Once upon a time, Jack Henry Abbott was serving time for forgery and manslaughter. However, Abbott managed to become pen pals with author Norman Mailer from his prison cell and then turned their correspondence into his bestselling book titled In the Belly of the Beast, which received a rave review from the New York Times. Despite the fact prison officials vehemently opposed his release and considered him unstable, Abbott was paroled after numerous liberal "Hollywood" elitists had championed his cause. Actress Susan Sarandon even went so far that she honored Abbott by naming her son with actor Tim Robbins "Jack Henry." Yet six weeks after his release from prison and with a nice five-figure advance on royalties in his pocket, Jack Henry Abbott senselessly murdered his waiter in a New York restaurant only the day before his book received that untimely rave New York Times review. It wasn't merely because he wrote well that Abbott was so readily forgiven his many horrible sins by people like Norman Mailer and Susan Sarandon. Jack Henry Abbott became successful in part because he wrote what liberal elitists wanted to read -- about how the criminal justice system was unfair to criminals, regardless of whether or not the criminal actually deserved punishment as decreed by our judicial system. What the elitists forgot, of course, was that forgiveness requires repentance. If you aren't sorry for your sins (all crimes are sins, but not all sins are crimes) then you don't deserve forgiveness. Jack Henry Abbott should not have been released from prison. Even so, … [Read more...]
Archives for March 2015
The Pearl: 31 March 2015
You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might also pray in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance. – Khalil Gibran You're familiar with the expression, "Great minds think alike?" Proving the truth of that old proverb, the Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran and Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw have both said basically the same thing about prayer: that we pray for the wrong reasons. We don't give thanks to God for what we have. Instead, we mostly beg our Creator to give us what we don't have, as if God exists to serve us. … [Read more...]
Stupidity in higher education
If you don't know about the latest scandal revealed by James O'Keefe and Project Veritas, you should check out the link below. An undercover reporter posing as a student advocate for Hamas and ISIS was told by an assistant dean at Cornell University that representatives of those terrorist organizations would be welcome on campus, and "grant" money might even be made available to help pay for the expenses of their visit. An associate dean at an Ivy League school doesn't know that ISIS are the terrorists beheading the prisoners they don't burn alive? Or doesn't care? … [Read more...]
The Pearl: 30 March 2015
The only source of knowledge is experience. – Albert Einstein Albert Einstein was arguably one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. This quote is particularly interesting because there are some renowned modern scientists who would try to convince you the opposite is true -- they actually claim that careful inference is superior to personal experience. However, seeing is indeed believing. In my book Divine Evolution, I wrote about my personal experiences -- yes, I do mean to imply there were multiple occurrences -- with ghosts. Many of these paranormal experiences were witnessed by other people. And in another chapter, I wrote about my personal encounter with the risen Christ on the night I connected the dots that linked Matthew 7:7 and Revelations 3:20. Then in my Counterargument for God, I sought to examine what I perceive to be a connection between the near death experience, or NDE, and ghosts, which of course could be called ADES, for after death experiences. My personal experiences were not hallucinations. They were nothing less than evidence that strongly indicates that the mind and brain are actually separable entities. There is scientific evidence to support my claims, known as corroborated veridical NDE events. These events involve a person who has a medical emergency of some nature that puts them temporarily in a state near death, and they claim to have out-of-body experiences. What makes these claims of particular interest are two facts: their medical condition can be verified, and these people make a specific claim of acquiring … [Read more...]
The Pearl: 29 March 2015
Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places, if you look at it right. -- Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter The above lyric can be found in the song "Scarlet Begonias" from the album/CD Live From the Mars Hotel. Yes. I confess that I was once a Deadhead. There was a time in my past that I sought wisdom from the music of the Grateful Dead and their leader, Jerry Garcia, the primary singer and lead guitarist. However, when Bob Weir, rhythm guitar player and alternate voice of the Grateful Dead suggested that, "Too much of everything is just enough", I recognized that line wasn't clever or wise -- it was stupid. That line was from the song "I Need a Miracle Every Day" and it reminded me of the band's participation in the infamous "acid tests" conducted by Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, documented by Tom Wolfe in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Too much of anything is too much of that thing. Too much of everything will more than likely cause your premature death. Case in fact: Jerry Garcia is no longer a member of the Grateful Dead because he is dead. So I soon decided to stop seeking to gain philosophical wisdom from people who gained fame through their abuse of LSD, in favor of slightly more conventional sources. The line from "Scarlet Begonias" will always remain true, though. If I hadn't first read Richard Dawkins's book The God Delusion advocating atheism, I never would have ultimately written my books Divine Evolution and Counterargument for God. That is indeed a most strange place for me to have begun to truly see … [Read more...]
