Misusing the Bible against Vaccination | Alan Dershowitz

While I disagree with Dersowitz's position on same-sex sexual relations, he makes some good points re the anti-vaxxer movement.

These are God's words, as recorded in Leviticus, Chapters 13 and 14. "The priest shall isolate" the contagious person for seven days and then an additional seven days if the contagion persists. "And he shall dwell alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp." Nor was this quarantine voluntary. The priest could compel it.

Anti-vaxxers are free to cite science, philosophy, law— but do not miscite the Bible or God. It is irreligious and insults the intelligence of those who have actually studied the Bible by assuming, as many do, that the Bible opposes everything they oppose.

Invoking the Bible and God is intended not as a stimulus to further debate, but rather as an argument- stopper: God is against it; no further discussion, research or argument is necessary; the debate is over.

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Christianity, Science and Scientism

Conspiracy Theorists are mad scientists

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, a number of people have sent me messages promoting conspiracy theories.  

Bill Gates, Jews, Tasuku Honjo...  

All fact checked by reputable news agencies and discredited.  Yet some tenaciously cling to them. 

The rise of fake news hasn't helped.

The truth is what’s at stake.

Science is the best method by which we can arrive at the truth.

Science and Scientism are not the same.  

Science is just a method of discovering information and evaluating whether it is truthful.  

Scientism is the religion that believes science can answer every question even though it can’t.

I’ve been reading John Lennox lately and it struck me that just because there is a commitment to science, it doesn’t mean the truth has been attained.

Everything is a hypothesis and the straw man hypothesis we classify as “fact,” is just the best there is until it’s credibly disproven.

But we should be cautious about when to classify a hypothesis as fact.

Some hypotheses can be re-classified as fact because it’s well evidenced, over a long period of time, and is therefore considered reliable.

But others are not and should remain mere hypotheses.

Even then, something credibly classified as fact, should be open to re-evaluation if new credible evidence comes to light.

Most conspiracy theories are just hypotheses with little supporting evidence. 

Sometimes they are just supported by other hypotheses masquerading as facts but are actually hypotheses unproven.

Conspiracy theorists jump to conclusions too quickly.

And in so doing, they cause great harm, to others as well as themselves.

The recent and tragic death of the flat earth “researcher” in his home-made rocket is a salient example.

Christians should be committed to the truth, and so 

if the scientific method is the best way we can investigate a matter to find the truth,

then we need to be good scientists, curious, open-minded, detached, cautious, methodical and not quick to jump to conclusions, guarding against confirmation bias, confident to call it either way: 

i.e. if there is insufficient evidence then we say its unproven; 

if there is sufficient evidence then we say its either proven or disproved.

According to John 14:6, when we seek the truth, we seek Jesus, and through Him, God.

A commitment to truth, is a commitment to God.

Pandemic Economics

I like everyone else, have been pondering when it is the right time to ease off on business closures so that we can go back to earning a living.

The economic consequences have been harsh, some comparing the damage to the economy to the 1929 Great Depression.

The economic wisdom of the NZ Government has therefore come under fierce scrutiny.

Economics and the Bible are not often said in the same breath. 

But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have anything to say about it. In fact, it has a lot to say about it.

The economics of the kingdom of God are different from how the utilitarian world would normally see economics.

For example, Gareth Morgan, a prominent NZ economist appealed to Pharmac's use of around NZD 10,000 per life as a standard by which we should decide public health policies.

Using this standard, the billions spent to prevent COVID-19 from overloading health systems and causing mortality rates such as that seen in Italy, Spain and the US, makes no sense.  

The Parable of the Lost Sheep (Luke 15:1-7) gives an example of how God sees economics.  The shepherd leaves his flock in order to find the single lost sheep.  

To God, every life is precious even if it means allowing the many to be vulnerable for a time while the few are saved.

COVID-19 means we are now entering a phase in our economy where there are going to be many unemployed and therefore needy.  

The bible says, true religion is the care for the widow and the orphan.  In other words the poor and needy.

You could say that this means that whatever you think you’re doing for God, if it doesn’t ultimately lead you to helping the poor and needy then you’re fooling yourself.

Within Judaic thought, charity is given high priority.  Equally important is not just charity but how this charity is given.  

Amongst the many ways one can give charity, the highest form is the kind that enables the recipient to re-establish their financial independence and dignity (Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot matanot aniyim ("Laws about Giving to Poor People"), Chapter 10:7–14).

So if you can hire someone to do your gardening then please do, if your oven needs cleaning then hire someone to do it, if you can, if you can give someone a job even for a short period, then do it.  If you can invest in someone and get them started in a business, then invest.

Therefore, don't just give, but hire.  Don't just give, but invest.  Don't just give, but restore.

Greek and Hebrew Keyboards in Windows 10

Logos provides ancient language keyboards for Windows PCs.  

They are homophonic (i.e. the Hebrew letters are mapped to the nearest English sounding keys in a standard QWERTY keyboard).

When they work, they make typing Biblical Greek and Hebrew much more easy. 

But after updating to Windows 10 Build 1909, the Logos Biblical Hebrew keyboard disappears (I don't use the Greek one, so I can't vouch as to whether the same behaviour occurs there). 

The standard Hebrew keyboard uses the mapping from an original Hebrew typewriter. 

After trying various combinations of adding/removing the Hebrew language pack, the other standard Hebrew keyboards and the Logos Biblical Hebrew keyboard, I got it back on two desktops and my ThinkPad X1 Tablet (Gen 1) but I couldn't get it to come back on a ThinkPad T430.

A workaround:  Use the SBL biblical hebrew and greek keyboards instead.  They can be downloaded from here.

Both the SBL and Logos keyboards support accents, cantillations and vowel points. 

Another better workaround:  I like to use the Logos Biblical Hebrew keyboard, which uses the same maps as the deprecated Shibboleth app mapping.  

You can create your own keyboard using the Microsoft Keyboard creator.  Instructions here.

Stopping the touch keyboard from popping up in Windows 10

While editing MS Word documents on my Lenovo X1 Tablet with the keyboard attached, everytime I touched the screen to change where the cursor was, the Windows touch keyboard would appear and obscure the document.

Painful.

To stop the Windows touch keyboard from appearing, follow these steps:

1. Hit Win-R
2. Open control panel:  Type in "control" and hit "Enter"
3. Tap Administrative Services
4. Tap Services
5. Scroll down to "Touch keyboard and handwriting panel service" and double tap it
6. Set startup type to "Disable"
7. Tap apply and OK.
8. Reboot, and you're done.

Using Logos to make your own Personal Books

Logos is a terrific tool for studying, well, almost any text.  

But it's makers have focused on using it as a study platform for Christian studies.  The software itself is the tool but its utility is unleashed when coupled together with a library of books and multimedia resources.  

Amongst all the bible software developers, Logos has the largest library of resources.  Nearly all the major book publishers have works adapted for the Logos platform.

By tagging content, the content can be efficiently indexed and then searched.

The library of resources that can be purchased is enormous.  Unfortunately, not all resources are accessible for several reasons:

• The publisher or the author may not be inclined to give their consent.
• The publisher or the author may have already given exclusive rights for electronic distribution to someone else
• Logos may ask too much of a margin on the selling price of the resource.
• The publisher or author may be biased toward hard copies.  

Logos allows its users to make their own personal books which can be imported into Logos for personal use.  

It's easy to do.

Just make a Microsoft Word .docx file of the resource and then import it.

All standard format bible references will automatically be turned into hyperlinks to your library's bibles.

There are special tags you can insert into your text if you wish to search content by topic.

One or two hooks to keep in mind:

1. If you want your document to show up in passage guide searches, then build it as a bible commentary, not a monograph or just a commentary.
2. Bible commentaries are specially tagged .docx documents.  Learn the syntax here:  https://wiki.logos.com/Personal_Books.  Once you have inserted the [[xxx]] tag before each verse that has a comment in your document, then if you open your bible in one panel, and your commentary alongside, and if both have been designated in the same set, then they synch with each other as you scroll through either document!  There are many types of documents that can be produced as personal books, such as, encyclopedias, dictionaries, lectionaries, calendar devotionals and more.  I have a lectionary that has all the Jewish annual reading (parasha) calendar.

There are a lot of resources in .epub, .mobi, .html and .pdf format on the web.  This is a cheap way to build out your library, but as always, be mindful of copyright law.  

An inheritance with Israel -- Berkowitz

Michelangelo's Ezekiel

Lest there be any doubt about how the new relationship between Gentile believers and the covenanted children of Israel, let us turn to Ezekiel 47. Here the prophet looks far ahead of his own time, and even of our present age. He prophecies concerning the coming Messianic age, when Yeshua will be seated on the throne of David in Jerusalem. This will also be the time, according to Ezekiel, when the final land inheritance is divided among the people of Israel.

However, we see in Ezekiel 47:21-23 that there will be others desiring to live among the people of Israel. These are Gentile believers. The Lord at that time will instruct Israel with the following word regarding the distribution of the inheritance:

    "You are to distribute this land among yourselves according to the tribes of Israel. You are to allot it as an inheritance for yourselves and for the aliens who have settled among you and who have children. You are to consider them as native-born Israelites; along with you are to be allotted an inheritance among the tribes of Israel. In whatever tribe the alien settles, there you are to give them his inheritance," declares the sovereign Lord.

Do you see what God is teaching here? He's instructing the Israelites regarding the relationship with those who have come to live among them. They are so grafted in that they are to be considered native-born Israelites, with full rights of inheritance. One thing this implies for our study is that if non-Jewish believers may be entitled to a parcel of land among the people of Israel and the Messianic Kingdom, surely they can be permitted to enjoy the blessings of the Torah among the people of Israel right now!

Source:  Berkowitz, A. and D. (2000). An inheritance with Israel. Torah Rediscovered. FFOZ, Inc.