Author: James

I’m assuming it was James who posted the comment regarding Woodrow Wilson and the central banking system.

Of course I’m opposed to that system, and have been from the beginning. In fact, everything I write is to find a synthesis that allows people to challenge the authority of the Federal Reserve Board and the central government which has sprung up around it.

This shouldn’t really be hard to do. What is the method by which the “Fed” regulates the economy? Interest rates. What is interest? The bible calls it usury. What does the bible say about usury? It’s bad. It is called an abomination, it is not allowed by God’s law(Deut.23:19, though verse 20 allows it to a “stranger”).

But even more interesting, notice what power the government is to have regarding loans.

Deut.24:10: “When thou dost lend thy brother any thing thou shalt not go into his house to fetch his pledge.
“Thou shalt strand abroad, and the man to whom thou dost lend shall bring out the pledge unto thee”.

First, there was to be no interest charged, second, the man owed could never enter the home of the debtor to collect the debt.

We might ask, from this, is the home itself to be the instrument on which the debt is based? if the collector can not enter the house to collect a debt, shouldn’t the house itself be immune to the power of loans?

If you look at Nehemiah 5 , you see that the Israelites, after their return from captivity, were in a state of near starvation. Verse 4: “We have borrowed money for the king’s tribute, and that upon our lands and vineyards.
“Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children: and lo, we bring into bondage our sons and daughters to be servants….”

Nehemiah was very angry when he heard that, and he named the culprit causing the problem:

Verse 7: “ye exact usury, every one of his brother(in direct violation of law, apparently, with interest placed on property).

Verse 10: “I pray you, let us leave off this usury”.

How much usury? Verse 11: “the hundredth part of the money”. A hundredth part? Small amount it seems, and yet look at the rates of interest paid to banks today!

It was Karl Marx who pointed out that if money became the “universal equivalent” the central value of everything, then, said Marx, the “so-called inalienable rights and the fixed property relationships corresponding to them break down before money”.

How about the right of governments to control property by financial organization?

Micah 2:5: “Therefore thou shalt have none that shall cast the cord(surveyor’s line) by lot(by vote) in the congregation of the Lord”.

Sounds like a law against zoning to me.

It is said in Daniel 2 that the empire to come at the ‘end time” will be mixed of iron and clay. Clay? How about Habakkuk 2:6: “Woe to him that increaseth that which is not his! How long? And to him that ladeth himself with thick clay?”

If you look at the Hebrew translation, you will see that “clay” refers to money pledges, loans, control of borrowing.

In fact, if you look at Daniel chapter 2, you see the “evolution of money”, from gold, which limited government power in Babylon, to silver, which was not only added to gold, thus expanding the power of the state, but that silver was also made into coins, which greatly facilitated the power of the state to control commerce.

With the development of bronze, Greece emerged, and coins could be made of cheaper metal, until with Rome it was recognized that it only required an image of a ruler on virtually any metal, even iron, to make the coin of value for tax purposes.

That is basically what Jesus pointed out when he was asked if it as lawful to “render unto Caesar”. he pointed to the coin and asked “whose image is on this coin?”

We know from the second commandment that the use of images to “bow down” to them, was forbidden. So, is it lawful to pay taxes to “Caesar” using images imprinted on money? Not according to the second commandment. So what do we render to Caesar? Nothing!

The power of any individual to reject currency based on interest is granted fully in the bible, as Jesus also pointed out we are not to be controlled by images.

It’s all about freedom.

Comments

Questeruk in the “comments” section says there is no way to have a rational discussion with me since I keep “changing the rules”.

I’ve never stated there were any rules. If there were rules we could define, then quite obviously we could define God. We could eliminate all confusion, prove there is a God, and what God expects to the degree we could eliminate all competition among so-called christian religions.

If there is a set of rules, there would also be a system of algorithms, a set of decision procedures, by which we could somehow represent God. But as I stated earlier, if there are such definitions, they can be translated into language, and if translated into language, they can be programmed into a computer, such that a computer could represent all necessary rules and definitions of God.

That in itself creates a contradiction, since if we could do that, we could contain “God” in a creation of our own minds, which means that God would be less than ourselves, not to mention the fact that it would be a form of idolatry, which is condemned by the second commandment.

I pointed out earlier that William James stated, if God is all knowing, then we are not free, since God would know in advance who would accept or reject him.

We can argue this back and forth an infinity of ways, and what will be the result? Exactly what you see today, over 38,000 versions of christianity and growing. Is there such a decision procedure by which we can identify in amny special way with God?

If we could, we would not see obvious evidence to the contrary. The very attempt to supply definitions or “rules” in ANY sense, will lead to an infinity of undecidable propositions about God, in full accordance with Godel’s theorem.

All you have to do to prove me wrong is to demonstrate that there IS such a process by which we can make such definitions, which are demonstrated as truth to all.

Simple premise, simple logic. No “rules changing”, nothing as been stated in any way contradictory to the physical evidence we see around us.

What is the conclusion of this? “If any man says to you, Lo, here is Christ, or there, believe it not”.

Have I told you a “way to Christ”? No, because it is impossible. Therefore, have I told you the truth? YES! I have.

Let’s balance this with a statement by Ayn Rand, whom “Ex-Android” admires, as do I:

“Nature allows no vacuum. Empty men’s soul–and the space is yours to fill. I don’t see why you should look so shocked… this is the oldest one of all. Look back at history. Look at any great system of ethics, from the Orient up. Didn’t they all preach the sacrifice of personal joy? Under all the complications of verbiage, haven’t they all had a single leitmotif: sacrifice, renunciation, denial? Haven’t you been able to catch the theme song, ‘Give up, give up, give up, give up’?….Every system of ethics that preached sacrifice grew into a world power and ruled millions of men”.

What do religions, ALL religions, teach? That we should “give our heart and souls to the “Lord”. If you wish to serve God, we are told, you should join a church, follow the rules, sacrifice our individuality to the collective of a church.

But what about government? SAME THING.

Now, I have been accused of applying Paul’s teachings of Romans 8:29-30 as “dogmatic truth”. Let’s assume you are right, that I am asserting that statement dogmatically(which basically I would have to, in light of any proof to the opposite conclusion).

What are the results of such “dogmatic assertion”? It would mean that no human being would have the ability to define God, to organize in the name of God, or to claim authority in God’s name. Why? because if God already knows who his children are to be, there is no thing whatever we can do, by any method, to change the outcome.

So, if I accept this as a “dogmatic belief”, then I have automatically concluded that no person can ever claim authority over me as a representative of God. In other words, there exists no “vacuum”, in the words of Ayn Rand, above, by which any man can claim my allegiance because of my ignorance.

So, let’s throw out Paul’ statement in Romans 8:29-30. God doesn’t know everything. Salvation is dependent on our free will decisions, of which God cannot know the outcome. Which one of those “free will” decisions will lead us to “salvation”?

All of them? Not according to Jesus in Matthew 24. it is possible to be deceived, and we are told we should not be deceived. So, we are back to the same question again: which one of the religions of Christ are we to accept in order to escape deception?

Which one? Define it. Show me. You can’t, at least not to the extent that you can show any connection to God, or if there is a God, or if anything you do can alter your destiny in any way.

So, we’re right back to the “dogmatic belief”, regarding Romans 8:29-30, which tells us exactly the same thing we see around us by direct physical evidence!

The only difference is that Paul eliminates such necessity of choice from the start, and we have to arrive at the same conclusion by two thousand years of experience, and a scammer called HWA.

Can you define God? If you can, then God can be reduced to a concept that is defined and known by humans, making “God” the creation of man, and not the other way around.

What “rules” have I changed? What free will choice do you have that places you any closer to God by your definitions than any other religion? What can you show, in any sense at all, that would make your “free will” belief any different from the thousands of other ‘free will” beliefs?

You can’t! it can’t be done! If you can show me otherwise, we can legitimately rule the world, right here, right now!

It is said that there can be no rational discussion regarding God. Exactly! That is now proven mathematically! God cannot be reduced to any rational, finite, logical conclusion, simply because the very attempt to define God would have to include an infinity of ideas, none of which can be established as truth!

There is no rational discussion of God. It does not exist,

cannot exist, and any attempt to do so will result in exactly what we see today: over 38,000 versions of “truth”.

Therefore, what Ayn rand said, what Jesus said, what Paul said, all boil down to the very same conclusion: if any man says to you “here is Christ(or God) or there, BELIEVE IT NOT”.

It is just that simple! It cannot be any simpler! So, how does this relate to government in regard to central banking systems and laws of men, as James pointed out in “comments”?

Both church and state, religion and government, are the collective creations of men, nothing more, nothing less. Ayn Rand calls them “Attila and the Witch Doctor” and the bible refers to them as the “beast and false prophet”. Is there truly any difference in these two terms? Attila was a power hungry government “beast”. A “false prophet” is nothing more than a ‘witch doctor’ who tries to convince us that we need to obey, obey, obey.

What did Ayn Rand say? Don’t follow them. What did Jesus say? Don’t follow them. What did Paul say? It does no good to follow them, since God already knows his children anyway. No choice can alter your destiny in that regard(Romans 9:16-22).

All of them amount to the same conclusions! What is that conclusion? You are free from all men or persons who would try to enslave you for any collective reason.

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I read a very good book many years ago, published in 1979, I think. It won the Pulitzer prize, and it was concerned with Godel’s theorem, entitled “Godel, Escher, Bach”.

I had to read it several times before I grasped the basic ideas, But the author, Douglas Hofstadter, also wrote a book a bit simpler, called “I Am A Strange Loop”. A pretty good read.

In “Godel, Escher, Bach”, Hofstadter would introduce his ideas with a conversation, in Lewis Carrol fashion, between Achilles and the Tortoise. The conversations were based loosely around Zeno’s paradox.

At one point, Achilles was trying to use logic to convince the Tortoise that Achilles’ conclusions simply could not be denied if the tortoise accepted logic as the ultimate arbiter of truth.

The Tortoise, like most humans, said that he was very reasonable, and would never accept a conclusion that was illogical. Achilles just knew the argument as won.

Achilles began, “If I show that A is true, and B follows from A, then we must also conclude that C is also true as a conclusion following from the premises of A and B”.

“Of course” said the Tortoise, “It’s obvious that this should be the case”.

“Then you agree?”

“In principle”.

“What do you mean, ‘In principle’?”

“I mean that if A is true, and B is true, the we would conclude that C s true as a premise following from A and B”.

“That’s what I said”

“Yes” said the Tortoise, “But if A is true, and B is true, and C follows logically as a premise resulting from A and B, then we would conclude that this is summed up in premise D”.

“What?”

“You see, if A, B, and C are true, we would establish this as premise D, which simply states the fact of the truth of A,B,and C”.

“Okay” said Achilles, “I’ll accept that. But then surely you must accept D as the final statement of truth”.

“Not at all” said the Tortoise, “If D is the statement of truth summing up A,B.and C, then certainly we would establish this as a subset of premise E, which states that if A,B, C, and D are true, then E”.

Achilles smelled a rat. “But surely there would be a stopping point. Let’s say that Z is the statement that sums up the truth of A through Y. Surely you then have to accept that Z is the truth?”

“Of course” said Tortoise, “But then we would also have to say that A1 is the statement that demonstrates the truth of A through Z, and then A2, A3, A4, until we finally arrive at the ultimate truth”.

“Which is?”

“I don’t know. How many numbers are there?”

“Infinite numbers. So if I say that infinity sums up the truth of all previous statements, we can stop there?”

“I suppose, but where does infinity stop?”

What occurred was that both Achilles and Tortoise were discussing a kind of “schematic” of truth. not the truth in terms of each statement itself, but in terms of statements that represented truth or statements about truth, as each one saw it.

This is my point in talking “about” truth. We can develop processes of organization, mechanical representations of ‘truth’, but in fact, the arguments can proceed into infinity. The system of mathematics simply cannot define truth in any limited fashion. It can go on forever….

That is the essence of Godel’s theorem. In order to find out if truth could be represented in mathematics, Godel had to develop a system in which the system of math actually referred back to itself. To do this, he had to develop a “Godel number” system in which the axioms of math( plus, minus, division, multiplication, etc) were represented as numbers themselves, so that the system was “self referencing”.

What Godel demonstrated b this was that a system of complex mathematics would produce a statement which said of itself, “I exist, but I cannot be proven within this system”.

From “outside” the system, the person could see if it was true, but the system itself simply had nothing to say about it! it was undecidable, therefore making the system incomplete.

The result was “in any consistent axiomatic formulation of number theory, there exists undecidable propositions”.

This same process may also be admitted by looking at Jeremiah 17:9 and Romans 8:7. When the human mind looks inside itself for truth, “self references”, it will come up with an infinity of possibilities as to what is true, especially in regard to God!

If we seek to organize truth about God in the form of rules and laws, that organization will have to reflect the limitations of our own minds. It will reflect also the incompleteness of our mathematical systems and our systems of logic as well.

We can’t get “there” from “here”.

That’s why, if we seek to “convert” others to a certain truth, that truth will ultimately split into an infinity of different ideas and concepts! No human mind can represent God in a complete sense, and that’s what both Paul and Jesus tells us.