Theism, Deism, Agnosticism and Atheism

The religion of atheists is communism.  For years they’ve tried to convince people that tiny groups like the humanist society are the sum total of atheist.  Communists are atheists just as Catholics and Hindu are theists.  The Quakers are Christians and hence theists but notoriously peaceful and admirable. They are famed for being the most courageous stretcher carriers. There are all manner of theists but the largest religion and congregation of aetheism is communist.  

Agnostics are neither atheist or theist but share far more in common with theists than atheists.  Atheists have been co-opting agnostics for political purposes.  Agnostics are more open minded than atheists who are completely closed minded to the point of arrogance.  Theists believe in a higher power.  Atheists don’t. Theists don’t necessarily define God.  The aetheists reject all spirituality.  Aetheism is materialism.  Agnostics by contrast are more like theist.  They are open to more than materialism and commonly embrace spirituality without limit.  

Theists,deists and agnostics are scientific.  Einstein, Newton, and most scientists are theist. 

Aetheists play the science game which says that materialism, determinism and empiricism is the ‘game’ but not life.  Scientists know that when they play the science game they are not loving their family or experiencing joy.  Science is but one way of knowing and studying reality.  Subjective reality cannot be experienced by science.  Intuition is beyond the rational. The theist and agnostic can experience the depths of intuition and the transcendent but the aethisists skepticism leaves them blind to the light the majority of the see.  They’re like the tone deaf who insist the dancers are crazy because they don’t hear the music.  

All the religions of the world believe in a higher power except atheism.  Agnostics are open to the myriad possibilities of the infinite, omnipresent, omniscience, omnipotential the theist embraces.  They are by definition open minded as compared to the atheist who is by definition closed minded.  

Buddha was a Hindu who created the Buddhist sect of the older all embracing inclusive religion.  Likewise Jesus was a Jew believing in Judaism of the da before he brought a new accord. . Buddhism doesn’t deny theism or deism but like Christianity proposed a ‘way’ if not the Way.  Atheism is limited by the rationalism that gave birth to it.  The eightfold path of Buddhism is akin to the 10 Commandments of Judaism and the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus.  Atheism has no code as such but the messianic teachings of Marx and megalomania of Mao are often recited. 

Aetheists are violently attached to their religion and have accounted for hundreds of millions of deaths and murders in the last hundred years.  Today they imprison hundreds of thousands and persecute theists, deists, pagans and especially Christians 

Company Doctors: Professionalism and Political Correctness

Historically, physicians among professionals have had the highest rating for trustworthiness and truthfulness.By contrast lawyers have been at the bottom of the heap.  Some actually say it’s sad that 90% of lawyers give the other 10% a bad name.  My old lawyer friend had insisted that this was  a product of the rise in social legislation that followed Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s reign.  My friend, an  old man, had  practiced law in Scotland before coming to Canada.

“I was proud to be a lawyer. It was a very honoured profession in my youth. Today I sometimes feel it’s just because of the money lawyers are perceived so negatively. I did well enough but if money was the sole criteria I’d not be thought as good a lawyer as some of my colleagues who sought celebrity and seemed only interested in the fame and fortune.  When I became a professional I saw it as a duty and service and frankly most of my colleagues saw it as that too.  We were there to serve people. Our independence and autonomy as professionals allowed us to protect our clients from governments and corporations alike.”

It wasn’t long after I heard him say that, that  a lawyer at my church told me “I think you can still can be a lawyer and a Christian in Canada but I no longer think you can be a Christian and a Corporate lawyer in Montreal.”

I can say the same is increasingly  true for doctors.  The lowest slur a doctor could make against another was to call him a “company doctor”. 

The ‘company doctor’ reached it’s a nadir during the years of the asbestos mining.  Miners were coughing up blood and dying all the while the doctors hired by the company and were paid exorbitantly essentially to lie and insist the problem wasn’t the  asbestos at all.  The miner instead, in classic ‘blame the victim’ was told he had ‘weak lungs’. It became the  great scandal of the era exposing corrupt courts, government, corporations and the doctors involved..  Science eventually prevailed as today we know and diagnose “asbestos lungs’. 

It should be understood that a doctor may give his opinion in court ,which remains a 19th century rationalist construct and sees the world in black and white as opposed to the multi factorial quantum universe considerations of 21st century rainbow science.  The ridiculousnesss of such ‘opinions’ was highlighted best by the farce of the OJ Trial with all its dream team and ignorance of DNA. 75% of the fruitfly DNA is the same as Human DNA. 

In British Columbia “Moynihan’s Law’  was enacted essentially to reign in the competing claims of ‘expert witnesses”.  Moynihans’s Law insisted that expert opinions be predominantly objective and serve the judge not the solely the lawyers paying them.  Some of the insurance company expert witnesses were paid so exorbitantly as to make the ‘company doctors’ of the asbestos mine era look like altar boys.   Tragically I was obliged to teach a judge the history of this in recent years, as he appeared to have missed out on the insanity of the courts that required a specific new “Moynihans’s law” to reign in the ‘expert testimony ‘ of competing factions.  Perjury laws have always existed but do appear to be rarely used as increasingly the courts move away from the ‘truth’ standard of old.  “The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” is no longer associated with the modern court but rather remembered as a line from the Perry Mason era. 

The judge appeared unaware of Dr. Jay Lifton’s seminal book, the “Nazi Doctors” which addressed the whole issue of the ‘company’ or ‘government doctor’ in exquisite horrifying detail.  

It should not reflect badly on this judge because we’re collectively seeing this phenomena today  in the ‘fake news’ . The media was once constrained by the idea of ‘fact’ but today has  lost all track of the very notion of  ‘objective’ and now sells ‘facts’ as ‘opinions’ to the highest bidder.  Judges, themselves, have historically been considered’ corrupt’ as their opinions have been on occasion bought as readily as world soccer players.  The remaining issue today ,as Canadian culture devolves into multiculturalism,  increasingly,  is not whether someone will sell out their integrity but at how low a price.

Around  the world in other jurisdictions and cultures the issue is not whether to bribe the official ther how little one can give without insulting   government representative. The whole idea of the ‘tip’ which once was only an issue in hotels and restaurants is the very basis of business and law in`many countries.  

The next worst ‘slur’a doctor could have against him was that he was a ‘pharmaceutical company doctor’. Some pharmaceutical companies hired doctors to promote their medications and rewarded those who ‘sold’ medications by down playing or denying risks while celebrating success.  I was hired only a couple of times by one drug company to give talks to family physicians about new produce.  I was subsequently   told by  that company that  I was ‘too objective’ and hadn’t ‘sold’ enough of  the product. . I took that a compliment but it caused me to look askance at some of my colleagues who took pride in being consider ‘trendsetters’ by some in the pharmaceutical industry. They considered it a compliment to be called ‘drug pushers for the multinationals’ and paraded their academic and financials rewards with gusto.   “Unhinged: the Trouble with Psychiatry” by Dr. Daniel Carlat discusses this problem in depth. 

It became so egregious an issue in medicine  that physicians in academic settings and journals are collectively now required to give notice of their ‘conflicts of intererst’.   At the beginning of a lecture a doctor is required to put up a slide indicating which drug companies or businesses had paid him for this lecture or his research in this area.  

Unfortunately the licensing bodies for professions, in general, like the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons, have not as yet had such a renaissance. The conflicts of interest that influence hiring, appointments,committe membership of non professionals,  their  political and fashionable decisions remain darkly opaque.

  

This practice has been in place for decades and naturally doctors wish that politicians and bureaurats would be required to do the same housekeeping regarding ‘conflicts of interest” and ‘lobby groups.” The partisanship of bureaucrats is a huge problem since they are required to be 'objective' but increasingly in Canada it has been exposed that government bureaucrats are Liberal biased.  To avoid this in many countries and eras the whole government apparatus was overturned and replaced by the followers of the winning party.

Given the scandals  over the foreign influence on Hillary Clinton and Justin Trudeau by Islamic countries and the alleged influence on Trump by Russia , politics seems mired like the media and courts outside the promises of the 21st century.  Escobar, the great drug lord used to brag that he had bought both the Republicans and the Democrats, hedging his bets, not that that did him much good in the long run. 

Doctors addressed this issue of autonomy first in the Hippocratic Oath of Ancient Greece.  I’ve taken the revitalized Hippocratic Oath of today since the ethical and moral foundations of professionalism have been increasingly eroded by government intrusion. The ‘do no harm’ clause is all but obsolete now  the ‘abortion industry” and recently  ‘euthanasia industry’ have completely won over the prevailing  government and their bureaucrats so reminiscent of the 'banal' of Arendt's writings.   Further, the various ‘codes’ of doctors in the western world were influenced by the “sanctity of life’ premise  inherent in Christian religion which inherited and refined the Judeo Graeco Roman traditions from which Western Civilization arose.  Other cultures have not had this notion of ‘sanctity of life’.

Further the ideas of where on the continuum the doctor sits regarding the collective and the individual are wholly different than what most Canadians assume.  Also the 'accountability' of the doctor in different countries is wholly different from the local ever changing responsibility of the doctor and indeed the health care system. This was never better reviewed than the greatest scandal of hospital administration of our time, the finding of the man dead for 36 hours in the Canadian teaching hospital and the abdication of accountability of administration.

There is also distinctly different ideas of cause and effect and accountability in eastern and western 'culture' which affect the very practice of medicine by doctors depending on training and background.

It was no surprise that Dr. Kellie Leitch, a brilliant physician and accomplished paediatric surgeon, should spearhead the importance of 'Canadian values' in this time when the dope smoking pretty haired selfie snapping Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was insisting there was no 'Canadian culture' and hence no 'Canadian values'.  Ironically he also said that Quebec French  speaking Prime Ministers were superior to English speaking Prime Ministers when his basic premise was that there was no such thing as a Canadian ‘culture’. While denying Canada 'culture' and denying Canadian 'values'  he insisted on the superiority of the French speaking. 

The word ‘culture’ derived from the Latin word ‘cultus’, ‘to care’ and from the French word to ‘cultivate’ or to ‘fill the ground’.  Well no one in their right mind would doubt that Dr. Leitch cares or is a highly cultivated individual who has done a lion’s share of work, there continues to be complaints about PM Justin Trudeau, simply not caring about Canada, and not by his personal history having much to do with cultivation and work.  Unfortunately Dr. Leitch’s insightfulness flew over the stoned heads of easily offended young followers of the Prime Minister. 

The ‘private’ physician retained their autonomy and worked for the patient just as the lawyer and accountant and engineer primarily served their client.  Historically the true ‘statesman’ served the country as a whole not the entrenched interests of corporations like Bombadier or the  urbans tastes of Montreal female voters.  

The ‘business’ of profession however always was tied to the idea of ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’.  As the “private” physician was working directly for the patient even though an insurance company might well be paying the bill, the doctor’s greatest concern was the ‘patient’s health’.  This was before the Hydra of  Cultural Marxism's weaponized political correctness redefined 'health' like the 'renaming' of 'gender" as something other than the ‘morbidity and mortality’ of science.   

Today the ‘insurance doctor’ is the next greatest ‘slur’ that can be made against a doctor.  It’s a bit wrong as there clearly are good and bad insurance companies. But clearly if the patient becomes sick and unable to work and provide insurance payments it’s in the interest of the insurance company to ‘de list’ that member as they are no longer a viable ‘client’.  Further, the worst insurance companies use and abuse the courts to offer the least inclusive definition of health and spend fortunes on lawyers fighting claims. 

Canada is a single party insurance scheme so that the ‘government doctor’ and the ‘insurance doctor’ ‘slurs’ can overlap.  Historically in public and private endeavours there was this area where the public need for finance existed because of the size and ‘risk’ of the project and in areas where there was no likelihood of profit but that as a society we collectively saw a need to care for others in a way private sources could not afford to.  

Our present government appears to be giving billions to foreign countries while not caring for it’s own sick and old.  The sick and old and those who suffer catastrophic  injuries were the principle reason for development of the Canadian Health Care system.  Tommy Douglas and those who were  principally Christian doctors of the  Saskatchewan model would obviously roll over in their graves  if they were to see the actions of the ‘company doctors’ and ‘government doctors’ of today.  Government spending today,  is to those early men and women of Canada,  a total corruption of the ideals of Canadian traditions.  Not surprisingly, Liberals get around this by indeed,   denying Canadian culture or tradition.

The highest paid doctors today are government doctors  and cosmetic surgeons while the front line workers in all fields are policed to no end and treated as the enemy by their superiors because they have been given the unenviable task of ‘rationing health care’ while the government doctors and political doctors make endless promises that are simply impossible to meet.

Professionals say that there is no ‘autonomy’ or ‘profession’ any more because the structure of our present centralized communist leaning government which is totalitarian authoritarian and diametrically opposed to the freedom of the individual and wholly supportive of the ‘collective’.   Indeed many professionals have considered that the ‘unions’ which developed in a much more hostile relationship to government may be the answer to the failing health care system.  Some doctors have approached the Teamsters feeling the whole idea of ‘profession’ is defunct in face of government corruption and the cancerous growth of the government burocracy to the detriment of professions and their clients.  

Canada has a history of having had a purely ‘government socialist based’ health care system which was associated with the worst morbidity and mortality statistics in the Canada. This was the Indian Affairs government health care system which is now being used as a "model" for all of Canada despite is at times horrendous failures.  

Given that immigrant doctors increasingly come from countries which do not share  Canadian ‘values’ of ‘sanctity of life’ , the importance of the individual, freedom, and libertarianism and other such ‘pesky’ ideas it is increasingly no surprise that the government calls’ physicians’ not by their ‘professional designation’ but increasingly as ‘health care workers’ as a collective job title. Ethically there fore in the government eyes they have no difference from the cleaning staff in the hospitals.  

It concerns me as the corruption of government and media and the refusal of the courts to move forward that doctors medical professionalism is now defined solely by ‘company doctors’ and dominated by ‘conflicts of interest’ that soon it will be said of doctors that 90% give the 10% a bad name.  It is no surprise that 75 % of Canadian doctors would not recommend medicine at present in Canada. 

As a dinosaur doctor I am increasingly concerned about health care not as much as a provider but because I might well need services and can see from the desperate experiences of my patients that they are utterly frustrated, dissatisfied, and wholly crippled by the government callousness, Naturally their opinions never appear in the government propaganda media or are always attributed to the doctors and nurses rather than the top heavy administration.  They express repeatedly concerns about  inefficiency and corruption the feeling that their basic needs and values are not being met.

A company doctor explained to me that I ‘cared too much’ and must ‘lower my standards’ as well as ‘learn to lie’ as he did for he enjoyed greatly his well rewarded government company doctor lifestyle.  I personally have to consider every day whether I want to continue as a ‘company doctor’ or if I should, like the other dinosaurs of my era retire early and accept that Christians, godly people in general,  moral people and all the doctors of old, especially my most esteemed mentors, and Tommy Douglas, a politically incorrect Baptist minister, are all  no longer welcome in Canada.  Insurance company models also routinely reward the physicians who do the least for the patient and save the government the most money.

This was a 'joke' of my surgical training where heart surgeons and lung surgeons would compete among themselves as to who could use the least 'thread' as the administration had a fashion of the month campaign to get the surgeons to save money in the operations.  At the time I thought it was something out of MASH where no show better defined the oxymoron on 'military intelligence". Yet the surgeons explained that the administrators were more concerned with their budgets than the lives of the patients. Indeed I caused myself no end of difficulty complaining that a small town administrator had robbed the hospital budget for a baby incubator so that he could have a new desk and chair with better wood panelling.  

I do envy the migrants who routinely return to their ‘homes’ whereas I personally feel my own home and profession have been destroyed.  This feeling has grown strongest since  I was told that  Dr. William Osler is no longer considered a ‘professional’. Clearly Dr. Osler is no longer welcome in Canada and  should never  apply to work here.

Jesus, the greatest healer of all time, would not be welcomed  either.  Jesus  was vulgar, kept the wrong company,  swore and behaved badly, the epitome of a politically incorrect individual.  Politically correctness and professionalism were once diametrically opposed.  Today a doctor kills or heals as the prevailing mood dictates. It’s just fashion.  Medicine is theatre.  The Kardashian’s are the new models of medicine.    

If love is the answer

If love is the answer, then you would defend yourself and your family and friends.  I just watched Felon last night. It was a powerful movie about a man falsely accused and incarcerated for defending his family.  It’s message encouraged one to consider just how many people are in jail who are indeed not guilty.
False accusations are increasing exponentially with the rise again of socialism.  In communist countries ,the ultimate expression of socialism, the standing joke was when three people were gathered together, one of them was an informer.  In socialism there is always someone who believes they can improve their lot by accusing another to the authorities.
Those who do make false accusations are sometimes just garden variety psychopaths and sociopaths, more common than many believe. The other sort  are developmentally psychologically immature and falsely accuse their neighbours to please their mommy or daddy, whichever one they feel rejected by and to psychologically conceal their own ‘dirty’ secret.  Of course there are good citizens. But historically part of good citizenship was the ‘openess’ of knowing who your accuser was.  Today ‘mind your own business’ goes hand in hand with the realization that a life in ‘witness protection’ might not be what one personally envisioned.  The check and balance of ‘accusation’ among good citizenry was that it was not done ‘lightly’ as it is today with everyone ‘offended’ and everyone a ‘critic’.
In the Judeo-Christian view from which western laws derived it was taught ‘thou shalt not judge’ and ‘thou shalt not bear false witness’ was one of the 10 commandments along side ‘thou shalt not murder’.  Jesus taught that if you see fault in your neighbour you should first pluck the timber out of your own eye before trying to take the sliver out of another’s.
Yet today, with a society ‘externalized’ by Hollywood and other media celebrations of the evil villains and superhero’s , along with all the propaganda, self reflection is discouraged.  Blame is the name of the game.  Deny deny deny is the answer the lawyer tells the accused.  Notice it’s not ‘silence’ but ‘deny’.  This message to the innoscent and guilty alike is given again and  again in the ever more popular police stories.  From the earliest age children are taught to lie even if they need no encouragement.
If love is the answer, then one needs to beware of Canada’s increasing failure to address ‘perjury’ in the courts.  Further in beurocratic agencies false accusations are sadly apart of the industry of encouraging people to spy on their neighbours and report their neighbours to the authorities.
This is seen in the ‘anonymous ‘tip’ lines’ which are naturally commonly abused.  The extent of the abuse is seen in social services where disputes between mothers on the play ground for whatever reason are sometimes followed by that awful call to child’s services with the claim that one neighbour is doing something wrong.
That these are not being investigated and front and centre of any discussion reflects the need of authorities to maintain their autocratic positions by any means. The loss of ‘truth’ in society is just one casualty that follows this drive to war and anarchy created by the fundamental failing of law and order.
If there is no truth there is no real law and order. In communist countries truth died first.
We are seeing the ‘fake news’ of CBC news, Vancouver Sun and CNN.  These alt left and alt right media compete in lies. Harvard University reported that 75% of CNN news coverage during the recent election was highly biased (essentially ‘untrue’).
Truth is the first casualty of war.
If love is the answer, then truth is the question.

Grace and Truth

“For the law was given through Moses; Grace and Truth came through Jesus Christ.”  John 1:18
The Law of Moses refers primarily to the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. The distinction between the law of Israel and the other laws before it was that transgressions of the law were seen as transgressions against God.
These include the contentious passages of Deuteronomy regarding clothing, food and sexuality.  A fine British doctor reviewing these early teachings felt that for the day they were the best public health prescriptions of the time among other things.
The question is their ‘timelessness’ and this was where the ongoing ‘interpretation’ of the Jewish Bible was necessary.  It is by its very nature a historical document.
By contrast, truth and grace are eternal as Jesus Christ, Son of God, God of Gods, Holy of Holies.  God is to Christianity all that is truly eternal, the first mover.  Christ is God incarnate as opposed to God transcendent or as the Trinitarian God would say, One God, three persons.
Truth has been demonized in the aetheist communist invasion of culture and society of the west. Truth is called ‘my truth’ by feminists specifically.  This short hand suggests that subject ‘perception’ is true rather than the ‘objective’ event. Now the courts of western civilization, as shown in the Perry Mason television crime series, called for the individual to state ‘the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth.’  Obviously this was silly as the court was asking for ‘version’ of the truth because later the judge would state his ‘truth’.
All perceptions are versions of the truth as we can be thankful for the Hindu story of the elephant with the blind professors surrounding it blindfolded and required to touch the elephant from where they are standing and later comment on what the elephant is.  The result is an argument between them with one saying it’s a wall, another that the elephant is a pillar, another that it is a snake and another that it is a hose.  They are all right as far as they experience.
In science we increased the number of experiment to lessen the ‘error’ which comes from only one ‘observation’ or a limited perspective observation.  Scientists know of ‘tolerances’ and ‘deviations’ and never ‘assume’ the truth but rather that what they know is a ‘hypothesis’. Scientific truth is hypothetical.  It is assumed that more observation or different observation might change the ‘truth’ but that as of this number of observations at this time under these condition, practically, and pragmatically this hypotheses approaches truth.
This is all different from the narcissistic ‘my truth’ and worse ‘relative truth’.  The problem with ‘arts education’ is that one can live in fiction and even be a drama teacher utterly unable to function in reality. When I left the arts and theatre and began my study of chemistry and physics I was hampered greatly by my having lived in my imagination and the realm of discussion and politics and even the forced agreements of the arts world of legality.  In the real world I blew up the experiments several time and repeatedly had the university evacuated because I didn’t appreciate the ‘law’ of this world.  I had my ‘ideas’ but had to learn ‘precision’.  Only by standing on the learning of the craft of my teachers could I function as a scientist and later as a physician.  As a physician I had to know and respect ‘truth’ and acto on it because otherwise my patients became sicker and or died.  This was especially true with surgery.
A fundamental failure of the health care ‘system’ is the interface with ‘administration’ and ‘medicine’.  Science and medicine has evolved to the 21st century and beyond but the ‘rate limitting step’ is the general persistence of politics and administration that pansies to stupidity and  relies on rewarding sociopaths and psychopaths who chameleon and lie.
The Law of Moses included the 10 commandments.
One of the 10 Commandments which socialist and communist political systems fear most is
“Thou shalt not bear false witness.”

Today the courts are a fire with ‘lies’ and judges making pronouncements based not on ‘truth’ but rather ‘on politics’.  This is why Christians call those this inn courts and in government the ‘anti Christ’ and see these ‘liars’ and those who support ‘lies’ as evil.
There are many versions of the truth and some say all roads lead to Rome.  There is an increasingly farcicalness to our language and the manipulation of language which was fundamental to communist takeover of countries. By altering the meaning of things communists ensured that people in the land to be overtaken could not speak the truth, could not share.  Undermining of a culture is a decades long matter. KGB operatives like Putin once was were infiltrated in the west with the express purpose of changing the language and softening up the target.
Grace is what we receive from God not by our ‘work’s but because of the generosity of God. God is love.  I have life today and it’s not through what I’ve done. I don’t know why I woke up today. I can only speculate about my purpose or my meaning. It’s true I as a spiritual and mystical being live in this ‘cloud of unknowing’ which some would call politically the ‘fog of war’.  The people who were supposed to be on my side and have my back are indeed calling me the enemy and turning their resources against me when I’ve only done as I was taught in the best interests of my patients. I have told the truth and acted in truth.
Yet “he and she” believe the outrageous and utterly obvious psychotic psychopathic lies of a person who has obviously gained greatly by their lying and cheating and continue to profit from deceit.. And I feel alone on the front lines. For a year I was unsupported by those who are paid incredibly from the benefit of health care but did nothing for me while my life and my dog’s life were threatened. Indeed they know that those who have drug and alcohol problems and are psychotic and are are sociopathic doing work at home and collecting insurance for deceit are the most likely to attack doctors. Yesterday I talked to another doctor whose life was threatened. I have had no support whatsoever for these physical attacks and none whatsoever except from lawyers for these attacks on my character and person.  I know that I represent my class , we are just others in the middle class , while those who were supposed  to work for the common good have chosen ,out of cowardice or avarice or plain stupidity, to allow the individual destruction of the truth telling hard working ones, one at a time. By divide and conquer “he and she”, these rather bad childen, our siblings gone wrong, are attempting an overthrow of society from within.
Truth and the concept of truth areat the centre. Politically the word ‘fake news’ and ‘fake main stream news’ and fake CBC and the lies of the heads of the EPA in the US and so much more are central to this time.
Thank God there is Grace.
Of course ‘maybe I’m wrong.’


“Surely the righteous will never be shaken; they will be remembered forever. They will have no fear of bad news; their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord. Their hearts are secure, they will have no fear, in the end they will look in triumph on their foes.” Psalm 112:6-8

Almeda, CBC and Fake News

Alameda University and Master of Divinity and Fake News

-William Hay, MD FRCPC CCSAM

I wrote about this some years back but the twisted tale gets even more convoluted. I told Dr. James Houston the former chancellor of Regent College that God had a sense of humor.  Dr. Houston has a great sense of humor and he thought this a funny story indeed.

It’s most recent twist is a request from a CBC news reporter to discuss my Almeda Degree. I’ve been vociferous about CBC Fake News for a year, which is rather disappointing as I’ve been a fan of CBC programs for decades. How sad that CBC News once reliable has gone over to the Dark Side.

I have lots of prestigious “Paper’, a Medical Degree from University of Manitoba, and a Canadian Fellowship in the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. In addition I had my FLEX, the American Medical Degree, and subspeciality certification in Addiction Medicine, in Canada, the US and Internationally.  I’ve taught at University of Manitoba and the University of British Columbia.  I’ve 30 years of medical and psychiatric clinical experience and am an acknowledged expert in Canadian and American courts.  

I didn’t ‘need’ more paper.  But I’m a Ship’s Captain having sailed solo in winter to Hawaii.  Technically I can ‘marry’ at sea but I wanted a piece of paper. My psychiatrist friend had got a piece of paper on line and married his daughter and I thought such a diploma might come in a handy if I wanted to place a blessing and a curse on some unsuspecting couple. I’m personally divocred and women have aborted my babies suggesting that even the idea of being married by someone such as myself would be suspicious. A fake marriage? 

I also have been studying Spirituality and Christian theology formally for longer than I have been a doctor. At the University of Winnipeg I studied Literature of the Bible with Dr. Carl Ridd back in the 70’s.  I grew up a Christian and have studied the Bible and Christianity all my life, studying all manner of courses in churches and teaching Christianity, prayer and meditation. I published a number of papers on Christianity, religious studies and comparative religions.  The most prestigious was an article I published in the Journal of Science and Religion.  

I also studied Yoga with the Self Realization Fellowship of Paramahansa Yogananda obtaining my diploma from that institute, travelling to Encinadas and later India.  That was back in the 70’s and 80’s before I studied Hypnosis and Self Hypnosis with the Ericksonian Institute.  A long time fan of Dr. Herbert Benson’s Relaxation Response I published a paper on meditation and blood pressure treatment back when I was delivering babies and doing surgery. 

Around that time I was asked to teach a class of young women Hatha yoga and threw out my bag trying to impress these girls with a humble presentation meant to help overcome ego. 

I have never missed an opportunity to study with religious leaders of a variety of religions, spending hours in sweat lodges with indigenous elders, going through various ceremonies, studying Tai Chi and taoism, studying Buddhism with a fellow physician, taking courses in Hinduism, learning from a Sufi, spending time with an Orthodox scholar, dating a Bahi and an aetheist and learning from osmosis. I have learned from Sikhs and Hindus and recently from a Zoroastrian.  I studied the Classics and learned the pagan religions of Greece, Rome and Egypt. I have enjoyed  reading the major texts of world religions.  I read the Torah and discussed Judaism at length with my mensch friend Sam and took guidance from Dr. Rabbi Twerski. I definitely enjoyed meeting the Dalai Lama and Bishop Tutu and have been blessed in countless spiritual encounters with men and women I could only admire and hope perhaps to emulate in some small way.

Though I ‘d been president of Amalgated Baptist Youth groups I would go on to publish a paper on how I was a better doctor than I was a Christian in the Medical Post. .  This was around the time when I had travelled to Israel on pilgrimage and began decades of travel to various spiritual sites, often designated Heritage sites.  One day I hope to write a book of these travels and the meaning they had for me. I’ve blogged them with the photographs I’ve taken and discussed the various followers I’ve talked with along with the spiritual leaders I’ve met.

About 20 years ago I began studying theology in night school formally focussing on Christian Spirituality, taking many courses over the years at Vancouver School of Theology, St. Mark’s Catholic College and Regent College.  I’d also taken church courses like Alpha and studied the Holy Spirit with the Pentecostals. I was meditating with a Benedictine Nun at the time and reading books like neuroscientist’s Mario de Beuregaard’s Spiritual Brain.  I especially liked How the Irish Saved Civilization series too. Though raised Baptist and been a member of the United Church of Canada I was formally baptized Anglican and became a reader at Christ Church Cathedral.  

I was doing readings and discussing ministry with pastors and ministers and thought I’d like a Masters of Divinity in Christian Spirituality or Ecumenical Studies.  This would allow me to marry on my yacht, a dubious matter and would also document this informal aspect of my training which was increasingly a direction I was taking in my addiction medicine clinical work where it was obvious that addiction was conceptualized not just as a disease but also a spiritual malaise.  

When I looked for an institute that would provide such a degree I found that none were indeed ecumenical. I could get a masters in religious studies and having shared with various institutes what I had accomplished was repeatedly told that I could indeed obtain with some extra study what I wanted but nothing was ‘ecumenical’.  Comparative religions yes, religious studies yes, but nothing like Christian Ecumenical Spirituality.  The Baptists have their M Div universities, the United Church theirs , the Catholics theirs, the Hindus and Muslims and Taoist their’s . I found that interesting because it appeared the religions had attempted through actual amalgamation religions like the Bahai’s and perhaps Muslims and  perhaps Mormons to create a religious equivalent of Esperanzo while individually academically  they really were quite divided.  I didn’t want an Anglican Master of Divinity as I really didn’t want a job. I was a Doctor. 

The music director of my church called me, a Christian Psychiatrist, an Oxymoron because Freud had been an aetheist and he considered psychiatrists Priests of Science. I told him that while I was Freudian trained I’d also studied in depth the theist Dr. Carl Jung and been mentored by the great Christian spiritual psychiatrists Dr. White, Dr. Gutowski and Dr. Ney. 

That’s when I came across the idea in California of on line degrees based on experience and review and questions by on line faculty.  I liked the secular nature of Almeda ironically and frankly for $1000 I was pleased to get an Almeda University degree that was backed by the government of California.  The process of finding all the paper that supported the above studies and more, getting the various universities to forward evidence of my attendance, finding copies of publications and answering endless questions in this regards was itself fascinating. Then I got this diploma.  

Psychologically at the time I was also somewhat miffed by the general institutional university’s monetary elitism as the costs of study were becoming exorbitant and exclusive for my patients.  I had had scholarlships but the education debts that my patients carried were a form of indentured servitude. Yet their future employment increasingly depended on these diplomas. Also increasingly students from other countries arrived with diplomas which had no real equivalency with Canadian or American or British or European or Indian or South African degrees. I saw an increasing disparity in this and learned around the same time that the University of Toronto had granted medical degrees to students who had been failed by the faculty but by threatening legal action passed by the administration.  In California there were simply not enough positions for the number of people who wanted to study and on line universities were becoming the answer.  I’d studied Aboriginal Studies in distance learning from University of Waterloo in the 80’s and have maintained my medical scholarship in part by constant listening to medical tapes, then discs the USB sticks in my car or truck.

I supported this process and thought there really was a place for experiential equivalency. This came about when I was training nurse practitioners who were doing the work of a general practitioner though not in a hospital setting.  I thought Almeda was a phenomena but clearly institutions have an invested interest in exclusivity and branding.  

I followed the scandal of Almeda and other on line institutions which were increasingly exposed as traditional and conventional universities increasingly replaced these original rogues with their own brands. 

At the time I was asked to be on the board of an off shore medical university by a former ambassador. The whole issue of education changing with some off shore universities being acknowledged as equivalent while others didn’t meet the varying standards.  It was also apparent that much of the certification process at the institutional level depended on whose hand your greased and by how much.  

I’d met doctors from some countries who knew less than first year medical students while some countries graduated doctors superior to myself and classmates. When I was accepted for a position at Stanford I was considered one of the ‘foreign doctors’ and discussed this when I was interviewed at Berkeley and in a Virginia position.  Increasingly much of Continuing Medical Education, which I’ve dutifully completed with honours and excess is highly suspect.

About the same time a beurocratic doctor who to my mind was best described as frankly, stupid, and  received an honary degree causing me to reflect on the whole ‘business’ of education for  cash and influence of the honorary degree. Wasnt the online experiential degree an honourable extension of this existing questionable practice?  

I just learned that the Engineers are adamantly questioning the relevance of professional studies past training since the nature of professional standards is self study and self awareness and task specific. Now i’ve heard that many other professions are questioning the training in their departments and finding that these certifications and recertification amount to little more than a money grab as they’ve been shown increasingly to be scientifically irrelevant.  They have made a very lucrative business of charging students who agreed to pay up front over and over again for the same training which is increasingly irrelevant to the older members in the field. 

My Queen’s Counsel friend shared one night how his legal work is so highly subspecialized that there are only 2 or 3 in Canada doing it. The continuing legal education in his field is generally set by academics at the level of law students with little relevance given the generalities of the knowledge base. I feel the same. Worse in my continuing medical education certified training there are increasing sign in sheets and the didactic lectures are the only thing valued by these low brows in the increasing policing of doctors education by low level political factions intent on making more money as ‘educators’.  The best education I have at conferences is the discussions over coffee with colleagues and rarely in the didactic presentations where we go back to sitting in desks and being obedient students as fun as that is.

So psychologically I was glad to have this On Line Degree and put it up on my wall . I’d a diploma up there also which declared  “I bought the band a drink’.   Indeed it is one of the fancier ones and was only first noticed months after I put it on the wall.  Both degrees allowed me to ask patients what they wanted a degree for and what was education. I've been encouraging patients for ever to get education while bemoaning Canada's tendency to mediocrity. A master's degree is well supported in Canada and repays the effort but my phD friends and medicine specialists versus surgeons feel that the further specialization its not reimbursed as it is in the US and Europe. 

It could be said that I had some ambivalence about the academic institutions especially since a government in my former home province had under funded education with the result that my own Medical Degree, once one of the top three in Canada had been devalued by these thug politicians none of whom had much education at all among themselves.  There was a mediocrity growing in Canada and the education systems were in chaos. My second university had fallen in 'value' whereas my first and third degrees were ''devalued". 

My father used to complain that he had to stop hiring union men because increasingly the carpenters despite their “trade” papers seemed solely to be incestuously related but lacking the the capacity to distinguish hammer from saw. In those contracts he was required to hire union he was hard pressed to complete the job as opposed to other contracts where he could hire individually according to merit.

In Canada the illiteracy rate of high school graduates with the stoppage of national high school proficiency exams became such an issue that universities eventually introduced admission exams because Canadian high school diplomas no longer had currency with institutions of higher learning. Many argued the was a product of liberalism socialist  or communist influence. Everyone was. ‘Entitled’ to a degree rather than being required to ‘earn’ a degree.

It was also easier and cheaper for me to get an American license to practice medicine than to great a Canadian license in another province because of the increasing politicization and Balkanization of education in Canada. It remains the case that Ontario doesn't quite acknowledge medical education from other provinces charging several order more to Canadians to have their training acknowledged than any province charges Ontario in return despite Ontario degrees being the most suspicious in the country given how many are obtained by legal threat.  

Spiritually I was amused at the degree too. One of  my favourite religious teachers had been Brother Lawrence who was the monastery’s kitchen help.  

Then I heard Almeda as an institution died. The folk just closed up shop. This interesting innovator It was presumably beaten down by existing institutions and laws and killed.  I really don't know what they did to bring upon themselves systemic wrath but the there obviously was some back rooms decision to regulate the university degree granting process. 

This was at the time I’d bought a hard bottomed rubber boat which sprung a leak.  When I tried to get parts the company had gone out of business.   This was just capitalism and market forces at work. The same had occurred with the radar I had when it was damaged. I couldn’t get parts. I have a hard drive from a company now defunct and I only learned of it when I found it didn't interface with new software. Interesting exclusive parallels with market forces and centralized regulatory forces competing.

About this time I also finally found years later a university offering Ecumenical degrees in divinity and theology.  This was at Columbia University and the Irony was that the program was started by a psychiatrist with interest in divinity.  I’ve considered taking classes and do hope to continue to study theology in formal didactic classes alongside my ongoing informal study.  The trouble is that increasingly degrees are being issued with a shelf life. I didn't renew an American Certificate I had because the prestigious institution could only vouch for its own diploma for five years. As a learning machine professional I was interested then that these institutions of supposed higher education were unable to produce a training program of the likes of my medical degree which was a life long degree with no shelf life limitation. I don't think i’d stop being a medical doctor if my university stopped paying the rent or defaulted on a loan. My Master of Divinity degree retains inherently the value of equivalence of the citizenship status of a person whose country has been dissolved by war perhaps.

My personal learning includes going to places like Instanbul where I hired a Turkish professor of religion and history and was guided for days through mosques and museums studying Islam as well as visiting the underground churches of Cappadocia.  I have had a number of torture victims as patients who had escaped from Muslim prisons and countries.  At the same time I’d been a presenter in Azerbaijan with a most delightful Muslim physician who answered my religious questions about his religious experience devoutly.  In the last few years because of the horrid ignorance of the Canadian politicians regarding religion I've been reading more extensively about the church development and religion and state interface. Where once I was reading Kierkegaard and Buber I found answers in Karen Armstrong’s Fields of Blood. I'm also reading the history of council and creeds withe the dicussions of orthodoxy and apostasy. At the the of King Lear he says “Lets talk of court things, whose in whose out”. Because the matter of whose in the in crowd as in the high school yard chum circle functions well beyond the school yard. Indeed President Obama gave out medals once reserved for the courageous and brave to comedians as the Queen Knighted Beatles and the Nobel Prize for Literature was given to Bob Dylan. 

The mystery is with everyone shelling out experiential degrees who indeed did Almeda offend, whose hand did they fail to grease and why as a true innovator in the process did they fail. I expect the answer is money. They simply didn't have the resources to muddle on like other similar bodies had through history. Time magazine with its ‘person of the year’ awards survived the probable error of the infamous Hitler choice. Perhaps if Almeda stuck to Divinity degrees no one would have cared but their administration degrees might have been used by too many Canadian Senators resulting in that once august body having shameful ignominy today. I am glad I didn't marry anyone because they might well have overnight joined the ranks of the unmarried without the blessing of the legal system which is making a killing off an institution once principally a source of ecclesiastical revenue.

I reported a fake doctor who had risen in the ranks of our local government concealing his never having obtained a doctorate from the august instition he claimed he had. What fascinated me was that he had appealed so much to the authorities. He was consulting on policy and nor practicing in a physical manner where our Fake surgeon surgeons or Fake pilots show up rather obviously. This fellow merely had the gift for the gab and said what our local government wanted to hear. His recommendations were so alien to the university position I knew that I questioned his credentials. Sure enough he was an imposter. But his policy persists today as abhorrent as it is because the government wanted a stamp of approval on their cost cutting nonsense. The matter which interested me most was his success at fooling literally hundreds if not thousands before I personally called him out as a fake, a liar, a fraud. It was a very dangerous tim. 

It goes to the naming of a thing - godly or ungodly. Are the fruit trees Adam named wrongly named today as we found only later that Adam disobeyed God. Are the names given since the Apple less or more valid. 

Personally I see the future as closer to retirement, some five or 10 years out, with the idea that I’ll see myself studying more religion and theology and spirituality, meditating more and writing and reading more in the area of spirituality. I don’t know if I’ll marry anyone at sea.  I have my ship’s captains papers for that as it is though I believe it would require me being in international waters. I may have to get a new degree if I want to host a dock party wedding and sactifymthe occasion.

But it was fun to have a CBC Fake News journalist call me and ask me about what is now being  called a ‘fake degree’.  I don’t know that it is. It’s a bit like when a country changes its flag.  Like Canada today, increasingly a communist police state with all the assaults on freedom speech and the death of journalism.  I grew up with a journalist mother during the hey day of the Winnipeg Free Press and have watched  journalist friends leave Canada because they say news journalism can’t be done here any more.  I do believe one can be  a sports journalist still but I don’t know any more. Will hockey be as fake as soccer any day soon? 

I think it’s ironic that I get a divinity degree and the institution fails.  If I was grandiose I would think my intrinsic evil nature , that binary gnostic self,  had destroyed this institution.   Perhaps it’s  just a reminder that religious studies is an ongoing , one day at a time, matter.  Like my boat and radar I guess I may have worked my studies so hard that I simply need a new one.  

I laugh too, sure that the young CBC journalist who called was probably given the story by someone who I’ve insulted for being a pot head sharia communist Liberal liar who panders to the shirtless Prime Minister Trudeau who supports the destruction of freedom of speech with anti Semitic Islamaphobia legislation.  I still have the Master of Divinity Certificate from when it was considered ‘good’.  It’s a bit like Canadian Currency though. Since the liberals came into power my dollar is now only 70 cents on an American dollar. I much preferred it a couple of years ago when it was almost par with the American dollar. 

I’m actually thankful because it brought me back to reflect on this journey and how I really must spend more time in my spiritual pursuits having been way laid by political discussions which do not appeal to me nearly as much as talking about Jesus or asking why Christians can’t create a ‘core’ study program like medicine with it’s subspeciality degrees.  I love medicine that way. After a generalist degree in medicine and surgery,  subspecialized in Community Medicine, Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine. I 

think it would be great if there was a 4 years religious studies program and then you  could get  a Christian degree, a Catholic degree, a Judaic degree, Moslem degree, or a Hindu degree etc.  There is initially shallow generalist knowledge and later deeper specialist knowledge.   Thomas Merton was a much deeper student of east and west and I really have a long way to go.  

I believe there is one God. I believe that Jesus was the son of God and that humans are the children of God.  I believe what Jesus said summed up religion as later stated by Hillel, Love God and Love your neighbour as yourself.  I wrote a paper at Vancouver School of Theology on comparing heavens and concluded that Mark Twain’s description of heaven was the one I wanted.  

Yesterday I listened to a Methodist minister share his views on hope.  I hope to get a new Theology degree. I’ve got a new radar and a new boat to replace the previous hard bottomed dinghy.  I have hope that CBC News will one day stop being so Fake and that the present Liberal Government will be replaced by a government less promoting of drugs and impaired consciousness.  It seems fake to me.

But there is a fundamental confusion today about what is truth and what is fake.  I miss the blue on the Canadian flag I grew up with.   I do hope University of Manitoba and University of British Columbia maintain their standards.  Poor socialist Venezuelans today have a country that is unable to feed their people and no doubt their university degrees are becoming like their other paper currencies.  I don’t think I’d like to be operated by a doctor who graduated from Somalia or one who bought his degree with lawyers from University of Toronto. 

I think it’s ironic that my spiritual degree has returned to the little off shore island where it began.   Almeda was the brain child of some academics with an office  on a Caribean Island back when.

Addendum

I just learned that Almeda apparently had been bought in recent years by a Pakistani ‘diploma mill’  I received a call from the CBC News reporter today having written this after the email arrived last week.  

I immediately wondered if this was where Prime Minister Trudeau’s gifts of Canadian tax payer’s millions of dollars  to Pakistan was going.  The plot thickens. What is true and what is fake?

I have agreed to talk with the CBC reporter next week to discuss this. 

My natural paranoia is such that I can’t help but think that CBC News would take an interest in this after I’ve been such an out spoken critic of CBC Fake News.  The reporter denied knowing I was a critic of CBC yet admitted to reading my on line writing.  What is true?   

I’m especially a rather loud critic of the unholy relationship between CBC News and the Liberal government.  The Liberal government has given CBC news more money despite the increasing number of jokes circulating on the internet about CBC reporting. My personal favourite is  “Is it fake news or is it CBC?”   

I am thankful that the email occasioned my reflection on this which I share but I sensed that the motivation might well be an attempt at character assassination since the Liberals have excelled in Ad Hominem and all the CBC News seems mired in innuendo and suggestion.  Fear mongering always and what sells rather than what is true.  

So much of it does come down to the rhetoric “Appeal to Authority”.  Clearly CBC, Pakistan and Almeda today all have issues with Authority "image" .  My ‘spiritual’ authority is questionable as a ‘sinner’ .  My authority is as a doctor.   I do have a diploma which was validated by the California Education system.  But today it is questioned. 

That this was nearly a decade ago when Almeda was as valid as the CBC news of that era makes one question "perception".  What is the 'shelf life' on a story especially a CBC story. I find CBC news tedious because it sounds increasingly so much like Pravda and gives speculation and opinion rather than stating the 'facts' before getting into the talking heads.  Reuters retains some respectability as it continues to focus on fact more than the journalist, not that there is any objectivity since Heissenberg.  

 Tarek Fatah would say Pakistan has had image problems longer than Almeda or CBC so why is Trudeau giving them Canadian  money.  Why is CBC questioning education that originates in this Muslim country. Is this Islamaphobia? Is it news?  Whose paying for this.  What’s my part in it. Why me. Why today.  

Of course as a spiritual person, I ask what does God want me to know from this?  A thrice divorced man, I probably shouldn’t be marrying people?   

Nightmares, fear, truth and lies.

I awoke at 4 am, sick with fear. I am again facing threats.  Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness.   I am falsely accused.  The lies are heinous. I’ve been here before. But the dreams are of those who held me hostage and brought guns to point in my face, knifes to thrust under my chin, to make their point.  The bold faced long necked lies are more insidious. The greed that drives deceit is more deeply disdainful.  Last year was particularly trying, the death threats and the threats to kill my dog when a former dog had already been sacrificed.   I still refused to comply with extortion.The extortion is the same. The punishment follows the refusal to reward deceit.
I am here at a conference of doctors. Others are speaking of their fears.  It’s becoming universal.  Except for the elite or perhaps the mediocre. So many shudder, the ripples felt as uneasy laughter, voices kept low in hope that no one hears whispered conversations.    Stand up and you make yourself a target.  I am disheartened to hear of doctors who have left their community because they are not allowed a conscience.  They are purposely being subjected to means to break them. There is no compromise.  Christians are persecuted all over. More so, these days of aetheist communist control and sharia language restraints. To speak is to blaspheme except for the chosen.  And who are the chosen. That debate sizzles.
I am by contrast criticized for transparency.  There are no secrets in our society today. I once “hacked" into the places where all the personal records recorded by governments  were left open to all because then anyone could, legally, look.  Security cost and though I was offered pay I didn’t want to address the mess.  They had not seen the need to protect the privacy except their own because they wanted easy access instead.  Repeatedly I fought repeatedly for confidentiality till the matter became irrelevant.  The illusion of privacy is just that, our government and countless agencies for business and even nefarious designs spy on us continuously. Wikileaks has told us what we all know, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Sexuality and private communication were once sacrosanct but no more.  The RCMP, FBI, NSA and all manner of public agencies spy on citizens routinely. They pay lip service to maintain appearances.  In hospitals the privacy at all levels except the top is like the gown afforded the patient.   There is pressure on the courts for transparency now.  We need the  full context of body language and secondary communications that slant all information to understand any verdict.  The back rooms prevail but only with bugs and cameras strewn around them. .
Transparency is the only protection, really.  We live in a glass house.  We are only protected by the truth. Relative truth is the illusion.   We know the media skews truth for profit.  Memories are false in hours or days and yet individuals insist their memory is true.  Then memories are fought back and forth before referees little different from those who wear black and white stripped shirts in soccer matches, convene. It’s always political.  Outcomes are bought or won.  The rich prevail.  The winner writes history.  All strength remains with the State, the King, the Big Man, the Big Woman.  Families and tribes compete.  Nation states are struck down. The rule of law is little respected when truth is no more.  Alibies are maintained by tribes and gangs.  Groups and primitive structures that predate nation states prevail.  Individuals are sacrificed or crucified.  Virgins, the young and so often Christians and especially Jews have always been the favoured entertainment in the games.  Animals and gladiators play to a different sort.
I am always anxious.  I am more anxious older.  I have served a society that once wanted law and order but the very structures of that old group are now torn asunder. The pedophiles I saw locked up will have their revenge on me.  The liars are more powerful each day as the power  shifts to celebrate the mob.  Marches upon marches define the present. A media chosen spokesperson with camera angles and lighting lies.  I’m not a marcher. I’m afraid in large crowds.  The young and physical prevail in war.  I was promised protection.  I was bred a hot house plant.  Old, academic, scholarly, a doctor, I have no more place in this physical fray.  
The campaigns to smear celebrate the actors and actresses. I wasted my time in libraries and labs.  The gossip mills were training new men and women when I was in the morgue. I have consulted the dead while reality tv was teaching debates. I am a minority view. I am a marginalized citizen.  There are favoured groups but my own group held onto truth like Shrodinger’s cat, lucid dreaming and fractals..  The world is any way you slice the pie.  Perceptions are self serving and compete by force.
I cling to the remnants integrity.  I have been violated sexually.  I have been violated physically.  My morality has been questioned. I have studied ethics ad infinitum if only to be aware in the increasingly unethical and uncultured world I live in. My RCMP friend said she joined the force to be a crime fighter but left when all she was allowed to do was be a crime recorder.  I feel a kindred spirit as we increasingly are called upon to promote disease by any other name.
I am tired in the morning.  The nightmares return and disrupt my sleep.  I struggle to remain.  Suit up and show up. Do the next right thing.  I resist the allure of self pity by exercises of constant gratitude. I thought block constantly. Prayer and thanksgiving. I seek to forgive but it’s always hard to be forgiving as one  is ducking arrows.  The nature of the work is in the midst of competing factions, more confused and confusing as the day goes on.  The armchair Monday Morning quarterbacks and the space station dwellers debate your worth.  Any moment you can be collateral damage or cannon fodder.  There is no concern above. Middle management is a casino, the players vying to skim the genius from the games to give back to the House.  The higher one climbs,the more bodies one leaves behind.  The greater the right to privilege and the more one is willing to do to keep the status.
I’ve come and gone. I’ve given up millions and turned down millions. I’ve walked away and wondered  if I’m meant to be a monk or if honourable death is better to the constant grind of facing people who want you dead so they can steal and take what they feel entitled to.  They would have your experience without the time in chains. They would have your reputation without the life of  shame.  EE Cummings called them ‘those people’.  Leonard Cohen spoke of the game, that ‘everyone knows”.
We are rats in a maize. Advance cockroaches in a dream.  Monkeys with minds and nice hair dos.  The question is truth and the judge claims to know this.  Bsseut increasingly all he holds is the gun and jailor’s keys. There are no Solomon’s in the drug addicted hoards.  Consensus is a commodity.  The guillotine is Occam’s razor. The one who fears most is left standing in the end.  The paranoids are proved right as Freud said.
And I am only afraid as long as I forget.  Anxiety is a measure of one's distance from God.  So again I turn and trudge towards Bethlehem.

Forgiveness in War

I am under attack right now by deceitful psychopathic individuals  who may simply be ignorant rabid dogs biting the hand that feeds.  I do object that those who killed God in our society also destroyed the ten commandments for their personal benefit. "Thou shalt not bear false witness,' went out the window in exchange for  Marketting and PC.
I have been in similiar situations on other occasions. I  have asked for guidance as a Christian from the elder men and women I turn to when I feel persecuted.   Sometimes they tell me "Get down off the cross, we can use the wood."  Other times they tell me, you are right. Now they tell me I am right. These people are hurtful, nasty people who are in fact shooting at you with 'false accusation's and  slandering your name.  I'm not psychotic. I'm not mad. I'm not even bad. But they are.
Christians are supposed to love and forgive.  I 'm not a particularly loving or forgiving Christian and have a memory for resentments that is prodigious. I go to church and read the gospel because I 'need to' as much as I 'want to'.  Often the experience is more like an enema than anything else.   My God was 'forgiving'.  So my friend says 'What Would Jesus Do?"   I say, he'd kick ass and throw the lying theives out of the temple.

My minister told  me that it was very Christian to 'duck' when people were shot at you.  When Hitler said that "Germans were ready to die for the fatherland," Patton, replied, "that's just what we want you to do."

 C.S. Lewis gave the  WWII talks later published as "Mere Christianity'. He supported the  British soldiers fighting against the Neopagan Nazi hoards.   The Nazis had conquered Europe and were exterminating Poles, Jews, Gays and just about any one else who wasn't in favour of  National Socialism lead by  Adolf Hitler and his girlfriend,  Eva Braun.
My psychiatrist minister friend said that yes, Jesus might well cleanse the  temple of  bad men, drain the swamp so to speak,  but if you plan to go to war, he told me,  "you should put on  the armor of God."

Ephesians 6

11. Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
12. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
13. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to sad.
14. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;
15. And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
16 Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.
17. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:
18. Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;

Truth, righteousness, gospel, faith, salvation, Holy Spirit and prayer, supplication and perseverance.

I kneel before God and ask his guidance.

However if I am being attacked right now, I duck.  I also return fire if this can't be avoided..  Jesus taught , Love God and Love Your Neighbour AS Yourself.  The idea that Jesus and his followers were wholly hippy pacifists does not hold with the biblical evidence of the apostles armed with swords.  It is true that Christians 'turn the other cheek' so are not 'easily offended', not like the evil kneejerk offence activists today.

In psychiatry we learned that we must protect ourselves from the dangerously insane because they 'knew not what they did' .  If we let an insane person hit us then we would be doing them harm as well because when the mentally ill were 'allowed' to hurt others their restrictions and drugs were increased.

We  were taught to avoid violence where possible. If violence occured we  'controlled' the violence with the least restriction.  This was unlike the encouragement for neglect and cowardice so often heard today. In the asylum we did not retaliate.  We did not take revenge. Indeed our patients might well think we were invading white coated aliens.  Truly we ourselves might behave similiarly with such beliefs.

So how can I protect myself especially knowing that the Cold War depended, as much of the history of the world has depended, on the fundamental laws of the jungle. Dangerous predators rarely attack each other but prefer the docile herds.  The oldest law of the world is the Chinese Law of the Fish, "there are big fish and little fish and the little fish have to be fast and numerous. "  Big fish counter each other with equal threat and given the potential of dangerous counteraction negate the 'value' of attack.

Hitler invaded his neighbours because  they were weak.  Chamberlain caused WWII as much as Hitler. It takes two to tango.

The members of alcoholics anonymous which began with Christians before becoming a universal self help organization based on  non religious 'spirituality' cautions those in recovery against even "righteous anger'. The reason is that people who have been alcoholic or drug addicts are at risk of relapsing with extreme emotions and tend towards over reaction and catastrophisation especially in early recovery.  However, the members of AA joined the American Armed Forces and fought offensively and defensively with bravery and reknown in the terrible WWII Italian campaign.  Abstinent men in recovery, members of AA, Christians  successfully fought the elite Nazi troops killing them en mass.  They did not relapse either.

So how can I be forgiving in war.

My minister said, forgiveness comes 'later'. It's the antidote to resentment.  Resentments are described as taking poison and hoping the other guy dies. They are toxic and go contrary to the teaching of 'love thy neighbour as thyself' or 'do unto others not as they do unto you' but rather 'do unto others as they would do unto you.'

For now I'm putting on the armour of God.

As a Canadian I am demonized today

As a Canadian I am demonized today because:
1) I believe in God and Jesus Christ and am demonized for these beliefs.  I am ridiculed and condemned yet I am supposed to accept that those who are so judgemental of theists and Christians are themselves enlightened and tolerant. I am persecuted for my beliefs attacked as ignorant and insane for my faith.
2) I am pro life. Our Justin Trudeau is pro abortion and dictated that no one can be in his government who disagrees with abortion.  I am by this one ultimatum of the petite Napoleon, persona non grata. I am ‘excluded’ by this government who claims to be diverse and inclusive. I have been screamed at and condemned and threatened for simply expressing and holding this belief.
3) I am a scientist and consider the central hypothesis of Climate Change, that the world is heating up principally due to man’s production of hot air purely a political construct with little scientific basis. I believe in Carbon Dioxide, the breath of life for plants and believe the taxation of carbon is a grand scheme of disinformation for political purpose. I have watched ever promise of the Climate Change Cult be proved wrong from Silent Spring’s death by ‘acid rain’ , to the boiling away of the planet by the destruction of the ozone layer, to Al Gore the greatest scientific fool of the century promising the ice caps would be gone by 2015.  All the fish continue to live in the post Silent Spring world, and Mount St. Helena spewed more ozone into the climate than man in man’s life time with no damage to the ozone layer whose hole mysteriously appears to lessening. Now the Ice Caps are alive and well and never before has plant life been so radiant and yet I am demonized for saying that Canada has reached an all time embarrassing low by creating a Department of Climate Change. For a scientist this is like living in a world where the government has created a Department of Scientific Alchemy.  That’s the sleight of hand of Climate Change and because I am opposed to this ridiculous deceit and the even more preposterous claims that the ‘world is going to end’ if you don’t give me more billions of dollars, then I am even threatened as a scientist with incarceration. Scientists simply don’t say other scientists who disagree with them should be put in jail or asylums but totalitarians do.
4) I am a libertarian mostly and against Communism specifically.  I am demonized as a person who faced with the question of the ‘state against the individual’ puts more faith in the individual than the state.  The state has killed more people than the individual and people in groups commonly act poorly compared to an individual. While I respect institutions I’m not naive to the history of the mass killing of innocents by the eurocrats of Communist Russia, Communist China and Fascist Germany.  Yet I am attacked and demonized for not agreeing with the belief in Big Government, Centralization of Authority, Bigger Government and loss rights of regions and individuals.
5) I hunt and fish and kill, clean and prepare my own meat but suddenly those who are fed on mass by the urban butchers and industries of commercial endeavour hold me as somehow evil and primitive and a killer. The effete even approach food as a fashion statement and condemn outright all humans that preceded their experiment in taste. I and the billions upon billions before us are the enemy overnight and these sentimentalists defend the chicken and lamb but not the snake and alligator or even the fish. It’s bizarre how the cuddly are championed but I am those like me who hunt are demonized and suddenly the ‘trophy hunter’ is akin to the gas chamber bureaucrats who gassed children in the wars.  The level of ignorance of the media and the urbanites is frightening because they all don’t seem to know that no food goes to waste in the wild and a ‘trophy’ hunt is about killing the oldest and most likely to die from old age that winter.  More case for protecting veal in the restaurant than from killing the 8 point buck.  Most unusual and outrageously ignorant behaviour in this mass hysteria fueled by urban elitism against all those who living in the country consider eating home grown vegetables and home shot meat as normal as the horrid city person might be considered for going to the 5 star restaurant.  Yet here I am, son of a hunter, grandson of a rancher, raised on wild game and home grown vegetables all my life maligned by the masses as somehow un Canadian.  I am demonized and excluded by those very effete who claim to be non judgemental and inclusive.
6) I am wholly against political correctness which I believe is the language of totalitarianism and goes against all the freedoms which the poor and marginalized have fought for since the origins of the magna carta.  The Politically Correct have always been the ‘courtly’ the fawners, and the psychopaths and sociopaths who chameleon but lack substance and character. I believe in truth by contrast not relative truth but truth, the objective, agreed truth of consensus arrived at by hidden ballot if not by common sense.
7) I believe in democracy and the right of dissent.
I feel increasingly that Canada, once a tolerant nation is intolerant of the familiar, it’s own and it’s forbears and suddenly embraces strangers while condemning me and those like me. I am afraid in Canada today because of the violence of those who powerfully maintain that they are peaceful and loving but are not this to me.

John 8: 42 NIV Study Bible

"If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now I am here. I have not come on my own but he sent me.  Because you are unable to hear what I say, you belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.  Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”
The message of Jesus Christ is that God is not some old white hair guy or gal sitting on a cloud directing the universe. The Cosmic Christ is God Immanent.  God manifested himself in the world.  His son, his image, his word are here and now with us.  That word is the word of truth.
To me that is as true as ‘scientific truth’.  The Creationist knows God first manifest himself in Nature before the Fall and before the Cross.  Within nature there is the perfection and messages found in the matter of fractals, in the triangle, in the hologram.  There are immeasurably signs that man and nature did not just happen but were conceived.  A monkey given time simply could not compose as does Bach. The Big Bang theory, a foundation of science, states that there is a ‘finite’ time from creation. Within that time, a monkey simply could not compose as Bach.  Countless other matters of creation could not have ‘evolved’ simply because there is not the amount of time for evolution to occur. Further the idea of mutation doesn’t take into account that most mutation is devolutionary not evolutionary.  Understanding science and string theory and quantum physics scientists see the hand of God. Even Einstein, a theorist, said ‘God does not play with dice.’  This life is not ‘random’ but there is purpose.
I believe my purpose in life is truth.  The language of truth is fundamental.  The deep evil of political correctness language, the language of the demonic, is that it confuses truth.  “My truth”, says the devil.  Of course we all know that there are many perceptions and many angles of vision and experience. Yet in the end, we agree on truth in science. It’s called objectivity. My truth is subjectivity.  Together we know more than as one. Together we can.  The irony and hypocricy and utter deceit of the left and politically correct is their fixation on the ‘consensus opinion’ of ‘climate change’ yet they themselves insist on the language of ‘my truth’.  The very truth was the thing of ‘consensus’ not an individual claim. The devil lies. The devil is deceit. There is a yes and a no.  We know all is grey but the ‘aha’ moment gives us insight and discernment so that no everything isn’t true.  There is truth.  It is from God. It is the truth of science and gravity here on earth. It is the truth of right and wrong. There is morality.
Smoking marijuana and drinking excessively there is a blurring of the world. Everything is okay.  This is not enlightenment but devolution to a lower level of non discrimination. A child puts everything into his mouth and learns that poisons are not to be taken. The drug addict is so accepting so ‘chill’, so ‘cool’.  ‘Take it easy, Man, everything is cool.”  No it’s not. That’s the devil speaking. That’s a lie.  Everything is not ‘cool’.  Maybe in some metaphysical way it is but right here and now the killing of a child would not be cool. Ironically if I offer to taken the drug addict’s drug, suddenly this generous easy going guru of enlightenment becomes more truthful. The same with the politicians and rich men and women who are generous with the goods, labour and money of others.  It is not that they are evil but they do seem to heed the devil more than they heed the father. They are leaders who lead from behind not those who charge with the troops.
The historical Jesus said he was from God and that God sent him.  Fundamentally I don’t know how I got here.  I know from stories I was born to my mother but I don’t even remember it. I don’t remember my time in the womb. I have a birth certificate.  I presume that I exist as Descartes so simply stated, “I think therefore I am”  (Cogito ergo sum).  But I don’t know if I spontaneously occurred or was sent. It’s an act of humility to consider that I might not have the capacity to ‘self create’.  I know about sperm and eggs and that whole biological cycle but it’s all ancient and truly mysterious and difficult and unpredictable and even sketchy in parts that there is today no ‘consensus’ on the ‘start’ of human life.  The abortionists, great lovers of the devil, rich ruthless men and women who are the greatest of murderers and deceivers who have argued that it is not murder to kill even a full grown child in the mother’s womb about to be naturally born. These men and women for money would kill babies and toddler if they could convince the world that they were good.  The devil is the great deceiver.  But no we don’t quite know with utter certainly if God invests the fetus with life at the moment of egg meeting sperm or perhaps later in the womb. Indeed religionists say that each life is ‘predestined’. This means that God meant for the birth to occur. God mean for the egg to meet the sperm and life to follow. God did not mean for abortion to occur.
In this scenario there is a life purpose, that is God and there is the death purpose that is the Devil’s.  Freud called this ‘life wish’, eros and death wish, thanatos.  The devil is murderous. This dichotomy of good and evil is of this world , where truth and lie exist.  There is night and day. There is evidence of particle and wave.  Flow and stasis.  Right and wrong. Truth and lie.  The language is not ‘my truth’ and ‘your truth’ but rather ‘my perception of truth’ and ‘your perception of truth’ otherwise these politically correct nut bars would have us saying ‘my light’ and ‘your light’ and the pc police would have you arrested if you insisted at midnight in utter darkness that ‘its’ night’ not ‘day’.
Language is the first casualty of war.  And don’t get me wrong, I believe there is a war.  The devil is in the detail. The politically correct speakers are demonic. They are liars. They would try to convince us that ‘black is white’ so we will accept that ‘your money is my money’ and ‘your life is my life’.  Political correctness in all it’s forms is evil.  
Jesus Christ was without sin. To sin is to ‘miss the mark’. It means ‘to sin’ is to err.  My intention when I shoot my rifle at a target is to hit the bullseye.  When I miss I have ‘sinned’.  To those who argue that all is ‘determined’ and ‘all is fate’ and that they have no accountability and no responsibility then there can be no sin. Yet I have observed these sinners all my life and they are very specifically willing to accept praise and reward for what they do but unwilling to accept punishment and blame. They are above the law. Their truth is narcissism. Their father is the devil.   They ‘change history’ to agree with what they want because they do not want to admit that their ‘purpose’ was other and that good came regardless of their intent. They would argue that ‘good things’ happen and ‘bad things happen’ and they were ‘lucky’ and you were ‘un lucky’.  They deny they ‘fix’ the games because they are liars.  The devil is a murderer and a liar.  If all is ‘accidental’ then the devil doesn’t have to be accountable.  They never accept responsibility for their behaviour but would rather ‘deny, deny, deny, lie, lie, lie’.
Now  the old language of the Bible is nonetheless a valid language. I can use the word ‘karma’ instead of ‘retribution’. I can put the language of Jesus into the California message of the Secret. I can talk about the first law of physics as God and the second law of physics as the devil. I can show the opposing forces in the universe physically and ask why there would not be opposing forces in man. I feel there is a ‘good’ way to do something and a ‘bad’ way.  If I want to build something I can do it with ‘efficiency’ and ‘least waste and destruction’ or I can cause the most havoc and crisis to achieve my end.  The idea of good and bad, or good and evil is throughout our world and our society. We question the decisions that serve the fewest and celebrate those decisions that benefit the most.
Increasingly there are bankers and financial folk who trade in companies and acquire drugs that cure and yet they price them at maximum profit and show no interest in the outcomes of their decision and how they would affect a sick child.  There is a back lash.  It’s karma. It’s Jesus. It’s Christ. Life’s a bitch.  But there seems to be a connection between kicking and mule and being kicked back.  We know in war that more people are killed by ‘friendly fire’ and the ‘stupid decisions of leaders’ than by the enemy bullets.  This push back is everywhere. This is ‘truth’.
Now the politically correct would lie and lie extensively.  Truth is truth. It’s not a possession. The new consumer society would say this is ‘my planet’. This is ‘my galaxy’. This is ‘my creation’. They sound like little children because they have not morally or emotionally developed. They are not diaper trained either.  Jesus recognized that the world was full of children and he loved the children.  So he said, “forgive them for they know not what they do’.  They are the tool of the devil. They are deluded. They are the zombies who are taken over by political correctness and other godless lies.
Of course it’s not ‘cool’ to think of the Devil as a serpent. Just like it’s not cool to think of God as a white haired elder out on a cloud. Just as God is immanent so is the devil. The devil is that which is inside you that is destructive. God is that which is creative. God and the devil are two voices inside each of us.
Jesus is asking which you will call your Father. There is choice. And you will be accountable.