There is a dark side to Socrates. The little known side may be common knowledge amidst some philosophers, yet it should be understood by the many as well as the few.
Socrates was a supporter of oligarchy and in opposition to the demos. It was the democrats that gave the philosopher the choice-Athens-leave it or die. Socrates choose death rather than to give up the principle of rule by the exclusive.
Bertrand Russell called Plato a fascist (during the Second World War). Plato's Republic was loosely modeled on the Spartan city-state. Yet of course Plato-Socrates wanted philosopher-Kings to dictate everything with a limited number of flunkies below in a rather Spartan configuration. The ordinary people were not helots of course, the men just should be cuckolded and the women imp0regnated by superior males-Socrates was an early formal eugenic supremist.
For most of the history of western civilization aristocracy has ruled and of course they advocate the extreme conservatism of 'The Republic'. How noble was Socrates in thrice being charged by the Demos of corrupting the youth of Athens-he was inciting them to revolt and restore the Oligarchy. Today of course the charge of’ corrupting youth' brings sniggers. Socialist believing corruption is hunkie dorrie want all of that they can get on the premise that it will undermine the conservative amongst us. We know the litany-unlimited sin is o.k. mankind evolved from lizards and hence it should today have a magical lizard's moral sensibilities.
Socrates did evolve the Socratic method. Maybe he refined some sort of water-boarding interrogation methodology that could work in polite society. Socrates wanted to prove that anyone he met was a moron or at least quite ignorant-any maybe he was right for the people were ordinarily ignorant and Socrates was a rare, thoughtful, intelligent aristocrat from a humble background.
Can we find sympathy for Socrates-son of a sculptor who worked on the Parthenon, rugged soldier, voluntary mystic of catatonic like states of deep standing contemplation-because he supported the rich and powerful of his day perhaps to get kickbacks of a financial nature-or at least to have an easy time of accommodations, food, parties and security?
If Socrates did not seek favors of the Buffets and Gates of his time, if the George Soros' of golden age Athens were just means to an end of converting Athenian liberty into a Spartan like domination by a pair of philosophers like Socrates and Plato, he was at least an individual who stimulated political philosophy and the inquiry into the nature of word meaning. It isn't too surprising that his grand-pupil Aristotle invented classical logic, the syllogism and formal scientific classification.
I guess Socrates wasn't all bad after all, yet of course, we like the moderns and several others fairly well in compensation, though of course none are God as is Jesus Christ.
1/6/12
Moderate Red Wine Drinking to Reduce Risk of Breast Cancer?
Science Daily posted an article on a scientific finding that the risk of breast cancer may be reduced with the drinking of 8 ounces of red wine nightly. The report will be published in an April edition of the Journal of Women's Health.
The article pointed out that most alcohol consumption increases estrogen levels that are a risk factor for cancerous cell growth yet red wine, seeds and grape skin do not. With environmental estrogen levels also elevated by certain plastic drinking containers, could those plastic cups and bottles be a risk factor for breast cancer too?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120106105925.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+
The article pointed out that most alcohol consumption increases estrogen levels that are a risk factor for cancerous cell growth yet red wine, seeds and grape skin do not. With environmental estrogen levels also elevated by certain plastic drinking containers, could those plastic cups and bottles be a risk factor for breast cancer too?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120106105925.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+
On Infinities
Cantor's trans-infinite infinities indicate ordinal form in abstract relations, yet it is not necessary that there is a correspondence to anything actual from infinite series. A circle line may be subdivided infinitely forever with smaller and smaller numbers at each point on the line. Reality may be qualitatively transcendent over infinities though, and the evident Universe is simply a project of an indefinable teleology phenomenalized.
Infinities of the abstract sort often are infinite in one direction with ordinal structure (regular intervals or spacing/quantity) yet not in all dimensions. The circle may be infinitely reduced yet not expanded in the same area without fundamental change of investment.
The Universe is sometimes thought to have expanded from a smaller area. Obviously it is logically easier to imagine the Universe shrinking to an infinitely small point.
If the Universe may be regarded theoretically as a circular or spherical section of a two dimensional or eleven dimensional membrane, it is fundamental to imagine reducing that portion or area to a small point before releasing it to expand and resume its normal context state over time.
Infinities of the abstract sort often are infinite in one direction with ordinal structure (regular intervals or spacing/quantity) yet not in all dimensions. The circle may be infinitely reduced yet not expanded in the same area without fundamental change of investment.
The Universe is sometimes thought to have expanded from a smaller area. Obviously it is logically easier to imagine the Universe shrinking to an infinitely small point.
If the Universe may be regarded theoretically as a circular or spherical section of a two dimensional or eleven dimensional membrane, it is fundamental to imagine reducing that portion or area to a small point before releasing it to expand and resume its normal context state over time.
On the Dionysian Aesthetic Paradigm vs More Objective Criteria?
Reading Euripides' versions of the works of Sophocles is lively. The Bacchae roll right along with a fair field description of the salient point of the advance of the women under the influence of Dionysus. What can't one like about it? Would you regard Timon of Athens as Dionysian because of the strength of Timon's hatred of mankind, or is that in a Euripidean style?
Is Wagner’s Logen a reference to Attila the Hun? Attila made it to France and fought to a stalemate with a Roman Legion.
One comment on the ring cycle offers the opinion that Bakunin was the role model. Adolph Hitler and other political charismatics place the emotion of vengeance right there with Dionysian passion. Monomaniacal political passion can bring a high opportunity cost with it. Artists though seem to require devotion to their project-I find it difficult to associate Dionysian drunkeness with artistic passion. Was Jackson Pollock a Dionysian and Pablo Picasso an intellectual of cubist construction and meta-layered perspective placing subjective psychologic perception into the empirical world?
The work of a the passion of Christ when the word means perserverence through suffering may be the best example of artistic devotion to an aethetic cause if we allow real values to intrude into the aesthete. Passion with sobriety is the best kind.
I stipulate that being in some way compelled to attend an Opera instead of reading philosophy or cosmology would be a terrible fate. So is a succession of Presidents of the United States that would be guided by emotion or red flags stimulating deficit spending instead of rational, analytical informed opinion about ecological economics and the way to move socially in a Thomas Moore direction or at least with a George Luis Borges sort of amusement aesthetically with intellectual genius.
Some prefer irrational motivation for living, yet it requires a good healthy ecosphere to run amuck in decadence instead of one with a prospect for mass extinction. I believe one might sublimate the aesthetic of romanticism within an intellectual appreciation of beauty and avoid the excesses of Nietzsche-
Is Wagner’s Logen a reference to Attila the Hun? Attila made it to France and fought to a stalemate with a Roman Legion.
One comment on the ring cycle offers the opinion that Bakunin was the role model. Adolph Hitler and other political charismatics place the emotion of vengeance right there with Dionysian passion. Monomaniacal political passion can bring a high opportunity cost with it. Artists though seem to require devotion to their project-I find it difficult to associate Dionysian drunkeness with artistic passion. Was Jackson Pollock a Dionysian and Pablo Picasso an intellectual of cubist construction and meta-layered perspective placing subjective psychologic perception into the empirical world?
The work of a the passion of Christ when the word means perserverence through suffering may be the best example of artistic devotion to an aethetic cause if we allow real values to intrude into the aesthete. Passion with sobriety is the best kind.
I stipulate that being in some way compelled to attend an Opera instead of reading philosophy or cosmology would be a terrible fate. So is a succession of Presidents of the United States that would be guided by emotion or red flags stimulating deficit spending instead of rational, analytical informed opinion about ecological economics and the way to move socially in a Thomas Moore direction or at least with a George Luis Borges sort of amusement aesthetically with intellectual genius.
Some prefer irrational motivation for living, yet it requires a good healthy ecosphere to run amuck in decadence instead of one with a prospect for mass extinction. I believe one might sublimate the aesthetic of romanticism within an intellectual appreciation of beauty and avoid the excesses of Nietzsche-
Darker Northern Winters Evolve Larger Human Brains & Eyes-Stimulate Sales of Light Bulbs
The brains of Northerners from Scandanavia are largest and those from Micronesia smallest evidently because the visual cortex increases in size to see better in those month of darkness. Since mosquitoes fly evasively really well, and since the U.S. Congress plans to spend a trillion dollars buying 2500 F-35 Joint Strike Neo-Stealth fighters the next two decades, it is easy to discern that brain size does not necessarily coincide with intelligence.
Other scientific reports indicate that long-term memory supports or reinforces the ability of perception to recognize objects. Learning does allow an individual to discern elements of their perceptual field they may not otherwise perceive-such as the UFO parked discretely in the corner of a Wall-Mart lot, or investors on Wall Street exiting the exchange with large bags of other people's money.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-remembrance-future-long-term-memory-stage.html
Alaskans have taken up the go north for a bigger brain evolution in selecting its state Governors adroitly skipping electing anyone from the S.E. part of the state and instead looking to Fairbanks and even Barrow for the best prospects.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2019600/We-Northerners-knew-bigger-brains-southern-softies.html
Other scientific reports indicate that long-term memory supports or reinforces the ability of perception to recognize objects. Learning does allow an individual to discern elements of their perceptual field they may not otherwise perceive-such as the UFO parked discretely in the corner of a Wall-Mart lot, or investors on Wall Street exiting the exchange with large bags of other people's money.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-remembrance-future-long-term-memory-stage.html
Alaskans have taken up the go north for a bigger brain evolution in selecting its state Governors adroitly skipping electing anyone from the S.E. part of the state and instead looking to Fairbanks and even Barrow for the best prospects.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2019600/We-Northerners-knew-bigger-brains-southern-softies.html
Redundant Canadian Tar Sands Crude Pipelines and Larger Northern Brains Perfidy?
Building an ecospherically invasive, displacing pipeline from Canada across the U.S.A. in order that Tar Sands Oil can be refined and sold to Brazil as gasoline seems outright dumb. A much shorter, entirely Canadian pipeline to carry Tar Sands oil from Alberta Canada to saltwater in a British Columbia (well, a few miles short on a river) is already going ahead. One must wonder how stupid U.S. politicians are to let that sort of ecospherically corrosive project be considered at all.
Apparently U.S. economic and energy leadership is just moribund-what ever happened to President Obama's state of the art 'clean coal' vision? Can't some sort of high tech electric car power line in highway for smaller, faster cheaper battery recharging be built instead? The again, why not invest in the hydrogen infrastructure at last?
http://www.tarsandsaction.org/spread-the-word/key-facts-keystone-xl/
These Canadians as northerners probably have larger visual cortexes and eyes than southerners in the 48 states. They may be attempting to build a best case for them pipeline infrastructure for exporting oil and gas to foreign destinations. While the Canadians are America's brothers in revolution (well, almost, it was only a fluke of fate that Tory's led Canada to be on Britain's side instead of ours), and we should be concerned to help them maximize their economic potential, it would be an abrogation of the 'tough love' axiom to let them do harm to the ecosphere of Canada and the U.S.A. by constructing a superfluous pipeline. We already know that Hugo Chavez and Venezuela's radical force of the left and are investing in new exploration and sometime will get around to cracking crude for point sale of petroleum to South America while the Tar Sands oil is more likely to find better sales prospects in China-a nation that is the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter and doesn't mind some Tar Sands crude.
Apparently U.S. economic and energy leadership is just moribund-what ever happened to President Obama's state of the art 'clean coal' vision? Can't some sort of high tech electric car power line in highway for smaller, faster cheaper battery recharging be built instead? The again, why not invest in the hydrogen infrastructure at last?
http://www.tarsandsaction.org/spread-the-word/key-facts-keystone-xl/
These Canadians as northerners probably have larger visual cortexes and eyes than southerners in the 48 states. They may be attempting to build a best case for them pipeline infrastructure for exporting oil and gas to foreign destinations. While the Canadians are America's brothers in revolution (well, almost, it was only a fluke of fate that Tory's led Canada to be on Britain's side instead of ours), and we should be concerned to help them maximize their economic potential, it would be an abrogation of the 'tough love' axiom to let them do harm to the ecosphere of Canada and the U.S.A. by constructing a superfluous pipeline. We already know that Hugo Chavez and Venezuela's radical force of the left and are investing in new exploration and sometime will get around to cracking crude for point sale of petroleum to South America while the Tar Sands oil is more likely to find better sales prospects in China-a nation that is the world's largest greenhouse gas emitter and doesn't mind some Tar Sands crude.
1/5/12
On Morality
Morality also has been said to be what people actually do socially. That is one may define social conduct interactively in various spheres from the point of view as a social anthropologist-historian. Moral behavior is made or developed from a variety of sources including obviously history and tradition-experience of real world circumstances that have bound people together.
One might consider Navaho funeral behavior of the 19th century and note that the procedures of the Shamanistic tradition were regarding life rather than the afterlife, and that the customs of body washing with soap of the funeral participants after three days, of not looking north and of concern for evil spirits coincided with the avoidance of germs and communicable diseases that often accompanied death-the living had no biological explanation for or understanding of germs, yet their selected moral traditions roughly followed the better decontamination and social grief release procedures possible given the criteria.
Social behavior tends to adapt its moral guidelines appropriate for the times. One sees the changes in feminist politics and employment following Rowe vs. Wade and the changes in sexual practices after the marketing of birth control pills. Moral guidelines tend to be rules of conduct with less than a substantive codification into law, although moral norms are often made into laws.
Natural law is its own implicit moral criterion that emerges throughout human cultures although not uniformly. Revelations of a divine nature are on occasions instructions for individual and social behavior that one disregards only at one's peril, and there is no necessary causal link between the emergence of moral codes from direct divine revelation, although some of the latter have been found through investigation to coincide with reasonable historical grounds for emergence into being.
Philosophical definition of terms such as good and evil tend have ontological values that vary, and construction of logical propositions and formations for moral axioms to induct responsive behavior conformity historically have been of a subjective and temporal nature. Good is a concept that requires a particular definition-utilitarians and others have obviously considered what good is, and if the greatest good for the greatest number is truly moral when that premise is exploited to annihilate individual primacy in existential social worth. If a political order pursues a particular highest moral goal that is good, then it might justify any lesser evil to advance society toward that goal as good as well. All evil in support of an ultimate goal is phenomenally good as well. The opportunities to disclarify terms are evident and abundant in such abstract impersonal approaches to manufacture of moral values.
Abstract moral values made practice by elite imposition are sometimes examples of the elevation of abstract goals through equivocation to a moral good that may then be placed upon the society as a straightjacket. Nietchze's idea that the annihilation of traditional morality and of Christian values obviously adversely influenced Germany toward a self-destructive political course in the 20th century. Some have noted that the adoption of mass social moral values of anti-values tend to bring about the most rigid mass social conformity possible as one might find in a gang, militant terror organization or the Hitler Youth Movement-Even Stalin's Russia sought to impose a culling moral existential guideline that would have been a comfortable philosophical fit for the Khmer Rouge in Kampuchea.
The abstract construction of moral value in order to bring about political change is a common enough historical occurrence. Even today in the United States there is a possibility of a Presidential contest in 2012 between two non-Christians from different parties yet in a way from the same state of Massachusetts with each advocating a corporatist health care plan in a state with homosexual marriage. One might speculate that the operative new moral axiom for the godless atheism of Massachusetts is Darwin' gambit; the over-use of evolution as a tool for the controverion of morality for-itself.
The philosophical consideration of the range of behavior useful to human life in a criterion of phenomenal evolution is not limited to crass anything goes-ism. There are implicit physical and spiritual criteria of the empirical state of being that makes some intentional and unintentional behaviors good, and other bad. Then again, there are transcendent questions concerning morality that are a matter of faith and insight.
One might consider Navaho funeral behavior of the 19th century and note that the procedures of the Shamanistic tradition were regarding life rather than the afterlife, and that the customs of body washing with soap of the funeral participants after three days, of not looking north and of concern for evil spirits coincided with the avoidance of germs and communicable diseases that often accompanied death-the living had no biological explanation for or understanding of germs, yet their selected moral traditions roughly followed the better decontamination and social grief release procedures possible given the criteria.
Social behavior tends to adapt its moral guidelines appropriate for the times. One sees the changes in feminist politics and employment following Rowe vs. Wade and the changes in sexual practices after the marketing of birth control pills. Moral guidelines tend to be rules of conduct with less than a substantive codification into law, although moral norms are often made into laws.
Natural law is its own implicit moral criterion that emerges throughout human cultures although not uniformly. Revelations of a divine nature are on occasions instructions for individual and social behavior that one disregards only at one's peril, and there is no necessary causal link between the emergence of moral codes from direct divine revelation, although some of the latter have been found through investigation to coincide with reasonable historical grounds for emergence into being.
Philosophical definition of terms such as good and evil tend have ontological values that vary, and construction of logical propositions and formations for moral axioms to induct responsive behavior conformity historically have been of a subjective and temporal nature. Good is a concept that requires a particular definition-utilitarians and others have obviously considered what good is, and if the greatest good for the greatest number is truly moral when that premise is exploited to annihilate individual primacy in existential social worth. If a political order pursues a particular highest moral goal that is good, then it might justify any lesser evil to advance society toward that goal as good as well. All evil in support of an ultimate goal is phenomenally good as well. The opportunities to disclarify terms are evident and abundant in such abstract impersonal approaches to manufacture of moral values.
Abstract moral values made practice by elite imposition are sometimes examples of the elevation of abstract goals through equivocation to a moral good that may then be placed upon the society as a straightjacket. Nietchze's idea that the annihilation of traditional morality and of Christian values obviously adversely influenced Germany toward a self-destructive political course in the 20th century. Some have noted that the adoption of mass social moral values of anti-values tend to bring about the most rigid mass social conformity possible as one might find in a gang, militant terror organization or the Hitler Youth Movement-Even Stalin's Russia sought to impose a culling moral existential guideline that would have been a comfortable philosophical fit for the Khmer Rouge in Kampuchea.
The abstract construction of moral value in order to bring about political change is a common enough historical occurrence. Even today in the United States there is a possibility of a Presidential contest in 2012 between two non-Christians from different parties yet in a way from the same state of Massachusetts with each advocating a corporatist health care plan in a state with homosexual marriage. One might speculate that the operative new moral axiom for the godless atheism of Massachusetts is Darwin' gambit; the over-use of evolution as a tool for the controverion of morality for-itself.
The philosophical consideration of the range of behavior useful to human life in a criterion of phenomenal evolution is not limited to crass anything goes-ism. There are implicit physical and spiritual criteria of the empirical state of being that makes some intentional and unintentional behaviors good, and other bad. Then again, there are transcendent questions concerning morality that are a matter of faith and insight.
1/3/12
Mo Seeming to Gather for Rick Santorum
Rick Santorum seems to have the valuable MO going into the first primary contest of the 2012 Presidential season. if he wins or finishes second his candidacy may be well set to surge in South Carolina.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1676705/iowa-caucus-rick-santorum-staffers.jhtml
Mitt Romney may alienate some voters because he received a Vietnam draft deferment as a 'Mormon minister'. While ordinary Americans were slogging though the muck of the rice paddies the heir of the American motors CEO got deferments like so many of his destined to wealth class in order to bring the Mormon faith to Parisians.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/21/9613042-character-matters?chromedomain=nbcpolitics
Avoiding ill-planned wars is not necessarily a bad idea, yet it is consistent with the yippification of Wall Street insiders seeking to concentrate class wealth as well. Many of that class are happy enough to send a well paid mercenary military to combat in profitable for corporate wars.
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1676705/iowa-caucus-rick-santorum-staffers.jhtml
Mitt Romney may alienate some voters because he received a Vietnam draft deferment as a 'Mormon minister'. While ordinary Americans were slogging though the muck of the rice paddies the heir of the American motors CEO got deferments like so many of his destined to wealth class in order to bring the Mormon faith to Parisians.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/21/9613042-character-matters?chromedomain=nbcpolitics
Avoiding ill-planned wars is not necessarily a bad idea, yet it is consistent with the yippification of Wall Street insiders seeking to concentrate class wealth as well. Many of that class are happy enough to send a well paid mercenary military to combat in profitable for corporate wars.
1/2/12
On Free Will
Free will is a state of affairs existing for a sentient being within a particular context. One may make choices on Earth that are not possible on a planet with stronger gravity or alien oligarchs that insist that none besides themelves have free will.
Mathematics has conditional free will opportunities abundantly-even infinitely within some sets of numbers. One may make right or wrong combinations, placements or intervals and be free. Maybe cognizant coincidence of positive choices with intention indicates free will when the possibilities for error are rich.
Free will may be developed with increased knowledge and when range of intellectual selection/motion multiply.
Do any know how to deal with the global warming Siberian methane hydrate burp that may reult in release of a global warming gas 25 times more powerful than co2 and in a quantity of 1,400 billion tons? Free will in political intelligence is as restricted as in authoritarian ocieties sometimes even when they are nominally free socieities because the politicians are daft.
Mathematics has conditional free will opportunities abundantly-even infinitely within some sets of numbers. One may make right or wrong combinations, placements or intervals and be free. Maybe cognizant coincidence of positive choices with intention indicates free will when the possibilities for error are rich.
Free will may be developed with increased knowledge and when range of intellectual selection/motion multiply.
Do any know how to deal with the global warming Siberian methane hydrate burp that may reult in release of a global warming gas 25 times more powerful than co2 and in a quantity of 1,400 billion tons? Free will in political intelligence is as restricted as in authoritarian ocieties sometimes even when they are nominally free socieities because the politicians are daft.
Elija and Problems With Political Leadership
The United States in its 2012 Presidential primary election season seems fundamentally presented with slim pickins. Some of us would prefer that Jesus just rapture us out right now and let the godless atheists ruin the world their own way-possibly frightening everyone with mechanical robotic snakes slithering about every neighborhood in search of hate speech against the government.
Few plain Christian candidates with economic competence seem to have any interest in reforming the Christian Church into a better functioning priesthood of beleivers. The candidates advocate no cost moral positions (what does it cost to make abortion illegal again?) but ignore the other Christian points about being of service to the poor. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and said that leaders ought to serve. Today's candidates ask for capital gains and income tax cuts for the rich and have enough interest in creating free health care for the poor.
President Obama obviously brought sex change to the nation and little else-the nation's military is moving down the trail of homosexual marriages, homosexual basic allowance for quarters and so forth while the institution is itself a professional service without ordinary citizens interested in joining it via the draft.
Mitt Romney is the obvious best qualified candidate on economic and secular interests yet isn't a Christian-and that worries Christians eager to please God (see the excerpt from the King James version following). One doesn't want to gain the world yet lose one's soul-neither does one want to elect economically incompetent and /or corrupt politician exploiting Christians for political support.
2nd Kings -
"1Then Moab rebelled against Israel after the death of Ahab.
2And Ahaziah fell down through a lattice in his upper chamber that was in Samaria, and was sick: and he sent messengers, and said unto them, Go, enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron whether I shall recover of this disease.
3But the angel of the LORD said to Elijah the Tishbite, Arise, go up to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria, and say unto them, Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that ye go to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron?
4Now therefore thus saith the LORD, Thou shalt not come down from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die. And Elijah departed.
5And when the messengers turned back unto him, he said unto them, Why are ye now turned back?
6And they said unto him, There came a man up to meet us, and said unto us, Go, turn again unto the king that sent you, and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that thou sendest to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron? therefore thou shalt not come down from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die.
7And he said unto them, What manner of man was he which came up to meet you, and told you these words?
8And they answered him, He was an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins. And he said, It is Elijah the Tishbite.
9Then the king sent unto him a captain of fifty with his fifty. And he went up to him: and, behold, he sat on the top of an hill. And he spake unto him, Thou man of God, the king hath said, Come down.
10And Elijah answered and said to the captain of fifty, If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.
11Again also he sent unto him another captain of fifty with his fifty. And he answered and said unto him, O man of God, thus hath the king said, Come down quickly.
12And Elijah answered and said unto them, If I be a man of God, let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And the fire of God came down from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.
13And he sent again a captain of the third fifty with his fifty. And the third captain of fifty went up, and came and fell on his knees before Elijah, and besought him, and said unto him, O man of God, I pray thee, let my life, and the life of these fifty thy servants, be precious in thy sight.
14Behold, there came fire down from heaven, and burnt up the two captains of the former fifties with their fifties: therefore let my life now be precious in thy sight.
15And the angel of the LORD said unto Elijah, Go down with him: be not afraid of him. And he arose, and went down with him unto the king.
16And he said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Forasmuch as thou hast sent messengers to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron, is it not because there is no God in Israel to enquire of his word? therefore thou shalt not come down off that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die.
17So he died according to the word of the LORD which Elijah had spoken. And Jehoram reigned in his stead in the second year of Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah; because he had no son."
Few plain Christian candidates with economic competence seem to have any interest in reforming the Christian Church into a better functioning priesthood of beleivers. The candidates advocate no cost moral positions (what does it cost to make abortion illegal again?) but ignore the other Christian points about being of service to the poor. Jesus washed the feet of his disciples and said that leaders ought to serve. Today's candidates ask for capital gains and income tax cuts for the rich and have enough interest in creating free health care for the poor.
President Obama obviously brought sex change to the nation and little else-the nation's military is moving down the trail of homosexual marriages, homosexual basic allowance for quarters and so forth while the institution is itself a professional service without ordinary citizens interested in joining it via the draft.
Mitt Romney is the obvious best qualified candidate on economic and secular interests yet isn't a Christian-and that worries Christians eager to please God (see the excerpt from the King James version following). One doesn't want to gain the world yet lose one's soul-neither does one want to elect economically incompetent and /or corrupt politician exploiting Christians for political support.
2nd Kings -
"1Then Moab rebelled against Israel after the death of Ahab.
2And Ahaziah fell down through a lattice in his upper chamber that was in Samaria, and was sick: and he sent messengers, and said unto them, Go, enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron whether I shall recover of this disease.
3But the angel of the LORD said to Elijah the Tishbite, Arise, go up to meet the messengers of the king of Samaria, and say unto them, Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that ye go to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron?
4Now therefore thus saith the LORD, Thou shalt not come down from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die. And Elijah departed.
5And when the messengers turned back unto him, he said unto them, Why are ye now turned back?
6And they said unto him, There came a man up to meet us, and said unto us, Go, turn again unto the king that sent you, and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Is it not because there is not a God in Israel, that thou sendest to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron? therefore thou shalt not come down from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die.
7And he said unto them, What manner of man was he which came up to meet you, and told you these words?
8And they answered him, He was an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins. And he said, It is Elijah the Tishbite.
9Then the king sent unto him a captain of fifty with his fifty. And he went up to him: and, behold, he sat on the top of an hill. And he spake unto him, Thou man of God, the king hath said, Come down.
10And Elijah answered and said to the captain of fifty, If I be a man of God, then let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And there came down fire from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.
11Again also he sent unto him another captain of fifty with his fifty. And he answered and said unto him, O man of God, thus hath the king said, Come down quickly.
12And Elijah answered and said unto them, If I be a man of God, let fire come down from heaven, and consume thee and thy fifty. And the fire of God came down from heaven, and consumed him and his fifty.
13And he sent again a captain of the third fifty with his fifty. And the third captain of fifty went up, and came and fell on his knees before Elijah, and besought him, and said unto him, O man of God, I pray thee, let my life, and the life of these fifty thy servants, be precious in thy sight.
14Behold, there came fire down from heaven, and burnt up the two captains of the former fifties with their fifties: therefore let my life now be precious in thy sight.
15And the angel of the LORD said unto Elijah, Go down with him: be not afraid of him. And he arose, and went down with him unto the king.
16And he said unto him, Thus saith the LORD, Forasmuch as thou hast sent messengers to enquire of Baalzebub the god of Ekron, is it not because there is no God in Israel to enquire of his word? therefore thou shalt not come down off that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely die.
17So he died according to the word of the LORD which Elijah had spoken. And Jehoram reigned in his stead in the second year of Jehoram the son of Jehoshaphat king of Judah; because he had no son."
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