Imagination

December 9, 2008Posted inGeneral4 Comments

My wife and her best friend have been reading the books that the movie Twilight was based on, and it made me think about the kind of entertainment we are drawn to.  My wife and I are both passionate about different things – she about passionate romance and meaningful relationships, and me about bravery and fighting for good causes.  I find it interesting that we are both drawn to certain media (video games, movies, books) that feature these themes.

While my wife reads Twilight, I am currently playing Fallout 3, a video game that is full of fighting and moral choices, a dreamworld for me.  I am also reading Cherryh (science fiction) which involves a war between humans and aliens on other planets – way cool.

I thought a long time ago about being drawn to these things.  Why is this?  In my wife’s case- how is it possible anymore to have a passionate romance with very young children who constantly need your attention?  In my case, how can I get out a gun and go fight the bad guys and be brave when I have a family and a wife that takes top priority?

Dangers to finding truth

September 20, 2008Posted inDangers to Finding Spiritual Truth, Epictetus, General, Philosophy, Spiritual Life2 Comments

I was just doing my daily reading this morning, and I came across some interesting quotes that really got me thinking:

“Get truth and don’t ever sell it.” ~ Proverbs 23:23

“When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, your lives will produce these evil results: …the feeling that everyone is wrong except for those in your own little group…” ~ Galatians 5:19-21.

These are two passages point out dangers that the person who is searching for truth will inevitably encounter. Since truth is what this website is all about, and the people who come here to read stuff care about it, I thought it would be a good idea to write about these dangers.

Where Jesus Grew Up: A Study of Lower Galilee

September 16, 2008Posted inReligion, Research Paper1 Comment

Hey all!  I thought I would start the new semester off by publishing a paper I wrote about the history, culture, and geography of the Lower Galilee region of Israel, the place where Jesus lived for about 30 years before he began his public ministry.  I left out the footnotes, but included a cited works section at the end if you are interested.  If you don’t feel like reading the entire thing, I can sum it up for you:

The region is quite conservative.  Many scholars- atheist, agnostic, and Christian alike seem to agree that the area Jesus grew up in was populated by people who were resistant to outside religion or spirituality.  This culture was in many ways linked to its secluded location up in the mountains off the main roadways.  Although they could see out over the valley of Armageddon where the main roadways were, they were not influenced by the foreign influences that traveled along them.  The body of research work I surveyed seems to agree – Whatever cultural influences that affected Jesus growing up, its certain that little to none were of a foreign nature.  He grew up in a very traditional Jewish world, one that remembered very clearly the stories of Elisha and Elijia, and the many Judges.  For a resident of Nazereth need only look out over the valley to see the very location of where a majority of the stories took place – where God acted on behalf of his people.

Enjoy!

A possible key to moral living…

March 10, 2008Posted inMorality, Personal, Spiritual LifeNo Comments

Over the past couple of months, I’ve taken a good look at myself, and realized that I’m not too thrilled with what I see. I’ve become discouraged with the blatant fact that I cannot become a more moral person by mere effort. If I look hard enough at my motivations for doing good things, I begin to see I have partial selfish reasons for doing nearly all of them.

More recently, I think I’ve discovered something that has really helped me, and I thought I’d share it with everyone out there who struggles with being a moral person and has decided to devote their life to doing what is right. You know who you are, and you know what I mean by being “moral.” To put others first in your priorities, to love without expecting to be loved in return, to not steal, lie, wish harm to others, or to talk badly about them, etc. We have a desire to leave our spheres of influences in better shape then if we were never around to influence them. In fact, we have decided that being moral and following a moral code is more important than anything else – it is a cause that drives our lives as we sit in the passenger seat.

Transposition

January 17, 2008Posted inGeneral1 Comment
Martin's comment got me thinking... Do animals "get emotional?" I have argued with others that animals operate under a system of cause and effect - try something: if it works,…

“Free will” and atheism…

January 15, 2008Posted inGeneral5 Comments

One of the “unconvincing arguments” for God set out by the Minnesota Atheists has piqued my interest. It is argument # 26: Free will is proof that God exists. Whether or not its existing proves God or not is besides the point here. Here is the text quoted:

(26) Free Will – Some people argue that without a god there would be no free will, that we would live in a deterministic universe of cause and effect and that we would be mere “robots.”

Actually, there is far less free will than most people think there is. Our conditioning (our biological desire to survive and prosper, combined with our experiences) makes certain “choices” far more likely than others. How else can we explain our ability, in many cases, to predict human behavior?

Experiments have shown that our brain makes a “decision” to take action before we become conscious of it!

Some believe that the only free will we have is to exercise a conscious veto over actions suggested by our thoughts.

Most atheists have no problem admitting that free will may be an illusion.

This issue also brings up a conundrum: If a god who created us knows the future, how can we have free will?

In the end, if we are enjoying our lives, does it matter if free will is real or an illusion? Isn’t it only our ego – our healthy self-esteem that is beneficial for survival – that has been conditioned to believe that real free will is somehow better than imaginary free will?