Because I’m so full of myself and love to hear myself babble, I’m reposting a comment I made on Mark’s blog (http://newsojourn.blogspot.com/2005/06/certain-uncertainty.html), here.
Enjoy. (ROTFL. God, I’m so conceited!)
————
Hi, Mark! Great to see you back! Glad to see the new blog and new direction.

Well, as a somewhat believer of that syllogism, I feel compelled to respond.
That quote comes from Universism founder Ford Vox. Specifically from a speech as found here:

Origins of the philosophies of Universism and rejection of absolutism: http://universist.org/120703speech.htm

The new battleground is Uncertainty versus Certainty. Faith claims knowledge of absolute Truth; Universists claim knowledge of absolute spiritual and intellectual liberation, of the empowering fact that there is no universal Truth. It is Certainty that drives people to fly planes into buildings, and it is Uncertainty that drives people to fly rockets to the moon. We must protect humanity’s mysteries as we would protect our lives. At our most fundamental level, we wake up in the morning to see what will happen today. Faith is a cancer draining the vitality of the human spirit and our potential and future greatness.
(Emphasis mine.)

For a little more on the Universist stance of relativism and absolute truth:

http://universist.org/faq.htm#16

OK, now my thoughts.
I think the point of the Certainty/Uncertainty arguement is simply to point up an philosophical problem in the general. Not the specific. Vox came up with that as he, like so many other people, were trying to find meaning behind the tragedy of 9/11.

Why would someone do that?! Not just 9/11, but every act of violence for “moral” reasons. Why must people in Israel live every day in fear of being blown up? Why do Christian counterparts to Muslem fanatics blow up abortion clinics, often with people inside? Why do cults like the Branch Davidians stockpile weapons and survivalist supplies? Why do KKK/supremists burn down churches with black congregations? Why do religious zealots like the HUNDREDS of followers of Jim Jones willingly kill themselves as in Jonestown?

It’s too easy to say Jihad. Too easy to say hate. There’s so much more, such a bigger explanation that’s more complex than we would like it to be. What’s the underlying cause for atrocities like these?

Moralistic certainty.

OK, let’s backtrack a second. The reason the certainty/uncertainty-plane/moon statement can’t be and isn’t meant to be taken completely literally and as an absolute is because any reasonable person understands that you HAVE to have some certainty in your life. Especially if you’re going to the moon! If you’re going to strap yourself to the end of a rocket and fly to space, you are probably pretty darn well certain it’s going to work! If you don’t wake up in the morning with SOME amount of certainty that you’re not going to die today, you’ll likely stay in bed clinically depressed. A Deist (as myself) is pretty darn certain that God created the universe, but isn’t a humanoid being that plays some direct role in it. A molecular biologist is certain of what reaction she will get when she adds chloralhydocarbon to amonium nitrate.

On the other hand, it’s moralistic certainty that underlies atocities like murder and suicide in the name of God/Allah/Jesus/Mohammad. Moralistic certainties that CREATES Jihads in the first place!

Hate is a part of it. It’s the spark that gives flame to the fuel that moralistic certainty provides. 95% of conservative Christians/Muslems are moralistically certain, but only 5% have the impitus to bomb something. Hate indeed makes people do bad things, but if hate is the only cause, we’d only be talking about crimes of passion and in the heat of the moment. It has to be something more than simply hate that drives a person to spend MONTHS preparing to murder thousands of people.
Be it with an airplane, a dynamite covered vest, or with the 101st Army Airborne.

It’s all relative and subjective. Hundreds, thousands of fanatic Muslems are absolutely 100% certain that murdering Jews and Americans is moralistically right, and they will find Paradise in Heaven for continuing the cause.
Hundreds, thousands of fanatic Christians believe it’s morally appropriate to bomb or at least praise the bombing of an abotion clinic or go back a few hundred years…and burn a “witch” or heretic or raze a villiage or send in the Crusades or Inquisition.

We Americans and Jews can’t understand why fanatic Muslems see us as sinfull infidels that must be killed. We can’t comprehend that. We write it off as simply hate, fanatacism.
But the tough question is what CREATES that hate and fanatacism?! It doesn’t just appear out of nowhere.

In the Old Testament. What allowed there to be SO MANY instances of the Jews performing scorched earth campaigns of destruction against so many towns and cities? Killing every man, woman, child and animal even? (Except for the ocassional permission to keep and distribute the virgin girls among the priests.)
Religious, moralistic certainty. Do you think the thousands of people the ancient Jews slaughtered felt the same objective morality the Jews did?

Do the people in Palastine feel the same objective morality as the People in Israel? Vise versa?

Do you as a moderate Christian feel the same objective morality as a David Koresh or Jim Jones or bin Laden? I didn’t think so. But you each believe in a certain moral certainty that you feel is 100% “right” and in keeping with what “God” commands.

It took Kennedy to say we had to reach the moon by 1969 to actually push us to do it, but you don’t think the drive and desire and want was there in the first place? Kenndy didn’t just pull that request out of the air, he had advisors and the Air Force to let him know that we were developing the technology and the posibility was there. We’d already been sending satalites up and low-orbit planes. Heck, we as a human race have been looking up to the stars in wonder and desire for millenia! Decades of sci-fi stories of travelling the stars and encountering the wonders and amazements of space pre-date Kennedy’s challenge to reach the moon in 8 years.

Religious certainty kept us from accepting for centuries that the Earth was not the center of the solar system much less the universe. Religious and moralistic certainty, on its own, prevents us from finding answers as we think we already know them. All answers are found in our respective religious texts–there’s no need to see if there are other planets, alien intelligence, cures for diseases, causes for earthquakes….

Taken as an absolute, “certainty causes people to fly airplanes into buildings;
uncertainty causes people to fly to the moon,” indeed doesn’t work. But the underlying message I believe is quite valid.

Certainty causes hatred.
Uncertainty causes the need for better answers.

A CNN article that mentiones Tom Cruise’s belief in aliens, http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Movies/06/29/cruise.aliens.reut/index.html reiterates his belief that “psychology is a pseudoscience.”

A reminder: Tom Cruise is a Scientologist.
Among other interesting things, Scientologists believe we evolved from clams, that our souls are reincarnated victems of an evil space overlord, and founder L. R. Hubbard has visited Mars and experienced Martian culture.

I’m not making this up.

Oh yeah:

The word scientology has a history of its own. Although nowadays associated almost exclusively with Hubbard’s work, it was coined by the philologist Alan Upward in 1907 as a synonym for “pseudoscience”

http://www.clambake.org/
http://www.scientology-lies.com/
http://www.lermanet.com/exit/FINAL.htm

(Note: An additional link added at the bottom.)
After writing my last blog, I started looking around for info on C.S. Lewis. I only really know a smattering about him. Was a Christian, became atheist and well known as a skeptic, then converted to Anglican after years of research and discussions with close friend JRR Tolkien. He’d written several Christian texts in addition to fiction such as the Chronicles of Narnia.

That’s all I knew. So, I found this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_s_lewis

And on that site I found this section:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_s_lewis#Trilemma
It’s regarding something called the Trilemma, which is a “logical arguement” which leads to the conclusion that Jesus must be divine, or else our concept of maorlity is invalid…or something.

The trilemma argument is as follows:

Most people are willing to accept Jesus Christ as a great moral teacher. However, the Gospels record that Jesus made many claims to divinity, either explicitly (“I and the Father are one”) or implicitly, by assuming authority only God had (“The Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins”). Assuming that the Gospels are accurate, we are thus left with three options.
Jesus was telling falsehoods and knew it; so He was a liar.
Jesus was telling falsehoods, but believed he was telling the truth; so He was insane.
Jesus was telling the truth; so He is divine.

Thus one cannot argue Jesus is only a great moral teacher. If He was a liar or insane, this would invalidate His moral teachings. If He was divine, He is more than just a great moral teacher.

This “logical argument” is completely flawed for two big reasons:
1)(Which is a two-parter really,) After it goes ahead and concedes it assumes the Gospels are accurate, it ignores the fact that inaccurate Gospels are an option. Which actually IS the case. (Again, I point to: http://www.coppit.org/god/contradictions.php, and these three examples: Which two differing accounts of creation in Genesis is right? Which two intermingled Noah accounts is right? What exactly happened on the day Jesus arose from the dead? Who was there, was the tomb open or closed, who did they see, what was said, what did they do afterward? All the differing accounts CAN’T be right, so we already know that the Gospels contain differences and errors.

Which leads to the 2nd part of this fallacy, the 4th option in the argument: Jesus didn’t actually say what he is supposed to have said because either a) the writers of the Gospels have it wrong/made it up/got it from sources who made it up, etc. (After all, even the earliest Gospel was written by someone who did not have 1st-hand experience of the events, and wrote through the filter of about 40 years.) Or b) Jesus didn’t exist (at least as the Bible makes him out to exist.) There is a lot of evidence that he didn’t actually exist, but is an amalgam of stories about Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Greek heroes, and this fellow whose name escapes me but lived about 20 years before Jesus was crucified. I’ll relook it up and add it to the blog later, but unlike Jesus who aside from the Bible, the only other documentation we have of his existence is two sources that we can trace back as being forgeries, we have Roman chronicles of this other fellow having a cult following and his followers claiming he’d performed miracles. This other fellow was stoned and then hung from a tree (and according to HIS followers arose from the dead.)

So, Jesus may not be divine, because he may not have said what he said at all or may not have even existed.

2)The other fallacy is the idea that if he was telling falsehoods but believed them and was thus “insane” that that invalidates what it was he said regarding morality. Why does it follow that just because he believed he was divine, his teachings about peace, love, and understanding is invalid?

We know it’s not because the majority of the world today is not Christian and yet value peace, love and understanding. As I babble on a couple blogs ago, Christian values are not unique to Christians. So option 2 in that argument could very very easily be true but that would not negate the value of the message.

I am not a Christian, and yet I say unto you, value love above all else. Be forgiving, patient, and without pride or arrogance. Help your fellow human and respect all of God’s creation. I believe that 100%. Now, because it was spoken by a non-Christian, does that mean what I just wrote is invalid? Lies? Ridiculous or wrong?

So, I really want to read more from CS Lewis. Because I can’t imagine anyone who is truly a reasonable skeptic could possibly use that flawed line of reasoning as a cornerstone to their newfound faith.

I still can’t find the name of that fellow that pre-dates Jesus that was remarkably similar to the Biblical Jesus, but here’s this:
http://www.atheists.org/christianity/didjesusexist.html
That other fellow may be mentioned in there…I need to reread it.

Edit: Here’s another link regarding errors and contradictions in the Bible:
http://www.bidstrup.com/bible2.htm.
At least scroll down about halfway to the “Crucifixion” section. It’s alone is pretty compelling. What does it say when the most important event in Christianity, the crucifixion and the ressurection, have dozens of factual contradictions among the four Gospels?
My point is not to say that the MEANING and MESSAGE of the Bible is faulty. Granted, you can find more than ample content in the Bible to validate ANY message. From extremist pacificity and mercy to facist and psychopathic vengence and God approved amorality. So it’s really up to the individual reader and their PERSONAL communication with God. Not through the dogma of what some pastor/scholar/priest/rabbi tells you the meaning is.
My point is to illustrate that the Bible is not inerrant. It’s not divine, it’s not holy in and of itself, it’s not perfect. It’s a book. A book written by many human beings with many point of view and all of them from an ancient, Middle Eastern patriarchal culture. The Bible is THEIR interpretation of their faith and beliefs, as much as the Koran is of a Muslem’s and the Talmud and Torah are of a Jews as…I dunno, Stranger In a Strange Land is to a New Ager or something.

It should never EVER come down to “I’m right because it saus so in this chapter and verse.” Because I will garauntee you that I can find at least one other verse that will refute and present the exact opposite message. And then it will come down to matters of interpretation, translation, context, etc.

How inerrant is a book that has factual contradictions within it AND has been argued and debated for centuries and probably forever due to interpretations, translations, context, etc? Can’t we just accept that and move on?

It was a terrible irony back a few months ago that the very same day I blogged a suggestion for people to go visit and positively partake in a friend’s blog, he has to close it down.

Well, he’s back up and with a new theme and perhaps a new mission. http://newsojourn.blogspot.com/.
As was with his old blog, this one appears to focus on positive, emotional, and intellectual Christian themes.

What?! The two of you who are not Mark are saying. You’re an anti-religion deist PROMOTING a blog by a conservative Christian?!
Yes. Because he’s a friend and a wonderful person. And truth, perhaps objective universal truth but CERTAINLY personal truth, is found in the crucible of discussion, debate, and open consideration of all opinions and experiences.

I found with his last blog I tended to decend into negativity as I debated hot theological topics, so I’ll likely try very hard to not comment on it…but I urge anyone reading this to participate in discussion over there. Just please, be polite and respectful. =)

In a way I kind of like to see Mark and I as J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis debating religion and philosophy…except, it’d be during Lewis’ non-Christian years, and uh…I WOULD prefer to be Tolkien as I like his writing better, (and he looks better with a pipe) but he helped convert Lewis to Anglicanism which I would prefer not to have happen…so uh, maybe Tolkien and Lewis aren’t the best examples of how I see Mark and my debates and discussions. =/

OK, so this is weird. Last night I had epic dreams of zombies. What’s weird is that I haven’t really been thinking about zombies lately. I haven’t even seen that new movie “Land of the Dead.”

It started with a political thriller dream. (I think that’s a first for me.) Being chased by shadowy agents and uncovering some plot by the “RNC” (which I’m assuming stands for Republican National Committee). I avoided an assassination attempt, and was then rescued by, I think a South Korean in a tank. Honestly, I really am not that into current Korean affairs. I have no idea where that came from.

So we blast and roll our way through walls and parks until coming to some kind of no longer used factory, and thats where it starts becoming a zombie movie dream. They seem to only come out at night, so all these living human refugees are down there making ready for tonight’s onslaught.

I make my way to a gourmet pizza place and find some college frat freinds (I was never in a college frat. Well, I was in some honor fraterinties*, but none social. OK, they were sometimes “demented and sad, but social….”) Oh, and also some freinds from SAGA.

Anyway, so then the zombies attack while at the pizza place (before I could my pizza which really took me a long time to order. I kept trying to find my favorite and couldn’t. So I ordered one that, if I recall, has sausage, artichoke hearts, feta cheese, and maybe spinich. This is understandable, as last night I watched the Food Network’s marathon of “The Next Food Network Star” competition, and one challenge was for them to make a pizza that expressed themselves. Some great looking pies!)

There was a very disturbing part where my wife came in as a somnambulant and I thought she was zombiefied. So I was compelled to put her out of her misery. Which ended up making her a real zombie. Very disturbing. Which is when I believe I woke up, and stayed awake for a while imagining lumbering undead coming into the bedroom until I finally fell asleep again.

And continued the battle in the pizza place. (Why is it when I wake up from dreams I LIKE I can’t fall back asleep into those?!) After some zombie head bashing (thankfully, while very violent, was NOT bloody or gruesome. Quite PG rated,) I went back to the factory/compound to see how things went there. And felt a horrible wave of depression that the same thing would happen the next night. And the next, and the next….

I don’t believe in dream interpretation–at least not the Freudian type. Where objects are symbols. I mean, c’mon. How and why in the heck would a rake in my dream mean the exact same thing as in your dream and why in the heck would it always mean something that’s not…a rake?! That’s silly. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. (Freud actually supposedly said that, I think.)
Most of the time dreams are just your brain processing recent events and whatnot. I watch a lot of “West Wing,” am interested in political scandals, so it’s easy to explain that aspect of the dream. And the commercial for “land of the Dead” has been showing, and I read a movie review of it recently. So that explains that.

But I am wondering if there’s more to it than that, particularly when it comes to the concept of depression over the same thing over and over. I do hate that prospect of life. While I do enjoy the comfort of security, a comfortable home, some predictability, I also get very depressed over redundancy. Ruts and a job that’s pretty much the same day in and day out. I wonder if that’s a part of it.

So while on the subject of zombies, I’ve been thinking this morning about the possibility. If you read the forums at Zombie Squad: http://zombiesquad.theedge.net/phpbb2/ you can become convinced the threat of zombies is very possible. Oh, not some supernatural undead kind of thing, but very likely from some biological threat. Either a natural or man-made disease that shuts down the thinking centers of the brain and makes people walking brain-dead which may or may not still have the medula and survival instinct centers of the brain active. There’s supposedly a couple of natural diseases which have produced some brain damaging effects without damaging the body itself. Supposedly, some additional mutations and some of these diseases could make zombie-like victems.

Anyway, I doubt something like that would ever happen. It’s more likely that the human race will be scourged with something akin to the plague, small pox, or Ebola. I’m pretty certain, in fact, that the human race is due for some mass purging from disease. Overpopulation, massive human contact with previously unknown regions of the wild, easy mass transit and contact with various cultures and regions…a very deadly and virulant disease is certainly not impossible and is much more likely than a surprise “planet killer” meteor. Which is also possible. Heck, it’s happened several times in this planet’s history, not just the one “famous” dinosaur eradicating event.

Well, it’s been an interesting night and morning. I haven’t decided if I should spend less time at the Zombie Squad forum…or more time learning about what to do in case of zombie attacks. =)

*Alpha Psi Omega: Theatre Honor Fraternity
Omicron Delta Kappa: Leadership Honor Fraternity
Sigma Tau Delta: English Honor Fraternity (We never refered to that one by its initials.)
Am I bragging? Yep. =)

First, mandatory federal ID’s and now lack of sovereignty of land ownership:
High court OKs personal property seizures
The 5th Amendment:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment05/

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The loophole which the Supreme Court is using to allow the rich to take advantage of the average citizen, the the mentioning of “without just compensation.” In addition, they have determined that economic development serves the public interest.
So, how does this sound to you? You own a house and a quarter acre of land. Been there for years, and have close ties to your neighbors. Some rich private developer comes along and decides your neighborhood would make a good spot for his privately owned office building. He petitions the local government to seize your land and bulldoze your house and you can do nothing about it except take their lowest market appraisal of worth as compensation, whether you want to or not. Sounds like the old Soviet Union or China or Nazi Germany, no?
What I just described isn’t a “this is what it’s going to lead to!” What I described is exactly what happened in this case, and exactly what the Supreme Court approved. Precedence has now been set, and the government can now take whatever they want so long as they can find some lame excuse to justify it.

As dissenting Justice O’Connor said:

“Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random,” O’Connor wrote. “The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.”

So I’m within hearing distance of a recording of preaching by Beth Moore, in her very expensive set of lessons called “The Patriarchs,” and she said that one thing that drives me crazy: “I would sink into the depths of depravity if not for God.” And I thought “How sad is that.” And it started me thinking about the whole objective morality thing again. How so often I hear from fundamentalists that they must act morally because God tells them to. That morality is handed down by God.

What does that say about a person, when they imply or even come right out and say, that the only thing stopping them from not being a moral person with values is God (viz a vis fear of hell?) How tragic and sad and, well, untrustworthy and scary of a person is that? Why is it they can’t be a moral person valuing other people just because? Because it’s the “right” thing to do no matter what your mythology? It’s the right thing to do to help the world be a better place? The right thing to do, if for no other reason, than because it helps you out to treat others with honor and be honorable yourself?

Let’s say, hypothetically, that there was irrefutable proof that God either didn’t exist or does but the Bible had no “divine” connection at all. Would you suddenly stop loving your family and friends? Would you really start thinking it was a good idea to be cruel and harm people? Would stealing or raping or murder or even simply lying suddenly become appealing? I would hazard to say “no.” And if it does, then you’re a pretty sorry individual and in my opinion not fit to be human.

There’s two types of “Christian morality,” Biblical and spiritual. Or, Old Testament and New Testament. I’m going to be nice and completely ignore Old Testament morality, because it’s at best psychotic. Read the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the Old Testament.) It’s impossible to count all the instances of God ordained/approved/commanded murder of enemies, murder of innocents, kidnapping of virgins, forced rape, forcing women to marry their rapist so long as the rapist pays her father, forced sterilization, selling daughters, keeping slaves, killing family members, incest, genocide, on and on. And I COULD give verses like Deuteronomy 22:28-29, Exodus 21:4, Numbers 31:1-18, Deuteronomy 21:11-14, 2 Samuel 12:26-31 (OK, that’s not part of the books of Moses,) Exodus 20:5-6, Genesis 38:6-10, 1 Chronicles 13:7-11, Genesis 19:12-26…
Just read the Bible. Don’t skip the boring parts, don’t jump around, sit down and read it. If nothing else, just the first 5 books, and tell me the God depicted therein is not a psychotic, murderous, blood-thirsty, unreasonable, anti-merciful, hateful God advocating some of the worst morality ever seen. And because of the absurd depiction of morality in the OT, I’ll skip that and just continue on with the NT and general “spiritual” Christian morality.

OK, read the NT now. Just the Gospels, and maybe Acts. They’re short. You can probably read them in one day no problem. Tell me that Jesus isn’t an angry, impatient, condescending, insulting man. Smiting fig trees for not having fruit on them because he was hungry. No message, no parable. The Bible said he was hungry, and mad because the fig tree had no fruit. He’s constantly calling his followers “fools,” and insulting them for not understanding his parables, constantly showing impatience and anger.

Now Paul’s letters (of which only 5 are really his own writings.) Here we actually start hearing about love and mercy and patience and understanding…conditionally. OK, let’s get off the Bible altogether.

If only God provides morality and values, and one is moral only because of God, then that has to mean one thing: If you’re not a believer in God then you have no values and are immoral.

Now, question: What does that mean to the 16,000+ years of humans that existed before Jesus lived? Or, if you’re also counting Judaic morality, the 12,000+ years before the first tribe of Judah existed? Does that mean all those millennia of humans were completely amoral?
Another question: Only 1/3 of the world today is Christian (http://www.religioustolerance.org/worldrel.htm), does that mean 2/3 of the world are murderers, rapists, thieves, liars, adulterous, hate their kids and parents?
What about from 1 AD to 400 AD when Christianity was only a small, fringe cult in the Middle East and and only beginning to infuse itself into Rome? Was 99% of the world at that time completely amoral?
Today, only half of England, Germany, France, and the Netherlands, and Japan consider themselves Christian, yet they have lower crime rates than the U.S., where 80% of the population considers itself Christians. Ironically, these half and less-than-half Christian modern nations considered the war in Iraq to be immoral, but the Christian U.S. with its “Christian” president lied and contorted facts in order to go to war with a country that posed no threat to the U.S. What’s the message from that?
The Code of Hammurabi predates Mosaic Laws. Buddhism and its beliefs of moderation, personal integrity, and the goal of ending suffering and strife predates Jesus. As does Confucianism and its focus on responsibility to your family and personal honor. Hinduism is quite ancient and focuses on empathy and selflessness in both actions and thought. Even Wicca (despite my disgust for this made up religion (but aren’t they all?) I’m mentioning because it’s becoming pretty popular in the U.S. and is a good example of modern “paganism”,) also believes in personal integrity, truth, loving the people around you and respecting the Earth itself. I know many agnostics and atheists who have a well developed sense of morality and values.

So, Christianity does not have a monopoly on morality and ethics. What does that mean for the argument that without God there is no morality?

Only one conclusion then, if that statement is true: God must not be the God of only Christians, and all religions and even no religion involves the same God that Christianity holds claim to. Lack of belief in the Christian God does not mean God does not provide morality to all humans.

How can it be otherwise? If you state that ONLY God provides morality, and it’s proven that the same morality (the positive good morality most Christians believe is “Christian” and not the psychopathic murderous morality of the Bible,) is practiced by most humans since recorded history by all faiths, cultures, regions, religions, then it must follow that God is present in/to ALL people. You don’t have to be Christian to be moral and ethical.

Here’s another thought, a scary thought to Christian fundamentalists: What if Christianity and Judaism and Hindu and Islam and Confucianism and Wicca and all of them, are all mythologies that try to explain the same God that created the universe and gave rise to the concept we have of morality that is shared by 90% of the world regardless of faith?

Finally, what if “morality” is simply a biological aspect of survival of the species, developed in humans over the eons because to do anything other than to “treat others as we would want to be treated” would mean an end to the species?

Personally, I believe in a mix of the two theories.

Interesting info regarding the lack of connection between video games and youth violence.

http://www.theesa.com/facts/games_youth_violence.php

From CNN.com this afternoon:

CIA report on Iraq

A new classified report by the Central Intelligence Agency says Iraq could be an even more effective training ground for Islamic terrorists than Afghanistan was under the Taliban, U.S. officials told CNN’s David Ensor on Wednesday.

The report says would-be terrorists are flocking to Iraq and gaining practical experience in urban combat techniques that they may take back and use in their home countries.

The CIA report, which has been widely circulated among federal agencies and on Capitol Hill in recent days, was first publicly identified in Newsweek magazine.

A U.S. official said the report is “focused mostly on what happens to these people after they leave Iraq.”

Islamic extremists in Iraq are learning how to carry out assassinations, kidnappings, and car bombings, the report says, according to officials in the executive branch and on Capitol Hill who have read it.

Lovely.
Thanks, Bush, for yet another wonderful side-effect from this needless War For Oil. This ought to help the “War on Terror” stay active and vital for years to come.

I was doing a search on my Blog for some past article, and found this one from Feb’ 04.
http://blog.celticbear.com/archives/000061.html
Boy have I been discussing this topic WAY too much!

Anyway, interesting to see how little my opinions have changed despite many months of angst-ridden soul-searching. =)

Something struck me reading this: The commenter mentioned how the Bible teaches The Trinity.
I didn’t question it then, don’t know why. But I question it now.
DOES it really teach the Trinity, or do we assume the message of the Trinity while trying to make sense of the confusing messages the Bible presents? Is making up the Christian concept of the Trinity (as in three seperate beings that are actually one being at the very same time) simply a “and then a miracle happens” way of trying to explain away confusions?

http://www.sullivan-county.com/identity/trinity.htm

As I mention in an earlier blog today, this guy rants a bit, but he makes some very interesting points. And some of his arguements I have heard and read about in various places.
I would like to, myself, investigate the concept of the Trinity as being nowhere overtly presented in the Bible as I encourage every Biblical Christian to do likewise.

“The word Trinity is not found in the Bible . . . It did not find a place formally in the theology of the church till the 4th century.” — The Illustrated Bible Dictionary

Here’s a Christian’s take on Deism:
http://www.gotquestions.org/deism.html

I have a couple of problems with that. It says:
“Deism pictures God as ambivalent, uncaring, and uninvolved.”
That’s not totally true. While there are many Deists who do believe that, there are just as many who believe that God IS caring, but uninvolved.
There are many others who, like me, do not believe that God is a human-like creature with human-like emotions and desires and conciousness. So that by saying God’s “ambivalent, uncaring” implies that God choses not to be, as opposed to being incapable of those qualities because God is above/apart/transcended from those human-like abilities of ambivalence and being uncaring.

That page also mentions something I have always found absurd (always as in, the last few/several years,)

“Deism is most definitely not Biblical. The Bible is filled with accounts of the miraculous. The Bible is, in fact, entirely an account of God interfering in His creation.”

What always gets me is how things like that are said as if the Bible is an inerrant and 100% factual and perfect tome written by either God himself or some 1st-hand observer.

It’s a foregone conclusion the Bible is not inerrant
(see: http://www.coppit.org/god/contradictions.html, http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/). And it’s not hard to find more than enough research and history regarding the origin of the Bible as a collection of various mythologies (http://www.bidstrup.com/bible.htm for one example). And finally, the simple and wonderful logical fallacy of pointing to the same item as proof of that item’s accuracy.

Saying “miracles exist because it says so in the Bible” is like saying “Clinton was a really upstanding guy because it says so in his autobiography.” Or “Bigfoot exists because the guy who shot this blurry photograph says so!”
In fact, just a couple of weeks ago I was visiting a church where the preacher, who was an otherwise decent public speaker, made that very same arguement: that atheists are foolish in denying evidence of God because the Bible is filled with evidence of God.
*sigh*
(Atheists, in my opinion ARE foolish but not because of that *grin*)

This is the best part:

“Everything that takes place is subject to His sovereignty and authority. Deism is most definitely not Biblical. A deistic view of God is simply a failure in attempting to explain the unexplainable.”

The first part: “Everything that takes place is subject to His sovereignty and authority,” as with elsewhere on that Web site which states “bad things happen” because the mind of God is unknowable, is like saying “A causes B and B leads to C and then a miracle happens and we have D. Well, that explains it all!” By saying “know one knows the mind of God” we can safely explain away anything we don’t understand without risk of THINKING about it. Considering and pondering.

Are you too burdened with uncertainty about why God would let something happen? Oh it’s not because humans failed in some way or because humans are capable of doing terrible things or because there are natural disasters, it’s because of God’s will! (Which we shouldn’t try to understand, mind you.)”
We absolve ourselves of responsibility and unburden ourselves from reasoning by saying “Hey, it’s God’s doing, don’t worry your pretty little head over it.”

And the very VERY best part is: “A deistic view of God is simply a failure in attempting to explain the unexplainable.”
There can be no better ironic, hypocritical statement than I have ever seen.
The natural converse of that statement is “…while Christianity is a success at explaining the unexplainable.” The entire point, of Deism is to value rational, reasonable pursuit of knowledge even in light of the existance of God. To use rational thought to explain the unexplainable, and if not possible, accept that there may not be one right now but eventually there will be.
Religion and dogma, on the other hand, has always been about creating mythologies, stories, well-meaning lies to explain the unexplainable. Which time and time again has been revealed.
How did the world as we know it get here? Well a supernatural being POP-ed it into existance just as we see it now. (Reason and rational thought has lead to the scientific discoveries which have given us knowledge to explain the development of the world from the point it was gas a debris in space through liquid magma to oceans and Pangea through a dozen epochs to now.)
Why is that bush burning? Must be a sign of God on earth! (Reason and rational thought has lead to scientific research which has shown that a certain species of bush in a certain geographic region put of a low-tempurature burning fumes around it.)
Earth is the center of creation, as we are alone and most important in all existance! (Reason and rational thought has lead to the scientific discoveries that the Earth is a small rock orbiting a medium star at the lonely end of an arm of a medium galaxy in the midst of a billion galaxies.)
Etc etc ad nauseum.

Religion, like Christianity, has its foundation in mythology and putting down attempts to find rational, reason answers to questions regarding the nature and the world.)
Deism purports that all things, including God, are now or eventually revealed through reason and rationalism.

Found an interesting site:
http://www.sullivan-county.com/deism.htm
The author raves a bit, and I disagree here and there…but he does say straight out that many Deists disagree on various specifics of Deism, and that’s OK. So, it’s still a very interesting and informative read for more info and thought on Deism.
There’s this:
A response to a letter regarding the difference between Christianity and Deism.
Has a lot of information regarding the borrowed concepts from eastern mysticism which became God vs. Satan, good vs. evil, Original Sin, and other mythologies. And how a LOT of Christianity would be VERY different if not for the pagan Emperor Constantine who took on Christianity as one of the several religions he practiced to cover his bases, and the Council of Nicea, which was the beginning of Christianity as we know it.