Posted on 09/20/2013 4:29:03 AM PDT by spirited irish
“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22).
“And the fifth angel sounded the trumpet, and I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth, and there was given to him the key of the bottomless pit." (Rev. 9:1)
In his Concise Commentary Matthew Henry identifies falling stars as tepid, indecisive, weak or apostate clergy who,
"Having ceased to be a minister of Christ, he who is represented by this star becomes the minister of the devil; and lets loose the powers of hell against the churches of Christ."
John identifies antichrists, in this case clergy who serve the devil rather than Christ, sequentially. First, like Bultmann, Teilhard de Chardin, Robert Funk, Paul Tillich, and John Shelby Spong, they specifically deny the living, personal Holy Trinity in favor of Gnostic pagan, immanent or Eastern pantheist conceptions. Though God the Father Almighty in three Persons upholds the souls of men and maintains life and creation, His substance is not within nature (space-time dimension) as pantheism maintains, but outside of it. Sinful men live within nature and are burdened by time and mortality; God is not.
Second, the specific denial of the Father logically negates Jesus the Christ, the Word who was in the beginning (John 1), was with God, and is God from the creation of all things (1 John 1). In a pre-incarnate theophany, Jesus is the Angel who spoke “mouth to mouth” to Moses (Num. 12:6-9; John 9:20) and at sundry times and in many ways “spoke in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all…” (Hebrews 1:1) Jesus the Christ is the incarnate Son of God who is the life and light of men, who by His shed blood on the Cross died for the remission of all sins and bestowed the privilege of adoption on all who put their faith in Him.
Therefore, to deny the Holy Father is to logically deny the deity of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, hence,
“…every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist . . . and even now already is it in the world” (1 John 4:3).
According to Peter (2 Peter 2:1), falling stars will work among the faithful, teaching damnable heresies that deny the Lord, cause the fall of men into unbelief, and bring destruction upon themselves:
“The natural parents of modern unbelief turn out to have been the guardians of belief.” Many thinking people came at last “to realize that it was religion, not science or social change that gave birth to unbelief. Having made God more and more like man---intellectually, morally, emotionally---the shapers of religion made it feasible to abandon God, to believe simply in man.” (James Turner of the University of Michigan in “American Babylon,” Richard John Neuhaus, p. 95)
Falling Stars and Damnable Heresy
Almost thirty years ago, two well-respected social science scholars, William Sims Bainbridge and Rodney Stark found themselves alarmed by what they saw as a rising tide of irrationalism, superstition and occultism---channeling cults, spirit familiars, necromancers, Wiccans, Satanists, Luciferians, goddess worshippers, 'gay' shamans, Hermetic magicians and other occult madness at every level of society, particularly within the most influential--- Hollywood, academia and the highest corridors of political power.
Like many scientists, they were equally concerned by Christian opposition to naturalistic evolution. As is common in the science community, they assumed the cause of these social pathologies was somehow due to fundamentalism, their term for authentic Christian theism as opposed to liberalized Christianity. Yet to their credit, the research they undertook to discover the cause was conducted both scientifically and with great integrity. What they found was so startling it caused them to re-evaluate their attitude toward authentic Christian theism. Their findings led them to say:
"It would be a mistake to conclude that fundamentalists oppose all science (when in reality they but oppose) a single theory (that) directly contradicts the bible. But it would be an equally great mistake to conclude that religious liberals and the irreligious possess superior minds of great rationality, to see them as modern personalities who have no need of the supernatural or any propensity to believe unscientific superstitions. On the contrary...they are much more likely to accept the new superstitions. It is the fundamentalists who appear most virtuous according to scientific standards when we examine the cults and pseudo-sciences proliferating in our society today." ("Superstitions, Old and New," The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. IV, No. 4; summer, 1980)
In more detail they observed that authentic ‘born again’ Christians are far less likely to accept cults and pseudoscientific beliefs while the irreligious and liberalized Christians (i.e., progressive Catholics, Protestant emergent, NAR, word faith, prosperity gospel) are open to unscientific notions. In fact, these two groups are most disposed toward occultism.
As Bainbridge and Stark admitted, evolution directly contradicts the Bible, beginning with the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo. This means that evolution is the antithesis of the Genesis account. For this reason, discerning Christians refuse to submit to the evolutionary thinking that has swept Western and American society. Nor do they accept the evolutionary theism brought into the whole body of the Church by weak, tepid, indecisive, or apostate clergy.
Over eighty years ago, Rev. C. Leopold Clarke wrote that priests who embrace evolution (evolutionary theists) are apostates from the ‘Truth as it is in Jesus.’ (1 John2:2) Rev. Clarke, a lecturer at a London Bible college, discerned that evolution is the antithesis to the Revelation of God in the Deity of Jesus Christ, thus it is the greatest and most active agent of moral and spiritual disintegration:
“It is a battering-ram of unbelief---a sapping and mining operation that intends to blow Religion sky-high. The one thing which the human mind demands in its conception of God, is that, being Almighty, He works sovereignly and miraculously---and this is the thing with which Evolution dispenses….Already a tremendous effect, on a wide scale has been produced by the impact of this teaching---an effect which can only be likened to the…collapse of foundations…” (Evolution and the Break-Up of Christendom, Philip Bell, creation.com, Nov. 27, 2012)
The faith of the Christian Church and of the average Christian has had, and still has, its foundation as much in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis, the book of beginnings revealed ‘mouth to mouth’ by the Angel to Moses, as in that of the person and deity of Jesus Christ. But how horrible a travesty of the sacred office of the Christian Ministry to see church leaders more eager to be abreast of the times, than earnestly contending for the Faith once delivered unto the saints (Jude 1:3). It is high time, said Rev. Clarke, that the Church,
“…. separated herself from the humiliating entanglement attending her desire to be thought up to date…What, after all, have custodians of Divine Revelation to do making terms with speculative Biology, which has….no message of comfort or help to the soul?” (ibid)
The primary tactic employed by priests eager to accommodate themselves and the Church to modern science and evolutionary thinking is predictable. It is the argument that evolution is entirely compatible with the Bible when we see Genesis, especially the first three chapters, in a non-literal, non-historical context. This is the argument embraced and advanced by mega-church pastor Timothy J. Keller.
With a position paper Keller published with the theistic evolutionary organization Bio Logos he joined the ranks of falling stars (Catholic and Protestant priests) stretching back to the Renaissance. Their slippery-slide into apostasy began when they gave into the temptation to embrace a non-literal, non-historical view of Genesis. (A response to Timothy Keller’s ‘Creation, Evolution and Christian Laypeople,” Lita Cosner, Sept. 9, 2010, creation.com)
This is not a heresy unique to modern times. The early Church Fathers dealt with this damnable heresy as well, counting it among the heretical tendencies of the Origenists. Fourth-century Fathers such as John Chrysostom, Basil the Great and Ephraim the Syrian, all of whom wrote commentaries on Genesis, specifically warned against treating Genesis as an unhistorical myth or allegory. John Chrysostom strongly warned against paying heed to these heretics,
“…let us stop up our hearing against them, and let us believe the Divine Scripture, and following what is written in it, let us strive to preserve in our souls sound dogmas.” (Genesis, Creation, and Early Man, Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 31)
As St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote, higher theological, spiritual meaning is founded upon humble, simple faith in the literal and historic meaning of Genesis and one cannot apprehend rightly the Scriptures without believing in the historical reality of the events and people they describe. (ibid, Seraphim Rose, p. 40)
In the integral worldview teachings of the Fathers, neither the literal nor historical meaning of the Revelations of the pre-incarnate Jesus, the Angel who spoke to Moses, can be regarded as expendable. There are at least four critically important reasons why. First, to reduce the Revelation of God to allegory and myth is to contradict and usurp the authority of God, ultimately deny the deity of Jesus Christ; twist, distort, add to and subtract from the entire Bible and finally, to imperil the salvation of believers.
Scenarios commonly proposed by modern Origenists posit a cleverly disguised pantheist/immanent nature deity subject to the space-time dimension and forces of evolution. But as noted previously, it is sinful man who carries the burden of time, not God. This is a crucial point, for when evolutionary theists add millions and billions of zeros (time) to God they have transferred their own limitations onto Him. They have ‘limited’ God and made Him over in their own image. This is not only idolatrous but satanic.
Additionally, evolution inverts creation. In place of God’s good creation from which men fell there is an evolutionary escalator starting at the bottom with matter, then progressing upward toward life, then up and through the life and death of millions of evolved creatures that preceded humans by millions of years until at long last an apish humanoid emerges into which a deity that is always in a state of becoming (evolving) places a soul.
Evolution amputates the entire historical precedent from the Gospel and makes Jesus Christ unnecessary as the atheist Frank Zindler enthusiastically points out:
“The most devastating thing that biology did to Christianity was the discovery of biological evolution. Now that we know that Adam and Eve never were real people the central myth of Christianity is destroyed. If there never was an Adam and Eve, there never was an original sin. If there never was an original sin there is no need of salvation. If there is no need of salvation there is no need of a saviour. And I submit that puts Jesus…into the ranks of the unemployed. I think evolution absolutely is the death knell of Christianity.” (“Atheism vs. Christianity,” 1996, Lita Cosner, creation.com, June 13, 2013)
None of this was lost on Darwin’s bulldog, Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1985). Huxley was thoroughly familiar with the Bible, thus he understood that if Genesis is not the authoritative Word of God, is not historical and literal despite its’ symbolic and poetic elements, then the entirety of Scripture becomes a collection of fairytales resulting in tragic downward spiraling consequences as the Catholic Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation makes clear in part:
“By denying the historical truth of the first chapters of Genesis, theistic evolutionism has fostered a preoccupation with natural causes almost to the exclusion of supernatural ones. By denying the several supernatural creative acts of God in Genesis, and by downplaying the importance of the supernatural activity of Satan, theistic evolutionists slip into a naturalistic mentality which seeks to explain everything in terms of natural causes. Once this mentality takes hold, it is easy for men to regard the concept of spiritual warfare as a holdover from the days of primitive superstition. Diabolical activity is reduced to material or psychological causes. The devil and his demons come to be seen as irrelevant. Soon ‘hell’ joins the devil and his demons in the category of antiquated concepts. And the theistic evolutionist easily makes the fatal mistake of thinking that he has nothing more to fear from the devil and his angels. According to Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the chief exorcist of Rome, there is a tremendous increase in diabolical activity and influence in the formerly Christian world. And yet most of the bishops of Europe no longer believe in the existence of evil spirits….To the Fathers of the Church who believed in the truth of Genesis, this would be incredible. But in view of the almost universal acceptance of theistic evolution, it is hardly surprising.” (The Difference it makes: The Importance of the Traditional Doctrine of Creation, Hugh Owen, kolbecenter.org)
Huxley had ‘zero’ respect for modern Origenists and received enormous pleasure from heaping piles of hot coals and burning contempt upon them, thereby exposing their shallow-reasoning, hypocrisy, timidity, fear of non-acceptance, and unfaithfulness. With sarcasm dripping from his words he quipped,
“I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how any one, for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall with the historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures. The very conception of the Messiah, or Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish history; the identification of Jesus of Nazareth with that Messiah rests upon the interpretation of passages of the Hebrew Scriptures which have no evidential value unless they possess the historical character assigned to them. If the covenant with Abraham was not made; if circumcision and sacrifices were not ordained by Jahveh; if the “ten words” were not written by God’s hand on the stone tables; if Abraham is more or less a mythical hero, such as Theseus; the story of the Deluge a fiction; that of the Fall a legend; and that of the creation the dream of a seer; if all these definite and detailed narratives of apparently real events have no more value as history than have the stories of the regal period of Rome—what is to be said about the Messianic doctrine, which is so much less clearly enunciated? And what about the authority of the writers of the books of the New Testament, who, on this theory, have not merely accepted flimsy fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian dogma upon legendary quicksands?” (Darwin’s Bulldog---Thomas Huxley, Russell Grigg, creation.com, Oct. 14, 2008)
Pouring more contempt on them he asked,
“When Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that "the Flood came and destroyed them all," did he believe that the Deluge really took place, or not? It seems to me that, as the narrative mentions Noah’s wife, and his sons’ wives, there is good scriptural warranty for the statement that the antediluvians married and were given in marriage; and I should have thought that their eating and drinking might be assumed by the firmest believer in the literal truth of the story. Moreover, I venture to ask what sort of value, as an illustration of God’s methods of dealing with sin, has an account of an event that never happened? If no Flood swept the careless people away, how is the warning of more worth than the cry of “Wolf” when there is no wolf? If Jonah’s three days’ residence in the whale is not an “admitted reality,” how could it “warrant belief” in the “coming resurrection?” … Suppose that a Conservative orator warns his hearers to beware of great political and social changes, lest they end, as in France, in the domination of a Robespierre; what becomes, not only of his argument, but of his veracity, if he, personally, does not believe that Robespierre existed and did the deeds attributed to him?” (ibid)
Concerning Matthew 19:5:
“If divine authority is not here claimed for the twenty-fourth verse of the second chapter of Genesis, what is the value of language? And again, I ask, if one may play fast and loose with the story of the Fall as a “type” or “allegory,” what becomes of the foundation of Pauline theology?” (ibid)
And concerning Cor. 15:21-22:
“If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if the story of the Fall is merely an instructive “type,” comparable to the profound Promethean mythus, what value has Paul’s dialectic?” (ibid)
After much thought, C.S. Lewis concluded that evolution is the central, most radical lie at the center of a vast network of lies within which modern Westerners are entangled while Rev. Clarke identifies the central lie as the Gospel of another Spirit. The fiendish aim of this Spirit is to help men lose God, not find Him, and by contradicting the Divine Redeemer, compromising Priests are serving this Spirit and its’ diabolical purposes. To contradict the Divine Redeemer is the very essence of unfaithfulness, and that it should be done while reverence is professed,
“…. is an illustration of the intellectual and moral topsy-turvydom of Modernism…’He whom God hath sent speaketh the Words of God,’ claimed Christ of Himself (John 3:34), and no assumption of error can hold water in the face of that declaration, without blasphemy.” Evolutionary theists are serving the devil, therefore “no considerations of Christian charity, of tolerance, of policy, can exonerate Christian leaders or Churches who fail to condemn and to sever themselves from compromising, cowardly, shilly-shallying priests”---the falling stars who “challenge the Divine Authority of Jesus Christ.” (ibid)
The rebuttals, warnings and counsels of the Fathers against listening to Origenists (and their modern evolutionary counterparts) indicates that the spirit of antichrist operating through modern rationalistic criticism of the Revelation of God is not a heresy unique to our times but was inveighed against by early Church Fathers.
From the scholarly writings of the Eastern Orthodox priest, Fr. Seraphim Rose, to the incisive analysis, rebuttals and warnings of the Catholic Kolbe Center, creation.com, Creation Research Institute, Rev. Clarke, and many other stalwart defenders of the faith once delivered, all are a clear, compelling call to the whole body of the Church to hold fast to the traditional doctrine of creation as it was handed down from the Apostles, for as God spoke and Jesus is the Living Word incarnate, it is incumbent upon the faithful to submit their wills to the Divine Will and Authority of God rather than to the damnable heresy proffered by falling stars eager to embrace naturalistic science and the devil's antithesis--- evolution. But if it seem evil to you to serve the Lord,
“…you have your choice: choose this day that which pleases you, whom you would rather serve….but as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:15
Half-TRUTH(truth) is true, but it's still a stacked deck.
How many doctrines are there, with proponents that will tell you only theirs is truly divine?
It just remains for me to say that I regard “scientism” as a strongly doctrinal and dogmatic secular religion. And its adherents are definitely “fundamentalists” in the manner and type of preaching they preach.... And it seems as if such folk regard Darwin’s theory as the holiest, most sacred of scientism’s scriptural texts.
***Same here. Perhaps you recall the time I worked with the Religion Moderator to generate the scientism tag as a recognized caucus tag?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/2038869/posts
It was a successful experiment just to hold evolutionists accountable to politeness and extend caucus protection to their belief system. It was difficult for them to adhere to politeness, and they also disliked the fact that we were calling them that it IS a religion when they didn’t want it to be. That’s because their claim to the Capital-T Truth is that science answers all questions and is the default TRuth in the universe.
Strangely, when I sought to use the scientism tag as a protected place where anti-LENR vigilante censorship activists would be held accountable in the same way, the Religion Moderator removed the tag altogether.
It has proven difficult to get FReepers to debate in a respectful manner on certain topics. To steal a paragraph from a previous FR topic:
One of the axioms utilized by H.L. Mencken in analyzing politics in the
United States stated that Americans were unable to grasp arguments on their
face and instead needed them recast in pure Manichean terms, with the most
repellent of devils on one side and the purest of angels on the other.
I’ve seen this axiom come into play on various debates including right
here. It is disheartening to see this logical fallacy lent credulity. But
it is human nature, and moderators are drawn from the cloth of human nature
as are we all.
Half-TRUTH(truth) is true, but it’s still a stacked deck.
half-truth is only half-true
Not according to the person telling it.
half-truth is only half-true... Not according to the person telling it.
Unless they are liars....... or have an agenda..
And who don’t?..
My experience is.... most wouldn’t know truth if they backed over it and tripped.. fell... broke their hip and cussed nasty words..
Agendas are pursuit of an end. Half-truths are a means. Everybody has an agenda. Some of them let the end justify the means.
spirited irish: "Precisely define these so-called Free Masonic founding principles.
Begin with the concept 'unalienable,' how it relates to 'person' and delineate the genesis of the historically unique concept 'person.' "
So, FRiend irish, do you now refuse to give a straight answer to a simple question?
Here you are, the self-proclaimed expert in all things gnostic, hammering, hammering on the wickedness of gnostic influences on modern societies, especially including those evil Freemasons, and so I ask you a simple question: does that include our Freemason Founding Fathers?
Yes or no?
If yes, then you tell us in what ways precisely our Freemason Founders were wicked Gnostics in their Founding Principles of Revolution and Federal Constitution.
If no, then why, precisely, not?
This is your big chance, irish.
Take the ball and run with it.
Rubbish.
Our Founders were the "inner circle" in America.
Yes, they had little or no contact with those "satanic" people you fantasize about in Europe.
But, iirc, Ben Franklin was the highest ranking Freemason in America, so your example of his visit in Europe may suggest some influence, but what exactly?
My question remains: do you consider our Founders, and their Freemason-based Founding Principles to be wicked, Satanic gnostic evil-doers, and if so, in what way, precisely?
If not, then why not?
spirited irish: "your incredibly uninformed, simple-minded postulations amply demonstrate their warning."
For those keeping score on who is disrespecting whom, please add this one to Ms irish's column.
Thanks!
You may be able to understand that my concern here is not to defend "gnostics", but rather to protect our Founders from the association of their Freemasonry with claims that Freemasons were/are wicked gnostics.
I've seen no evidence -- zero, zip, nada -- to support any hint of such a claim.
Indeed, I would go so far as to reject -- utterly -- any association of American Freemasons with allegations of European satanic, gnostic, Marxist, statist, etc., evildoers.
Unless somebody here wants to make the case that our Founders were somehow part of a satanic cult, then I would sincerely suggest that all future references to alleged "gnostic Freemasons" specify you mean "European gnostic Freemasons".
And I only accept the claim regarding Europeans because I don't know enough about them to dispute it.
For those keeping score on who is disrespecting whom, I'd put this one in MHGinTN's column.
What, did you stay up late trying to figure some way to misunderstand a simple idea?
I said that the young Lincoln admired Paine.
Did the young YHAOS never admire somebody already dead?
YHAOS: "Paine died in poverty, unforgiven for his betrayal."
In fact, Paine was rewarded rather handsomely for his service by the US Congress, plus the states of New York and Pennsylvania.
Yes, he may well have squandered most of his earnings in England and France -- supporting the French Revolution.
But in 1802 Paine was invited to return to the United States by his friend, President Jefferson, and when Paine died at age 72 in 1809 he was buried on his 320 acre farm in New Rochelle, a gift from the State of New York.
Paine also owned a house in Bordontown City, NJ.
Paine's funeral was sparsely attended.
The newspapers' obituary read in part:
YHAOS: "Why are you buying the America-haters’ schtick?"
Sorry, FRiend, but it's your associate, the good spirited irish, who has made endless hammering on "gnostics" and Freemasons her work on this thread.
I have merely tried to defend our Freemason Founders against any association with her hammering.
Now, finally, after 1,500++ posts, we're starting to get some:
YHAOS: "Or, perhaps you meant to say that Abe was a great admirer of the Paine of 1776, overlooking the subsequent actions Paine took which utterly destroyed his prior reputation and standing with the American people."
YHAOS: "This conversation has previously taken place on FR (sans Lincoln’s grandfather).
Perhaps you suffer from long-term memory loss (December 5, 2009, and thereabouts).
I know I do. Old age is my excuse. What’s yours?"
My memory is still pretty good, but didn't recall discussing Paine before, or what a context for it might have been.
So a quick word search shows that post #1,536 of a 1/4/2009 thread (addressed to YHAOS, tacticalogic & betty boop among others) included this statement:
In fact, Paine was a Deist, and that is the only other mention of him I made before this thread.
Interesting to note some of the other comments in that old post... ;-)
YHAOS: "...we forget how bitterly he subsequently betrayed that same Spirit.
But the Americans of the Revolution never forgot, and never forgave.
The Abe Lincoln of the 19th Century, being a consummate student of American History, would know this."
In fact, even in his old age, Paine was befriended by President Jefferson, and after his death, admired by young Abraham Lincoln.
But more than anyone else, Paine was befriended and helped by Benjamin Franklin, who originally encouraged Paine to leave England for America, in 1774.
Whether Franklin would have approved of Paine's views of, say 1796, is doubtful, but most likely because of their impolitic nature, rather than substance.
Bottom line: Paine was born European not American, and so in the end he was held in contempt by most -- but not all -- Americans at the time of his death in 1809.
Oh I agree, I now have near zero respect for your palaver, whereas you tricked me earlier into thinking you actually wanted to explore possible aspects of the Universe usually dismissed with ‘scientific taboo’ mentality. ... It might be the condescension factor being so high that flicks my BIC, but I really don’t respect you enough to explore it further.
You're almost, but not quite there.
If I could just get you to understand the ancient concept of "branches of knowledge", each with its own realms and rules -- i.e., theology, metaphysics -- then acknowledge that the branch called "natural science" refers to nothing more, or less, than studies for natural explanations of natural processes.
So science is just one branch of knowledge.
If you want other knowledge -- i.e., of the super-natural or ontological -- then you must leave science and go to another branch.
Natural-science by definition cannot deal in those realms.
Of course our problem is that, in the modern-materialistic world, in the minds of many there is no other branch besides "science".
For them, if it's not "science", then it's not real.
But such was never the original intention of thinkers like, for example, St. Thomas Aquinas.
So the problem is not just that "science" has become immeasurably greater than it was in Aquinas' age, but also that all those other branches of knowledge have effectively atrophied to the point of non-existence in our modern minds.
How, exactly, to go about restoring the non-scientific realms I don't have an answer for, however...
Seems to me that was one problem that people like JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis addressed in their marvelous fiction-fantasy works.
YHAOS responding to betty, but addressed to BroJoeK: "Which word didn’t you understand?"
YHAOS is obviously cleverly non-responding to my answer to Ms boop:
BroJoeK: "Then what exactly is your problem with it?"
My question remains unanswered: if you truly don't wish to impose your own personal super-natural explanations on natural-science, then what exactly is your problem with science?
I see that in your efforts to defend Ms irish's assaults on satanic, gnostic Freemasonry, you wish to obfuscate the fact that our Founders were also Freemasons.
I am merely here to defend our Founders Freemasonry against unwarranted attacks.
Sorry, FRiend, by your lack of reading comprehension does not equate to my misunderstanding.
The fact is that spirited irish has conducted a broad, sweeping assault on "satanic", "gnostic" "statist" Freemasonry, and I am here to defend the Freemasonry of our Founders against such unmitigated nonsense.
Which side are you on, YHAOS?
As almost always, YHAOS is mistaken in his assumptions and conclusions.
Ms Alamo, you'd do better to look elsewhere for correct reasoning.
Sheer nonsense.
In fact Gollum's power -- his "precious" -- was a totally non-scientific magical power for evil.
It was opposed ineffectively by other magical powers for good (i.e., Gandolf, elves), but was ultimately defeated by Hobbit-courage and the absolutely natural-science of Mount Doom's volcano.
In the very end, Tolkien like many people regrets the passing of that age of heroic magic & myth, to be replaced by the "Age of Men" -- boring, scientific men -- but he offers us up no hope of the previous age ever returning...
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