Mr. "I'm Angry"

It’s been awhile since I blogged. Life goes on and the DOW goes down.

I recently thought of a few things that distinguish John McCain from Barrack Obama.

First McCain sees things as black and white. His speeches to his rabid fans paint a “you’re either with us or against us” view of the world. His comment to Rick Warren about evil - “defeat it”- indicates to me that he doesn’t delve deeply into subjects. Obama, I think, sees things in gray shades. Again his response to the same question from Warren was deeper and more thoughtful.

Lately there is this “anger” thing that McCain foments. Others have indicated that McCain has a temper and you need to watch out! Obama has impressed me with his steadiness and his thoughtful responses to questions and events.

So the question is, would you rather have an angry, erratic McCain or a steady, thoughtful Obama in the White House? Think about it.

Who's knocking?

I have a cousin that I would classify as an evangelical Christian. She frequently forwards to me Christian theme emails that I generally delete without opening. Recently I got one that I did open (God talking to me?) and it was basically a picture of a Jesus-like figure knocking on a door. (The picture is in this blog.) I noticed that one of the comments from one of the other recipients was something like “I would love to have Jesus knocking on my door.” The whole concept of a Jesus-like person knocking on a door intrigued me.

First of all we don’t know what this Jesus person looked like or if he really existed despite what the evangelicals say. All the paintings and statues of Jesus are idealized and romantic depictions. They are simply the figment of the artist’s imaginations. So Jesus could have been a short, dumpy, balding, ugly guy as well as the viral, young bearded stud we seemed to be accustomed to. So if a short dumpy guy in a robe of some sort comes up to you and says “I’m Jesus” how many people would take him to be Jesus? Even evangelicals might not embrace him.

I was thinking this might be a good stunt for one of those “Candid Camera” shows. I, however, would not want to be the person playing the Jesus role. He might be looking down at the barrel of a .22 by some offended evangelical. You know how loving and accepting they can be!

Nonsensical Supernatural

According to Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, nature is defined as “the sum of all things in time and space; the entire universe.” If nature is the entire universe, how do we define supernatural? Back to Webster – supernatural is “existing or occurring outside the normal experience or knowledge of man.” Definition 2 states that supernatural is “attributed to hypothetical forces beyond nature; miraculous; divine.”

If nature is all that we are aware of or have experience of, how can something like “supernatural” exist? What we have is knowledge of the universe. What we experience is the universe. We have no knowledge or experience with anything outside the universe. Really! True we don’t know all there is about the universe but so far our experiences and explorations have shown that what we have discovered locally seem to hold throughout the known universe. So what is this thing called supernatural?

I contend that supernatural does not exist. It’s nonsensical word. If supernatural did exist, then we would have knowledge of it and therefore it would be part of nature, i.e. the universe. The question of the existence of a supernatural god is a good example. The claim is made that a god or gods exists but so far there has been no definitive, testable proof or evidence of its/their existence. As long as there is no solid evidence of the existence of a god, then the whole question of god remains a hypothesis.

There has been much written about some of the characteristics of a supernatural entity such as omniscience, omnipresent and omnipotent. But what about location? According to the Bible, god created the world. Most of the story of the creation concerns its self with the creation of the Earth and living things. Mentioned also is the creation of the universe, e.g. “let there be light!” (Genesis 1:22) So following the line of logic that says, if god created the universe that presumes that the universe did not exist at a particular point and then god brought it into existence. That further supposes that god must exist in some realm “outside” our known universe. Or does he?

Some have proposed that god is the universe. In other words god is the sum total of all that is. I prefer to look at the question another way. If a god exists, where does he/she/it exists? Again location. To me, the answer has to be either in the universe (as part of it or it as a whole) or outside of the universe in some other realm. Either answer poses problems.

Consider the proposition that god exists outside the known universe. By the way, I am assuming that a supernatural god exists for purposes of this discussion. If god exists outside of the known universe then that presumes that “something” outside our universe exists. Therefore god must reside in this “something”. That immediately begs the question of what is this “something” that god resides in? If there is something beyond our universe, could there not be other universes? Cosmology delves into the multiverse theory as something that is plausible but as of yet, no evidence exists to support the theory.

But assuming that god exists outside our known universe and that there is the possibility of other universes that he/she/it deals with, are we his favorite or just one of many? Maybe we are just an experiment. Since the Bible states that god has always existed, maybe we are just one of many universes that he/she/it puts together just for the fun of it.

Now think of the other possibility, that god exists in our universe. That presumes there is nothing outside of what we know or see of our universe. Since we have pretty good evidence that the laws of physics operate the same in the observable universe, it can be assumed that god must be subject to the same laws. But wait, theologians maintain that god can do what he pleases, regardless of the laws of nature, for example Jesus stilling the waters by his words. That leads to two other lines of questions. If god exists in the universe and is bound by the laws of nature, as we know them, is god just a real smart entity who knows more than we do about the universe? Is this god just a super alien with knowledge about the universe we haven’t come to know?

Or is god operating under his own rules, laws, etc.? How can he/she/it operate in the universe and not run into conflict with the laws of nature as we know them? It’s like having a bonfire in a solid ice cave. The fire would eventually melt the ice and the melting ice would put out the fire unless there was a trick involved.

So if supernatural is a nonsense word, maybe we should hold off on declaring that a god like entity exists until we have definite evidence. But then Christians and others have always said that having faith is belief in something in the face of NO evidence. Remember just believing that something exists doesn’t make it exist.

A National Malaise

For sometime now I’ve felt that the American public is in some sort of malaise. Of course it started with the shock of the attacks of September 11, 2001. Ever since then we, as a country, have been just going through the motions. We bought into the rhetoric of Bush and company that we have to strike someone, so we went along with the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Even the congress, first the Republicans and now the Democrats seem to go along with the flow. What ever Bush wanted we went along.

Now the crises are mounting. The mortgage mess was caused in part by the Republican attitude to let the free market do its thing. Now the housing market is in the toilet and credit is tightening. Oil and gas prices are hitting the roof. We complain but still we saddle up our big SUV to the pump and suck the gas down. Healthcare is a looming crisis if not already. Our population is getting older and health costs are spiraling. What’s the plan? Well, let everyone buy health insurance, says McCain.

Food prices are next. We decided to divert some food production to making biofuel. Now with higher gas prices, just getting the biofuel to a station will cost more. Great idea!

Now Bush wants to start a fight with Iran. Is he dense? The military is stretched to the breaking point, we can’t pay for the mess in Iraq and now we want to start another war?

And the media have themselves in a snit because Obama said some people are “bitter.” Maybe angry is a better word.

This little guy decided to perch on our pergola and taunt our little dog. It was neat that he decided to just sit there while I zoomed in for this tight shot! (Click to enlarge)

The genesis of this blog was all the great blogs I saw in my surfing on the internet. I tend to focus on the science blogs, the politically liberal blogs, and atheistic blogs as a rule. I am a pragmatic, nuts and bolts type of guy who likes to know how things work.

After an eight year stint in the Air Force working on electronics, I went into computers, servicing them and then into management of computer service groups. After the shake out of the computer industry in the early nineties, I eventually decided to get my pilot’s license. After accomplishing that I proceeded to get my instructors license and to focus on teaching. I’ve been doing flight instructing for some time now. Not making much money but the view is nice.

My postings will be random and probably chaotic. So don’t expect frequent updates. But I do hope to spark some interest.

Here is a pic of a dragonfly taken on summer. Amazing they can fly! (Click to enlarge)

This blog is under construction. Pay no attention to the silly stuff posted. Still trying to figure out the whole blog thing!

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