We find this in Genesis 1:6-8 (NIV) And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the expanse “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day. But God did NOT say: “It was good” The creation story is interesting reading. God takes a whole day out His busy schedule of creation just to form an environment with water in all its forms in what we call the atmosphere or “sky”. He has yet to create life. Could it be, that water in all its forms are necessary to form and sustain life, so a sustainable ecosystem had to be prepared first?
God created the earth too be just heavy enough to hold on to water vapor, and water is unique because its melting point and boiling point is within the range of bring able to participate in sustaining life. It also has the second (after ammonia) highest specific heat capacity of all known substances. To melt 1 gram of ice takes 80 calories, to heat it takes 1 calorie per gram and to boil it at ground levels takes 539 calories. (The calories you eat are actually kilo-calories). This makes water the ideal substance to moderate and regulate climate. Water vapor evaporates from the ocean, cooling it down and water vapor, being lighter than air rises and condenses as clouds form. The clouds are the most important temperature regulator, much more important than all other greenhouse gases combined. Clouds transport heat from the equator to the temperate areas and to the poles. Without this the equator temperature would be in excess of 145 F. In addition clouds have a high reflection of incoming sunlight, reflecting incoming heat back into space. The earth has never been to warm to sustain complicated life, nor is there any danger of overheating unless clouds disappear. In fact, the next major climate change is the next ice age.
The picture above shows the friendly earth we are living in today. On the second “day” of creation situation was quite different. The sun was not fully created yet, and the earth was still in its chaotic state. All God did was to prepare the ecosystem. The earth was still cooling down from creation, and water evaporated and formed a cloud that covered the whole earth. This is why God did NOT say “it was good” on the second day, it was just the preparation.
Pope Leo XIV, the newly elected pope, has recently championed the Vatican’s plan to become the world’s first carbon-neutral state by developing a large solar farm on land near Rome. This initiative is inspired by the environmental legacy of Pope Francis and aims to generate enough electricity to meet the Vatican’s needs and potentially provide excess energy to the local community. The Vatican’s efforts are part of a broader push for climate action, with Leo XIV actively promoting the transition away from fossil fuels and emphasizing the moral imperative of environmental stewardship. He also took part in the “Raising Hope for Climate Justice” International Conference in Castelgandolfo, Italy on Oct 1, where he blessed a chunk of a Greenland iceberg. See the picture:
Pope Leo asked eloquently: “What must be done now to ensure that caring for our common home and listening to the cry of the earth and the poor do not appear as mere passing trends or, worse still, are seen and felt as divisive issues?”
“Everyone in society, through nongovernmental organizations and advocacy groups, must put pressure on governments to develop and implement more rigorous regulations, procedures and controls,” the pope said.
“Citizens need to take an active role in political decision-making at national, regional and local levels,” he said. “Only then will it be possible to mitigate the damage done to the environment.”
What they still do not know is that rising CO2 levels is responsible for less than 10% of the climate change, and water in all its forms; ice, water, water vapor and clouds is responsible for over half of climate change. Land use changes are also more important. Let me explain it further:
Many years ago, around 1976 Dr. James Lovelock bought a number of Hewlett Packard 5840 Gas Chromatographs to be set up in some of the most remote places of the earth to study pollution and its effect on the climate. What he found was an unexpectedly large amount of dimethylsulphide (DMS) in the atmosphere, and that acted as a
condensation point for cloud formation. He was then a longtime paid consultant for Hewlett Packard, so he came over from his native England a couple of times a year, always willing to hold a seminar for us engineers working at Hewlett Packard Analytical, and at one of them he sprung “Daisy-world” on us before it was published; mostly to see if we could poke holes in his hypothesis. It involved a world that consisted of only two flowers, black daisies and white daisies. The computer simulation starts out with a cold world and a weak sun. The sun slowly warms up (about 1 percent every ten million years), and at some time suddenly black daisies appear and cover the earth. This warms the earth some more and white daisies appear. As the sun varies in intensity the mix of white and black daisies changes and this keeps the earth at a stable temperature, as they have different reflective properties. He then went on to say that the whole earth is like a living organism. Some time later he presented the paper and afterwards we asked him how it was received. “You won’t believe it”, he answered. ”Now there are people who actually believe the earth is a living organism. They demand follow-up articles that justifies their belief.” He had partly himself to blame, the name he had chosen was “the GAIA hypothesis,” Gaia being the Mother Earth Goddess. Talking about religion the Mother Earth people now had their goddess, and expressions like. “The earth has a temperature” became commonplace. For me, being a Christian I read with wonderment what God has to say about Creation and the Ecosystem.
Starting in Genesis 1:1; In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. This can be described in scientific terms: From nothing God created space and matter. What happened to “In the beginning”? It turns out that matter has to be accompanied with space or it will not work. And time is a derived property from the existence of matter and space. Without space and matter time does not exist. So the creation of matter and space also defined the beginning of time. What about God? The laws of physics tells us you cannot create something out of nothing. This proves that we and everything else cannot possibly exist. But we do, and therefore there must have been something existing before anything existed. This is God, and He can be defied in one word: Presence. When Moses saw the burning bush he asked who it was. And God answered “I am that I am”, in a way describing the eternal presence, without beginning and end. This is the God I believe in: Out of time and space since He created it, and also in time and space since it is part of His creation.
The expression “in the beginning” is in Hebrew bereshit which means in the beginning. The same phrase begins the gospel of John 1:1 “Inthebeginning was theWord, and theWord was with God, and theWord was God.” Here the word translated beginning is “Arch” like in archangel and means “the chief” or “the most important one’ referring to the Word. It is in past tense which means that the Word existed before the beginning. Another reference is found in Titus 1:1 “inthe hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before thebeginning of time,” In this verse the word eternal and the word time is in Greek aionion , which means a very long time, like the time span of a dynasty. Nowadays eon has a meaning of a thousand million years in Geology and Astronomy, but the original meaning is a very long time which may or may not be defined. It is sometimes translated of the ages. Here is a song that spiritually speaks to me:
There was this Finnish guy that loved his wife so much that he almost told her.
Many years ago I was part of a very international team that did an engineering project in a number of countries. One of our fellow engineers was from Finland. We thought it was funny so we sent him the joke. Within five minutes he sent back the message “He was drunk!“
“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”
The quote comes from a speech that President Obama delivered to the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 2012 about the death of U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three others in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. At that time he still blamed a video.
Muslims claim, and the religion of Islam demands that Muhammad was “The Prophet”. This claim comes from what Muhammad called “the Book”, Deuteronomy 18: 17-22
17 The Lord said to me (Moses) : “What they say is good.18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. 19 I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name. 20 But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.”
21 You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?” 22 If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.
After Muhammad fled from Mecca to Medina he started to proclaim he was “The Prophet” His new followers wanted to make sure he was “the Prophet” so they asked the Jews. The Jews immediately answered “No, he is not The Prophet. The Prophet must be an Israelite, and Muhammad is an Ishmaelite, so he is an impostor”. That didn’t sit well with Muhammad, so he ordered his followers to start praying to Mecca instead of praying to Jerusalem, as had been their practice until then. His always cooperating archangel provided a convenient revelation that that was indeed so. Since then Muslims have prayed to Mecca instead of Jerusalem, and been on the warpath against the Jews.
So, Muhammad was not “The Prophet”. Was he even a Prophet?
Everything a prophet proclaims must come true for him to qualify as a Prophet. One miss, and you are out. One prophecy Muhammad claimed was that the Jews would never be a unified nation again, and that they would not be able to fight militarily against the Muslims.
“They [the Jewish people] will not fight you (even) together, except in fortified townships, or from behind walls. Strong is their fighting (spirit) amongst themselves: thou wouldst think they were united, but their hearts are divided: that is because they are a people devoid of wisdom.” (Surah 59:14).
The seven day war and other wars since the formation of Israel in 1948 proves this prophecy wrong. (The opposite of what was prophecised has occurred)
Logic demands that Muhammad was not a prophet.
The Muslims have chosen another explanation: Israel does not exist, will never exist, has no right to exist and all fighting that has occurred in the Mideast can be explained by other means. There never was a genocide of Armenians, the holocaust never occurred and so forth.
After President Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed the peace accord with Israel together with Begin and President Carter, he was promptly assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
It is my opinion that the only solution possible for peace in the Middle East is a reformation of the Muslim faith, accepting the violent history of Islam, its slavery and oppression, abandoning all physical claims to future world dominance, separating out the spiritual claims, and abandoning their geographical dreams of physically conquering the world. There are plenty of Muslims here in the USA willing to work towards that goal, but unfortunately they are not accepted by President Obama, who still prefers to work with the Muslim Brotherhood and their affiliates.
This is my take on it: Judge for yourselves.
“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”
The quote comes from a speech that former President Obama delivered to the United Nations General Assembly on 25 September 2012 about the death of U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three others in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. At that time he still blamed a video.
Muslims claim, and the religion of Islam demands that Muhammad was “The Prophet”. This claim comes from what Muhammad called “the Book”, Deuteronomy 18: 17-22
17 The Lord said to me (Moses) : “What they say is good. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him. 19 I myself will call to account anyone who does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name. 20 But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.”
21 You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?” 22 If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.
After Muhammad fled from Mecca to Medina he started to proclaim he was “The Prophet” His new followers wanted to make sure he was “the Prophet” so they asked the Jews. The Jews immediately answered “No, he is not The Prophet. The Prophet must be an Israelite, and Muhammad is an Ishmaelite, so he is an impostor”. That didn’t sit well with Muhammad, so he ordered his followers to start praying to Mecca instead of praying to Jerusalem, as had been their practice until then. His always cooperating archangel Gabriel provided a convenient revelation that that was indeed so. Since then Muslims have prayed to Mecca instead of Jerusalem, and been on the warpath against the Jews.
So, Muhammad was not “The Prophet”. Was he even a Prophet?
Everything a prophet proclaims must come true for him to qualify as a Prophet. One miss, and you are out. One prophecy Muhammad claimed was that the Jews would never be a unified nation again, and that they would not be able to fight militarily against the Muslims.
“They [the Jewish people] will not fight you (even) together, except in fortified townships, or from behind walls. Strong is their fighting (spirit) amongst themselves: thou wouldst think they were united, but their hearts are divided: that is because they are a people devoid of wisdom.” (Surah 59:14).
The seven day war and other wars since the formation of Israel in 1948 proves this prophecy wrong. (The opposite of what was precised has occurred)
Logic demands that Muhammad was not a prophet.
The Muslims have chosen another explanation: Israel does not exist, will never exist, has no right to exist and all fighting that has occurred in the Mideast can be explained by other means. There never was a genocide of Christian Armenians, the holocaust never occurred and so forth.
After President Anwar Sadat of Egypt signed the peace accord with Israel together with Begin and President Carter, he was promptly assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood.
It is my opinion that the only solution possible for peace in the Middle East is a reformation of the Muslim faith, accepting the violent history of Islam, its slavery and oppression, abandoning all physical claims to future world dominance, separating out the spiritual claims, and abandoning their geographical dreams of physically conquering the world. There are plenty of Muslims here in the USA willing to work towards that goal, but unfortunately they are not accepted by Ex President Obama, who still prefers to work with the Muslim Brotherhood and their affiliates.
The second hint that Barack Obama is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
On September 1 2014 Egypt’s largest newspaper claimed on its front page that Obama is a full fledged member of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood called for “a long, uncompromising jihad” in Egypt just days after a delegation of the Islamist group’s key leaders and allies met with the State Department, according to an official statement released last week.
While the President himself did not attend (as far as we know) the State Department meeting was attended by a deputy assistant secretary for democracy, human rights, and labor and other State Department officials.
The Muslim Brotherhood statement also was issued just two days before a major terror attack Thursday Jan 29 in Egypt’s lawless Sinai region that killed at least 25.
“It is incumbent upon everyone to be aware that we are in the process of a new phase, where we summon what is latent in our strength, where we recall the meanings of jihad and prepare ourselves, our wives, our sons, our daughters, and whoever marched on our path to a long, uncompromising jihad, and during this stage we ask for martyrdom,” the statement from the Muslim Brotherhood reads.
Then February 4 2015 ex President Barack Obama met with Muslim leaders in the East Room of the White House, off limit to reporters. We were not to know the content of the President’s message, only that it is none of our business, neither are we to know who attended the meeting, “since they are private citizens and their privacy needs to be protected”.
This does not pass the smell test.
Which leads to verse 22 of the Obama Impeachment song (sung to the tune of “Please release me, let me go”)
These are my opinions and I do not attribute any of them to Kathy Barnette, except that she has been accused to hold the view that Islam and Christianity are incompatible, you cannot hold both views.
Oh, and one more thing: Kathy Barnette just tweeted:
I have released all my military records. Has Dr. Mehmet Oz released released all his Turkish military records?
President Joe Biden explained today in a short speech on inflation that the biggest obstacle to his program is the Ultra MAGA Republicans that has taken over one part of the Republican party rendering governing nearly impossible considering his small majorities in both the House and the Senate.
It is now one week until the Pennsylvania Senate Primary, so it is time to look who to vote for. I saw the same attribute given to Kathy Barnette. Her fatal flaw is that she is Ultra MAGA. So I took a second look at her, and this is what I found. She is Black, and is running as a Republican. She was conceived out of rape when her mother was only 11 years old. She grew up in poverty on a pig farm. She clawed herself up and got both a bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in economics. She has served many years in the Army Reserve. But she has made the most important choice in her life. She is pro- life. As it says in the Holy Bible:
Deuteronomy:30:15 See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; Deuteronomy 30:19 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki declined to say if President Biden believes a 15-week-old unborn baby is a human being during one of her press briefings.
“Does the president believe that a 15-week-old unborn baby is a human being?” a reporter asked Psaki.
“Are you asking me if the president supports a woman’s right to choose? He does,” Psaki said.
This is what a 15 week old unborn baby looks like
The two verses above was from the King James Bible.The context is that Moses, having been forbidden to enter the promised land gave his final instruction to the people before they were to finally end their desert journey by crossing the Jordan River. This is from the New International Bible.
This is one of Kathy Barnett’s commercials telling quite well what it means to be an “Ultra MAGA” person.
– Only 15% of the U.S. population is over the age of 65
0.02% of all deaths occurred under the age of 2, too young to get vaccine
0.05% of all deaths occurred between the ages of 2 and 18, school age
0.15% of all deaths occurred between the ages of 19 and 25, college age
3.6% of all deaths occurred between the ages of 26 and 45
(Source: CDC – just updated: https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/AH-Provisional-COVID-19-Death-Counts-by-Age-in-Yea/3apk-4u4f )
From this CDC data I can safely conclude that it makes no sense to vaccinate school children or even college students unless they are in a high risk category and still able to take the vaccine. Even people 26 to 45 year olds should only take the vaccine if in a high risk group. For people 46 to 65 year olds the odds are that vaccine helps, and for people over 65 it should be given to all that can still take the vaccine.
The so called delta variant of Covid-19 is much more contagious, but ear loop masks are nearly useless to stop the spread. It is also much less deadly, and the European experience proves it. This is the chart from United Kingdom:
Great Britain data Feb 2020 to July 30 2021
We can see from this chart that the first wave of Covid-19 was eight times as deadly as the second wave. Now the third wave, the Delta virus wave is one tenth as deadly as the second wave. United Kingdom has one of the highest vaccination rates in Europe:
How does this compare with new Covid Cases for the least vaccinated countries in Europe?
This is interesting. The countries with the least number people vaccinated shows no third wave in Coronavirus cases. It seems mostly confined to vaccinated people. The good thing is, that the vaccinated people get a very mild case, more like the common cold.
Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party Military in Wuhan is continuing their gain of function research in the Wuhan Lab, or else they would have welcomed an inspection of the lab to make certain this will never happen again. They have by no means developed the most efficient bio-weapon yet, so it behooves us to work to find alternate cures to what may yet come. So far HydroxyChloroQuine has shown great promise, if taken early in conjunction with Zinc (and Vitamin D) has been proven effective in countries too poor to use patent medicines. Even though they have a much inferior health system, they showed initially a much lower death rate. Now Ivermectin seems to be even more effective both as a prophylactic or as an early treatment. Remdisivir is approved and shoren hospital stays. Israel is trying out many new medicines, trying to stay ahead in this bio-warfare. What is our NIH and CDC doing? By the way, thanks for the data.
Deuteronomy:30:15 See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; Deuteronomy 30:19 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki declined to say if President Biden believes a 15-week-old unborn baby is a human being during Monday’s press briefing.
“Does the president believe that a 15-week-old unborn baby is a human being?” a reporter asked Psaki.
“Are you asking me if the president supports a woman’s right to choose? He does,” Psaki said.
This is what a 15 week unborn baby looks like
The two verses above was from the King James Bible.The context is that Moses, having been forbidden to enter the promised land gave his final instruction to the people before they were to finally end their desert journey by crossing the Jordan River. This is from the New International Bible.
The Detroit News’ Kathy Hoekstra reports that Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) has sent a letter to all physicians and pharmacists in the state warning of “professional consequences” if they prescribe or dispense hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine to treat coronavirus patients. Hoekstra writes that “beyond the rational recommendation against hoarding as production of this medication needs to be ramped up, the letter deviates into open threats of “administrative action” against the licenses of doctors that prescribe hydroxychloroquine.” It also orders pharmacists to “ignore physician orders for this medication.”
There must have been a reason why Governor Gretchen Whitmer issued this threatening letter. She could have heard President Trump being excited about a promising study that offered a remedy, or, which is scary, she believed it was dangerous because a husband and wife ate spoonfuls of aquarium tank cleaner which contained chloroquine phosphate, and one of them died. What made this unbelievable story the news of the day in the mainstream media was the dying man’s words: “Look, this is what Trump recommended, why don’t we try it?” Little did they know that 2 grams is a deadly dose, but it is perfectly safe to take an appropriate dose under a physician’s supervision. It has been taken safely for over 50 years to combat malaria.
So why was President Trump so excited about the french study he was shown? Here are the results:
This was a non random test of 80 people, and one person died, a 70+ year old woman with underlying conditions. They took a chance on her because she was within hours of probable death anyhow, but she was too far gone. The other 79 recovered.
This is no time for double blind large clinical trials. They sometimes take years to verify, and the enemy, the COVID-19 virus works on a time-frame of 3 days, so the only choice is to work with incomplete and uncertified data.
To make matters a little more complicated, China has stopped export of one of the ingredients in making this medicine, and they are the only source, until we have started up production of our own. We have to do it in days, not weeks.
Why did China stop this medical export? There are at least two possibilities, either they are lying through their teeth about the COVID-19 cases and they need it for their own consumption but didn’t tell us, or, which is even worse, they do want to maximize the damage in the rest of the world.
It is March 6 2019, a cold morning in Intercourse, Pa. The temperature is 19F and the snow is still deep. There it is! A recently built Amish homestead with the telltale clothesline, but also a small wind turbine and four solar panels to provide
electricity. Contrary to popular opinion the Amish do not shun electricity, they just want to be left unconnected to the “English”, in other words, live off the grid. Their desire to be independent force them to be resourceful and innovative, since they also follow the law of the land whenever possible. So it was, when the farms were mandated to refrigerate the milk before pickup they installed electric coolers. The electricity was generated by diesel generators, so bingo, they could get electricity for their workshops as well, and turn from primitive hand work to fully modern wood workshops, I know, they provided a first class kitchen for our home in Intercourse. They had a problem, federal law mandated headlights on their buggies to be street legal. The propane lights with gas stockings burned well, but were too fragile to last the bumpy buggy rides so they installed car headlights running on car batteries. They had to be charged often, and it became quite expensive, so the Amish in 2003 made the first commercially available LED headlights for their buggies, thereby extending battery life nine-fold for a marine deep-charge lead-acid battery, from six hours to 100 hours.
Even at 120 dollars a piece it made economic sense. How do you charge batteries? This is where the solar panels come in, they are used to charge the batteries. When the sun doesn’t shine the wind may blow, a reasonable backup. Now they have 12 volt electric power. The next step was to wire the house and install 12 V LED lights and provide 12 volt DC or 24 volt AC outlets for small appliances. The lights are done, the appliances are still run the hard way, diesel engines providing compressed air, which run their wells with jet-pumps and in their hand mixers they take out the motor and replace with a compressed air motor. The LED lights beat kerosene lamps any day for efficiency, and even a compressed air driven refrigerator is much more efficient than a kerosene driven refrigerator.
So if the grid goes down for an extended period of time, who is better off? The Amish are far ahead of us in preparation for catastrophes.
And the Amish do get together and fellowship for any reason, but mostly for their Sunday services, which are held in the upper room of their workshops, or in the kitchen for the women and the basement for the men. The horse-drawn pew-mobile is in the picture above, to the right. This is a tell-tale sign who has the service next time.
July 27, 2018 was the funeral service of my mother, Gertie Bilén.
She was almost 99 year when she died July 4.
She had a rich and fulfilling life, so rather than the normal sorrow it was more of a celebration, we do not sorrow as those who have no hope.
My niece and brother performed my mother’s favorite song. “Invitation to Bohuslän” It is in Swedish but describes her life since she knew many of the places and people in the song. Enjoy!
Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment. 