Still Counting Sheep: Heathen Spirits in the Name of Christ (Atheism Doesn't Get Any Worse Than This, Preacher Boy)

Too many preachers think of themselves as pastors, as spiritual leaders, as under-shepherds. Too many of them adore themselves in quoting scripture from behind a respected pulpit, such as:
The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.'
But, atheism is not primarily a denial of God. It is primarily a denial of how people ought to think of, and treat, each other in the face of the invisible God. It is the spirit of heathens, which is primarily self-admiration in the face of visible fellow human beings. Many Christians are atheists, or heathens, in effect, because of how they think of, and treat, strangers who they target for 'soul winning', and because of how they think of, and treat, children in the name of education. Adam did not learn spiritual leadership from a self-admiring preacher boy with a dogmatic, 'Biblical' attitude.
If thought (or discernment) is defined as the ability to recognize something, then this is not enough to know anything in the first place. You need to be able to identify something to begin with in order to be able 're-cognize' it when you see it again. And, that's the very problem, because even if thought is defined (i.e., identified) as the ability both to identify and to recognize things, then a computer can, in effect, think. The question is what criteria is to be used to identify whatever it is that is being identified. The wrong criteria will result in partial, or primary, or even complete, misidentification.
So, what is needed for actual thought is an actual sensibility, a sense about things, whether the experience of the red of a rose, or the observing of one's own thinking (qualia and metacognition, respectively). A sense about things might alternatively be called imagination, or awarness, or sentience. Sensibility is something which neither radios or computers have, because these objects are only objects, only machines; they are nothing more than glorified hammers; there is nobody 'in there', there is no 'little man inside the radio'; they cannot actually identify anything, they can only simulate for us what we 'identify with'. The same goes for books.
An 'educational process' that consists primarily of being spoon-fed a Primary Document to identify-and-recognize, and according to prescribed criteria, does not produce an educated mind, it produces a programmed mind---a brainwashed mind. And, if the victim of such brainwashing arrogantly welcomes it as THE TRUTH, then that victim's mind becomes preoccupied with a sense of its ablity to 'discern' both facts and spirits, both conditions and intentions. The less such a 'discerning' person knows about the differences within different people, the more such a person feels sure of his own ability to 'discern' other's through that Primary Document.
Imagination---a sense about things---is the core of thought. To learn anything for real, you not only need the ability to identify-and-recognize things, you also need imagination. And, I hope you recognize that imagination includes an awareness of the black expanse of personal ignorance and solely from which new knowledge is gained. Wanting to know something implies ignorance, and every baby is born with the natural action of 'searching' for things to discover, things that are new to him. We can search inside things that we have never explored before, or inside things with which we are already acquainted. This natural act of 'searching' for things to discover (or identify) is the root of effective thought, because it implies sensibility. Computing machines do not actually search, we simply make them function in ways that automate a presentation of raw information. The crowds of little 'bugs' you are currently looking at (what Tarzan called the letters of these words) is simply raw information.
Notice that I said the NATURAL act of 'searching' for things. But, this natural act can be prevented or corrupted if the person is routinely and arbitrarily imposed upon to 'pay attention' to something else. And, the 'something else' can even be nothing more than the effort to comply with an impatient and presumptive demand that he initiate a search. This is human thinking turned into a chore. An even worse implication about this is that chores can often become things you do simply to get them done and out of the way. Worse still, the compliance to the command to initiate a search is degraded by an order of magnitude if the searcher is imposed upon to identify new things according to prescribed criteria. In this way, a person's efforts to learn---to search for things---becomes hijacked.
A child sometimes needs guidance in understanding things, especially in regard to wisdom in an evil world. But, this does not mean he must be treated meanly just to make sure he doesn't one day end up rejecting what we tell him. To hijack a child's effort of searching is to treat the child as if his mind were little more than the Mars Rover commanded by NASA. This kind of teacher-to-child relationship presupposes that the child may rightly be 'tested' constantly such that the 'testing' attitude of the teacher toward the child makes the child self-conscious in an uncomfortable way: a micro-managed, breathing-down-your-neck-even-when-the-teacher-is-absent feeling.
Such hijacking is not a natural human relationship, especially if it is heavy-handed, or even if it feels heavy-handed to the child from past abuse (analogous to having a very raw wound that someone handles as if there is no wound, so that the pain is out of proportion to what the handler intends). This unnatural relationship is compounded when the teacher, at least in effect, equates thought with expression---especially with preconceived forms of expression. Such a teacher may think that the child's relative inability to articulate his thoughts about certain ideas means that the child only poorly understands those ideas. The teacher can articulate her own thoughts about those ideas comparatively well, so she assumes that her own thoughts about those ideas are right, especially if the child has no ready and articulate objection to her expressed thoughts.
To hijack a child's mind like this is to make an effective claim to essential dominion over the child (Genesis 1:28)---just as if the child were a robot made to serve its human maker. Don't presume to represent my maker to me, preacher boy. Atheism doesn't get any worse than you. In fact, you can be worse than an atheist because only the Truth, not a lie, can be misused. Only the Truth misused can truly rape feeble-minded souls.
God's Word was made for man, not man for God's Word. That's because it's not sufficient in every sense of sufficient. Only God is that sufficient. Even God's Word, in the book of Revelation, says that there shall, in the future, be two prophets of God who shall prophecy. Don't you know that the Last Fact in a list of Facts is not synonymous with the Last Truth, and that the Last Truth in a list of Truths is not synonymous with the last word?
You, Preacher Boy, are not a pastor, much less a suitable one. You are a vending machine from hell. The ability to carefully prepare highly proprietary slop, and dump it in a feed trough, does not make you a pastor when, regardless of your success in getting most of your sheep to stand and eat it, you condemn as stubborn what is, in fact, another man's sheep that is both very ill from this heathenized slop and was born without legs. This one sheep, that you thought was a strong one of your own, which you thought to show off to other shepherds as proof of your 'blessing of superior discernment'; that God would give you, of all shepherds, such a sheep.
So, what about the fool? I have just one thing to say, and it is not to him. Rather, it is to the preacher who claims that since he has the Word of God, he has the automatic discernment of God: You are a viper dancing to your own charm.