The estimates are staggering as international NGOS are estimating that as many as 700,000 Sudanese have fled their homes.

 

imor, The estimates are staggering as international NGOS are estimating that as many as 700,000 Sudanese have fled their homes. This is why I need your help urgently. Thanks to a generous matching grant from one supporter, every donation you give to allow the Vulnerable People Project's Hope for Sudan Fund to provide EMERGENCY, LIFE-SUSTAINING REFUGEE KITS to families in crisis will be DOUBLED, dollar for dollar. This means your $100 tax-deductible gift to provide one family with EMERGENCY REFUGEE KIT containing food, shelter, and other life necessities will automatically be doubled to $200, to provide TWO KITS for TWO FAMILIES. So, can you pitch in $100 or even $50 right now? With the borders being flooded by Sudanese refugees fleeing the war zone and potential genocide, we only have days to act to fund KITS for 1,000 families and get the supplies on the ground to our partner organization. Please click here or below to watch a short news update from the region as well as chip into our campaign. Timor, I need to be straight with you. Launching an operation in Sudan was not on my list for this spring and, therefore, not included in the budget I created for 2023. So this means, every dollar we raise is going directly into our newly formed Hope for Sudan Campaign and our allies who are now on the ground. Can you pitch in with a donation of just $100? Not only will your $100 save a family from starvation, exposure, and sickness.  It will also be doubled to $200, to save two families. With our critical goal to raise $100,000 to provide 1,000 Sudanese Christian and other vulnerable families with EMERGENCY, LIFE-SUSTAINING REFUGEE KITS. These kits include a tent to protect families from the sun and rainy season that just began as well as food and other life sustaining necessities. And they only cost $100 per family. See the image at the bottom of my email for what these tents will look like! Please chip in $100, which will be doubled to $200, to secure TWO Christian or vulnerable refugee families with shelter, food, and other life necessities to survive. Or, if you aren't able to do that, please donate $50, which will be doubled to $100, to help ONE receive an Emergency, Life-Sustaining Refugee Kit. We only have days to act and secure tents and food for 1,000 families in one of our border refugee camps. Please keep this desperate situation in your prayers. For the Sudanese Christians and families,  Jason Jones Founder, Movie to Movement & The Vulnerable People Project Host, The Jason Jones Show P.S. - After you contribute to our Hope for Sudan Campaign and this generous $24,000 Matching Grant, please forward this urgent message to all of your friends and family. Or simply post the link to our Matching Grant donation page (https://movietomovement.givingfuel.com/vpp-sudan-matching-grant) on your social media profiles asking your friends to chip in.

Our mailing address is: Movie to Movement HERO inc 117A Packerland Drive Green Bay, WI 54303 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list. A tiny request: If you liked this post, please share this? I know most people don’t share because they feel that us bloggers don’t need their “tiny” social share. But here’s the truth… I built this blog piece by piece, one small share at a time, and will continue to do so. So thank you so much for your support, my reader. A share from you would seriously help a lot with the growth of this blog

What you’ll learn

 

What you’ll learn It’s a common claim that science alone gives us knowledge. As a result, Christian faith has become marginalized as a myth, without any factual basis. Yet, argues philosopher J.P. Moreland, this view called “scientism” is itself a philosophical assumption and not the conclusion of scientific observation. Science must utilize a great deal of philosophy before it can get underway. This pervasive view of scientism has devastating implications for morality, human dignity, knowledge, and much more. Its proponents naively dismiss orthodox Christianity, which actually gave rise to modern science and has historically been committed to evidence and reason. Moreland seeks to clarify what scientism is, how to identify and respond to scientistic assumptions, and how to show that Christian faith actually makes the best sense when it comes to science and a range of other considerations. Read on for key insights from Scientism and Secularism.

1. Knowledge, not faith or mere belief, gives people authority to speak and act in public. It is on the basis of perceived knowledge that we give dentists, lawyers, history teachers and so on the authority to speak about matters within their areas of expertise.  If a dentist said he had a set of deeply held beliefs about molars and was emotionally committed to those beliefs even though he didn’t actually know that his beliefs were true, he would not be allowed to continue as a dentist. Likewise for Christians, they can be confident that their faith (personal trust in God) is no blind leap but is rather a principled commitment to reality. The Christian faith is a rich knowledge tradition that has been dedicated to robust philosophical reasoning as well as public evidences that include eyewitnesses and publicly-accessible miracles— most significantly, Jesus’ bodily resurrection. They can have genuine knowledge of what is real, and they can have a cultural authority that gives them courage and boldness to speak because they know why they believe what they do. The most important idea in a society is its understanding of who does and does not have knowledge, who gets to define reality, truth, and rationality and who doesn’t.

2. Scientism is a philosophical stance that comes in two forms. Scientism is a philosophical position, not a scientific one.  The claims of scientism are assertions about science, not of science.  Scientism takes two forms. The first is strong scientism. This is the view that the only knowledge we can have about reality are those that have been properly tested in the hard sciences—especially physics and chemistry. All other claims—theological, ethical, political, aesthetic, and the like—are mere expressions of emotion and private opinions. The second type is weak scientism. This position allows that there may be modestly justified beliefs outside science. However, the settled assertions of the hard sciences are vastly superior to claims outside science.

3. Scientism leads to Secularism and marginalizes Christianity and ethics. Scientism leads to the secularization of culture because it leads people to believe that no one can know anything about God, right and wrong, and so on.  If something like religious, ethical, or related claims cannot be quantified and proven in the laboratory, then the claims are nothing but hot air, mere expressions of feeling that cannot carry any authority.  Thus, the Christian faith and morality may be safely disregarded since no one can know whether those claims are reasonable or foolish. Scientism in turn has contributed to troubling trends. One of these is relativism in ethics—the view that affirms that morality is just person- or culture-relative; this is the perspective that claims, “That’s just your morality. Your moral standards are right for you, but not for me.” Scientism has also contributed to a pluralism in religion: no one religious perspective is savingly true for all people; rather, all religions are equally capable of bringing salvation or liberation. Scientism undergirds the idea that those who claim their views are true in these areas are intolerant bigots.

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4. Scientism is causing people to abandon Christianity and is contributing to the church’s increased ineffectiveness. According to the Barna Research Group, five of the six reasons Millennials leave the church and abandon Christianity involve the suspicion that there is no good reason to believe it in the first place. These five reasons involved doubts and various intellectual issues; one of these is key:  the church does not keep up with the developments of modern science, nor does it know how to relate to them from a biblical perspective or worldview. Nor does it help parishioners to do so. The church isn’t adjusting to the discoveries of modern science. No wonder scientism seems credible to many—it seems that Christian claims are mere expressions of feeling with no authority to command belief. Scientism has marginalized the church. Given its numbers, its impact on culture should be orders of magnitude greater than it is. Why? Because Christians lack boldness and courage. Society believes Christian ideas to be irrelevant and not authoritative since they cannot be known without scientific proof.

5. Strong scientism is self-refuting and must, therefore, be rejected. A statement or sentence is self-refuting if (1) it refers to a group of things; (2) the statement or sentence itself is included in that group; (3) the statement or sentence does not satisfy its own requirements of acceptability.  For example, “All English sentences are shorter than three words” refers to the group of all English sentences; the sentence itself is a part of that group; and the sentence fails to satisfy its own requirements of acceptability. (It contains eight words and, thus, is not shorter than three words.) Strong scientism makes this self-refuting claim: “The only knowledge we can have about reality is that which has been properly tested in the hard sciences.” But this statement about reality is not itself one that has been properly tested in the hard sciences. So it cannot be a knowledge claim about reality. It is actually a claim of philosophy to the effect that all claims outside the hard sciences, including those of philosophy, cannot be known to be true. Strong scientism doesn’t live up to its own demands.

6. Weak scientism is a foe and not a friend of science. Science rests on a number of assumptions. For example, it takes for granted the laws of logic and math. It assumes the objectivity and rationality of the external world and that our faculties are suited for gaining knowledge of the external world; this includes its deep structure that lies underneath the everyday world of commonsense and causes that world to be what it is.  Science assumes the correspondence theory of truth: a mind-independent reality makes a belief or a claim true. When a claim doesn’t correspond to reality—like “Paris is the capital of Spain”—it is false. Notice that all of these assumptions cannot be formulated or tested within the limitations of science, especially the hard sciences. Yet every one of them has been challenged and rejected by many in the academic community. One of the tasks of philosophy is to formulate and defend the assumptions of science so that science’s claims can be taken as approximately true and rational. A theory, including scientific theories, can only be as strong as the assumptions on which it rests. By disregarding the rationality of philosophy, weak scientism disallows the clarification and defense of science’s assumptions. Thus, weak scientism is a foe and not a friend of science.

7. Contrary to scientism, we have more confident knowledge about certain theological or ethical truths than certain claims in science. Consider these two claims: (1) Electrons exist. (2) It is wrong to torture babies for the fun of it.  Which do we know with greater certainty? (2) is the correct answer. Why? The history of the electron has gone through various changes in what an electron is supposed to be. J. J. Thomson (1856-1940) at Cambridge University was the discoverer of electrons, but no one today believes that Thomsonian electrons exist because our views have changed so much. It is not unreasonable to believe that in 50 to 100 years, scientific depictions of the electron will change so much that scientists will no longer believe that what we mean by an electron today exists. Regarding (2)—the wrongness of torturing babies for the fun of it—someone may not know how she knows it is true, but nevertheless, we all, in fact, know it is true. If someone denies that, she needs therapy, not an argument. Now it is not hard to believe that in fifty to one hundred years, most people will no longer believe (2). But it is hard to see what kind of rational considerations could be discovered that would render (2) an irrational belief. Thus, we have more certainty in (2) than in (1). And the same is true for certain theological assertions such as that God exists.

8. There are five fundamental realities that science cannot explain but theism can. Theism affirms that an all-good, all-powerful, all-knowing God exists and has uniquely created a world distinct from himself. Theism also affirms that human beings bear the image of God, which confers on them dignity and worth. While science can help us to know much, there are some things it cannot explain—and is not properly equipped to explain. Science cannot account for (1) the origin of the universe, (2) the origin of the fundamental laws of nature, (3) the fine-tuning of the universe, (4) the origin of consciousness, and (5) the existence of moral, rational, and aesthetic objective laws and intrinsically valuable properties. These features make sense if a powerful, intelligent, good, and supremely self-aware being exists--more so than if these are the products of mindless, deterministic, valueless, non-conscious processes.

9. Scientism gains strength from methodological naturalism. Philosophical or metaphysical naturalism affirms three major tenets. First, matter is all the reality there is (materialism). Second, all that occurs can be accounted for by physical processes preceding them going all the way back to the Big Bang (determinism). Third, all knowledge is derived from the scientific method (scientism). By contrast, methodological naturalism is the view that while doing science, explanations of phenomena must be limited to natural objects and natural laws. No appeal to the act of an agent or to personal explanation is allowed to explain a physical event. This means, for example, that Intelligent Design theories and the notion that God created the universe and all it contains is theology and has nothing to do with science. But like philosophical naturalism, methodological naturalism is also false. Consider the number of sciences that explain things by reference to the intentional act of a personal agent and not to a natural object or law. These include areas such as forensic science, archeology, neuroscience, SETI (the search for extraterrestrial intelligence), psychology, and others. These considerations about scientism reveal both its power to marginalize belief in God as well as its deep flaws. This book is written to equip persons who confront the steady drumbeat of scientism that dismisses any claim that cannot be scientifically proven. This book alerts them to the dangers of scientism, pointing out its deficiencies and inherent contradictions. It also makes clear that theism—and the Christian faith more specifically—has strong explanatory power that can stand up under intellectual scrutiny. It can also challenge the leading ideologies of our day—including the powerful and influential view of scientism. Parents would be wise to prepare their children to engage the prevailing ideas of our culture. Scientism, which is the very foundation of our secular culture, cannot be sustained. Understanding the nature of scientism and exposing its inherent weaknesses and dangers should be a top priority for all seeking to engage our own culture and to influence the next generation.

Endnotes These insights are just an introduction. If you're ready to dive deeper, pick up a copy of Scientism and Secularism here. And since we get a commission on every sale, your purchase will help keep this newsletter free. * This is sponsored content

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Ancestors: Two Poems by Alfred Schaffer

 

Ancestors: Two Poems

if as a free person I fall from one of those trees
I stay lying on the ground and a brand-new tree grows out of me!
like from the cracked stone of a fruit.

I have so much more to tell you.

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from ETHIOPIA PROJECT

 

Emnet's Story...

Here is an amazing story from the Ayele's newsletter...this is why we do this:

One of the key people behind all [of our] information is the Chief Administrator of the Hamer Woreda. Woreda means district. His name is Emnet, which means “faith”. When children, adults or even animals have been ordered to be cast out and killed, they are called Mingis. Emnet is from the Hamer tribe and he was a Mingi that was saved, by the grace of God! This is his story...

First of all, we ought to tell you some of the reasons one would become a Mingi. One of the reasons, as you all know, is that a mother was not married before she got pregnant with a baby, therefore the baby would be a Mingi. Another reason is if a child should fall and chip a tooth, they become a Mingi. Also, if their top teeth grow in before their bottom teeth, they become a Mingi. The last one we’ll mention is that if your mother was nursing you while she conceived another child, both you and your unborn sibling become Mingis! There are so many more ridiculous reasons one could become a Mingi, but there isn’t enough space to write all of them. We will tell you, though, that 30% of the Hamer children are born as or become Mingis.

When Emnet was 3 or 4 years old, he tripped and fell, which caused one of his front teeth to break. Therefore, he became a Mingi. So, his parents were told to kill their son. However, Emnet’s father loved him too much, so he hid him for 4 years in a bush instead. However, after 4 years, the tribe found out that Emnet was still alive, so they ordered his father to kill him. He still wouldn’t do it, though. Because Emnet’s father was rich, no one really wanted to threaten his life for not being obedient to the cultural ritual. But, the pressure was still intense. In fact, it was too intense for his father to handle any longer. So, Emnet was taken to one of his father’s friend’s house for about 6 months. However, the people around this friend’s home found out that he was Mingi and wanted to kill him. During this entire time, Emnet had no idea why his life was being threatened. He went from place to place, and he always tried to go back to his tribe, but they threatened to kill him every time. And, because his father wouldn’t kill him, anyone had the right to do it.

Emnet started going to a government school, which was in town. Therefore, no one knew about him and he was safe. He was educated about harmful practices and realized that his culture was not the norm and that the superstitions that came along with it were false. But, he still loved his tribe and wanted to help them. Finally, when Emnet was 16 years old, he went back to his tribe, performed a cleansing ceremony and was rid of his “Mingi”status. After getting his high school diploma, Emnet went to teacher-training school and taught for three years. After that, he got involved in politics, which has brought him to where he is now: Chief Administrator of the Hamer Woreda.

Emnet is very interested in the work we are doing and is excited that we are wanting to help his people. He has given us suggestions as far as how we can help to change the evil practices of this tribe. He was the one that gave us the idea of offering the mothers education, because he believes that not all of them would want to leave their home towns. He has been very helpful and very encouraging to us in providing information and suggesting ideas that we hadn’t thought of before.

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africa

 

Lemonaide

 

You don't need what you want

 You don't have to listen to me! Please don't listen to me! Please! In fact, don't give me any heed at all! You don't have To have what your selfish needs are demanding! You can learn to give them up so as to not hurt others. Grow up! Care about others! Grow up! Stop making others feel bad! Think about other people. Think about what they want! Grow up! Think about what others need! There are grieving people out there! Think about those grieving people! Stop being selfish! Grow up! Get over yourself!

  

Galadriel's Song

Original par J.R.R. Tolkien

I sang of leaves, of leaves of gold, and leaves of gold there grew:
Of wind I sang, a wind there came and in the branches blew.
Beyond the Sun, beyond the Moon, the foam was on the Sea,
And by the strand of Ilmarin there grew a golden Tree.
Beneath the stars of Ever-eve in Eldamar it shone,
In Eldamar beside the walls of Elven Tirion.
There long the golden leaves have grown upon the branching years,
While here beyond the Sundering Seas now fall the Elven-tears.
O Lórien! The Winter comes, the bare and leafless Day;
The leaves are falling in the stream, the River flows away.
O Lórien! Too long I have dwelt upon this Hither Shore
And in a fading crown have twined the golden elanor.
But if of ships I now should sing, what ship would come to me,
What ship would bear me ever back across so wide a Sea?

Elbereth

 

Original par J.R.R. Tolkien

Snow-white! Snow-white! O Lady clear!
O Queen beyond the Western Seas!
O Light to us that wander here
Amid the world of woven trees!

Gilthoniel! O Elbereth!
Clear are thy eyes and bright thy breath!
Snow-white! Snow-white! We sing to thee
In a far land beyond the Sea.

O stars that in the Sunless Year
With shining hand by her were sawn,
In windy fields now bright and clear
We see your silver blossom blown!

O Elbereth! Gilthoniel!
We still remember, we who dwell
In this far land beneath the trees,
Thy starlight on the Western Seas

  

Poem of the Ring

Original par J.R.R. Tolkien

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all. One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

Par Chiara Cadrich

Aux Elfes trois Anneaux pour régner sur la Terre,
Sept aux Seigneurs des Nains dans leurs salles de pierre,
Neuf aux hommes ci-bas destinés au trépas,
Un pour le prince noir couronné de ténèbres
Au Pays de Mordor où s'étendent les ombres.
Un Anneau suprême pour les dominer tous
Rameuter leurs terreurs et les enchainer tous
Au Pays de Mordor où s'étendent les ombres

From THE DESTRUCTION OF POLAND. A Study in German Efficiency. BY ARNOLD J. TOYNBEE

 We raise a solemn protest, in the name of the Polish labouring classes, to all the more enlightened elements of the German nation and to German Socialists in particular. The present condition of things is reducing the Polish proletariat to mental and physical exhaustion