Last week, I toured Mabel Bassett Correctional Facility led by my former legislative colleague Kris Steele, now the director of The Education and Employment Ministry (TEEM) in Oklahoma City. TEEM is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to breaking cycles of incarceration and poverty through education, personal development, and work readiness training.

The ancient Egyptians built the pyramids with the ratio of the height to the base equal to 1:1.618—The Golden Ratio. The ancient Athenians, those masters of architecture, built the Parthenon with its column configurations and dimensions based upon the Golden Ratio. We looked last week at several examples from nature that satisfy the Golden Ratio as well: the facial features of people that society generally deems “attractive” is one fascinating aspect of the Golden Ratio. In a sense, facial recognition technology can be thought of as a method that analyzes how much a person’s facial proportions deviate from the Golden Ratio. In fact, Leonardo da Vinci painted portraits using the Golden Ratio; the Mona Lisa is a fine example. And it is not just facial features, the Golden Ratio is present in a rose as well as many other flower petal and leaf configurations, and it is present in all sorts of seashells such as the Nautilus. But these are all tangible, concrete forms of soul food. What about the semi-abstract world of music? I say semi-abstract because although you can see music on paper, the notes played and traveling through the air are essentially abstract, they linger in the air just for a moment then they are gone . . . abstract.

In January of 2021, President Biden assumed the presidency with an aggressive immigration agenda. In just his first 100 days in office, he took 94 executive actions, including removing Title 42 and Remain in Mexico, halting border wall construction, and reinstating Catch-and-Release,inanattemptto make it easier for immigrants to illegally enter and stay in our nation.

On the day that 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley opened fire in his Michigan high school, a teacher found a graphic drawing of gun violence with disturbing phrases. The most haunting, however, were two simple words: “Help me!”

Over the past week, Oklahoma lost two individuals who did much for our state’s children in their own ways. Most people are aware of the passing of Toby Keith, the Oklahoma country musicperformer with multiple top hits.

Last week we mentioned “beauty” as soul food. It seems to me that since we have established that human beings are made up of both a physical body, and an immaterial soul, then just as the body needs hamburgers, the soul needs its nourishment as well. For the Christian soul food comes in two forms, from the Word of God in Scripture, and from the things that have been created (Rom 1:19ff).

Last week we posed a series of questions designed to make us think about a unique capacity that is common among human beings but is nonexistent in the rest of the animal kingdom. That wonderful characteristic is termed the duality of man. The 18th century philosopher Gottfried Leibnitz said “if we liken the human brain to a factory we could see any number of movable parts, but we could never see the thinking itself.” Unsurprisingly, the Darwinists have no answer as to where selfconsciousness comes from. Although all people, believers and non-believers alikeagreethatthereisanimmaterial mind, the problem for the Darwinist seems to be in that there is no logical, scientific way to explain where self-consciousness comes from, or how it could have evolved from inert atoms in the animal brain. And yet self-consciousness very much exists all the same.

During his Valley Forge speech earlier this month, where he stated this election is about whether democracy would survive, President Joe Biden asked, “Is democracy still America’s sacred cause?”

Words: the foundation of language, simple letters strung together to form a word. Then words are used to create sentences, then paragraphs, and eventually complete storiessharedbetweenhuman beings.

Now, back to the question, “how do you get from atoms to self-consciousness?” Howdoyougetfromtheatomic chemistry in your brain, to a mental thought—maybe even the thought about how fascinating this column is? If we are all just a conglomeration of atoms like the Darwinist, or the atheists, or even some of the Michaels of the world say we are, then from whence doest thou thoughts come? States of self-consciousness are not our brains. The brain is a part of our body. It is made up of cells which are made up of atoms. The brain, and self-conscious states, or we can say the mind, are two different things.