The activist’s curse lies in the following rhetorical question:
If I can change my mind, and if you can change your mind, who are you and I to unilaterally declare that it is too late for the rest of our society to change it’s mind, too?
Because it is obviously possible, no matter how improbableit may be, the honest activist may not excuse himself from the cause by pretending that it is impossible to succeed in changing the minds of others. Rather, he or she must face the reality that if he opts not to try, it is because he or she does not care enough to expend the energy necessary to determine whether it is possible or not.
The very possibilityof reform is like the proverbial carrot being dangled in front of the horse’s nose to coax him ever forward. So forward I go, as if on parade by those who would rather lie about the possibility.
The encroachments of government against liberty, decency, and justice in the United States seem to be accelerating. Spying on the citizens in various ways, forcing us to buy insurance, forcing us to vaccinate our kids with toxic drugs, making ammunition unavailable, protecting megacorporations who are poisoning the food chain with their inventions, robbing our pockets with the inflation of our money, positioning to take our guns away, positioning to take ownership of our kids, giving away our treasury in “aid” to foreign nations, protecting government officials from prosecution for illegal acts…..
All these things and more seem to be happening in increasing measure, and I fear that they are pushing the public farther and faster than the public will long bear. What happens then is that the public (finally) begins to push back. And then, no matter who fires the first shot, the shooting will start. And at that point, the Federal Government of the United States will consider itself to be under attack. Continue reading →
Earlier today I posted an article and video about a non-Christian scientist who finds some problems with Darwinian Evolution. I also posted a link to my article on a Facebook discussion, where the following noteworthy discussion ensued between a friend of a friend and me. I have added blue color highlights here and there to what the statements I found most worthy of comment, and have made my own comment in red for clarification.
Tony: His[the scientist who disagrees with Darwin]background is mathematics and he’s never practiced in the biological sciences other than some post-doc work. Not exactly the right person to criticize evolution.Continue reading →
Whooda thunkit, but I learned some invaluable life lessons from a solitaire card game that came preloaded on my computer!
The game is Spider Solitaire (advanced 4-suit version) and if you don’t know it, don’t worry; I won’t bore you with the details. But here’s the gist of it:
Two decks of cards are dealt in a certain pattern of 10 columns. The player then rearranges the cards as per a few rules, in hopes of aligning them from King to Ace in each suit. Once aligned in this fashion, that particular set of 13 cards is removed from the board, allowing the player more space to work the remaining cards. When all the cards have been so removed, the game is won.Continue reading →
NEVADA DESERT, 9 June 2013 –Leaving his exhausted family in the safety of the broken-down car, former Navy SEAL Brian Schad humps it across the desert at sundown, certain that he can be back with a warm McDonald’s breakfast for everyone by first light. The nearest town is only 31 klicks out and Schad figures that while he would normally make that run in only two hours, he’ll have to slow down on the return trip to keep from sloshing the coffee.
When asked why he didn’t do what any normal SEAL would do and simply push the lifeless vehicle into town with his family steering safely from inside, Schad replied that he had thought of that, but was concerned about exceeding the speed limit.
What follows is a discussion that arose as an offshoot of a Facebook discussion regarding recent violent events in the USA. I engaged a participant who made an assertion in support of the inherited sin model of Christian doctrine.
Note that the poster seems to have copied and pasted other materiel into her post:
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Original Poster (OP):There are several lines of biblical evidence for the historic Christian doctrine that we are all born into the world with sinful natures, due to the sin of Adam. Continue reading →
A couple of months ago, I decided I’d keep track along the way of individuals in our generation who claim to be prophets. I happened upon a surprising claim this week from an Astrophysicist, Neil DeGrasse Tyson. While he did not claim to be a prophet of God in the fashion that many religious people do, I was intrigued that he claims to have been “called by the Universe”.
Here is the excerpt you will find in the embedded YouTube video at roughly 00:00:45 – 00:01:17:
“I wanted to become an astrophysicist not because I chose it; in a way, the Universe chose me. …. I was called by the Universe. I had no choice in the matter.” (See it in the video below.)
I find this interesting because the scientist is most likely waxing metaphoric, as if to say that “It was as ifthe Universe were calling to me.” If this is how humans tend to think about their own experiences—even those we might assume to be highly-trained thinkers such as Tyson—then is it any wonder that average citizens tend to wax imaginary about their “callings” from God? Is it any wonder that so very many people fancy themselves to have a “relationship with God” even though they know full well that there is nothingtypical about that “relationship”? That is, they talk to God but God doesn’t talk back. They ask for things and often don’t get anything that can even be imaginedto be a response from God. They cannot make a phone call to reach him as they do with their other relationships, and he doesn’t reply to email. Yet even so, they imagine a “relationship” with him just the same. And here we have the famous Astrophysicist engaging in something of the same general sort, it seems.
How interesting. Yet he does it in the name of “science”, as he looks down on those who do it in the name of “religion”.
If the Universe can call an astrophysicist and a table can give Wayne Dyer the words for a book, perhaps the preachers claiming prophecy ought at least to be recognized as belonging to a larger group of humans doing the same general thing—-however unreal those claims may be.
I, for one, would prefer that we all be honest and rational, not making any claim that we cannot demonstrate as true.
I’ve learned through experience that people who say the following are not likely to be highly-authentic people.
“To be honest…” or “To tell the truth…” Whenever I hear this, I always wonder why it is at that particular point in the conversation that this phrase comes out. Was the person lying beforethis point in the conversation? And if not, why is it important to affirm to me that he is not lying now? Has he suddenly become untrustworthy in the middle of a conversation? And if not to me, why to himself? Or is he just a cognitive miser who repeats this phrase because he has heard it from others, and without regard to whatever it is supposed to mean or what it might tend to convey (or to betray, even)? None of these possibilities speak well of his personal authenticity. Continue reading →
NEVADA DESERT, 9 Ju
