I love to go to Starbucks, grab a cup of coffee, and read/study my favorite topics in book form. Once and a while I will bump into people well known in pop-culture. Michael Berryman was recently one of those people. Of course, he is best known to me from an 80′s classic,... Read More
I thought I would post a few items for the average man to engage someone lightly about Genesis. Here I want to focus on larger, easier to defend positions and will also throw in some minutia for the person who is curious about the issue as well. I will give a short reply and... Read More
Certain words can mean very different things to different people. For instance, if I say to an atheist, “I have faith in God,” the atheist assumes I mean that my belief in God has nothing to do with evidence. But this isn’t what I mean by faith at all. When I... Read More
I was in a recent debate about Biblical cruelty/ethics and the person brought up a verse that has not been brought up in conversation with me yet. It provided a fun learning curve on a specific verse and topic that opened up culture and manners of the early Biblical leaders and... Read More
I was surprised in listening to Vincent Bugliosi in an interview about his book, Divinity of Doubt: The God Question. Surprised because considering his book on debunking pretty much every JFK conspiracy known to man, I would expect him to realize his fundamental mistake that... Read More
The artists name is Jon McNaughton (FaceBook -or- mainsite) and these are two painting I like by him. In fact, when I was in Arizona last month I saw the “Peace Is Coming” (below) painting in an art store. Very deep.
Some funny stuff has come out in regards to the above painting, such as this humorous “caption” :
“We’ll trade you this peasant for that constitution. We’ll even throw in the bench,” to, photo-shopped versions of it.
If you want a “210 introduction” (i.e., a bit more advanced), see my introductory chapter to my book.
It has been a while for some FAUXTOGRAPHY (see my many posts on my older blog), so here is the most recent one — which is NOT the one the Wall Street Journal fell for, via The Blaze:
A multitude of websites have posted the photo and presented it as authentic including: Australians for Palestine, Palestinian Libra, and a boycott Israel (BDS) website
A pro-Israel blogger tracked down the original photos which show a wider shot of the scene of the street theater performance.
The Blaze Continues:
That blogger linked to an Israeli site Tazpitwhich discussed the photo in June after seeing it posted on the Facebook group called “Freedom Will come to Palestine.” The photo prompted comments condemning Israel including, “Disgusting! Hope the Israelis rot in hell!!” Tazpit wrote:
The soldier in the photo appears to be holding a Kalashnikov AK47 which is not used by the Israeli army, but used often by the Palestinian police forces and terror organizations. The IDF is known for using M16 and M4 weapons, and its uniforms are different from the soldier’s uniform that appears on the photo.
Tazpit quoted an Israeli government spokesman who said:
“Unfortunately, the use of such photos is a known method, trying to harm Israel’s image on the internet and is part of the social networks war of information”.
The use of fake photographs to score PR points in the Arab-Israeli conflict was highlighted after blogger Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs discovered a Reuters photographer in Lebanon had used Photoshop to digitally alter two pictures during the Israel-Lebanon war of 2006.
“This is the most wonderful time in which to live and be among the young people who are helping your country and bringing about change during this exceptional transitional period to a real democratic state,” Ginsburg said, according to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. “Think of the people who lived before you and did not have this opportunity because they lived under a dictatorial regime.”
Two things to note that have already happened before Justice Ginsburg’s praises:
We meet the president of the Salafist Al Nour party as he leads prayers at a mosque in Alexandria. “Before the revolution prayers were on more general subjects…now we are freer and we can be more frank,” Emad Abdul Ghafour tells us.
Like fellow members, he’s brimming with confidence. They’ve just scored 24% of the vote in Egypt’s landmark elections, making them the second biggest bloc in parliament. Not bad for a political party founded just nine months ago.
Hosni Mubarak’s departure in February 2011 has seen Egypt’s Salafists emerge from the shadows. Before, they operated in the half-light, in little mosques like these, the former leader’s security services – wary of Islamists – never far away.
Now, they can openly advocate their agenda. Their ideal society is that of the first Muslims, one based on a strict adherence to the Koran and Sharia law.
What is striking among the party’s leaders and supporters is the belief that this model will soon become reality. They’re buoyed by election results which have seen Egyptians vote overwhelmingly for Islam – the Salafists coming in second only to the Muslim Brotherhood.
The second is that the most popular movement in Egypt — the Muslim Brotherhood — is on the same page with the second most popular movement:
Whatever their disagreements may be about how Sharia should be implemented, if the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis do succeed in imposing Sharia upon Egypt, we will see restrictions on the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience, and the rights of women and non-Muslims. Wherever and whenever Sharia has been implemented, this has been the case. Yet in the U.S., we are forced to believe on pain of “Islamophobia” charges that Sharia is so multiform as to have no particular content and is fully compatible with Constitutionally protected freedoms — and on the basis of these false claims, anti-Sharia legislation is struck down.
Via LR:
From one comment from the video site:
From a young Iranian woman suffering from Islam rules in Iran to all my sisters in the world especially TUNESIAN AND EGYPTIAN : It’s not just about Hijab that would make you suffer, it starts with Hijab which is a tool to control you then comes other forms of restrictions and limitations, violating all your basic rights. The aim is to make a good society for men not women and children….
Via The Blaze
I have written quite a bit in the past about Venezuela… an ex-coworker was from there and I got lots of inside info during that time, click graphic for the older posts:
NPR has a left leaning bias, we all know that and I have proven it in the past. So reviews of a book they laud connecting the fanciful imaginations of the progressive in regards to history and Bush is a dream come true. In two reviews of the book/topic with the author of the book, God’s Jury, you can see a creeping bias, much like the pre-war Germany propaganda, has on the cover a “hooked nosed” Pope designating (implicitly or explicitly) the secular leftist hatred for anything Christian.
Cullen Murphey’s Cover:
WWII Propaganda:
Modern Islamo-Nazi Depiction:
Some NPR stories on the book/author:
1) The Inquisition: Alive And Well After 800 Years
2) The Inquisition: A Model For Modern Interrogators
NewsBusters has this in what they call a Liberal Two-Fer:
…NPR promoted it this way:
Murphy’s new book God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World traces the history of the Inquisitions — there were several — and draws parallels between some of the interrogation techniques used in previous centuries with the ones used today.
“A few years ago, the intelligence agencies had some transcripts released … of interrogations that were done at Guantanamo, and the interrogations done by the Inquisition were surprisingly similar and just as detailed,” he tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “[They were] virtually verbatim.”
“Many people in the Bush administration were insisting [it] was not torture at all. The Inquisition was actually very clear on the matter. It obviously was torture. That’s why they were using it.”
Murphy’s own website summarizes the book this way:
The Inquisition pioneered surveillance and censorship and “scientific” interrogation. As time went on, its methods and mindset spread far beyond the Church to become tools of secular persecution. Traveling from freshly opened Vatican archives to the detention camps of Guantánamo to the filing cabinets of the Third Reich, Murphy traces the Inquisition and its legacy.
Surprise, surprise! Murphy sought out a blurb by leftist New Yorker writer Jane Mayer, one of the most prominent Bush-trashing journalists (and a favorite of Terry Gross):
“From Torquemada to Guantanamo and beyond, Cullen Murphy finds the ‘inquisitorial impulse’ alive, and only too well, in our world. His engaging romp through the secret Vatican archives shows that the distance between the Dark Ages and Modernity is shockingly short.”
—Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side.
This book is at odds with the most renown scholar and author of the book, The Spanish Inquisition, Henry Kamen. Take note of the difference in tone and most probably scholarship — as this interview shows… his [Cullen Murphey] connections are so general that any religion or government can be connected to this event. These generalities are not to connect a historical event to a modern one but in progressive fashion the goal of stoking emotions rather than basing something in fact/history is the prime mover.
From an Amazon book reviewer and author of Author of “Mission,” an African novel set in Kenya:
Henry Kamen’s The Spanish Inquisition is an amazing experience. It is a highly detailed, supremely scholarly and ultimately enlightening account of an historical phenomenon whose identity and reputation have become iconic. So much has been written about it, so many words have been spoken that one might think that there is not too much new to be learned. But this is precisely where Kamen’s book really comes into its own, for it reveals the popular understanding of the Inquisition as little more than myth.
He explodes the notion that the busy-bodies of inquisitors had their nose in everyone’s business. It was actually quite a rare event for someone to be called before it. And in addition, if you lived away from a small number of population centres, the chances were that that you would hardly even have known of its existence. 
Also exploded is the myth of large numbers of heretics being burned at the stake. Yes, it happened, but in nowhere near the numbers that popular misconceptions might claim. Indeed, the more common practice was to burn the convicted in effigy, since the accused had fled sometimes years before the judgment, or they might have died in prison while waiting for the case to reach its conclusion. The intention is not to suggest that the inquisition’s methods were anything but brutal, but merely to point out that perceptions of how commonly they were applied are often false.
Henry Kamen skilfully describes how the focus of interest changed over the years. Initially the main targets were conversos, converts to Christianity, families that were once Jewish or Muslim who converted to Christianity during the decades that preceded the completion in 1492 of Ferdinand and Isabella’s reconquest. Protestants were targeted occasionally in the following centuries, but it was the families of former Jews that remained the prime target, sometimes being subjected to enquiry several generations after their adoption of their new faith. A focus on converts to Christianity gave rise to a distinction between Old and New Christianity, an adherent of the former being able to demonstrate no evidence of there having been other faiths in the family history.
What consistently runs through arguments surrounding Old and New Christianity, a distinction that was also described as pure blood versus impure blood, is that at its heart this apparent assertion of religious conformity was no more than raw xenophobia and racism. Henry Kamen makes a lot of the contradiction here, since Spain at the time was the most “international” of nations, having already secured an extensive empire and sent educated and wealthy Spaniards overseas to administer it. In addition, of course, Spain was emerging from a long period when Muslims, Jews and Christians lived competitively, perhaps, but also peacefully under Moorish rule. It is worth reminding oneself regularly that the desire and requirement for religious conformity during the reconquest was imposed from above.
Completing Henry Kamen’s The Spanish Inquisition prompts the reader to reflect on which other major historical reputations might be based on reconstructed myth. One is also prompted to speculate on the future of an increasingly integrated Europe, a continent forcibly divided for half a century where xenophobia and religious intolerance might be closer to the surface than most of us would want to admit.
One of my favorite quotes comes from a debate between Dinesh D’Souza and the late atheist Christopher Hitchens:
✦ Atheists regimes killed more people in a week than the inquisition could kill in three-centuries
And another reviewer:
The Spanish Inquisition by Henry Kamen is a balanced overview of this sad part of Spanish History. At 300 plus pages the author shows the motivation behind the Spanish Inquisition and that this inquisition was just that, “Spanish.” By sourcing Inquisition, Spanish, and other documentation author Kamen traces the roots and history of the Spanish Inquisition. He shows how this was a tool of the unified Spanish Crown that resulted in its own fear of it past and inability, at times, to deal with contemporary Spain, which came to be at the end of the Muslim domination of Spain and rise of the Protestant Reformation in the rest of Europe. The author does not gloss over the suffering it caused to both Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity, but shows that overall people were better treated by “The Holy Office” aka the Spanish Inquisition than the secular courts. Remember, heresy was a secular crime, punishable only by the secular authorities. And while those Jews and Muslims who did not convert might be considered heathens they could not be heretics. So, those who suffered at its hands were Catholics. The author also shows that, for its time, the Spanish Inquisition acted rationally. For example, when the great witchcraft scare was dominating Europe and its colonies (lets not forget the Salem Witch Trials) for its part the Spanish Inquisition so this phenomena as mental illness or an overactive imagination. In other words Witch hunting stopped dead in its tracks when it got to Spain. Henry Kamen does not gloss over the torture or burnings of the inquisition’s victims, but does show that for all of Europe, Catholic and Protestant, this was not uncommon for most crimes. And, many of the victims of the Spanish Inquisition were burnt and punished in effigy. Kamen shows how the Spanish Crown used the Inquisition to deal with its fear of an Andulus (former Muslim rulers of Spain) Fifth column and the rise of Protestantism in Western Europe. Remember Spain controlled a good part of the present day Netherlands and Belgium as well as Parts of Germany. So some Lutheran ideas did make their way to Spain. But, Kamen also shows that much of Spain, mainly the rural areas, was never even touched by the Inquisition. And that the Inquisition never had whole hearted support from the crown, those in positions of power, and the common folk. It was not the Gestapo like machine painted by many of its critics. But, criticized it should be and author Kamen shows the sad effects of the Inquisition not only on its victims, but on Spain itself. The author concludes by showing that people’s view of the Spanish Inquisition is not based on the historical data available but on the imaginations of those who have not reviewed or studied this data. Overall a great work of history is this book.
A great video by a fellow arm-chair apologists is a good introduction to the topic:
This is how I put it in footnote #7 in my chapter on Mormonism:
Usually I make this point – that Heavenly Father was a mortal man – early in the conversation, and, will revisit this idea of Heavenly Father being a man born into a world of his own by stating the argument another way. I will point out that it is possible that their god owned a gas station, worked at a grocery store as a clerk, went to college, or,even like myself, could have been convicted of crimes and done jail time before becoming “exalted.”
From Video Description:
Jihad in America. Pentagon shooter records video while firing shots Ex-marine Yonathan Melaku pleaded guilty Thursday to shooting at the Pentagon and the Marine Corps museum and other military buildings. Melaku recorded himself firing the shots.
To read more on it, see JihadWatch:
Yonathan Melaku was sneaking through Fort Myer and Arlington National Cemetery, his backpack filled with plastic bags of ammonium nitrate, a notebook containing jihadist messages, and a can of black spray paint. The 23-year-old former Marine was heading to the graves of the nation’s most recent heroes, aiming to desecrate the stones with Arabic statements and leave handfuls of explosive material nearby as a message.
Before police foiled the plan in June, the vandalism was to be Melaku’s sixth attack, months after he went on a mysterious shooting spree that targeted the Pentagon, the National Museum of the Marine Corps and two other military buildings in Northern Virginia. A video found after Melaku’s arrest showed him wearing a black mask and shooting a 9mm handgun out of his Acura’s passenger window as he drove along Interstate 95, shouting “Allahu Akbar!”
This topic is one that deals with a larger one, which is, Ron Paul, by all understanding is an anti-Semite, and attracts those who think likewise. Now, Eric Dondero of Libertarian Republican caveats that Ron Paul is NOT an anti-Semite while mentioning his old bosses hatred for everything Israel… but even the people Dr. Paul surrounds himself with is telling.
…a distinction worth memorizing. Remember also that Ron Paul surrounds himself with anti-Semitic persons which isn’t guilt by association but rather guilt by proxy (a more damning understanding of the idea).
Continuing from the story found at LR about the Synagogue bomber:
…And a friend confirms he hated Jews:
some of Graziano’s friends… One, who did not want to be identified, told CBS 2 “for the past two months, he’s been talking about how much he hates Jews because they were going to take over the country. This kid is crazy. He’s insane.”
From the video description:
Dr John Polkinghorne KBE, FRS (Cambridge Physicist & Canon Theological) Vs. John Mackay “International Director of Creation Research. Is Evolution Compatible with the Christian Faith? Hosted by BBC’s Roger Phillips, filmed live at Liverpool Cathedral. Don’t miss this great debate.
LIVERPOOL CATHEDRAL DEBATE A GREAT SUCCESS Over 1100 people filled the Liverpool Cathedral to hear Cambridge University physicist and Canon Theological for the Cathedral, Dr John Polkinghorne, debate Australian and International Director of Creation Research, John Mackay. The topic: Is evolution compatible with the Christian faith?”
As the UK’s leading theistic evolutionist, Dr John Polkinghorne started the debate with his claim that the universe had evolved over the past 14 billion years. Mackay quickly produced a copy of a 1990 lecture by Polkinghorne, where he had stated the universe had evolved over 15 billion years. It was fun to watch the audience react to Mackay’s claim that evolution must be so wonderful it has enabled John Polkinghorne to become 15 years older while the universe became one billion years younger, and then use it to emphasis the point that these vast billions of years are not facts that disprove a literal reading of the scriptures, but men’s feeble theories, which are constantly evolving while the scriptures in Genesis remain firm.
THE UK CHURCHMAN NEWSPAPER reporting the Liverpool Debate stated: “The controversial issue of origins was given a theological airing in the cloistered confines of Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, on March 8th 2005. The distinguished Australian Creation Scientist John Mackay was, in my humble opinion, far away ahead in his creation views against the resident Anglican theologian, Canon John Polkinghorne, KBE. It was a great educational debate but in my view Mackay’s Biblical answers left the canon (and he reminded me very much of Captain Mainwaring of Dad’s Army) spluttering in his hastily assembled answers. (from Liverpool Canon Debates Creation Scientist in Cathedral by G. Patrick Battell Paper No 7568, 18 March 05) Hosted by popular BBC Commentator Roger Phillips, this exciting debate was filmed professionally.
This is one DVD you don’t want to miss. Since faith in Theistic Evolution over billions of years is one of the biggest problems in evangelical churches throughout the world, your church needs to see it as well!
To purchase this DVD go to http://www.creationresearch.net/secure/store/home.php?shopkey=3399 click on GREAT DVDS and scroll down titles:
(Scottish Coat of Arms)
Before beginning this import from my old blog, let me say, the video I am updating this with is EXCELLENT! Not only can some creatures not known by modern man existed in the past (as my post shows), but the most plausible explanation is a change in definitions over the past couple hundred years. Good stuff Maynard.
This is a favorite of atheists, that is, to say that believing in God is just like believing in unicorns. The story use to be: believing in God is like believing in Santa Clause. But this analogy didn’t work to the atheists advantage… so they changed the story line.
However, this is not what the Christian is stating, and the analogy about Santa Clause will illustrate (which is why they changed the story line). First though, let me read from 1 Corinthians 15:14-17:
(14) And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. (15) More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. (16) For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. (17) And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.
Paul here is saying that this person Jesus is a historical being, and that his resurrection happened in history. Even the most ardent skeptic knows that Jesus existed in actual history, whereas we can say most probably — I will discuss this at the end — that unicorns do not exist. So the unicorn analogy is already falling apart. Which brings me to Jolly Old St. Nick.
Let us start with my favorite St. Nicholas who is said to have been from Asia Minor in what is now Turkey. He was a monk who rose to become the Bishop of Myra in the 4th century. Known for his generosity and compassion he worked to improve the lot of his fellow man. Stories and legends abound on the various things he is said to have done in helping the poor ranging from secret donations placed in shoes or stockings of the needy to protecting sailors at sea. He was imprisoned for ten years by the Romans as this was still a time of Christian persecution and was only released by the Emperor Constantine who was to later become Christian. He died Dec. 6th and that day is celebrated as St. Nicholas’s Day in much of Europe. His popularity only continued to grow following his death so that by the Middle Ages there were several thousand churches bearing his name.
This is closer to the analogy that we are looking for. Jesus REALLY existed; a monk named Nicholas REALLY existed. Horses REALLY exist.
There may be other discussions more valid here regarding whom Jesus of Nazareth was, but at least we need to realize that the unicorn analogy just doesn’t work. This puts mankind’s historic search for answers in a light not becoming of a persons intellect.
We are not applying Big-Bang cosmology and the beginning of the universe, the laws of causality, thermodynamics, the weak and strong nuclear forces (etc.) to a unicorn – which, if a historical mammal, would be within the space/time continuum… and thus subject to the laws of nature – but rather, we need a being that is the source or explanation for these historical events. We are looking to larger explanations as well as God’s actual dealing with events of history.
So the unicorn analogy would look more like this in the theistic sense of the explanation.
A friend said he met someone who said they saw a unicorn… in fact, he saw a family of them. They left the scene but there were many other people who saw it as well. In fact they wrote about it. Also discovered were hoof prints and a few shed horns. In fact, the government has tried to cover up this fact and started killing the eyewitnesses. They kill them because even under the most extreme torture conditions they are not recanting their stories. And we all know that if there were a group of people (say, 511 people) that would make up such a story that under torture conditions one of them would admit to lying. Because it is logical to think that people would die for a lie thinking it was true, but they wouldn’t die for a lie knowing it was a lie they fabricated. One bloke was tortured and then crucified on an upside down – broken – cross (Peter). Surely he would have recanted and settled this whole thing for the Roman Empire if he were knowingly lying.
This analogy is a bit closer to what is claimed in Scripture. Mind you the analogy is still a bit flawed, but at least the story line is closer to the truth of the HISTORICAL line of thinking. I will post this and a few other “pros” on my site for those who wish to actually study the issue instead of merely being critical of it. I am confident the evidence leads to God in general, and to Jesus specifically.
Below is just an historical example of this debate from the Grecian days. It is still relevant to this day, and a mammal that is subject to nature itself (like a unicorn) just doesn’t cut it in regards to explanatory power.
Plato wrote, “Some people, I believe, account for all things which have come to exist, all things which are coming into existence now, and all things which will do so in the future, by attributing them either to nature, … or chance.” Epicurean materialism was taught in the Stoic school founded by Zeno in 308 B.C.. And if there is a positive writing, there must be a negative one it is commenting on, for instance:
“When you see a sundial or a water-clock, you see that it tells time by design and not by chance. How then can you imagine that the universe as a whole is devoid of purpose and intelligence when it embraces everything, including these artifacts themselves and their artificers? Our friend Posidonius as you know has recently made a globe which in its revolution shows the movements of the sun and stars and planets, by day and night, just as they appear in the sky. Now if someone were to take this globe and show it to the people of Britain or Scythia [barbarians at this time] would a single one of those barbarians fail to see that it was the product of a conscious intelligence.” (Cicero, 106 B.C.–43 B.C.)
I hope one can see that the question of how we got here and us asking “what our purpose is in this existence we call life” is beyond a simple unicorn analogy. Not only that, but whomever makes the unicorn analogy should realize how un-educated this challenge really is.
Now to change the story a bit… I said that at this time we can say that unicorns do not exist, but history does hint at such a creature, since written records have been kept in fact. So it would be interesting to see if we can add a fossil find to the drawings and descriptions found through the historical record for creatures that are similar to the horse/ass that have a horn. Let’s just say the jury is still out. Scottish Royal Arms
King James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth I when she died childless in 1603, effectively uniting Scotland and England beneath one rule. The Scottish Royal Arms had, up to that point, used two unicorns as shield supporters. The English Arms had used a variety of supporters, but most frequently had included a lion. In a tactful gesture then, he placed a lion upon the left of the new Arms, and a unicorn upon the right. This was a potent bit of symbolism, for both the lion and the unicorn had long been thought to be deadly enemies: both regarded as king of the beasts, the unicorn rules through harmony while the lion rules through might, It came to symbolise a reconciliation between the Scottish unicorn and the English lion that the two should share the rule.
In 416BC, the physician Ctesias set out from his native town of Cnidus to attend the Persian King Darius II. There he stayed for eighteen years, and learned of many wonderful things during his time at court. Upon returning to Cnidus, he wote a book of his experiences which he called the Indica. In it is the earliest surviving written account of a Unicorn:
“There are in India certain wild asses which are as large as horses, and larger. Their bodies are white, their heads are dark red, and their eyes dark blue. They have a horn on the forehead which is about eighteen inches in length. The dust filed from this horn is administered in a potion as a protection against deadly drugs.”
The great philospher Aristotle, whose words were taken so seriously that they were widely held as gospel truth a thousand years later, could have destroyed the infant legend with a sentence, whatever the truth of the matter. However, he confirms its existence by a passing comment, which, though flawed in content, proved that this great man of learning clearly believed there was such a creature.
“We have never seen an animal with a solid hoof and two horns, and there are only a few that have a solid hoof and one horn, as the Indian Ass and the Oryx.”
The “Indian Ass” is none other than Ctesias’ Unicorn. Pliny the Elder, in the first century AD, mentions Unicorns, saying of them that there is:
“…An exceedingly wild beast called the Monoceros, which has a stag’s head, elephant’s feet, and a boar’s tail, the rest of its body being like that of a horse. It makes a deep lowing noise, and one black horn two cubits long projects from the middle of its forehead. This animal, they say, cannot be taken alive.”
There are some indications here that he was confusing the creature with a rhinoceros, a creature known to his race but often confused because the rhino was a known animal and the Unicorn was not! It never crossed the minds of many scholars that they might be talking of one and the same creature!
The same mistake has been attributed to the Roman scholar Aelian, who lived some five hundred years after Aristotle. He wrote a book about animals that mentioned the Unicorn quite frequently. In one passage he states:
“I have found that wild asses as large as horses are to be found in India. The body of this animal is white, except on the head, which is red, while the eyes are azure. It has a horn on the brow, about one cubit and a half in length, which is white at the base, crimson at the top, and black between. These variegated horns are used as drinking cups by the Indians. …It is said that whosoever drinks from this kind of horn is safe from all incurable diseases such as convulsions and the so-called holy disease, and that he cannot be killed by poison.”
Elsewhere he says,
“They say that there are mountains in the interior regions of India which are inaccessible to men and therefore full of wild beasts. Among these is the Unicorn, which they call the kartajan [Sanscrit: Lord of the desert]. This animal is as large as a full-grown horse, and it has a mane, tawny hair, feet like those of an elephant, and the tail of a goat. It is exceedingly swift of foot. Between its brows there stands a single black horn tapering to a very sharp point. Where other animals approach it it is gentle, but it fights with those of its own kind. It seeks out the most deserted places and wanders there alone.”
Other notable Greeks and Romans have noted the unicorn: Julius Caesar for example, who said they could be found in the Hercynian Forest. However, for all the weight these mighty scholars and writers wielded in the literary world, the Unicorn was not well known among the ordinary people. It was yet a beast of books and libraries, and there it might have dwindled into obscurity and never been known to us….
….The unicorn had actually long been a Royal Beast associated with kings and rulers.
Aelian had said that only great men could own the cups made from his horn, and Philostatus had stated that only the kings of India might hunt them. The Physiologus mentions that the captive unicorn is taken before the King, and the Chinese Ki-lin has always been associated with Emperors. The Bible (Daniel chapter 8) relates the following vision:
“And behold, a he-goat came from the West on the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground; and the goat had a notable horn between his eyes.”
The goat in question is later interpreted as “the king of Grecia”, Alexander the Great, and it is also interesting to note that Alexander was once gifted with a unicorn by Queen Candace as tribute. We know that Caesar also wrote of unicorns. 
Ghengis Khan, about to invade India, saw a unicorn and took it as an omen that India was not to be his. He turned back immediately….
No invisible pink unicorns here!
About Papa Giorgio @ RPT:Biased: I have my own interests and personal beliefs in mind when talking to others, spiritually or politically (Prov 21:2; Matt 15:19), because... I am Fallen: I am a sinner and tend towards ~ naturally ~ what is not best for me or others. In other words, I will probably let you down (Rom 3:10; Rom 3:23; Lam 5:16); Sentenced: since I tend towards rebellion and selfishness, I am judged accordingly and righteously (Rom 5:12; Rom 6:23a; Job 36:6); Forgiven: I am justified before God NOT through works but by faith (Eph 2:8-10; Gal 2:16; Rom 6:23b; PS 86:5); Relational: mercy is not getting what you deserve. And grace is getting what you absolutely do not deserve (Heb 4:16; Eph 1:5; Jer 15:19a).
Top 12 Posts Visited at RPT in 2011
1) The Left/Islamo-Nazis/Homosexuality/Womens Rights/and Contradictions
2) LOVE ~ Mariano (of TrueFreeThinker)
3) Debates About Homosexuality
4) Margaret Sanger and the Racist History of Planned Parenthood (Black Genocide)
5) Some Black and White History (A response to convo elsewhere)
6) Taking Physicist Stephen Barr to Task for His Mischaracterizing Saint Augustine's Stance on the Age of God's Creation
7) Homosexuality-A Christian Ethic?
8) Moving Mountains: Faith in Faith (My First "Sermon” Given 4-15-2010, Tax Day)
9) Thanks Obama $ Company-I have wanted this subject of Foreign Campaign Donations back in the headlines (plus Krauthammers ~ Reptilian Desperation)
10) The Vitamin C Pseudogene Argument Crumbles Slowly
11) The BBC Culture
12) Same-Sex Matters (Race and Gender in Marriage)
Top 5 Permanent Pages Visited
1) Quotes I
2) Bio
3) Blogroll
4) Too Poor
5) C-O-N Debunker
See Bob McCarty’s Blog for more info
