If we can tag our pets why can't we tag our children? Insert a small locater chip and if our children are lost or taken from us a GPS satellite can locate and recover them within hours. Tag pedophiles so that authorities can identify their location at all times. Access records to find out where they were during a particular crime. Allow the public to have their own locator installed so if the situation ever arises they will be found.
Or is this just another way for Big Brother to keep watch over us? Would you want your children "tagged" if the option were available?
It gives "Home Again" a whole new meaning.
http://www.findmadeleine.com/
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Knowing Faith
One trend I have noticed is that those who have supported their religion on faith forget soon after that faith is not fact. Almost immediately they use words such as "I know", "is", and "did" instead of "I believe", "I think", and "I have faith".
No one can "know" that their god exists, that the biblical stories are historically accurate, the marital status of Christ, or the what the future will be. To know such things demands supporting evidence, which everyone lacks because no one has died, witnessed the afterlife, returned, and given supporting evidence of the events they encountered while "dead". It is because of this great lack in evidence that leaves the believer to rely on nothing, but their faith.
Keep your faith. That’s fine, but remember that you have as much evidence to prove that there is a god and an afterlife as I do to disprove it – None.
No one can "know" that their god exists, that the biblical stories are historically accurate, the marital status of Christ, or the what the future will be. To know such things demands supporting evidence, which everyone lacks because no one has died, witnessed the afterlife, returned, and given supporting evidence of the events they encountered while "dead". It is because of this great lack in evidence that leaves the believer to rely on nothing, but their faith.
Keep your faith. That’s fine, but remember that you have as much evidence to prove that there is a god and an afterlife as I do to disprove it – None.
The List of Banned Books
I was talking to my sister for, what had to be, the ten thousandth time on the upcoming Harry Potter news. Whenever new information is released, we phone the other and race to see who heard what first.
During one of these excited calls over the release of Book sevens’ title, my sister called me with the news. With the title, she also told me that Rowling was officially added to the List Of Banned Books. In which Rowling states that "this in the company of Harper Lee, Mark Twain, J. D. Salinger, William Golding, John Steinbeck and other writers" (end quote http://www.jkrowling.com/ posted January 2007). Lee and Twain!? I had to see this list! I went online to Wikpedia.com and looked it up to also find James Joyce, The Koran, and "Catcher In The Rye" on this list! A cold metal ball sunk into my stomach as a fire exploded in my chest.
Also on the list was "Uncle Tom’s Cabin", "Madame Bovary", and "Lady Chatterley’s Lover". With every title I read, the fire became hotter until my head burned like a hot plate. I knew these names too well. I was raised by this list. Every book I had been kept from was right in front of me. I read the reasons for the ban. "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" was/ is banned in the South because it speaks AGAINST slavery (I live in New York). Joyce was announced "explicit and unreadable". Harry Potter was banned for the witchcraft and sorcery. We have the Leviticus to thank for that.
Mark Twain was banned for using the "N" word. What amazed me the most was that Playboy wasn’t on that list. Nor was the American Pie films or Jack A** the movie.
Someone, somewhere banned The Koran, but okayed "Eyes Wide Shut", Forty Year Old Virgin, and Austin Powers. Mark Twain is banned for use of the "N" word, but Blazin’ Saddles is OK!
Nobokov’s Lolita was banned, but, apparently,"Girls Gone Wild" is considered unoffensive enough to remain unbanned!
My favorite was that Farheneit 451 was banned. They gave no explanation for the ban, but did make note that "ironically the book is about banning books".
Am I missing something? Or is the general message here that if something is completely dead beat and un-educational it can be as vulgar, rancid, or as tasteless as you want. Make it educational or add a touch of lesson in the work and you will find it added to the List of Banned Books.
What good is the freedom of press if the books they press become banned? I’m not proposing we ban all vulgar and offensive material. I don’t believe in bans. Only in the power of boycott. Only in the power to exercise my right to have a choice to buy Uncle Tom’s Cabin even if I’m not going to read it. I really don’t take to the idea of being told what I can and can not buy, read, or write, for that matter. This is America, isn’t it? Land of the free? As long as you don’t want to read Harry Potter.
During one of these excited calls over the release of Book sevens’ title, my sister called me with the news. With the title, she also told me that Rowling was officially added to the List Of Banned Books. In which Rowling states that "this in the company of Harper Lee, Mark Twain, J. D. Salinger, William Golding, John Steinbeck and other writers" (end quote http://www.jkrowling.com/ posted January 2007). Lee and Twain!? I had to see this list! I went online to Wikpedia.com and looked it up to also find James Joyce, The Koran, and "Catcher In The Rye" on this list! A cold metal ball sunk into my stomach as a fire exploded in my chest.
Also on the list was "Uncle Tom’s Cabin", "Madame Bovary", and "Lady Chatterley’s Lover". With every title I read, the fire became hotter until my head burned like a hot plate. I knew these names too well. I was raised by this list. Every book I had been kept from was right in front of me. I read the reasons for the ban. "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" was/ is banned in the South because it speaks AGAINST slavery (I live in New York). Joyce was announced "explicit and unreadable". Harry Potter was banned for the witchcraft and sorcery. We have the Leviticus to thank for that.
Mark Twain was banned for using the "N" word. What amazed me the most was that Playboy wasn’t on that list. Nor was the American Pie films or Jack A** the movie.
Someone, somewhere banned The Koran, but okayed "Eyes Wide Shut", Forty Year Old Virgin, and Austin Powers. Mark Twain is banned for use of the "N" word, but Blazin’ Saddles is OK!
Nobokov’s Lolita was banned, but, apparently,"Girls Gone Wild" is considered unoffensive enough to remain unbanned!
My favorite was that Farheneit 451 was banned. They gave no explanation for the ban, but did make note that "ironically the book is about banning books".
Am I missing something? Or is the general message here that if something is completely dead beat and un-educational it can be as vulgar, rancid, or as tasteless as you want. Make it educational or add a touch of lesson in the work and you will find it added to the List of Banned Books.
What good is the freedom of press if the books they press become banned? I’m not proposing we ban all vulgar and offensive material. I don’t believe in bans. Only in the power of boycott. Only in the power to exercise my right to have a choice to buy Uncle Tom’s Cabin even if I’m not going to read it. I really don’t take to the idea of being told what I can and can not buy, read, or write, for that matter. This is America, isn’t it? Land of the free? As long as you don’t want to read Harry Potter.
Primitive Gods
I do not believe in deitism. There is nothing I find more intolerable than a religious person who knows nothing about their religion’s history. These are people who have chosen to remain ignorant to their religion’s past. They will worship their god without knowledge as to how it affected society throughout the ages, how it progressed, where it came from, or the actions taken by the papacy of their religion.
Most Christians can quote numerous passages from the Bible. But very few have knowledge of the dead sea scrolls or when they were found. Christians believe that Christ was the son of the god of Abraham. But very few (if any of them) know about the deitizing of Christ by the Council of Niceae.
People just don’t know exactly what it is they are worshiping. During a religious dispute I once had, the opposition argued that the crucifix came from calvary after I had stated that it came from Rome. To be exact, the Roman Catholic Church around 300 AD after Constantine The Great, creator of the first church, legalized Christianity. If my opposition was correct, then the moment Christ died in 32 AD (approximately), Mary Magdalene, the chosen twelve, and The Virgin all hand carved crucifixes on the spot as Christ hung there dying. No. The crucifix did not come form calvary. Closer to the actual events that took place, those people I previously mentioned all hid underground from the Roman soldiers for fear that they too would be killed, which is why Peter denied Christ three times and also why Christ found them later huddling in a room when Thomas doubted Christ. This started the illegal underground sect that would become Christianity. I highly doubt they were carving crucifixes at that point.
Following the events of the death and resurrection of Christ, a great persecution towards the early Christians began. It is at this time that many followers were stoned to death and martyred. In 60 AD, brought on by the last Julian-Claudian Caesar, Nero, the greatest persecution of the Christians began when Nero blamed the Christians for the fire of Rome. For those of you who haven’t heard, the fire lasted ten days and destroyed much of the Roman city. Nero was said to have played his lyre while the fire consumed the city. Doing nothing to aid the republic or to save the city. Hence why we say an idle person "Fiddles while Rome burned" (Just for some trivia, the viola wasn’t invented until the tenth century and the violin (the Italian for fiddle) didn’t come along until the 1500's, so Nero couldn’t have actually fiddled. More like he Lyred while Rome burned).
One may not need to know about the Julian-Claudian dynasty, nor would they need to know about the great fire of Rome, but if one is going to make a statement, it would be best if they knew what they were talking about.
Deities come from the Pagans before there was philosophy and reason. The idea of deitizing something familiar (such as the sun, an animal, or a person) stems from the primitive mind when people needed an explanation for the sun, for the rain, for a sudden earthquake, volcano, or tsunami. Remember, these were people without science. Without the knowledge we now possess through the explorations of Magellan and Colombus, without the discoveries of Galileo and Copernicus. All they knew was that the giant circle in the sky gave them warmth. This wet stuff fell from the sky and moistened everything. Sometimes too much and killed everything. On occasion a massive wave pummeled their villages or the ground broke apart or the mountain in the distant suddenly vomited fire.
They required the explanations that we have the luxury of answering. To aid them in their comprehension of the world around them they created gods and humanized them with anger and compassion. These gods were there before the philosophy of Socrates, before the god of Abraham, before Zoroastrianism (the oldest organized religion known to man - the three magi from the Bible belonged to this religion). They were there before the potter’s wheel and before fire.
I associate gods with the primordial mind of ignorance and an inability to answer questions due to their lack of tools, knowledge, and placement on the evolutionary time line. We are blessed with tools of science, math, reason, and logic, knowledge granted to us by our precursors, and a placement in the time line when exploration of the world around us, the world on the other side of the earth, and the world of the great abyss known as space is not only possible, but accessible.
Deities are from the mind of primitive man and are meant for the primitive mind.
Most Christians can quote numerous passages from the Bible. But very few have knowledge of the dead sea scrolls or when they were found. Christians believe that Christ was the son of the god of Abraham. But very few (if any of them) know about the deitizing of Christ by the Council of Niceae.
People just don’t know exactly what it is they are worshiping. During a religious dispute I once had, the opposition argued that the crucifix came from calvary after I had stated that it came from Rome. To be exact, the Roman Catholic Church around 300 AD after Constantine The Great, creator of the first church, legalized Christianity. If my opposition was correct, then the moment Christ died in 32 AD (approximately), Mary Magdalene, the chosen twelve, and The Virgin all hand carved crucifixes on the spot as Christ hung there dying. No. The crucifix did not come form calvary. Closer to the actual events that took place, those people I previously mentioned all hid underground from the Roman soldiers for fear that they too would be killed, which is why Peter denied Christ three times and also why Christ found them later huddling in a room when Thomas doubted Christ. This started the illegal underground sect that would become Christianity. I highly doubt they were carving crucifixes at that point.
Following the events of the death and resurrection of Christ, a great persecution towards the early Christians began. It is at this time that many followers were stoned to death and martyred. In 60 AD, brought on by the last Julian-Claudian Caesar, Nero, the greatest persecution of the Christians began when Nero blamed the Christians for the fire of Rome. For those of you who haven’t heard, the fire lasted ten days and destroyed much of the Roman city. Nero was said to have played his lyre while the fire consumed the city. Doing nothing to aid the republic or to save the city. Hence why we say an idle person "Fiddles while Rome burned" (Just for some trivia, the viola wasn’t invented until the tenth century and the violin (the Italian for fiddle) didn’t come along until the 1500's, so Nero couldn’t have actually fiddled. More like he Lyred while Rome burned).
One may not need to know about the Julian-Claudian dynasty, nor would they need to know about the great fire of Rome, but if one is going to make a statement, it would be best if they knew what they were talking about.
Deities come from the Pagans before there was philosophy and reason. The idea of deitizing something familiar (such as the sun, an animal, or a person) stems from the primitive mind when people needed an explanation for the sun, for the rain, for a sudden earthquake, volcano, or tsunami. Remember, these were people without science. Without the knowledge we now possess through the explorations of Magellan and Colombus, without the discoveries of Galileo and Copernicus. All they knew was that the giant circle in the sky gave them warmth. This wet stuff fell from the sky and moistened everything. Sometimes too much and killed everything. On occasion a massive wave pummeled their villages or the ground broke apart or the mountain in the distant suddenly vomited fire.
They required the explanations that we have the luxury of answering. To aid them in their comprehension of the world around them they created gods and humanized them with anger and compassion. These gods were there before the philosophy of Socrates, before the god of Abraham, before Zoroastrianism (the oldest organized religion known to man - the three magi from the Bible belonged to this religion). They were there before the potter’s wheel and before fire.
I associate gods with the primordial mind of ignorance and an inability to answer questions due to their lack of tools, knowledge, and placement on the evolutionary time line. We are blessed with tools of science, math, reason, and logic, knowledge granted to us by our precursors, and a placement in the time line when exploration of the world around us, the world on the other side of the earth, and the world of the great abyss known as space is not only possible, but accessible.
Deities are from the mind of primitive man and are meant for the primitive mind.
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