Archive for category Philosophy

Reality Check

What is the United States of America? Is it land, a place with borders, or is it mainly a body of people that reside in that land? Pardon me while I lead the witness. I would argue that it is the people, and lay out the first words of the constitution of the United States of America as evidence to support that idea. I would also go further and solidify the the meaning of the USA (we the people) with a statement from the declaration of independence. The statement is simply “all men are created equal” which I read as meaning all mankind, every person is created equal, and equal meaning no one person or their time is worth more than another.

What is money? Specifically what is the American dollar? What is its purpose? What is the intent in the United States of America having the US Dollar? Evidence here will be a bit harder to come by. Here comes a little more witness leading. I would argue that in the most basic self interests of the country that created the US dollar that it is for the better of the USA “we the people”, for a strong and fluid working economy, to strengthen “we the people”, and our country as a world entity.

What if, with the above in mind, certain people managed to manipulate the economy, fix it at the governmental enforced policy level, all the way to the day to day squeezing of citizens to maximize collection of the US dollar, and then they horded the vast majority of all US dollars in bank accounts, on and off shore.

What is treason? I would put forth that the meaning of treason is “the crime of betraying one’s country”. Is hording that which was intended to strengthen the USA (we the people, everyone created equal) a betrayal of the country? If not so clear, when would it become clear that there is a betrayal? What if 50% of the people had 90% of the US dollar? What about if 10% of the people had 90% of all the US dollars. How about 1% of all the citizens of the USA had 90%+ of all the US dollars? At what point does hording the prosperity of the United States of America become betrayal. At what point is it not just being a strong man, or a rich man, but a man hording prosperity from the United States of America because of their refusal to reinvest in their own country, but instead hording it.

What if a time came when one person working 16 hours a day could not pay for proper child care, rent, or healthy food for their family, because of the hording of the US dollar, manifest by the underpaying for nearly every profession. Isn’t it a slight against our country for one person to work 16 hours and only pull in 224 dollars, and another work 4 or less, but bring in thousands or more? How can “all people are created equal” even mean anything in the light of such clear inequality.

Is it socialism to put boundaries on hording the US dollar, and forcing reinvestment in the USA, to strengthen the USA (we the people), so that we can be a strong country, not just a country of people weakened by the few hording prosperity.

I don’t suggest the persecution of the rich. I suggest that the USA needs to use its governmental powers to place boundaries so that the USA (we the people) can share in the prosperity of being a part of the greatest, riches, most influential, and powerful country in the world. We need the US dollar to be reinvested, not horded, and that can only be done via taxes, and reasonable wage limits.

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Why Be A Bible Thumper When God Is Active Today

I was thinking the other night about my daughter, and how I could reflect that God is relevant today in everyday life.  When I was growing up, hell, into my 20s, I didn’t read the bible and most of the described events in there, that I have heard from various sources surrounding me, were very hard to relate to today, to the struggles we deal with just trying to survive in this society, bent on rich people getting richer on the backs of the poor most of all, and then the middle class.  Today I can see some major similarities, some relevancy that I have never seen before, but that was only due to the insightful people I have been exposed to, and the research I have done.  I will do my best not to get off on a rant about legal tender, and the hording of it, using government as a tool so that those with it get to keep more of it than those without.  Regardless of what I see today that I didn’t when I was younger, how can I relate to my daughter how God fits into:

  • Being different than everyone around you.
  • How to make friends.
  • Where to find the right people to surround yourself with.
  • How to get a job in a tough market with an inadequate skill set and education.
  • How to find the right person to spend your life with.
  • Then, how to actually spend your life with a person you live with for the rest of your life.
  • How to tell when it is time to leave, a job, an abusive situation, a community.
  • How to find a way to stay when things are tough, and why.
  • What kind of car to buy and why.
  • A reason to live.
  • How to deal with debt, and what it really is.
  • How people work, their motivations, and how it makes everything in society predictable and sad.
  • How to keep on going when you know how broken society is.
  • How to deal with difficult people.
  • How to actually forgive someone.
  • Why to forgive someone.
  • What is love.

LOL, as if I could list all the things.  But the list goes on and on, and every human needs to learn how to live, and every one of these elements fits in, and God fits into every one of these elements.  I have heard from people this sad misunderstanding where they say “God doesn’t really fit in to taking care of my family, making ends meet” extremely paraphrased of course, but the idea is clear, they could not fathom how God fit into everything it takes to live today.  Like finances, you can bible thump a lot of verses out about that, and not that they are worthless, but the societal gap, the lack of understanding of how things were then and how things are now, and how they were very similar, really kills the application of the bible to today.  Subject after subject, you will fail to relate, so much lost in translation, and not just in translation of language, but translation of the situations that were in play then, and the same damn thing happening in one form or another today.  David was right, there is truly nothing new under the sun, but starting out in your understanding and if you are lucky, study, none of it hits home.

As a father, I can’t help but revisit how it was when I was young.  I still don’t know how I can help a young person see and believe that it is real.  As a young boy, I was a hard case, one even today I would not know how to crack.  Sometimes I wonder if the best thing we can do is raise them as close to how you want them to be, and pray.  However, I worry about being just another “Christian” family that makes a little atheist because we paint and live such a hypocritical life, oh Lord, let us not live a hypocritical life.  I believe that all atheists are in one form or another the fault of God believing people being terrible in the name of God, or while living under His name as “Christians”, okay I am getting off topic.

So, to summarize, I have come to the conclusion that the bible is good, but only after seeking God with all your heart and having Him guide you through it, otherwise it can be used as a tool of evil, just remember, even Satan used it for evil, and still does.  Spiritual things are spiritually discerned.  I think something that may help relate to a young person who God is, and what He wants for us, is to write down the statistically anomalous events in our lives where God clearly pulled some strings.  Not to discourage described events from the bible, but without described events from a little more recent time, it will be very hard to relate.  One day I want my little girl to recall a story of where we had no food and no money, and the very day we prayed, out of nowhere people were cleaning out their pantries, and started to show up with boxes of food, and I want her to pray, and see what happens.  I know my Friend, He will not disappoint a humble prayer, from a pure honest heart, who seeks Him, with all of their strength.  Or I want her to look back, when she finds herself in a hard place with work, to recall daddy telling about how he just could not make it, there was no way to get out of debt, and prayed, and within a month was being paid nearly 3 times as much in a new job.

Heh, “doesn’t really fit into life”, that is really missing the mark.  The wife I have, the home I have, the car I have, the child I have, the health I have, the fact that I am alive here today, only because of God.  I have experienced how He really does fit into life, in every way.  Its not simple, its not easy, it takes work in prayer, study, choice, belief, and action.  You can’t con God, He is a *person, and I wouldn’t expect Him to respond to someone being a shit saying “prove you exist” (I did that once, didn’t work), but He will respond to someone who humbly believes in Him and calls on Him, asking some of the simplest of life’s questions.  Many would say to that “how convenient”, and I would say “yup, deal with it, it is His choice, what would you do if for thousands of years you have interacted with your creation, and then a generation decides to discount a portion of written history for all kinds of reasons, and someone who still believes asked for help, and one who doesn’t believe asks for you to prove yourself again, who would you rather respond to?”.  I can’t presume to speak for God, but I can say it seems fair at this point in history to let people believe what they want to believe, and respond to those who believe and call on Him.  From my perspective, God has nothing to prove, at least not to me or mankind, He has done so quite enough in history.

I am so glad God is in charge of all that.  I am not equipped for His job.  The story is never quite as simple as I put it, I classically, at least part of me, wishes it were.  Frankly I took the long way around, as I put it, I had to hit some walls before I even thought to ask God about any of those line items.  Terrible relationships, before I finally asked Him to take care of that, but I was fine being single, ether way was ok at that point. I ended up going to bars to find friends and such, and I found that doesn’t always end well, and dare I say, from my experience, it has a high statistical probability that it is not going to end well.  So I asked where I can find a good woman.

My next blogs will tell those stories, and how God responded.

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Why I Believe What I Believe: Introduction

I feel it is time to write down what I believe, and why I believe what I believe.  I think that somehow it will be important in the future, and quite often I find that it is an important process in working out thoughts, and even finding misperceptions in beliefs, ideas, or thought processes.  Writing also has a nice way of solidifying things in the mind and memory when writing them.  If I were to forget for some reason, this is a good way to remind myself as well.  Below are the points that I plan to expand on, and for the title, shorten up.

  • I believe in the spiritual world.
  • I believe Jesus Christ is the son of God
  • I believe in creation of the world as it is reflected in the Bible including it’s timeline
  • I believe that evil spirits can prophesy about God and truth
  • I believe that God limits Himself by the rules He has put in place for free Will’s sake
  • I believe God gave us free will
  • I believe that the law of free will explains why things happen
  • I believe in miracles in the modern day and that God is active with us constantly
  • I believe that every prayer is heard and God acts even if we don’t see it
  • I believe God talks to us and communicates with us on a regular basis and sometimes we don’t even know it
  • I believe Satan is the destroyer and a legalist, the ultimate lawyer and Heaven has been turned into a sort of court room as a result
  • I believe the spiritual world has rules and those rules allow for quantifiable things like multiple people praying together having more effect than a single person
  • I believe that the closer you are to God the more intense the spiritual and physical world results of stances, decisions, and actions.
  • I believe that the 7th day is the Sabbath, and that is Saturday, and I do not believe that God or Jesus ever authorized it to be changed to Sunday
  • I believe that Elijah was torn between 2 spirits, the spirit of God, and another spirit at times.  The disciples asked if they should call fire down from heaven to consume them, Jesus said, “you do not know by what spirit you are of”.  They were referencing the historical acts of Elijah, and I believe that this shows that it is a mistake to assume all the things that the prophets have done are of God, spiritual yes, but of God, not all of it.
  • I believe Satan has had a lot more to play in biblical history accounts than we know, reflecting again that the simplistic view of the infallible bible just messes your picture of God up.  I believe that all of the fire consuming people acts were from Satan, as a legalistic move due to the seriousness of our close interactions with God.  I believe he is allowed to play in an equal access duality as to be legally fair to the legalistic Satan, so a person can be working powerfully for God, and yet be a part of something that is not of God, or even on the other hand call on ungodly powers for wonders.
  • I believe that God never intended for the people of Israel to kill their way through the promised land, but it was a concession for their hard hearts, and their war cultured minds.

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Free Will and The Spiritual World

There is a wall, some guy built it, in the middle of a field.  He willed, he chose to put it there, his will was put into action, and through the effort driven by his will in this world, over time it was built, no matter what his reason was, it is there.

A woman was traveling, and willed to pass through the field.  She was reading as she walked and passed by the wall without even noticing it.  Her will and the effect of her will in this world did not conflict or intersect in any way the will of the man who built the wall.

Another man was in the same field after the wall was built, mowing the brush down in a riding lawn mower.  It was his will to go out that day and mow down the brush, so he put forth the effort to do so.  He ran into the wall, it damaged his mower, so he decided to circumvent the wall, and mow around it.  His will to mow the entire field was effected by the will of another when all was put into action in this world.

Yet another man was driving through the same field, and he ran into the wall with his vehicle.  He got out and looked at the wall and decided he wanted to drive through where the wall was.  He got back into the vehicle followed his will to run through the wall, and by his will put into action, and the resulting effort he put it, in very little time, the wall was destroyed.  The will of the driver, put into action, over time, overturned the will of another man who built the wall.

God has patterned things in His creation, and in many ways they are harmonious with other realities, and that is why you can look at the properties of what He has created, and get hints at how other hidden realities work.  We are free willed creations, and our wills conflict sometimes, and sometimes they do not, and sometimes they don’t even intersect.  The strength of these wills, and the action that it creates can cause one person’s will to overturn another person’s will and the effect it had.  The hidden worlds I believe this works in is the spiritual world, the world of faith, belief, prayer, and the resulting effect by God’s hand that some may call “super-natural”.

In the spiritual world, I believe the will of the man driving through the field overturned the will of the man who built the wall, even before he ran through it, right when he decided he was going to run through it.

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