Three Month List

I'd like to present a list of excuses for why I haven't written here for 3 months, but no use whining. Everyone is busy, yet some people can keep their blogs going without gaps. Still, even though I have slacked, l believe it's a good practice to add a post once in a while in case I ever get back to this blog on a regular basis. If anyone checks they will see I haven't forgotten it altogether. I actually can't believe Google has been kind and consistent enough to keep the blog site going in the way it has. I'm sure they get something out of it but to give them credit, it is a benefit for those who use it.

Technically, I have done some things on the blog that aren't reflected in the posts. I added my book, Mission: Faithful which I edited last year (see the picture on right to access). And now I hope to go through the files of my other books to update them.

Also, I will go through my posts from the beginning, which was back in 2008. I am sure there are a lot of links that are outdated, and I wasn't always careful about my style for citations. I hope to make improvements in that area.

I do find purpose in thinking about the blog and in writing. So thanks for stopping by and someday I may get back to posts which have more than 3 month's worth of dates between them!
😉

Trying My Best

I am going to use personal stresses as the reason for delays in previous promises I made to look into the programs that carry my blog's e-books. I want you to have the optimum reading experience and am not sure which possible downloads are the best for which devices. But I just haven't had the time to look into it. Among the stresses in no particular order: both my laptops, one old and one new, have had repeated technical problems; my mother who lives 350 miles from me has cancer and needs regular treatments; now I have my own health problems and don't know where that is going. I find it hard to get back into the blog with these things going on.

I know there are not many who come to this website and perhaps none of these promises to update or at least check for better download possibilities are necessary. I guess I will have to discern depending on future events. In the meantime hope that anyone reading will check out the books and posts, as I have invited before. And leave a comment or two if you so desire.

Tomorrow is Easter. I hope you have a very blessed one. 🙏

The Perspective of Worshiping God

There has been discussion about whether the Biblical God of Abraham is the same as the Christian God. I know many think He is the same, but I think there is some confusion and the argument depends on perspective. I would like to present my thoughts. I think what I will say is also applicable to the argument that “we all have the same God.”

First we have to keep straight whether by the term “God” we are referring to the ultimately true (Catholic) God or to the concept of God within each human.

Catholics believe the Trinitarian God is and always has been God of all. Our Catholic God is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three Persons and one Essence (CCC 253). But the other perspective of “god” would be from a human person's point of view: what that person considers as his or her spiritual creator and/or controller of him/herself and surroundings and therefore worships. We know of examples of ancient Romans, Greeks or Native Americans who believed in multiple gods, some of which supposedly created then others who controlled fertility, rain, etc. Yet we Christians believe our Trinitarian God was ultimately their God because He was the one who really created and sustained their lives even though they didn’t know or worship Him as He is. We don't consider their concept of God to be correct and therefore from our perspective they worshipped false gods. Catholics believe humans are affected by fallen nature and deception is part of that. Perhaps some of these groups had inklings of the true God but others carried on with the false ones. They may have even had interactions with demons through this false worship.

Ancient Jewish people worshiped one God, and some still do, in the sense of one Person, the Father. When Moses asked His name, God answered “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14), and said this would be his name forever (and He is 3 in one forever). They believed “The Lord our God is One God” (Deuteronomy 6:4). I believe that from the current Christian perspective, the God that interacted with Abraham and Moses and the Old Testament Israelites before Christ came to Earth was the true God, our God. I believe because of the revelation of the Bible which is the inspired book of my faith and because the Father had an especially close relationship with the Israelites since Christ was born from that people. On the other hand, our true God allowed the Israelites at that time to think of Him as one Person, which was not fully complete. He acts with His own purpose and the time had not come to fully reveal Himself. In the belief of the people, He was a different God than ours, even though there were references to the Spirit and the Messiah in the Old Testament. Even though they pictured Him differently from what He really is, I don't think He would have considered them worshiping a false God since it is what He told them and probably knew they would not understand the concept of 3 in one at that time. (Their worship of idols is a different story.) Later, however, God speaks of a New Covenant with His people, which is repeated by Christ in His last supper: “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which will be shed for you” (Luke 22:20).

I believe since Christ came, whoever hears of Him is to worship the true God as a Trinitarian God and in no other way. Though we will never understand God fully, we believe He has revealed His nature and made it plain He wants all of us to believe in Jesus Christ as a Person of the Trinitarian God, our Savior from our sins. We still suffer from the fallen nature. From the Christian perspective, to worship God as only one Person is wrong. The human who holds that belief rejects two equally important Divine Persons who have one Essence. And therefore after a human person hears about Christ, to worship the Father alone is, from the perspective of the person who is worshiping him in that way, worshiping a different God than Christians are. To Christians, Jesus Christ is a Person of God. To non-Christians, He is not God.

This is why I also say that we can’t just let it go at “we all have the same God.” Though the true God is ultimately the same, what matters to each of our souls is that we declare Who our God is.

I think battles occur in the spiritual realm and correct human belief and worship of God are very fundamental to these battles. These days, human belief seems unimportant to many people. But I hold that what ultimately matters to each human being is Who or what we believe and in turn how we worship and speak.

A Blessed Christmas 2018 to All

I pray for everyone who believes in Jesus Christ as God our Savior to have a wonderful celebration of His birth. And for those who don't believe, I pray even harder that you come to realize He is the way, the truth, the light for your life.

Just a little technical note, I discovered my books here on PDF files can be viewed better on my phone and nook than on my laptop (where they can be seen but are quite large). The EPUB was not supported on my phone and didn't come out well on the laptop but looked good on my nook (sigh--technology). I am glad they can still be read reasonably well at least on some devices although I realize they suffer from the shortcomings of an amateur.

Books can be accessed on their pages which can be reached on the top line and on the right column. I had a mobile design selected for a while but it didn't work well with my blog so I switched back to web version. I hope you can read it well enough if you want on a phone. If you have any suggestions I'd be happy to hear them. I hope any of you who are interested in reading one or more of my books and booklets will find the version best suited for you.

Updates Needed and Slowly Coming

Yesterday I clicked one of the links of my books on this blog to its PDF file and was surprised to find that online it was very large on the screen and couldn't be reduced to a more convenient size. I then clicked the other book links and found the same thing. I should have checked them sooner but I don't get much traffic here and was occupied with other things in my life. I know how fast things change in the tech world so I'm sorry for not checking them more often. I am not sure what this problem might be but am going to look into it. I hope the files are better to read when downloaded. I'd be happy to take advice anyone might have.

I intend to do some further updating as winter rolls in. I have been working on my first book which I have not had on this blog. It was written long ago and has not been on a single file. I don't even remember why I had kept the 5 parts separate, but it probably had to do with file size on the vintage word processing program I used. It is a pleasure to get the parts together in one file on my Microsoft Office Word 2016.

Though my self-published books here are not perfect, I still want to put them out as free books that might entertain and, I hope, elicit some food for thought. If anyone sees mistakes, I'd be happy to take comments on any regular posts and correct them. I intend to update all files of my books on Word 2016 and convert them to PDF. I don't know what I will do about the EPUB format at this time. I found Adobe still provides an EPUB reader, so for the time-being I will leave the file formats I already have on here.

I also must update the posts since many links are now outdated. I am starting at the chronological beginning of March, 2008. I look forward to having that done soon.

I hope to comment a little on Catholic Answers Forum, so if you have looked me up, thanks for reading and I hope you will bear with me as I try to get my blog in better shape.

Praise God for Creating DNA

Way back in January 2013, I did a post about the make-up of a part of the cell which produces energy, a set of proteins called ATP Synthase. The post is HERE, and it includes a little video about ATP Synthase which processes protons through a membrane due to an electrical gradient set up by yet other sets of proteins. I want to re-post a picture of this sequence from KEGG database called "oxidative phosphorylation" because it is amazing (sorry if my reproduction is a little fuzzy-- a direct link for this image data is HERE). Please note that all the different-colored parts are different proteins that have different genes:

However, I did not add everything I could have to that post to make the picture complete. I showed the amino acid sequence of one of the sub-unit proteins, but I'd like to take the composition of a Beta sub-unit one step further to show the human gene sequence. This is the darker blue piece of the protein set on the right of the above picture:

Each letter in the image above stands for a molecule called a nucleotide. These in turn are a code for producing the sequence of amino acids needed to make the protein subunit. In this case there are 1590 of the DNA nucleotides. These molecules, made of atoms, exist in the ladder-like DNA helix structure which sends a code through the cell to make proteins. There are 4 letters in the chart above --c, t, g and a. Below is a picture of them (the fifth, Uracil, is in RNA, a whole other story). The N stands for nitrogen, H for hydrogen, O for oxygen, and C, carbon, is understood in the corners of the "rings" that don't have letters). The R is where they attach to the rest of the DNA molecule:

Though perhaps every amino acid (coded by the DNA nucleotides) does not have to be exactly where it is in this Beta subunit, as in all proteins, many do. The protein has to have a structure that will hold together in a certain shape, and some amino acids do better on the outside of the protein and some on the inside. Then this Beta piece along with another type of protein provide the conformations that allow the chemical change of one molecule into another (ADP to ATP). The ATP is what gives energy to our metabolism and in fact is needed to produce more DNA and proteins. The machine-like quality of the ATP Synthase is due to several specific amino acids that can accomplish this task when the ATP Synthase complex turns on an axis. There is another way to produce ATP which I won't go into: substrate-level phosphorylation. This requires its own complex sets of proteins and you can always Google the name if you are interested in learning more.

Overall, you have a chicken and egg problem: DNA is needed to code for the proteins that make ATP which is needed to make DNA. Though many want to believe that life came through natural physical laws, we have to consider at least two events: first, beginning of life; second, continuation and change of life forms (evolution). At the beginning we have to understand that the chemistry that would affect the atoms of the atmosphere is under the Law of Mass Action (Wikipedia entry HERE), where atoms and molecules move randomly but collectively act in a certain way. Even quantum physics becomes random at the Newtonian level. Though some want to dream of finding physical laws that would put DNA together "naturally," in my opinion they are literally dreaming. They accuse Creationists of not being able to acknowledge that God could create through physical laws, but what about them acknowledging that He could create directly?

In the Bible, the Apostle Paul says that God made Creation in a way that it is obvious for us to see His eternal power and divine nature (cf. Romans 1:20 NABRE). I agree with Paul.

Praise God for His Creation

I went to the Farmer's Market yesterday. Our town has a great FM, and this time of year it is full of produce, but also showing signs of the impending autumn. There are gourds and Chrysanthemums, and also one of my favorite flowers, Gladiolas (they are late in Michigan). I have a picture of one here, admittedly from the Internet under free images of flowers. One of the reasons I am writing this is to praise God for His creation, something I don't think we do enough. Perhaps it is "understood" that if we look at flowers and believe in the Lord, that we admire His handiwork. But I'd like to hear more of "Praise God through Jesus Christ for His Creation."

That is why I have the idea to make a thread at the Catholic website Catholic Answers Forums (CAF) that says that or something similar. But before I do that I have to get some things done, like getting my nook charged up for the first time and, as I understand it, sign in to places I've registered already such as Google. I've been putting it off but I'll be going back to my mother soon for her to have more surgery and I'd like to have my new nook there so I can read the books I have on it (I guess the ones that are on the previous one are carried over to the new one). There are other things going on too, such as trying to finish editing and re-writing my first book, Mission: Faithful, so I can put it here on my blog.

Another thing is that I would like at CAF to take the Creation part down to the molecular level, to show how the Lord has used His mighty creativity to get the biological world working in the first place. We will see how it all goes.