the basic but vital topic of Straight/Critical Thinking -- have yet to learn that, ever since Socrates, men have known that debate is that wicked art that makes the worse appear the better case, and that its practitioners are trained in how to argue with equal facility and persuasiveness for and against any given case. In that, they are aided and abetted by that devilishly en-darkening art, rhetoric: the art of persuasion, as opposed to proof. Worse, yet, too many of us seem to be unaware of what Aristotle warned us about in introducing his study of that two-edged art: our judgements when we are pleased and friendly are very different from those we make when we are pained and hostile. So, we should beware of any and all attempts to use distracting red herrings dragged across the track of facts and logic, to then lead us out to conveniently caricatured straw-men which are then burned to cloud and poison the air. Sadly, this particular hyped up, rage-stirring pattern is now unfortunately a routine tactic used by especially secularist progressivists/secular humanists and their fellow-travellers [e.g., the modernist theology-driven and neo-pagans], in public discussion in our region and across the wider Western culture.)

I have been further stimulated by reading a July 10th 2007 discussion by Herbert Meyer, who was Special Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence and Vice Chairman of the CIA's National Intelligence Council during the 1980's. The popular blog Powerline, notes on his depth of insight, through citing Steven Hayward, that "in 1983, when the Cold War was still regarded almost unamimously as a fixture in global affairs, Meyer predicted that the Soviet Union was in its final stages. He argued that the U.S. therefore should begin planning for a post-Soviet world."

With that sort of track-record, we should give careful attention indeed to his current analysis, which is entitled "The War About the War":

The 9-11 attacks did more than start a war; they started a war about the war. No sooner had the World Trade towers collapsed and the Pentagon burst into flames than two perceptions of the threat began competing for the public's support:

Perception One: We're at War

For the third time in history Islam - or, more precisely, its most radical element - has launched a war whose objective is the destruction of Western civilization. Our survival is at stake, and despite its imperfections we believe that Western civilization is worth defending to the death. Moreover, in the modern world - where a small number of people can so easily kill a large number of people - we cannot just play defense . . . So we must fight with everything we've got against the terrorist groups and against those governments on whose support they rely. If the Cold War was "World War III," this is World War IV. We must win it, at whatever cost.

Perception Two: We're Reaping What We've Sowed

There are quite a few people in the world who just don't like the United States and some of our allies because of how we live and, more precisely, because of the policies we pursue in the Mideast and elsewhere in the world. Alas, a small percentage of these people express their opposition through acts of violence . . . Our objective must be to bring the level of political violence down to an acceptable level. The only way to accomplish this will be to simultaneously adjust our values and our policies while protecting ourselves from these intermittent acts of violence; in doing so we must be careful never to allow the need for security to override our civil liberties . . . .

While experts disagree about how "the war" is going, there isn't much disagreement over how the war about the war is going: those who subscribe to Perception Two are pulling ahead . . . .

In the long run, history always sorts things out.

If it turns out that Perception Two of the threat is valid, then over time we will become accustomed to the level of casualties caused by the terrorists . . . . But if those of us who subscribe to Perception One are correct, then it's only a matter of time before something ghastly happens . . . Whether this will happen in two years, or five, or in 15 years, is impossible to predict. All we can know for certain is that if Western civilization really is under attack from Islam, or from elements within Islam, then they will not give up or be appeased. At some point they're going to go for the knockout punch . . . .

Ironically, there is abundant evidence that Meyer's Perception 1 is -- more or less [e.g. I am not sure that all of Islam is incompatible with modernity . . .] -- the correct one, given the many statements and actions of the Islamists themselves, ranging from jihadism defectors such as Hassan Butt, to former Muslims such as Ayan Hirsi Ali, to the leaders of Al Qaeda, to the obvious agenda of Mr Ahmadinejad to acquire nuclear weapons -- he already has the ballistic missiles and suicide bombers to deliver them. Credibly, we have been in the early phases of World War IV -- "world" is just a different terminology for "Global" -- since 1979.

And, with the ongoing unchecked proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, that ongoing global conflict could easily move to a decisive phase overnight.

So, what will happen if one horrible morning in the possibly not so distant future,

. . . we wake up to learn of say a dozen cities, six in the USA, five in Europe, one in Australia, have gone up in nuclear smoke? And, that Mr Ahmadinejad or his successor is declaring that any attempt to retaliate against any Islamic nation held to be "harbouring" the terrorists will be met with by a series of further attacks, by missile and/or by nuke suicide bombers? Then, several days later, a massive outbreak of anthrax or some other deadly plague begins to sweep the nations?

In short, Machiavelli's point that political disorders are like progressive diseases should always be borne in mind. At first, they are relatively easy to cure but very hard to diagnose. But, when at length for want of early diagnosis and prompt treatment, the course of the disease is obvious to all, it is far too late to cure.

This hard-bitten counsel of course appears in his infamous The Prince, a now 400 year-old standard text on statecraft, and is rooted in his observation on Livy's nearly 2,000 year old discussion of Roman statecraft. Worse, the two major historic surges of Islamism as an attempted global conquest ideology date back 1400 years and nearly 500 years. The current upsurge is thirty years old, and the foundational era Quranic texts, [cf. also here, especially Q 9:5 and 29] Hadiths and traditions and Sharia Law on both Jihad and Dhimmitude [the status of conquered peoples] that drive it have long been accessible in our own languages, much less the original Arabic.

So, we can hardly plead blameless ignorance, if we are still ignorant of the underlying dynamic!

Hassan Butt, in the above linked article, has put his finger on the roots of our folly:

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network - a series of British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology - I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.

By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this "Blair's bombs" line did our propaganda work for us.

More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology . . . . though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice.

If we were interested in justice, you may ask, how did this continuing violence come to be the means of promoting such a (flawed) Utopian goal? . . . .
the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel.

Formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion: they are considered to be one and the same.

For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).

Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.

Along with many of my former peers, I was taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief.

In Dar ul-Harb, anything goes, including the treachery and cowardice of attacking civilians . . . .

The issue couldn't be plainer -- as are both the relevant, easily accessed history and current pattern of events -- but, many of us couldn't be more willfully blind to it.

Why?

Because much of the West has lost its roots, in God, and has been self-devoured by a combination of self-deception, decadent self-indulgence and rage/guilt over the real and imagined sins of the imperialist past, and especially a false accusation that it is the Judaeo-Christian tradition that is in the main responsible for that series of sins. [How ignorant we are of Roman, Greek and German history! Of the roots of modern liberty and democracy! And, so much else . . .]

So, now, we must wake up to our peril at the hands of the tidal wave of de-Christianisation from the North, and that of Islamism from the East. Then, we mus rise up and fulfill our challenging calling under God "for such a time as this." And that includes our potential to bring the good news of reconciliation between God and man, thus between man and man, to the wider world.

For, we are descended from many peoples who have long been at mutual war, but largely through the community-healing influences of the gospel, we have learned by and large how to live at peace here in our region. A lesson the world at large now sorely needs.

So also, again, let us reflect:

Why not now? Why not here? Why not us? END
______________

PS: For the moment my Moodle investigation is at a pause, pending memory upgrades to this 7 yo backup laptop PC and the resurrection of the main PC.

Matt 24 Watch, 30: On two Bible Archaeology-related discoveries

Today is of course the twelfth anniversary of the initial so-called phreatic eruptions of the Soufriere Hills Volcano, here in Montserrat. (Phreatic eruptions occur when hot magma or rocks heated by it and ground water come into contact. July is now regarded as significant for that, as this is when we tend to get the first serious tropical waves, after the typical early year dry time. That of course raises a concern on the current 208 million cubic metre dome, which has a semi-molten core and is probably gas-pressurised. One for prayer.)

A half-holiday has duly been declared and there will be a national church service at the new Little Bay George Martin Cultural Centre Auditorium. (And, yes, it is that George Martin. He has had a long connexion to Montserrat and once ran the world famous Air Studios here.)

Of course, that brings to mind also, a recent media eruption which occurred as the common sensationally headlined selective hyper-skepticism about the Bible and the Christian Faith came into contact with an opportunity to make a fair bit of money through a popular level skeptical reinterpretation of a1980's tomb discovery in Talpiot, near Jerusalem. [NB: The underlying statistical study has apparently not yet been completed or submitted for proper peer review and onward publication in the professional literature, it seems -- from remarks in the Dembski-Marks paper discussed below.]

This is of course, the so-called "Jesus Tomb" media splash event, and we noted at the time, that, because of the wrong location of the alleged Jesus Family Tomb [S. Jerusalem, not Galilee -- several days' journey away at a time when one would try to bury the dead within a day], because also of the relative poverty of Jesus' Family -- crypts were for the well-off, and because of the flawed statistics, it was most unlikely that the claimed 599 -to- 1 in favour of this being Jesus' Family Tomb would prove to be so.

Now, William Dembski of Discovery Institute, and Robert Marks of Baylor University have weighed in, with a critical statistical review. Scooping out a few key excerpts from the paper, we may see:

Probability and statistics lie at the heart of the startling claim by James Cameron, Simcha Jacobovici, and others that the Talpiot Tomb, discovered twenty-five years ago outside Jerusalem, is the tomb of the New Testament Jesus. Specifically, proponents of this view have put forward a number—1 in 600—as the probability that the Talpiot Tomb could be other than the tomb of Jesus . . . . Readers of Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino’s The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History and viewers of Discovery Channel’s documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus are given the impression
that to deny that the Talpiot Tomb is the tomb of Jesus is to renounce the rigors of mathematical thinking and to embrace irrationality . . . .

[But in fact] A corrected version of Feuerverger’s model using reasonable estimates of the probabilities for the New Testament names found in the Talpiot tomb shows that there were likely to be as many 154 Jewish families living in Palestine at the time with the pattern of names found in the Talpiot tomb. On the “Jesus Family Tomb” people’s reckoning, this would yield a probability of 153 in 154 that the Talpiot Tomb is not the tomb of Jesus. And even if we go with the “Jesus Family Tomb” people’s smaller probability estimates for the New Testament names found in the Talpiot tomb, a Bayesian analysis that takes into account additional evidence not considered by Feuerverger increases this probability close to one . . .

In short, the Jesus tomb claim is on the evidence we now have in hand, the now commonly encountered skeptical hype, not substance. (The recent spate of brazenly hostile pro-atheism, anti-God books is very similarly seriously wanting in substance, too. Thanks, Dr Dembski, for your useful blog site!)

By sharp contrast, we may look at a recent discovery made by Michael Jursa, a visiting professor from Vienna, in the Arched Room of the British Museum, which holds "130,000 Assyrian cuneiform tablets, dating back 5,000 years." (The Museums of the world hold such a vast trove of Bible Archeology-related materials that it will take decades, maybe centuries to systematically sort through them all -- and more keeps coming in!)

As a Jul;y 11th Nigel Reynolds Daily Telegraph article "Tiny tablet provides proof for Old Testament," rather breathlessly notes:

The sound of unbridled joy seldom breaks the quiet of the British Museum's great Arched Room . . . . But Michael Jursa, a visiting professor from Vienna, let out such a cry last Thursday. He had made what has been called the most important find in Biblical archaeology for 100 years, a discovery that supports the view that the historical books of the Old Testament are based on fact.

Searching for Babylonian financial accounts among the tablets, Prof Jursa suddenly came across a name he half remembered - Nabu-sharrussu-ukin, described there in a hand 2,500 years old, as "the chief eunuch" of Nebuchadnezzar II, king of Babylon.

Prof Jursa, an Assyriologist, checked the Old Testament and there in chapter 39 of the Book of Jeremiah, he found, spelled differently, the same name - Nebo-Sarsekim.

Nebo-Sarsekim, according to Jeremiah, was Nebuchadnezzar II's "chief officer" and was with him at the siege of Jerusalem in 587 BC, when the Babylonians overran the city.

The small tablet, the size of "a packet of 10 cigarettes" according to Irving Finkel, a British Museum expert, is a bill of receipt acknowledging Nabu-sharrussu-ukin's payment of 0.75 kg of gold to a temple in Babylon.

The tablet is dated to the 10th year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, 595BC, 12 years before the siege of Jerusalem.

Evidence from non-Biblical sources of people named in the Bible is not unknown, but Nabu-sharrussu-ukin would have been a relatively insignificant figure.

"This is a fantastic discovery, a world-class find," Dr Finkel said yesterday. "If Nebo-Sarsekim existed, which other lesser figures in the Old Testament existed? A throwaway detail in the Old Testament turns out to be accurate and true. I think that it means that the whole of the narrative [of Jeremiah] takes on a new kind of power."

We may of course discount the puffery on this being the most important Bible Archaeology related find in the past 100 years -- surely the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Rylands codex fragment of John from ~ 125 AD and the like are far more important [though long since passed from the headlines . . .].

But what is important is that here, again, and again -- even, by now "as usual" -- we see corroboration of even minor details of Biblical accounts. Such detailed accuracy of course lends credibility at points where we do not have such details to specifically cross-check, and it should give pause to those Ultra-Modernist Theologians and the like, who would assume or assert that unless there is such step by step confirmation, we should disregard the Biblical accounts. (On long track record, I am not holding my breath on this, though,as the just linked documents.)

It is therefore worth pausing and hearing Edwin Yamauchi's tellingly relevant remarks from the early 1970's:

Historians of antiquity in using the archaeological evidence have very often failed to realize how slight is the evidence at our disposal. It would not be exaggerating to point out that what we have is but a fraction of a fraction of the possible evidence . . . . only a fraction of what is made or written ever survives . . . . only a fraction of the available sites have ever been surveyed . . . . only a fraction of the known sites have been excavated . . . . with the exception of small and short-lived sites such as Tell en-Nasbeth, Qumran, and Masada, . . . only a fraction of any excavated site is actually examined . . . . only a fraction of the materials, and especially the inscriptions in languages other than Greek and Latin, produced by excavations has as yet been published. Because of the relative scarcity of scholars who can publish inscriptions in cuneiform and other types of scripts, there is often a serious time lag between the acquisition of scripts and their publication. [The Stones and the Scriptures (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1972), pp. 146 - 154]

This last is of course precisely what has happened in this case.

However, we have now got sufficient evidence to discern the overall patterns in outline: Biblical accounts are often, indeed, I daresay: as a rule, astonishingly accurate, even down to incidental details. For instance, this was precisely the massive fact that persuaded William Ramsay to change his mind in favour of the historical soundness of Luke, something like 100 years ago now, on inspecting the relevant sites in the Acts. Similarly, in the 2004 Benthal Public Lecture on the Gospels, noted Canadian New Testament Scholar, Craig Evans, remarks:

My purpose tonight is to lay before you what I believe are key facets in the scholarly discussion of the historical Jesus. In my view there are five important areas of investigation and in all five there has been significant progress in recent years. I shall frame these areas as questions. They include (1) the question of the ethnic, religious, and social location of Jesus; (2) the question of the aims and mission of Jesus; (3) the question of Jesus’ self-understanding; (4) the question of Jesus’ death; and (5) the question of Jesus’ resurrection. All of these questions directly bear on the relevance of Jesus for Christian faith and some of them have important implications for Jewish- Christian relations . . . . The story told in the New Testament Gospels—in contrast to the greatly embellished versions found in the Gospel of Peter and other writings— smacks of verisimilitude. The women went to the tomb to mourn privately and to perform duties fully in step with Jewish burial customs. They expected to find the body of Jesus; ideas of resurrection were the last thing on their minds. The careful attention given the temporary tomb is exactly what we should expect. Pious fiction—like that seen in the Gospel of Peter— would emphasize other things. Archaeology can neither prove nor disprove the resurrection, but it can and has shed important light on the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ death, burial, and missing corpse . . . . Research in the historical Jesus has taken several positive steps in recent years. Archaeology, remarkable literary discoveries, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, and progress in reassessing the social, economic, and political setting of first-century Palestine have been major factors. Notwithstanding the eccentricities and skepticism of the Jesus Seminar, the persistent trend in recent years is to see the Gospels as essentially reliable, especially when properly understood, and to view the historical Jesus in terms much closer to Christianity’s traditional understanding, i.e., as proclaimer of God’s rule, as understanding himself as the Lord’s anointed, and, indeed, as God’s own son, destined to rule Israel. But this does not mean that the historical Jesus that has begun to emerge in recent years is simply a throwback to the traditional portrait. The picture of Jesus that has emerged is more finely nuanced, more obviously Jewish, and in some ways more unpredictable than ever. The last word on the subject has not been written and probably never will be. Ongoing discovery and further investigation will likely force us to make further revisions as we read and read again the old Gospel stories and try to come to grips with the life of this remarkable Galilean Jew.

And now of course, with this finding, Jeremiah, perhaps the most autobiographical OT Prophet, receives a further corroboration of a telling detail. [There has long been a recovered correspondence complaining of those who were weakening the hands of defenders from during the Babylonian invasion; which sounds ever so familiar to readers of Jeremiah.]

So, maybe again, we need to begin to be just a bit skeptical in our hearing of the skeptics, and give fresh attention and respect to that often despised but ever so powerful ancient primary historical source that sits on shelves in our homes -- the Bible? END

Short update July 17th . .

A reader has reminded me I have not blogged for about a week.

That is true, I have been busy with several online brushfires, e.g. here and here, and have also had a busy week on the ground. [I am also owing several people snail mail correspondence.]

Please bear with me! (I actually have a couple of interesting archeology based discoveries to discuss, soon.)

God bless. END

1 Chron 12:32 report, 47: Cyber College 4 -- some remarks on the usual work-in-progress technical hiccups

Regular readers will suspect from the recent low activity on this blog, that I have been busy over the past few days, as we work to explore the possibilities of developing a cyber campus.

They are right -- I have been addressing the usual hiccups, teething troubles and the like on the creation of a web based cybercampus.

It is also helpful to give an interim report, perhaps in points. Pardon a few semi-technical details, they will help us understand why not just anybody can do this yet, which gives us a chance to get into the market now as innovators/early adopters and so establish our reputation, thus being in an excellent position to be a major established player when things get "easy" to do:

1] In exploring Moodle as a possible core technology for doing a cybercampus, I saw that there is a Web On a Stick [WOS] implementation of a Web server by CH Software, that allows hosting of Moodle [and a lot of other server level applications], without too much danger of disrupting one's PC. For, this allows one to use say a USB memory stick to set up a Moodle implementation hosted by the Apache web hosting application.

2] Of course, this is really set up for Windows 2000 or XP, while my backup 7 y.o laptop PC is ME [of all things!]. So without waiting another month or so to get my main PC back up, I decided to try anyway.

3] The obvious package to try is the Matt Campbell full implementation as Moodle links on its Moodle on a USB stick page. I tried that first of all [not noticing at first that there is a reason why there is no estimate of the memory size required!], and as was noted last time, a 256 MB USB stick came back full. [It is credible that the implementation requires over 2 GB of memory!]

4] The first alternative was to try to use CH's small package. This installs fine and works -- providing you let it install in its own little subdirectory (contrary to the advice on the Moodle on a Stick installation guide page, at least for ME, that ever so problematic OS that Uncle Bill actually apologised for . . .). However, there is an issue of a link to PHPMyAdmin on the local server home page that opens up -- and there is no link, and no obvious alternative, at least, none obvious to a broken down old Applied Physicist. Back to the drawing board.

5] Similarly, a roll-your own package from CHP's WOS Mixer page if installed in the same sub-folder from the last try works, then it tries to install programs. This works at first, very smoothly, but, it then begins to loop over and over at the point where MySQL is looking for data to support packages, and that holds for both the small version and the big one. (That last little bit is the result of a night's thinking over and a bit of insomnia patrol.)

6] "Stuck," in short, for now. (Most likely, I will try the Matt Campbell 2 GB+ implementation, once I get a 20 GB external drive to work (again) with the same machine.)

But then, if all of this were exceedingly simple and easy -- works first time, right out of the box or the download, "everyone" would be doing it! (Of course, perhaps a real techie would have fixed the problems in a jiffy and would be sailing away long since. But, sometimes, we have to climb a learning curve the hard way. That's part of what we pay for when we hire a techie, or a consultant. And techies are a bit scarce on the ground just now.)

Even so it is plain that a Moodle implementation of a cybercampus is very doable, we are obviously very close to success. (There is also a parallel case where a client needs a multiple-purpose web site with web page, blog, etc features, and so I am monitoring a "poor man's version" that if it works would be a simple "sign up here" deal. In short, I have not put all my eggs in the Moodle basket.)

So now, back to bed for a short catch-up nap. Then, maybe tomorrow, let's see on the next step in developing a virtual campus for the proposed Caribbean Vision Cybercollege. [H'mm, how does that "name" sound . . . ? Any ideas for a nice, catchy name?]

Again, even as we struggle with a few teething troubles and hiccups, it is helpful to remind ourselves of the importance of making the best use of our opportunities today, not next year or next decade.

So, let us remember the Mordecai principle:

Why not now? Why not here? Why not us? END

Matt 24 Watch, 29: Former activists speak

Over the weekend, I obtained a brand new 2 GB USB Memory stick and downloaded to it the working files on my desktop in various folders.

I thought I would have room and to spare -- to my shock, it filled up! (So now I will have to be looking at a DVD burner drive . . . and will seriously need to see about working with hard drive enclosures. All, in the interests of securing my data vaults as an un-named reader has reminded me on. Y'know: all of that stuff about backed up key files, as there are two types of computer user: those who have lost data and those who will lose data. It's true, and we so often forget to secure data. Thanks again, X!)

But, what does all of this have to do with signs of our times?

Well, there are two heartening additions to the files, speaking to each of the two tidal waves. (And yes, I know that so much of what we have to speak on is not so good news. I am glad to be able to share the excerpts and links below. Then, DV, let's get back tot he Cyber College ideas and developments -- indeed, the 2 GB memory stick frees up a 256 MB one forsome Moodle Experiments. )

Good news item 1: Hassan Butt of the UK, a former Islamist, in The Daily Mail. Observe, carefully, the role of conscience in his turnaround from radical Islamism::

The attempts to cause mass destruction in London and Glasgow are so reminiscent of other recent British Islamic extremist plots that they are likely to have been carried out by my former peers
. . . . I left the British Jihadi Network in February 2006 because I realised that its members had simply become mindless killers . . . . though many British extremists are angered by the deaths of fellow Muslim across the world, what drove me and many others to plot acts of extreme terror within Britain and abroad was a sense that we were fighting for the creation of a revolutionary worldwide Islamic state that would dispense Islamic justice . . . .

How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion? . . . . the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel . . . . For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).

Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.

Along with many of my former peers, I was taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief . . . . But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology.

They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex truth that Islam can be interpreted as condoning violence against the unbeliever - and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace and hope that all of this debate will go away.

This has left the territory open for radicals to claim as their own. I should know because, as a former extremist recruiter, I repeatedly came across those who had tried to raise these issues with mosque authorities only to be banned from their grounds . . . .

Outside Britain, there are those who try to reverse this two-step revisionism.

A handful of scholars from the Middle East have tried to put radicalism back in the box by saying that the rules of war devised so long ago by Islamic jurists were always conceived with the existence of an Islamic state in mind, a state which would supposedly regulate jihad in a responsible Islamic fashion.

In other words, individual Muslims don't have the authority to go around declaring global war in the name of Islam . . . . Because so many in the Muslim community refuse to challenge centuries-old theological arguments, the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern world grow larger every day . . . . Crucially, the Muslim community in Britain must slap itself awake from its state of denial and realise there is no shame in admitting the extremism within our families, communities and worldwide co-religionists . . . . Muslim scholars must go back to the books and come forward with a refashioned set of rules and a revised understanding of the rights and responsibilities of Muslims whose homes and souls are firmly planted in what I'd like to term the Land of Co-existence.

And when this new theological territory is opened up, Western Muslims will be able to liberate themselves from defunct models of the world, rewrite the rules of interaction and perhaps we will discover that the concept of killing in the name of Islam is no more than an anachronism.

Similarly, that quiet inner voice played a crucial role in the turnaround of the founder of the Young Gay America magazine, Michael Glatze:

My mom died when I was 19. My father had died when I was 13. At an early age, I was already confused about who I was and how I felt about others.

My confusion about "desire" and the fact that I noticed I was "attracted" to guys made me put myself into the "gay" category at age 14. At age 20, I came out as gay to everybody else around me . . . . It took me almost 16 years to discover that homosexuality itself is not exactly "virtuous." It was difficult for me to clarify my feelings on the issue, given that my life was so caught up in it.

Homosexuality, delivered to young minds, is by its very nature pornographic. It destroys impressionable minds and confuses their developing sexuality; I did not realize this, however, until I was 30 years old . . . . I was asked to speak on the prestigious JFK Jr. Forum at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in 2005.

It was, after viewing my words on a videotape of that "performance," that I began to seriously doubt what I was doing with my life and influence.

Knowing no one who I could approach with my questions and my doubts, I turned to God . . . . Soon, I began to understand things I'd never known could possibly be real, such as the fact that I was leading a movement of sin and corruption . . . . Driven to look for truth, because nothing felt right, I looked within. Jesus Christ repeatedly advises us not to trust anybody other than Him. I did what He said, knowing that the Kingdom of God does reside in the heart and mind of every man.

What I discovered – what I learned – about homosexuality was amazing. How I'd first "discovered" homosexual desires back in high school was by noticing that I looked at other guys. How I healed, when it became decidedly clear that I should – or risk hurting more people – is that I paid attention to myself.

Every time I was tempted to lust, I noticed it, caught it, dealt with it. I called it what it was, and then just let it disappear on its own . . . . Homosexuality, for me, began at age 13 and ended – once I "cut myself off" from outside influences and intensely focused on inner truth – when I discovered the depths of my God-given self at age 30.

God is regarded as an enemy by many in the grip of . . . lustful behavior, because He reminds them of who and what they truly are meant to be. People caught in the act would rather stay "blissfully ignorant" by silencing truth and those who speak it, through antagonism, condemnation and calling them words like "racist," "insensitive," "evil" and "discriminatory."

Healing from the wounds caused by homosexuality is not easy – there's little obvious support. What support remains is shamed, ridiculed, silenced by rhetoric or made illegal by twisting of laws. I had to sift through my own embarrassment and the disapproving "voices" of all I'd ever known to find it. Part of the homosexual agenda is getting people to stop considering that conversion is even a viable question to be asked, let alone whether or not it works.

In my experience, "coming out" from under the influence of the homosexual mindset was the most liberating, beautiful and astonishing thing I've ever experienced in my entire life.

Lust takes us out of our bodies, "attaching" our psyche onto someone else's physical form. That's why homosexual sex – and all other lust-based sex – is never satisfactory: It's a neurotic process rather than a natural, normal one. Normal is normal – and has been called normal for a reason.

Abnormal means "that which hurts us, hurts normal." Homosexuality takes us out of our normal state, of being perfectly united in all things, and divides us, causing us to forever pine for an outside physical object that we can never possess. Homosexual people – like all people – yearn for the mythical true love, which does actually exist. The problem with homosexuality is that true love only comes when we have nothing preventing us from letting it shine forth from within. We cannot fully be ourselves when our minds are trapped in a cycle and group-mentality of sanctioned, protected and celebrated lust . . . .

Conscience tells us right from wrong and is a guide by which we can grow and become stronger and freer human beings. Healing from sin and ignorance is always possible, but the first thing anyone must do is get out of the mentalities that divide and conquer humanity.

Sexual truth can be found, provided we're all willing and driven to accept that our culture sanctions behaviors that harm life. Guilt should be no reason to avoid the difficult questions.

In short, we are right back at Paul's inspired words in Romans 2:

Rom 2: 6 God "will give to each person according to what he has done." 7 To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8 But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. 9 There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; 10 but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 11 For God does not show favoritism . . . . 14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law . . . 15 . . . they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.) . . . .

RO 13:8b . . . he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. 9 The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: "Love your neighbor as yourself." 10 Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

In effect, the first edition of God's moral law is written on each human heart, in our consciences. It reads first and foremost: "love thy neighbour as thyself."

It is heartening to see from these two case studies, that that law is alive and well and working in the hearts of those involved in the de-Christianising tidal wave now sweeping the secularised North, and among those caught up in the Islamist tidal wave as well.

Let us therefore take heart and work with the stirrings of the Spirit in many hearts across the world, even across the ideological and theological divides that sunder our emerging Post-modern globalised age, in so many ways.

And that is worth an: AMEN