Replies

I owe you an apology, dear Kevmo. I've been very impatient with you all week, taking out my visceral disappointment with another on you. I apologize.

I am disappointed with a person, very dear to me, who has decided he is an atheist. He is intelligent and should know better - but I suspect he has been beguiled.

In that regard, the words of the serpent to Eve in the Garden of Eden are clear in my mind. The serpent said "did God really say..." (Gen 3:1 NIV).

So, as you might see, communication is front and center to me - especially this week. And this thread and our sidebar has focused on that very subject.

One of the truisms in Shannon's model is that if the sender encodes the message in say, French, the receiver must also be decoding in French and not say, German, or else the communication fails.

And here we have a problem.

You are certainly free to use whatever word meanings you desire. And if you choose colloquialisms, you are welcome to them.

I reject colloquialisms. This is also because of Scripture. For instance, in today's colloquialisms, bad and good are interchangeable - a reflection of what has actually happened in society:

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! - Isaiah 5:20

I will continue to be hard as nails on language as I am after all, Christian and Texan and a math geek. Add all that up to my encoding/decoding demands clarity and precision.

So we have an irreconcilable language difference that makes continuing this dialogue pointless but thank you for your time, Kevmo, it has helped me deal with the disappointment mentioned earlier.

I was once an atheist, so I feel like I know where your friend is coming from. I had a desire to know truth and pursued it even if it hurt me. And boy, did it hurt me.

The 2 books that pulled me off the atheism path were

“Late Great Planet Earth” by Hal Lindsey. Largest selling nonfiction title of the entire decade of the 1970’s. It’s a bit dated now. It’s about bible prophecies coming true in these end times.

“Jesus: God, Ghost or Guru” by Buell and Hyder. It is about the historical evidence that Jesus claimed to be God Himself. A similar book for this timeframe is “The case for Christ” by Lee Stroebel.

The atheists I encounter are not honest with themselves. They refuse to acknowledge the historical evidence that Jesus claimed equality with God (and paid for that statement with His own life) because their bigotry forces them to view christians as irrational followers of a superstition. If they honestly value truth, they would encounter the evidence. I will pray for your friend.