Political Imaginations

I can imagine living with a better government than the United States. I daily imagine living with real personal freedom to participate in government. I need not imagine reasons to participate more, for the government and its issue make these clear.

Clouds of Change

Can you feel it? Your reason to live, never knew you had one until it was getting the shit beat out of it, is hanging on by a finger. What about this makes one want to escape? Does this delay the loss - maybe drugs, drink and media delay the crisis? Escape. I think what we're talking about here is change: Ugly, naked, change. You feel it coming. Sniff the air; you're old enough now to know that smell.

Always a new self marching to the front; the multiplicity of self is depressing in the extreme. I want to stay who I am. I like the now, but I know that smell: Placental, wet, sulfur smell of a new self pushing its way to the front fucking everything before it. Good bye. This may be the last you hear from me. I'm slipping and my god damn arrogant next incarnation isn't wasting any time with courtesy.

Infallibility of the Scripture

Most christians will honestly assert that they are not infallible. In fact they will often speak at leangth to their weaknesses and fallibility in judgement and action.

These same people will take a sinsere position that they believe the Bible to be infallible. Many even go as far as holding to a loose understanding that God directly created the literary work.

There are several points to notice in this discussion. One, you can not be both infallible and completely assured that you are correct about the bible's infallibility. Two, other christians chose what was included in the bible and what was not. Three, other christians authored the individual documents that comprise the bible. Four, these documents have changed over time with many differences in versions being found. Five, the collection of documents called the bible is translated and in many cases we do not have a draft more recent than hundreds of years after our assumed original pen dates.

Let me first address the extreme opinion that holds the divine to have directly written the documents through the human hosts. Firstly, the reason that the documents were written was often personal or for teaching purposes. None of the authors claimed divine inspiration, in fact they more often seemed as humble as their modern counterparts. If the authors themselves do not claim perfect divine inspiration then why claim it for them. This seems to be a critical point of fallibility; asking these documents to be something that they were not originally intended to be. Secondly, we know that these writings are not directly inspired without the effect of the human host. We can differentiate writing style between authors. We can identify word choice and intellectual approach that reveal educational and cultural differences between the authors themselves. They also record events limited to their experience or second hand knowledge as well as events that seem significant from their perspective. This extends to the context they place events in, how they lead up to it and frame it. The imprint of the author is clear and undeniable. The humanity and therefore fallibility of the author is also clear.

Humanist

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use." Galileo Galilei

If god made man then I will resist the efforts to denegrate his work. Are men so bad? Is god's creation so flawed? I hold that man is not so flawed as some would have us believe, and that our mutual artist could not have so failed as to have made us objectionable to his own eye. These same haters of man would have you pray for the end of creation. They will convince you if they can of their own indespensibility to your life while at the same time wagging a soft finger at you lest you drink from the cup you've been handed.

punishment

“If you see me smoke another cigarette,” Greg said, “I want you to punch me in the face. Okay, Andy?”
“Alright,” I said, knowing if it came right down to it, I probably wouldn’t punch him in the face for smoking a silly cigarette. But I might let him think I was going to, right up till the end.
Greg lived with his brother, Steve, in an apartment on a little country road. I stopped by most evenings on my home from my job at the radio station. There was a small gravel parking lot in front of the four-plex. Greg and Steve lived in the first unit on the left. I whipped my car into the lot and then locked up my brakes as I did every time, to slide a couple feet into place. That used to irritate Greg, but I told him I did it to let him know it was me. I went inside without knocking. I heard voices in the kitchen. Greg was in there with others.
I turned the corner and found Greg with a cigarette in his mouth and a lighter in his hand. He knew it was on. He dropped everything and slipped past me headed for the front door. He looked back at the frenzy in my eyes. He pulled open the door and poised ready to sneak out. I raised my foot and reached for the door to tap it shut. I tapped it forward and it sandwiched his head in the jam. Not hard, but hard enough to make him fall and bleed steadily from his left eyebrow.
We both agreed he’d earned the cigarette, so I watched him smoke it with a wadded tee shirt on his eye. He told me about his day. And then I felt bad for what I had done.

Catholic

The glory of the roman empire faded and its strength crumbled; in its passing it left behind piles of religious thought and trails of broken faith canonized. The religion left behind by mother rome and still clinging to human lives is equivelant to post-apocolyptic survivors dwelling in broken down cars and under bridges.