Sunspots 669

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:


Christianity: He Lives has a brief post on the importance of the resurrection.

Computing: ZDNet reports that Microsoft claims that its artificially intelligent language translators have become as good as expert human translators, in changing sentences in news reports from Chinese to English.

Gizmodo on how to use Facebook, but make as little information as possible available to others while doing so.

Health: Gizmodo reports on a study of how a virus spreads between passengers in an airplane.

History: Sojourners tells us some interesting facts (or not) about St. Patrick.

Politics: A Relevant writer says that some white evangelicals seem to have a double standard on Presidential morality.

An annotated list of people and things that President Trump has insulted on Twitter, as of January 3, 2018. (It's a long list!)

Science: Scientific American reports on experiments that suggest that people are less likely to return favors, as time increases since the first favor.

Gizmodo on why our faces change shape as we get older.

Gizmodo reports on really black, and really white materials, including paint.

Gizmodo also reports on the bone structure, and possible flight behavior, of Archaeopteryx.

Scientific American reports on a study that showed that having tigers around farms in Bhutan increased farm profitability. Reason: the tigers kept some other predators away.


Thanks for looking!

Image source (public domain)

Gray versus Black and White

Gray versus Black and White

Christians disagree over many things, such as:
1) Whether women should be pastors.
2) Whether or not there will be a rapture, and, if so, whether it will be before, during, or after the tribulation.
3) Whether a person who is truly a redeemed believer can lose their salvation or not.
4) Whether or not Christians should expect to speak in tongues, and, if so, whether such utterance is or is not really a language.
5) Whether the days of Genesis 1 were literal consecutive 24-hour days or not.
Some of us like to see things in black and white. We want to know the answers -- the right answers. Some of us don't feel this need, or don't think there is enough evidence to make up our minds. We see things in gray. Generally, that would be me.

There are real dangers in being a black and white person.
1) Most obviously, you might be wrong.* The main reason being wrong is a problem is that if you are hard-nosed enough about your wrong belief, you may turn non-believers away from Christ.**
2) Vehement disagreements between believers will turn away non-believers.
3) God never commanded that we understand exactly what the book of Revelation predicts, for example. We can spend more of our time on such issues than we should, just as we can spend too much time watching TV. Christ has other plans for us.
4) You might disrespect a gray fellow Christian, because she hasn't made up her mind on something that you have. You might disrespect a black and white believer, because he doesn't agree with you. You might be proud of your own firmness.
There are also dangers in being gray:
1) You may be ignoring things that God wants you to know and act on, or you may doubt things that you should believe.
2) God commands that we take the scripture seriously.
3) You may not be spending enough of your thought life on God, lazily saying about whatever issue, "Well, we can't know, so why think about it?"
4) If we don't take our beliefs seriously enough, unbelievers will not consider believing as we do.5) You might disrespect a black and white believer as simple-minded, or be proud of the fact that you haven't made up your mind.

So, my friends, I submit to you that, generally, we should be intermediate between black and whiteness and grayness. I don't know what color that is.
*As Henry Neufeld recently said, there is a sort of unacknowledged doctrine that you have to be doctrinally correct to be eternally saved, but that is one thing we should be black and white about -- you don't have to have all your theological jots and tittles in a row to be redeemed, thanks be to God! (Neufeld's entire essay is splendid.)That's no excuse for not listening to pastors, not studying Sunday School lessons or the equivalent, not reading the Bible, or for ignoring other sources of light.

**For instance, if you say that the Bible says that Christ is returning before you die, and He doesn't, people who don't know much about the Bible, except what you say, will come to the conclusion that they can ignore it.
For another instance, non believing geologists are not likely to respond, if you tell them that the Bible says that they need to repent and believe, if you have also told them that the Bible teaches unequivocally that almost all geological phenomena are the result of Noah's flood.
I thank my wife for constructive criticism. Thanks for reading.

This essay was subject to serious editing on November 22, 2008, without changing the meaning significantly from that posted on the original date.

Colors: White

White light isn't exactly colored light. It is a mixture of all the other colors of the rainbow, at least in theory. White surfaces and objects reflect most colors of light, thus seeming to reflect white light. So white isn't exactly a color, but I'm including it in this series. White is the second most common color word in English.

For anyone who read my other posts on colors (here's the first) I am not going to include white text, as I did for red, orange, yellow, etc.

Easton's Bible Dictionary, available through the Blueletter Bible, says the following, in its article on "Colour": White occurs as the translation of various Hebrew words. It is applied to milk ( Gen 49:12), manna ( Exd 16:31), snow ( Isa 1:18), horses ( Zec 1:8), raiment ( Ecc 9:8). Another Hebrew word so rendered is applied to marble ( Est 1:6), and a cognate word to the lily ( Sgs 2:16). A different term, meaning "dazzling," is applied to the countenance ( Sgs 5:10).

White occurs 75 times in 66 different Bible verses. It is used to describe animal skin color, the effects of leprosy, fabric, snow, cleansing, fields ready to harvest, a white stone given to believers, and a few other items. Revelation has more use of the word than any other in the New Testament.

In our culture, white is often used as a symbol of purity. Brides are supposed to wear white for this reason. One reason that we associate it with purity--it's not the only one--is that snow, after it has cleaned out the acid and particles in the air, is clean and white. There are Christian songs that speak of cleansing, and becoming "Whiter than Snow."

Besides snow, some other important substances are white, including cotton fibers (usually), salt, sugar, milk (usually) and the white of eggs. Part of the visible human eye is white, as are our teeth, ideally. There are white flowers, and white rocks, and white domestic animals. Wild animals in snowy parts of the earth are often white, at least during snow season. Clouds are white, unless they are too thick for much light to get through, or unless tinted red by sunlight near the time of sunset or sunrise.

White blood cells are a vital part of our body's defenses. White matter is part of our brain.

In sports, it is common to mark boundaries in white, and to use white balls, or the equivalent (although not in all sports). In team sports in the U. S., the home team often wears white. (If anyone can tell me why, I'd appreciate knowing.)

Part of the appeal of the bald eagle as a symbol, in the United States, is because of its white head.

Unfortunately, it is possible that prejudice toward dark-skinned persons may be partly because of the symbolic uses, above. Except for albinos, however, no human is really white, which makes preference for white skin seem especially irrational.

White is symbolic in fantastic literature. In Tolkien's Middle-Earth, you can pretty well tell how a race, or an individual, is going to act, based on how dark they are. Generally, the lighter, the better. Gandalf started out as Gandalf the Grey, and Saruman was Saruman the White, but Saruman fell under the influence of the Dark Lord, and became Saruman of Many Colors, while Gandalf fell to his apparent death in Moria, and came back as Gandalf the White. The White Tree was one of the symbols of the kings of Gondor.

The White Witch in C. S. Lewis' Narnia books was not good, but evil. Through the Looking-Glass has white and black chess-pieces. In Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea books, most of the characters were meant to be dark-skinned. A recent TV movie adaptation mostly changed that, which understandably upset Le Guin.

White is a common last name. There was a Supreme Court Justice named Byron (Whizzer) White. Some variations are also common, such as Weiss, which is white in German. There are several fairly common last names that include White, such as Whiteside and Weissman.

Since I began these posts on colors, on Feb 14th, I have read some about how we see color. Mr. I was an artist who had become color-blind after an auto accident, and was a patient of Oliver Sacks. He also could not dream or think in color after the accident. Sacks writes that he discussed the case with Francis Crick, among others, and that:

His retinal cones were still reacting to light of different wavelengths, and his primary visual cortex (an area which has been named V1) was registering this information, but it was clear that this wavelength discrimination was not in itself sufficient for the experience of color. The actual perception of color had to be constructed, and constructed by an additional process in another part of the visual cortex.

The experience of white, then, depends, first, upon the effect of white light on sensory cells in the retina. It also depends on additional activity of the brain.

My job, and yours, is to reflect the light, all the light, from the purest Source. May we do so.