Omnipotent - Having unlimited power; able to do anything
Omniscient - Knowing everything
These definitions are from the Oxford English Dictionary online. These are two adjectives often used to describe Yahweh. Richard Dawkins in "The God Delusion" makes a great point that a god that is both Omnipotent and Omniscient is contradictory. If that god is Omniscient, he knows of EVERYTHING that is bound to happen, yet billions blindly pray to him seeking personal gratification (which is rather selfish) and hope that the Omnipotent god will answer their prayer. If the Omnipotent god does answer this selfish request, this action ultimately cancels out the validity of the Omniscient god; one cannot be both.
The second point I wish to touch on tonight is the idea that this Omnipotent god created a vast universe, so vast we're still searching and finding new items that boggle our minds, and that we're the only life that he created. Let's talk this through; we reside in the outer edges of a swirling arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Our eye in the sky, known as Hubble, has opened up the celestial doorway to a vast number of galaxies that were all unfathomable a mere century ago. We know that there are billions upon billions of stars in the billions of galaxies that are now estimated to populate this universe. Our solar system requires just one star, a single celestial body at the center of it all and we are fortunate enough to be at a favorable distance from it so we are not cooked like Mercury or Venus and also have the advantage of massive gas giants of Jupiter and Saturn to thwart impending asteroids from coming too close. We have an ideal setup in our little nook of the universe, but to think that we are the only life in this chemistry lab known as the universe is very primitive, and to think that God is the creator of it all is a very lazy answer. The odds of someone winning the Powerball Jackpot is 1 in 195,249,054. Everyday new planets are being discovered just by gauging the wobble of distant stars from the gravitational force that planet has on the star. It is highly unlikely that we as a species will map every star system in the universe in any of our lifetimes, but I would say that the odds of winning the lottery are right in line with life being elsewhere in the galaxy.
As a nation, we need to revitalize our sciences once again. After World War II, we smuggled in some of the great minds from Nazi Germany and thrust America into the Superpower status we now enjoy. Sadly, conservative Christian fundamentalists see science as an attack on religion and are doing everything they can to prevent science from being taught to its fullest in schools. Science is there to ask a question, and through testing, experimentation, gathering evidence develop an answer. Religion is the lazy way out (why is the sky blue? Because God made it blue. It has nothing to do with the light being scattered by the atmosphere). Religion and faith, if we let it, will impair this once great nation. Yes, we have the freedom of religion, but that does not entitle for the Conservative Christian Core to force their beliefs on the rest of society. Religion and faith are personal beliefs and should be kept as such; I want my children to learn of evolution, not idiot design. I want my children to be able to ask why and be able to go into a library to find an answer in a science journal, not rely on a book with contributors who had their own personal agendas in writing stories from other stories of the time and then a group of men gather to select which ones will be best to be the Word of God.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
In the Defense of Marriage
Today the U.S. Census Bureau released the statistics of marriage and divorce from the year of 2009. It turns out that married couples in the South, often referred to as the Bible Belt, have a higher tendency to divorce than those married couples in other regions of this vast nation. This coming from the same region of the country that is overflowing with Bible thumpers that lobby on family values and fund politicians to represent their conservative ideology putting up the largest opposition to the support of gay marriage.
I can say that I have been happily married for more than 10 years now and I do reside in the South, Tennessee to be exact. I can proudly say that the actions I take are what is best for my family and myself. Any decision I make I take into consideration any outcomes not asking "What Would Jesus Do?" but more along the lines of what implications will this have? I live by the Laws of Nature not by silly text that has been mistranslated over centuries upon centuries to be accepted as the Word of God. The point I make with this is best summed up with a quote from my brother; "No one is more miserable than a southern white middle-class Christian conservative". I am proud not to be bound by the dogmatic theocracy that burden many of "souls" traveling this land. I truly feel that the dogmatic stigmata we are drowning in today is poisoning our society. Avid believers try to find every justification in their Holy Book to denounce what their neighbor does and fail to look themselves in the mirror and denounce the hair cut the got which is strictly forbidden in the same Holy Book.
Now, onto the defense of marriage. This is what we need to do to fix our divorce rates in the South. allow homosexual marriage. Follow me on this; if we allow homosexual marriage, by default there will be more women (aside from the homosexual women) for the newly divorced men to pick from, allowing procreation to take place giving these new love birds another chance at happiness. With fewer opponents on the mating scene trying to hide their true homosexual beings, the pickings will be ripe for the heterosexuals. Just like in nature, the top ram gets first dibs on their mate, the same can be true for the South (just leave the head butting to the beer cans).
Another way to look at this news is that the South is so deep in the closet that we're finding next year's Christmas presents. Deep down inside the cockles of their souls, white Christian conservative men have discovered they cannot beat the gay agenda, so rather than beating why not join them? Okay, I guess I shouldn't have said beating them, maybe defeat them. White Christian conservative men cannot find satisfaction, no matter how many women they marry (i.e. Newt Gingrich) so they keep defying the tenth commandment about coveting they neighbors wife.
What I propose is that we allow gay marriage. This will increase the number of marriages we have to tally next go around offsetting the increasing number of divorces that miserable white christian conservative middle class men are revolving through the courts with. Massachusetts and Vermont, just to name two states, already allow gay marriage and have lower divorce rates than us in the South. They realize that the more marriages there are, the more balanced the divorce rate will seem. It's simple law of averages...wait, most southerns wouldn't even get that, sorry.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acs-13.pdf
http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/08/25/divorce.bible.belt/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1
I can say that I have been happily married for more than 10 years now and I do reside in the South, Tennessee to be exact. I can proudly say that the actions I take are what is best for my family and myself. Any decision I make I take into consideration any outcomes not asking "What Would Jesus Do?" but more along the lines of what implications will this have? I live by the Laws of Nature not by silly text that has been mistranslated over centuries upon centuries to be accepted as the Word of God. The point I make with this is best summed up with a quote from my brother; "No one is more miserable than a southern white middle-class Christian conservative". I am proud not to be bound by the dogmatic theocracy that burden many of "souls" traveling this land. I truly feel that the dogmatic stigmata we are drowning in today is poisoning our society. Avid believers try to find every justification in their Holy Book to denounce what their neighbor does and fail to look themselves in the mirror and denounce the hair cut the got which is strictly forbidden in the same Holy Book.
Now, onto the defense of marriage. This is what we need to do to fix our divorce rates in the South. allow homosexual marriage. Follow me on this; if we allow homosexual marriage, by default there will be more women (aside from the homosexual women) for the newly divorced men to pick from, allowing procreation to take place giving these new love birds another chance at happiness. With fewer opponents on the mating scene trying to hide their true homosexual beings, the pickings will be ripe for the heterosexuals. Just like in nature, the top ram gets first dibs on their mate, the same can be true for the South (just leave the head butting to the beer cans).
Another way to look at this news is that the South is so deep in the closet that we're finding next year's Christmas presents. Deep down inside the cockles of their souls, white Christian conservative men have discovered they cannot beat the gay agenda, so rather than beating why not join them? Okay, I guess I shouldn't have said beating them, maybe defeat them. White Christian conservative men cannot find satisfaction, no matter how many women they marry (i.e. Newt Gingrich) so they keep defying the tenth commandment about coveting they neighbors wife.
What I propose is that we allow gay marriage. This will increase the number of marriages we have to tally next go around offsetting the increasing number of divorces that miserable white christian conservative middle class men are revolving through the courts with. Massachusetts and Vermont, just to name two states, already allow gay marriage and have lower divorce rates than us in the South. They realize that the more marriages there are, the more balanced the divorce rate will seem. It's simple law of averages...wait, most southerns wouldn't even get that, sorry.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acs-13.pdf
http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/08/25/divorce.bible.belt/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1
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