evolutionist propaganda

by Andrea Elizabeth

It is so depressing and frustrating how the atheist evolutionists have taken over science. They have to establish early on, even in How the Mind Works, by Steven Pinker, that of course there is no God or creator, so therefore…. Causation has to be established before they can talk about how anything works, and selfish natural selection has to rule the whys. I wish they’d just stick to present cause and effect and quit forcing unprovable historical hows (as if only stupid, deluded religious people don’t agree) down our throats. Or at least be honest and say, “one of many possible explanations is…”

Every valley shall be exalted

by Andrea Elizabeth

But, Mr. Pageau, there is hope for the mud. The pinnacle of the tallest mountain in the world is limestone from the bottom of a sea bed. However, getting to the top takes a lot of time and pressure.

Excellent talk on the relationship between science and religion by Jonathan Pageau

by Andrea Elizabeth

https://youtu.be/1w7TQ1KqaBY

L’chaim!

by Andrea Elizabeth

Wow, everything is so great! I’m just so happy! I can’t believe how wonderful everyone is, and how much they contribute to everything to make it all so good. There is such an incredible amount of beauty and love in the universe that one cannot contain it all. Everyone helps share their little bit and this is why the earth glows. That and the big, beautiful sun shining so brightly on it.

No mean snow!

by Andrea Elizabeth

What d’ya know ho ho?

The other day I was riding in my minivan and saw a reindeer pulling a sleigh. “Whoa!” I said in my ecstacy, and it stopped.

You know you have a spoiled dog when it wont chew Walmart Christmas slippers.

The PC people should be just as outraged at the Caravan as they are about the guy in “Baby It’s Cold Outside”.

 

 

I’m not sure the left understands this

by Andrea Elizabeth

“And finally, to the extent that Dasein, as an entity with the possibility of existence, has ontological priority over every other entity, “hermeneutic”, as an interpretation of Dasein’s Being, has the third and specific sense of an analytic of the existentiality of existence; and this is the sense which is philosophically primary.” (Being and Time, by Martin Heidegger, translated by John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson)

The left believes identity can be determined from the outside. They would disagree and say, no hierarchy can impose my identity on me or anyone else! But they don’t see how external their own position is towards themselves! They think they can know who they are! That a person is forthcomingly self disclosing. If this were true it wouldn’t be so hard to “know thyself”. And to think a pre-teen knows himself! Naïveté. And to let or encourage him and her mutilate their bodies or make other permanent alterations or decisions is ridiculous.

The difficulty of knowing any entity is addressed in the next paragraph.

“Being, as the basic theme of philosophy, is no class or genus of entities; yet it pertains to every entity. Its ‘universality’ is to be sought higher up. Being and the structure of Being lie beyond every entity and every possible character which an entity may possess. Being is the t r a n s c e n d e n s pure and simple.( 1) And the transcendence of Dasein’s Being is distinctive in that it implies the possibility and the necessity of the most radical individuation. Every disclosure of Being as the transcendens is transcendental knowledge. Phenomenological truth (the disclosedness of Being) is v e r i t a s t r a n s c e n d e n t a l i s.”

Covering up

by Andrea Elizabeth

“The covering-up itself, whether in the sense of hiddenness, burying-over, or disguise, has in turn two possibilities. There are coverings-up which are accidental; there are also some which are necessary, grounded in what the thing discovered consists in [der Bestandart des Entdeckten]. Whenever a phenomenological concept is drawn from primordial sources, there is a possibility that it may degenerate if communicated in the form of an assertion. It gets understood in an empty way and is thus passed on, losing its indigenous character, and becoming a free-floating thesis. Even in the concrete work of phenomenology itself there lurks the possibility that what has been primordially ‘within our grasp’ may become hardened so that we can no longer grasp it. And the difficulty of this kind of research lies in making it self-critical in a positive sense.” Heidegger, Being and Time

This harkens back to this passage on discourse

“Discourse ‘lets something be seen’ ἀπο…: that is, it lets us see something from the very thing which the discourse is about.( 2) In discourse (ἀποφανσις), so far as it is genuine, what is said [was geredet ist] is drawn from what the talk is about, so that discursive communication, in what it says [in ihrem Gesagten], makes manifest what it is talking about, and thus makes this accessible to the other party.”

He also describes covering-up as deception. I’ll say God is said to hide himself, but if he reveals himself through creation, placing something between to be experienced instead(?), is that deception? Or is He fully manifest in the universe or the  the Incarnation? Christ’s transfiguration characterizes his hiddenness as a protective measure for those who can’t handle the whole truth.

On a tangent, seeing ones-self as one truly is can also be too much to bear. I just watched a film from the 90’s where there were nice people and not nice people. This was before we learned that badness dwells in all of us. Ones-self is not necessarily a sympathetic character. When Fr. Hopko said sometimes that Orthodoxy makes one worse, I wonder if it could be because of the harrowing experience of seeing ourselves without our Emperor’s New Clothes? Who can handle that? I often need to hide from myself.

I’ll go with it’s God’s fault

by Andrea Elizabeth

even though that sounds Calvinist.

People may not agree with their telos or how to get to it. If one really wants to get there though, then they do the best they can and trust God to do the rest, sorry for the cliche. This isn’t Calvinistly deterministic because one can choose their telos or reject it. Or there may be more than one legitimate telos, in a particular sense.

why I can’t take or make a good picture or recording

by Andrea Elizabeth

It’s your fault. My son noticed that whenever a camera comes out my face completely changes. I know I get tense. It’s a vicious cycle of past bad pictures making me fearful. I get so mad at accusations of the negative traits of paranoia, jealousy, and anxiety. Only soldiers get a pass with the understanding label of PTSD. There’s usually a reason for these negative reactions. It may not be the current recipient’s fault, but there’s still something that made the person that way, even if it is their own failure of giving in to fear too much.

Sensitivity is an interesting phenomenon. You can blame it on a person being overprotected, or abused. Or maybe it’s physical or genetic. The fact that conditions can be improved or temporarily staved off keeps the sufferer, or those around him who could help, from getting a total pass, though. I agree that in any particular instance a person can get back on the horse again. But if someone has to be drug kicking and screaming, even if they do it themselves and it’s all on the inside, every time they have to get on; or that their gut panic is so instant and profound that they can’t talk themselves out of it, I think enough is enough can be called. Still, it’s so un-American to admit defeat.

However, I think I could have been less scared than I am, and that’s your fault. Or maybe God’s. Or the Devil’s.

I am Lazarus at the gate, and someday you will be begging me for mercy. And I’ll probably give it to you. This was Ralphie’s daydream in The Christmas Story, that his parents would be so sorry that they caused his blindness by soap poisoning instead of his shooting his own eye out. See, no one gets a break.

This took hours and hours!

by Andrea Elizabeth

I used another trial version of video and audio software to record 5 of the 7 parts to this French Carol in Russian. My translation is in the description on YouTube.

I used VideoPad and MixPad, but it looks like I have to buy them to use all the features in the future. Still shopping…

Also, I wish I’d started with a little higher pitch to brighten it up a bit.