DUTCH TREAT- Cal Fox's Blog

The effort is on to find the next Supreme Court Justice and the major litmus test is how the candidate will interpret the Constitution.  The philosophy of interpretation will determine how the candidate would rule on many case that come before the Court, e.g. Abortion.  I have long realized the same applies to Christian Faith and Practice.  How one views the Bible determines how one judges issues such as Marriage.  Interestingly, the debate about Constitutional Interpretation is very similar to the one about Scripture.

Here is a good, helpful article about interpreting the Constitution.  See if it applies to how you read your Bible

http://www.eppc.org/programs/constitution/publications/pubID.2394,programID.39/pub_detail.asp

Here is a very good article by George Will in defense of the new Arizona law and about the hypocrisy of its naysayers

News came this morning that the remains of Noah's Ark have been discovered (again). That remains to be proved, but why the interest?  Many Christians want confirmation that Bible History is factual.  Skeptics and Cynics are glad for any evidence that it is not.

Personally, as with the debate over Creationism, my solid faith in the Bible's trustworthiness is based on just that: "faith" and that needs no historical verification (although it is always welcome).  Jesus and Paul both believed that Adam and Eve were real historical characters.  That is good enough for me.

I will add that the current search for what Jesus looked like according to reconstruction of the Shroud of Turin image is also irrelevant to me.  I know Jesus, talk to him everyday and have been reading and studying what he has written for years- what he looked like at 33 just doesn't matter.

Lots of hypocrisy in the anger vented against Goldman Sachs.  What they did appears to me to be legal, but very immoral.  Many many things in life are exactly that.  We learn that early on along with the truism: "Life is not fair".

The  hypocrisy is that every day people of all kinds, rich and poor, have no problem doing immoral things if they can get away with it because they are not illegal.

"No one argues that different economic systems or political regimes are one and the same. Capitalism and socialism are so self-evidently at odds that their differences hardly bear mentioning. The same goes for democracy and monarchy. Yet scholars continue to claim that religious rivals such as Hinduism and Islam, Judaism and Christianity are, by some miracle of the imagination, both essentially the same and basically good."

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/04/25/separate_truths/

"The trend of laptop-banning seems strongest at law schools, where discussions and understanding the material are vital to getting past the dreaded first year. Georgetown University Law Center professor David Cole bans laptops, as does University of Memphis law school professor June Entman. George Mason University law professor Michael Krauss has banned laptops for five or six years now.

The way his first-year law-school classes are taught, Krauss said, is by asking questions for students to answer in discussion. Distractions and the Internet aren't Krauss's concern in banning laptops; the reason for the ban is that laptops have "become a substitute for thinking." The material in a law class requires a lot of thought to help understand concepts, and students who type verbatim what is said in class into their notes aren't giving themselves any time to absorb and analyze"  [emphasis added]

 MORE HERE

An essential that all of us need to have and many of us sorely lack is the ability to do critical thinking.  Critical Thinking Skills involve looking for alternative reasons and better explanations. According to Bloom’s Taxonomy, there are six escalating levels:

   1. Knowledge
   2. Comprehension
   3. Application
   4. Analysis
   5. Synthesis
   6. Evaluation

To learn much, much more on this subject and for help in developing critical thinking skills I strongly, highly recommend this website

http://fox4editing.wordpress.com/critical-thinking-skills/

Here are two articles about the real possibility of a values added tax (VAT)on just about everything- scary stuff

HERE

HERE

The Bible warns about what Kings will do to their subjects, especially with unjust taxes!

Read 1 Samuel 8:6-19