Current events and entd-time judgments

Submitted by Michael S (United States), Apr 26, 2015 at 00:02

Hi, Waz. I had to look up "tautology". I had never heard it before, with the meaning of "redundancy". I did remember the word from high school, from mathematics:

A tautology is a logical statement in which the conclusion is equivalent to the premise. More colloquially, it is formula in propositional calculus which is always true (Simpson 1992, p. 2015; D'Angelo and West 2000, p. 33; Bronshtein and Semendyayev 2004, p. 288).

If p is a tautology, it is written |=p. A sentence whose truth table contains only 'T' is called a tautology. The following sentences are examples of tautologies:

A ^ B=!(!A v !B) (1)

A v B=!A=>B (2)

A ^ B=!(A=>!B) (3)

(Mendelson 1997, p. 26), where ^ denotes AND, = denotes "is equivalent to," ! denotes NOT, v denotes OR, and => denotes implies.

-- http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Tautology.html

For the sake of most folks, who are not interested, and some who are, let me explore the passage I quoted. The quote is about only one of the four horses, the "pale" horse; but it is in the passage about all four -- which, as I said, actually seem to appear at the same time as one another.

Rev. 6:8:

kai eidon kai idou (and I looked, and I saw) hippos xlOros (a green horse) kai ho kaθhemenos epanO autou onoma autO ho θanatos (and the one sitting upon him was named "Death"); kai ho hadEs (and the unperceived one) akolouθei met mutou (following with him); kai edoθE autois (and it was given to them) eξousia apokteinai (power to kill) met autou (with him) epi to tetarton tEs gEs (on the fourth of the land) en romfaia (with saber) kai en θanatO (and with Death) kai hupo tOn θEriOn... (and with the wild beasts...).

I Romanized the spelling as much as practicable; and I capitalized "Death" because it was given as a name -- the name of the invisible horseman who accompanied the rider of the pale horse. It's not a redundancy: "death", to the ancients, was not considered to be a physical state: It was a spiritual state, like being struck with a weapon; but the weapon and its bearer were invisible. In this passage, "Death" might be thought of as "The Grim Reaper".

Well as far as nasty events go - they've always been happening just that the pace is picking up quite a lot.

You might be surprized, as I was, to see the article,
"5 Reasons Why 2013 Was The Best Year In Human History", by Zack Beauchamp Posted on December 11, 2013 at 3:34 pm

It is true, that the pace of war picked up from 2013 to 2014; but even so, what we are seeing in the Muslim World, Central Africa and parts of Latin America, is widespread low grade killing and moderated destruction. Even the most violent conflicts, like the Syrian Civil War, are more theater than struggle -- as are the beheadings, burning alive, etc. perpetrated by Da'esh.

The area covered by the struggle is roughly a fourth of the earth's land area (The "earth", in ancient texts, never referred to a "planet"; it referred to the part of our world made of "earth", or "dirt"). The other horsemen in the prophecy brought famine and plague, which always rear their heads in protracted wars. What we've entered into, since the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Islamism, is this protracted warfare. It may be significant, that it is afflicting the nations around Israel, while leaving Israel relatively untouched. That makes the current "plagues" similar to the judgments against Egypt in the book of Exodus.

A favorite show is on TV. Gottago...

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".