On Wonder, Christmas, and Children

Something about Christmas has changed.

I can recall as a child the magic and wonder the day held for me, but that feeling seems to have been lost. My parents had me while they were children themselves and so I'd spend many days with my grandparents. As the end of the year would roll around she'd bring out the largest artificial Christmas tree that I've ever seen placed inside a house. The trees in the stores weren't good enough for her; she hated their perfect shape. She must have bought two trees and took the longer branches from them to create one physics defying Christmas tree of epic proportions. It was a monstrosity that she would deck out with giant Christmas lights, tacky ornaments, and a thick coating of tinsel. I remember standing at its base and looking up at it wide-eyed in amazement/terror.

As Christmas drew near large gift wrapped boxes would start to slowly appear beneath the tree branches. Every time I saw a new one I'd run over and check if it was for me. I'd always want the largest ones to have my names on them, but they never did. I hadn't yet learned that the best gifts came in small packages. I recall watching the giant present being passed out on Christmas Eve (my father's side has always celebrated the day before Christmas) and wishing it was for me, but then it would turn out to be a piece of lawn equipment and my wishes would change.

Waiting for Christmas Eve was always painful, even when the day arrived I still had one obstacle between myself and presents. Mass! Around four in the afternoon my mother would take me to the children's Christmas Eve Mass (I was born and raised Roman Catholic). We would have to arrive an hour early just to get seats. They'd be playing Christmas music and telling the Christmas story while other children acted it out. I hated it. I didn't care about the story I'd heard a thousand times before; I wanted to find out what was in those boxes under my grandmother's tree!

After the kids finished with their Christmas play the Mass proper would begin. I was halfway there, but I still had an hour to go. Every seat in the church was full at this point, children and their parents were standing in the aisles. They were lucky. Sure, they had to stand, but at least they got to miss out on the first hour.

Oh, and did I mention the bells? Yes, the bells. At the Christmas Mass all the children were supposed to bring a bell that they would ring during the songs. A lot of children brought tiny bells that let out a small tinny sound. Not my mother. She gave me a cowbell. A full-sized thick metal plated cowbell. It would vibrate my entire arm as I used all the strength I had to just be able to move it through the air. The noise it produced would drown out all the other bells. Heads would turn, and necks would crane to catch a glimpse of what might be causing such a terrible sound. By this point I would be losing control and I'd be trying my best to hold on to the monstrosity as physics took over. If anyone made eye contact with me I'm sure they saw a confused and terrified child. Finally the songs would end before my arms detached themselves and the priest would start his sermon. He'd open up by asking the parents to put their child's bells away. He always seemed to be looking at us when he said it.

He would talk forever. Usually something about Santa Claus and then Jesus. Santa Claus! That guy brought me presents! Jesus was that guy who was keeping me from those presents. The Eucharist would roll around, and then it was time for the final song! The final song! It was here! It was over! People were making their way out of the building! I would grab my mother's arm and try to make a run for the doors.

She didn't budge.

My mother refused to leave church before the last song was completed and the last note no longer resonated in the air. Everyone in the aisles got to leave though. Some of them even before the last song had begun. Man, they were lucky. Me? I got to stay and deal with the traffic leaving the church.

It was almost time though, the presents were a mere couple miles away.

My mother would drop me off at my father's parents house. I would jump out of the car, say goodbye, and then run in immediately to see if any more presents had arrived. Not yet. I had to wait on the rest of the family. This was probably the most excruciating point. At Mass I knew the motions and how much longer I had on the clock. All I had at my grandparents were the sounds of motors in the street that always turned out to be someone I didn't know. I'd pace back and forth in her kitchen looking out the window.

Eventually the cars would slowly start pulling up in front of the house and more wrapped boxes would make their way out of the trunks and under the tree. It was ridiculous how many gifts would be in that living room. The adults would complain there wasn't enough room to sit. Not me, I imagined building myself a fort out of the boxes that held toys for me. (I still do this when I see a large pile of boxes. Box forts = awesome!)

And then, finally the moment would arrive and I would tear into the boxes with wild abandon and pile the riches in front of me. My cousin and I would compare loot. See who got the bigger pile or the best toys. I always won. (Til that one year he got a Nintendo 64. He made up for all the years after he opened that one.)

I'd sit and stare at the wonders that laid before me. Board games, books, gizmos and gadgets just waiting to be opened up and explored. I didn't care about them anymore, though. It was time for phase two.

Santa was coming.

Santa always terrified me. What if I wasn't good? I honestly remember stressing out about how good I had been all year. Trying to fall asleep that night would take hours in my mind (probably ten minutes in reality). My aunt would spend the night and we would share a bed. I was the first grandchild born into my family and everyone always wanted to see me in action. I can recall waking up early in the morning and trying my best to sneak out and peak around the corner into the living room to see if Santa had come during the night. The walk down the hallway that led there was like walking to my death sentence. What if Santa didn't come? What if I wasn't good enough? My tiny eyes would peek around the corner. The toys were there. He had come! He always came. I am perfect after all.

The toys would line the living room where the boxes had been the night before. My grandparents made it their sole purpose in life to spoil me. I remember my father would get mad at how much Santa would bring me. It was a bit much he would say. I guess he didn't realize how good I had been.

I never knew where to start with my Christmas loot. I wanted to dedicate my time in a manner that would give each toy a proper breaking in, but not spend so much time with it that I'd figure out everything it could do. It would take several intense calculations, but I would always come out with the correct toy to playing ratio.

Christmas was quite literally the most magical time of the year for me. I could go on about the Christmas specials on television, or the lights, or the decorations that lined my grandparents house. I remember everything so vividly. It was magical.

But something about Christmas has changed.

The tree is not as large as I remember and the tinsel just makes a mess of the house. The presents don't seem to be as big as they once were either. Sometimes those large ones are for me, and now they do turn out to be lawn equipment. They barely fill the room anymore and there's plenty of room to sit. My family decided to draw names instead of buying for everyone as the years went on. The children still get gifts from everyone, but it's not the same as it was before.

As a child every gift I received was full of wonder and mystery. I had rarely gotten a present that I'd seen before in the stores. Today it's usually clothes or some electronic devise that I already know everything about. "Oh, an iPod. Cool. Thanks." It's an iPod though. It plays music, and that's about it. I'm not saying I'm not thankful, but that magic seems to have disappeared. It's just not the same.

Something about Christmas has changed.

Now I watch my younger brother and sisters opening their gifts (some of them sharing the same age difference with me as my parents and I), and I see that wonder in their eyes as they tear their way into those boxes. I watch them pacing the house between the dining room table covered with food to the living room piled high with boxes. They've already picked out all of theirs and usually mine as well.

Christmas through the eyes of a child, the magic and wonder of it all, is lost to most of us now that we have grown up. Now it's about fighting traffic to provide that wonder to our children, and recapturing glimpses of that wonder in their eyes.

What's our toy on Christmas morning? What's the perpetual wonder that will never grow old? Is there a gift of infinite proportions and endless magic and potentialities?

Is there?

Something about Christmas has changed.

I think, though, we can recapture it if we can see it through the eyes of a child again. A child looking into the depths of God and the endless presents and presence He promises for those who love Him. One day I'll meet the gift that walked this earth over two-thousand years ago. For now, He's given me a large awkward cowbell to make a fool of myself with. I'm going to try my best to play along to the music until the songs end and that last note no longer resonates in the air. It sure hurts my arms at times, and I get a lot of weird looks from others as I do my best to hold on, but it's what I've been given and I'll do my best with it.

I wonder what's under that tree though, don't you?

Something about Christmas has changed, but it's the change that changes everything.

How to Judge Others Properly

I'm judging you. Yes, you. I'm doing it right now. As I type these thoughts I'm judging you and everything you believe in. Some Christians have prayer lists, but I have judging lists. That's my job as a Christian after all, to judge the world and everything in it.

I'll never understand the people who have problems with judging. I'll be walking along and I'll notice a guy eating his own baby. So I'll walk over to him and tell him that I really don't think it's right for him to eat his own baby. He'll roll his eyes at me and tell me not to judge. I'll start to get frustrated and tell him to think about the baby, but then the baby will look me in the eye and ask who I am to tell his father that he shouldn't eat his own baby. Then I'll turn to the streets and start screaming for help, and the passersby will point their finger at me and ask where I get off defining what's actually right and wrong. They obviously don't realize that I'm a Christian and therefore entitled to judging the world.

These replies are common. In our culture it's wrong to judge and to tell another person how to live. This really pisses me off. I've always wanted to start a competition with my fellow Christians where we go out on the streets and judge everyone. Calling people out for certain sins would be worth more points than other sins, and you can get point multipliers by finding more than one sin on an individual person. I would be the official judge of the competition and I'd give the winner a bunch of those little pamphlets that tell people they're going to hell if they don't believe everything that we do.

People would have a problem with this because of all the judging and they'd probably shut us down. That's what pisses me off. They're ignoring the fact that they're using their judgment to judge me for using my judgment as a judge to judge my contestants in using their judgment on how to judge the heathens for their judgment to be the judge of judging their own lifestyle.

...wait, what?

Perhaps that wasn't a clear analogy to use to get my point across.

The point is that it's judgmental to tell me that I shouldn't judge. Who are they to tell me that I shouldn't judge? Do they really think that they know it's wrong to judge?

All this silly nonsense about not judging doesn't live up to its own standard.

People judge all the time. Suppose I gave you the choice between eating a bag of Twizzlers and a jar of pickled pigs feet which would you choose? Did you make a judgment between the two? Who are you to judge?

Do you get angry when you watch the Olympics because they only give three medals away? Do you write the judges angry letters and ask them to work on their own athletic abilities before they judge others on theirs?

All judgment means is to make a distinction. To apply a property to one object that you don't apply to another. Twizzlers are delicious, pickled pigs feet are gross. This man can run so far this fast, that man can't.

What's missing from the statement that we should not judge is a qualification for why we should not judge. If someone was lighting puppies on fire then we are allowed to tell them they really shouldn't do that. Unless, of course, they were shooting them out of cannons as well because that would just be awesome. They can't tell us that we shouldn't judge them unless they can show either (1) there is no discernible difference between lighting a puppy on fire and not lighting a puppy on fire, (2) there is nothing morally different between lighting a puppy on fire and not lighting a puppy on fire, or (3) we cannot know if there is anything morally different between lighting a puppy on fire and not lighting a puppy on fire.

This, however, is never shown. We all know that there is a difference in acting one way compared to another. We just don't like it when we're called out on it and so we have this self-defense mechanism of moral agnosticism to throw up whenever the moral law comes knocking on our door.

I'd like to leave you with some advice on how to properly judge others. I am, after all, a Christian, and therefore an expert in the matter. First, judge. Do it. Do it to everyone all the time. This is so you can guard yourself from making the same mistakes. Second, only call someone out when it really matters. We're all human and therefore open to making mistakes. A lot of them at that. Most people are aware of their own sins. Third, if you're a Christian then hold fellow believers to higher standards than the non-believer. This isn't because we're better than them, it's just that we should know better than them. The non-Christians are prisoners of the Devil and we should live a life that reflects our freedom from him. Fourth, when you judge someone make sure you're holding yourself accountable to what you are saying as well. This is what Jesus is talking about when people try and quote Him out of context on telling us not to judge. And lastly, have some compassion. Say what you mean, and mean what you say, but for the love of God, have some compassion.

Why I'm a Teetotaler

I've come to realize there are usually two responses to be expected after informing someone that I do not drink. Either their tongue will lose its capability to articulate a sentence and they respond with, "apitneougrousringlyeuting?!," or they will say "wow, good for you." From there it seems to become the goal of a lot of people to spend every waking hour of their life trying to get me to drink.

I've always found this rather amusing. What if I told them that I didn't eat... umm... I dunno... let's say... eggs. Would they make it their goal to get me to eat an egg?

"Yo, Chris, how would you like your eggs?"

"Nonexistent, please."

"Huh?"

"I don't eat eggs."

"Why not?"

"I just choose not to."

"But why?"

"Several reasons."

"C'mon man, just eat this egg."

"No thanks."

"Just do it!"

"No, really, I don't want it."

"Do iiiiiiit, do iiiiiiiiit."

"I appreciate the offer, but I really don't want to eat the egg."

"Here, this egg is on me. Have an egg, you'll like it."

"Seriously, I don't want it."

"Just take a bite--a small one. There's nothing wrong with enjoying an egg once in a while, you know."

"I'm not saying that there is, I just don't eat them."

"Whatever, dude, but I'm going to get a couple of them and enjoy me some eggs."

"Cool."

"Don't judge me!"

"I'm not judging you. You're free to eat all the eggs you want."

"I know you're judging me. I can see it."

"No, really, I'm not. Enjoy your egg."

"You sure you don't want this egg? You could have it scrambled, sunny side-up, over-easy, or boiled, or maybe even an egg made into a soup? You gotta like one of those! Here, have some ice cream with just a little dab of egg on it."

"Seriously, I don't want..."

"What about a chicken? Would you eat a chicken? Chickens were once an egg! Do you eat chicken? Let me buy you a chicken. How do you like your chicken prepared? Baked? Fried? A chicken sandwich, perhaps..."

I can't see someone having this reaction if I didn't eat eggs. It's always made me wonder: what is it about alcohol that people seem to have such an odd reaction to but not other foods?

I remember growing up and everyone would brag about how much alcohol they drank at so-and-so's party. All I would wonder in my head was why? What if I started talking about how much... umm... egg... no, I need a new analogy... how about... ummm....eggnog! What if went on about how much eggnog I had to drink over the weekend? What if I planned a party that would have tons of eggnog for everyone to consume until they started throwing up. I'm not sure this would be much of a hit. In fact, they would probably say that it would be pretty dumb to drink eggnog until you threw up.

Not so with alcohol.

Why is that?

What is it about the substance that has such an allure to it?

Is it the taste? I know it was for me when I used to drink. I loved a drink once in a while. I wouldn't always have one when I went out, but sometimes I would. Just like I wouldn't always have eggnog or eggs for breakfast, but sometimes I would. With alcohol, though, it seems to be something that people need. If you're out in public, if you're having people over, or if it's a Tuesday then there needs to be a drink in your hand. It seems to be more about something else than the taste and aroma it gives off.

Sometimes I would hear stories from others about how on Friday night they drank so much they couldn't remember any of it. Someone would reply of what a great time it must have been, and they would agree. This would cause drool to come out of my mouth as my mind began destroying itself with synapses misfiring in all directions in its attempts to make sense of such a conclusion. Apparently, alcohol was a mysterious liquid that proved the laws of logic to be false. From absolutely nothing, the best times of our lives come about.

I used to try this trick on my mother all the time when as a I teenager I deemed myself to be too cool to talk to her.

"How was the party last night, Christopher?"

"Good."

"What did you do?"

"...nuthin'."

"You did absolutely nothing, and it was good?"

"...yea..."

Last time I checked my mother doesn't know much about Aristotle, but she seemed to grasp the basics of logic. Nothing, you see, is not something. A good time can't come about from doing nothing, there would have to be, well, something. Perhaps it's just me, but I usually prefer to be aware of what is going on when I'm out having fun.

"How was the partay last night, dude?"

"It was totally awesome! I got so drunk and I can't remember any of it! It was a blast!"

"Hells yea! Wanna do it again next weekend!"

"Absolutely! I'm going to go call... hey, what's this scar? Umm.. where'd my kidney go? Oh well... But, yea, let's do it again!"

It's rather odd when you think about it. Somehow through the magic of alcohol we have some of our best times arise out of events that we can't remember much about.

It's even odder when I actually go out with people and then as the night goes on alcohol slowly takes over their mind. Conversation turns to nonsense and the same jokes are laughed at and repeated which don't make any sense at all. It's like they sold themselves out and cheapened what might be a genuine sober thrill for illusions and sometimes stupidity. In my philosophy, if you need alcohol to have a good time, then it might just be that your good times aren't really all that great. It would be like making a song better by reducing your capability to hear it and replacing it with another.

My formula for happiness is knowing truth. If you want to be happy, then you have to know truth. No one can be happy by living a lie. To know truth is to know the is-ness about reality, to know what is. Alcohol necessarily takes you away from being able to discern truth. It leads to bad judgments and bad judgments lead to regrets and sometimes worse results than that. I've known three people who were killed that would not have been killed if they had not been intoxicated at the time. I've seen my own family led down paths that might never have been visited if they refrained from drinking to the point where they lost control of their own bodies. The stories are countless of events that occurred merely because someone couldn't grasp the is-ness of the situation and acted out in ways they wish they had not. This is a fact that cannot be denied.

If happiness lies in knowing truth, and if drinking to the point of intoxication leads you away from being able to know truth, then it logically follows that getting drunk leads you away from happiness. Any feelings of happiness which might take place during the time are a false happiness arising from the mind instead of reality. It's a happiness born forth from something less than ourselves, and one cannot be liberated by something less than what we are. That is the definition of an addiction--needing something less than oneself to find satisfaction.

Of course, all this does not apply to alcohol in general, it only applies to drinking in excess. The question remains of if drinking alcohol is wrong in and of itself. That, it seems, is an issue that is unclear. Some questions of morality are unclear. Liberals like to run with this and apply it to morality in general, but that obviously does not follow from particular moral dilemmas. If you are unsure of how to answer a math problem, then it does not mean that math is relative.

When I gave up drinking over four years ago I based it largely on my newly birthed faith in Christianity and the writings of Norman Geisler. Dr. Geisler is my hero and it scares me how much I agree with him. He's written over a hundred books on every topic you can think of. No matter what he tackles it changes everything I believe in. I used to be completely reformed in my theology, but after reading his book on the relationship between God's sovereignty and a libertarian free-will I changed my beliefs to his. If anyone has ever talked to a reformed Calvinist, then you realize how impossible this task really is, but you just can't argue with Geisler. Well, you can, but you'd be wrong. And lame. Don't be lame.

One day I came across an article he had written about alcohol and why Christians should abstain from it and I made a pact to never drink again. Since then I've read different reasons for why it is not a sin for Christians to drink and they sound convincing, but I've chosen to stick to my personal commitment for reasons that have evolved since then.

(If you are reading this and happen to be a Christian, then I'm not writing to tell you that drinking is a sin. I'm not really sure if it is a sin, and I don't believe that Christianity is about legalism. It's not a system of how to live or how to be a good person, it's about being born again in Christ. Rules don't lead to being a good person. A person can follow every law ever written and still be the most evil man alive. Drinking is between you, God, and reality. I will say, however, that if you are a Christian and you drink to the point of intoxication, then you are making a very foolish decision and sinning. As Christians we are called to see the world as how Christ sees the world and if we choose to get drunk for the mere sake of getting drunk then we placing ourselves in a situation where we can no longer see the world through the lens of God's worldview. We are clouding our vision, our judgment, and our capacity to live as Christ would before a watching world. We can never know when God might bring someone across our path that needs His redemptive message, and I can guarantee you that if you're drunk you're going to be in no position to be able to present such a thing. And further, not only does remaining abstinent save me a ton of money and face, but it presents me with countless opportunities to enter into conversations about God, life, the universe, and everything. I've found that saying you don't drink is the secret password to a man's soul.)

My decision is hard at times, as I really did enjoy the occasional drink. I've never been drunk, nor ever had the desire to get drunk. (I personally believe that when my body asks me to stop dumping something into it that I should probably stop and not have to force my body to expel it out for me.) Alcohol was never any different for me than eating a really good piece of cake or pie. My plans were never conditional on if there would be a lot of pie and cake to stuff my face with, it would depend on what I wanted to do to have fun.

And so with alcohol stuck in the moral gray area of my worldview I continue to not drink for one specific reason: I've found that it's a commitment and promise that I can actually keep. God has been good to me in more ways than I can count. I constantly make stupid decisions and He's always there blessing me and giving me a pass with His grace. He looks at me and smiles, picks me up in His arms, and in turn I look Him in the eye and slap Him across the face. I don't do much for Him, I'm constantly telling Him to eff off, and yet He's always there forgiving and providing. My commitment to not drink appears to be the only sacrifice that I'm able to actually offer up to Him.

I know it's nothing special in the grand scheme of things, but it's a small and petty offering for Him on my behalf.

And that is why I don't drink.

Dear Tiger Woods,

I can honestly say that I don't know much about the drama that has been talked about on the news for the last week or so. I really don't care much about your personal life. You'd imagine that the culture which uses the battle cry of "what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their room is their business" would remove its nose from what you did in the privacy of yours. Instead though, your life seems to have dominated the news over other more important issues such as our economy, the war in Afghanistan, the threat of radical Islam, and the Copenhagen meetings in light of the leaked emails on global warming.

That's not what I care to voice my opinion on, though. You see, the other day I was in the bathroom at work and on the television they were playing a quote from you that I find extremely troubling. Yes, I have televisions in the bathroom where I work. They're good for the sentence "I have televisions in the bathroom where I work" and giving me something to stare at for twenty seconds at a time, but not much else. I've looked all over the internet for the quote to get it in its full context and to make sure it was even from you, but I cannot find it anywhere so if I have misquoted you then I apologize.

You appeared to be talking about where you and your wife go from here, and thus you had to look at the question of what a marriage is. Marriage, you said, is not about the children, or the mortgage, or anything else, but marriage is ultimately about two people who love each other. This, I think, is completely wrong as love cannot be the sine qua non of marriage.

I've never been married so I can really only comment from the perspective of an outsider looking in, but hopefully certain principles apply regardless of my relation to the experience at hand. I've often heard people speak of their former marriages falling apart because they just weren't happy, or they fell out of love. And to that I usually reply, "so?" Like, I really like Twizzlers and I could easily eat an entire bag before realizing it, but after awhile I can't stand them anymore. If someone came up to me with a bag of Twizzlers at that point I'd probably respond by throwing up all over their shoes. My love and happiness for Twizzlers comes and goes with my current disposition. I suppose if I was a creature of infinite proportion that I could constantly handle a mouthful of Twizzlers, but I'm not God, and so sooner or later my love and happiness when it comes to Twizzlers is going to die off until an unknown time in the future.

Love, you see, cannot be what makes a marriage, as love for another can come and go. If love is the essence of marriage the moment I "fell out of love" (that is, no longer feeling the love), then I'd also be saying that I was no longer married to them. That appears to be absurd; there must be something more to marriage than love and happiness. I've tried having a relationship with a bag of Twizzlers, but things just didn't work out. One night I came home to a half-eaten bag laying on my desk and I knew it could tell that I had been out enjoying some Sour Patch Kids earlier. I tried to explain that I was just currently not in love and thus the marriage was temporarily suspended for the moment--no unfaithfulness had taken place. The Twizzlers didn't buy it, no matter how much I explained that I was indeed back in love with it again.

The Twizzlers were right, and so we get a clue to what marriage might be about: commitment. You know, those vow thingies we take. It's hard to keep them though, because my love for other candy can be pretty strong at times, but if I stick to that commitment, then regardless of my current love for Twizzlers there's never an excuse to end the relationship. It doesn't matter how sick they make me, or how miserable I can be at times, the vows override my current feelings.

But I guess we still aren't finished. The commitment seems to be missing something. I love my Twizzlers, but that doesn't make it a marriage. Twizzlers make me happy, but that doesn't make it a marriage. And I could be committed to my Twizzlers, but wouldn't seem to be grounds for a marriage either. Indeed, I have several female friends that I love, enjoy being around, and have a commitment to be the best to them that I can, but none of those things equate to a marriage. [Homosexual activists take note here: if you want to make a case for homosexual marriage that rises above pure arbitrariness then you're going to have to ground it in something above love, happiness, and commitment.]

Thus we come to what marriage is all about: God. You know, that big guy upstairs who created, designed, and sustains everything that exists. In marriage there is a bond between two people which takes place that only God can take apart. Once upon a time man was split into two, and when he took on a wife, he became whole again. It's like the awesome story of two twins being born, and then a pendant is split into two and each given a half. The twins are then separated until the day they meet again and open up some secret temple full of awesomeness by rejoining the two halves of their pendant.

Of course, seeing as that I have not yet found my long-lost twin or a wife, I cannot speak on what that awesomeness might be; but I am rather sure that it's an awesomeness that should never, or rather cannot, be destroyed by falling out of love or happiness.

This is not to say that marriage should not include happiness or love, but that those things seem to be something that have to be worked towards once grounded in the commitment placed in God's covenant. Of course this might explain what led you to cheat to begin with. You've been lied to, as we all have. We've come to believe that love and happiness are just supposed to happen and continue off into the sunset, but unless you happen to be God, then such things will never come naturally for creatures such as us. What will come naturally is the tendency and desire to find that happiness anywhere we can. I'm sure you have your fair share to choose from as a source of happiness, but may I suggest that there's only one correct choice to make.

Understandably,
A man after your own heart.

The Physics of Crapology

Crapology is a highly complex science that deals with the relationship of life to crapiness and/or suckiness. I'm not even going to begin to try and explain the details to a layman such as yourself, so please be aware that this popularization of crapology is accurate and applicable to your life.

Crapology and its theories can be summed up as the following: life sucks. It does, and if it doesn't, it will. I'm with the group of crapologists who believe it should move from being a theory to a law, but there are a bunch of secular humanists who keep messing with the data to prevent that from happening. They keep popping up out of nowhere and declaring that life may suck now, but we have the power to turn the world into an everlasting utopia. This contradicts all reliable data we currently have on crappiness. Happiness, as it turns out, is indirectly proportional to the influential degree of men trying to destroy crappiness by their own hand.

But I digress, let me give an example of how crappiness works in the real world. Earlier tonight I was eating in a restaurant with my grandfather who has lost his mind. It's still there on some levels, but he has to be treated and talked to like a three year old. That sucks! When I'm with my grandparents and I see how much he clings to his wife for comfort and care all I can think about is, "man, I hope he dies before she does." That, my friends (and enemies), is just crap. Having any hopes about a member of your family dying can only be true in a world that sucks.

This isn't to say life is as sucky as it could be. Life can be pretty good at times. I remember a couple months ago when I was driving down my street and a squirrel ran out in front of my car and decided to play a game of chicken. "My, isn't that little guy cute," I thought as I slowed down feeling a small sense of happiness swell up within me. And then, just as all of life's crappiness was slowly losing power by the growing happiness within me--BAM--this giant hawk comes out of nowhere and grabs the squirrel to take him home for dinner. That sucks!

In crapological thinking there is the second law of crappiness which states that all usable happiness is slowly being overcome by crappiness. There will come a time when happiness has been replaced by a complete and utter crappiness that leaves no hope for any happiness at all. Look at your life: it might totally suck right now, it could just be alright, or it could totally rock. The problem is that there is always the potential for it to be smashed to bits and be replaced with maximum crappiness.

In fact, it's guaranteed.

Some time in the future you are going to die and dying is relatively high on the crappiness chart. It's only topped by things such as finding out Wendy's turned off their Frosty machine an hour before you got there. And so you're destined to die one day and possibly without one last Frosty. That totally sucks. Sure, you might be able to leave behind a small legacy either in name or your children's DNA, but all that too is forecast to die in the massive heat death of the universe. Let's face it--all of this sucks.

I should also mention that you suck as well. This is the problem with the secular humanists and their plans to save the world from crappiness by their own hand. Not only are we the victims of crappiness, but we are the source of it as well. Think of a vice you have that you just can't seem to get rid of. You know you shouldn't continue visiting it, but for whatever reason you can't walk away and do the right thing. Perhaps you conquer for a little while, but it's always back to haunt you a few days later. Plain and simple--it's because you suck.

So what's the solution? Well, that's for you to figure out. I've already found it, but I just want to leave you with another law of crapology to guide your search for happiness. Anything that contains crappiness cannot produce something of lasting happiness.

In order to combat your crappiness and decrease the levels of sucking you need something greater than both yourself and crappiness. Turning to a world that sucks for the answer is helpless. If you build yourself a house full of fast-food ball pits of fun it will eventually become overcome with crappiness. You can't fight the greater force of immanent crappiness by adding more ball pits of fun. Crappiness will merely grow exponentially until it overcomes your building spree.

The remedy to the crapological malady must come from a source that is Pure Awesomeness. It must have no potential to suck in any way shape or form. It must be something greater than yourself and satisfy all your longings for happiness in infinite and unbounded form. Love, for example, can bring happiness as love is not of this world. Love is perfect (unlike ball pits of fun) and so your source of perpetual happiness must be one of infinite and perfect love (among many other things). Otherwise, you'll find that crappiness will creep into your life once again, and usually in a more advanced stage.

In any event, I hope you have enjoyed this brief and highly simplified explanation of crapology and its effects on all of mankind. Life can be pretty good, but life can, and will, completely and utterly suck (it's mathematically certain), but there might just be hope if that theorized source of Pure Awesomeness does exist. In fact, it's been shown that if it does exist, and you ask it into your life it can have some surprising results on the potential for crappiness to take over your life. Not only will you be able to find happiness in the ball pits of fun that you never saw before but you'll find that all measurable forms of crappiness will slowly remove themselves from your life. Those sucky things you couldn't stop doing before will no longer have control over your life.

Awesomeness, not crappiness, will fuel your new life. It shall suck no more.

Capitalism vs Communism

Which way do we take our country? Do we stick to free-market principles and all the greedy folk who use the poor for their own profit? Or do we punch the greedy people in the face and resort to a classless society where the poor stand up and the rich fall down? Should we let men choose how to provide for themselves or create a society where all men have everything in life provided for them?

What's the difference between capitalism and communism? No really, is there anything different about them? Is one better than the other? Historically, I guess there is, but I'm asking in principle.

In reality, capitalism and communism are both merely different means to the same ends: having things. Capitalism allows men to create the things for themselves, and communism is a way to create the things for the use of all. Regardless of where the things end up, it's all about the things. The ends are the same, it's only on the means that we disagree. We all want the things, we just don't know the best way to get them.

Are the things really the ends for which society is born? Is the man who dies with the most toys really the man who wins? I would hope not.

What is the point of society? What does it work towards? What's the end goal? What is the sommum bonum?

That question appears to be of a moral nature and not one of business, but it's never addressed because we live in a postmodern culture that no longer believes in absolutes. And if there are no absolutes, then there can be no absolute ends, and therefore society cannot be based in anything but relative means working towards unknown ends. You can't examine the means without knowing the ends. How can you determine if capitalism or communism is better without knowing what you're trying to work for?

Perhaps we should step back and ask what the end goal is that society should work towards.

I'll give you a hint: it ain't the things.

Rocks of Ages Evolve for Me

The theory of evolution is a strange beast and I've battled with it for a long time. According to the evolutionary biologist if you don't believe in evolution then you're an idiot and perhaps evil, or maybe you just haven't evolved far enough and reached enlightenment via natural selection. Personally, I don't buy the story of man's history that evolution paints.

There are many ways to define evolution and on the most basic level it's impossible to deny. Things change everyday. Lives come and go, sediment settles and erodes, organisms adapt and become extinct, and fads foster and fade. Some days I'm totally awesome, others I'm only kind of awesome, and at times I'm not really awesome at all (but still more awesome than you). Change over time cannot be denied as the denial of change over time is a change that has taken place in time. Evolution in its simplest form is undeniable.

But that's not what we are talking about here. We're talking about the belief that all of biology and its vast diversity can be explained through naturalistic mechanisms. No supernatural input has taken place nor is it needed. The Designer is out of a job and His replacement is chance.

"No you stupid, evil, neanderthal," cries the pitchfork carrying evolutionist, "it's not chance it's the fine-tuning scale of natural selection that makes the magic happen!"

"Erm.. well..," I stumble in reply, "you see.. um.. that natural selection stuff just doesn't do it for me--and please quit poking me in the arm with your pitchfork."

"Never! Here, let me show you! I made this voodoo doll of a creationist several weeks ago and I torture it every night before I go to bed. Here, I'm going to tear off his arms and legs and toss him into this bucket of water. I shall call him Bob, you know, because he can't swim he can only bob in the water! Get it...? Oh, never mind! Look, now I'm going to take my Richard Dawkins creationist fighting action figure and place him into the water next to Bob. Who do you think is going to have a better chance of surviving? Bob the creationist, or Dawkins the evolutionist?"

"Well, I guess the creationist because Jesus could walk out on the water and save him and Dawkins would be left to fight a evolutionary advanced killer shark with lasers of death or something."

"See! This is why you creationists are so stupid. It's obviously Dawkins--he has the means to survive and can pass on his genetic code to the next generation. The creationist with no arms, no legs, and really, no brain, won't be as prosperous and will eventually die off! This idea can be extrapolated back in time, and all random changes in a creature go through this scale of fine-tuning. Creatures with beneficial mutations live on, and the others die off. Now if you'll pardon me I have to go home and do my daily devotional to Charles Darwin."

That's usually how my conversations go. Seriously. No hyperbole at all. I promise.

The opposite of design is chance, if a change in time wasn't instituted with a purpose (by design) then it came about by chance (with no design). Seeing as that evolution denies that design is necessary, then the only other option is chance. But the evolutionist realizes that chance will never bring about the complexity we see in nature and so they need a non-intelligent natural mechanism to run the show. This is natural selection and it weeds the bad "design" from the good.

Here's my problem. Natural selection is nothing in and of itself. Natural selection is in essence nothing. There is no physical law of natural selection, nor is there something working behind the scenes pulling the strings.

Suppose you had to babysit a creationist and you had to keep him entertained for millions of years. This, of course, is easy because creationists are stupid. You give him a giant bag of rocks and tell him to have fun. Stepping back you watch as the creationist reaches into the bag, looks at the rock, tries to eat it, hurts his mouth, and throws the rock away in pain. Shaking off the pain, the creationist reaches back into the bag, and does it all over again. After overseeing this cycle for a couple of hours you walk off and go about your normal life.

Several millions of years later you look at your watch and realize that the creationists parents will be back at any moment and quickly return to make sure he's still okay. Back on the scene you find a giant column of rocks towering hundreds of feet into the sky and the dumb creationist in the middle of trying to eat his current rock just before tossing aside in hunger. Mystified you call in your friendly neighborhood scientist to explain the pillar of rocks and how it got there.

It's quite simple he tells you. It's natural selection. The first rock just happened to land in such and such a fashion and then, who knows how much later, another rock just happened to land on top of the prior rock in a way that it started building the tower and so on and so forth. Natural selection dictates that the rocks which land are more apt to "survive" on the previous rock, and those that are not quickly "die" or fall off.

This is when the parents return and the creationist runs to them and brags about how he has been building them a rock tower while they've been gone. Happy for their gift and seeing the added company they ask the scientist to stay for some of their infamous cooking by chance, but the scientist quickly, though politely, excuses himself.

As far as see it, natural selection doesn't help avoid the impossibility of chance bringing about the complexity of my body. There still needs to be a designer. This is because natural selection is a tautology. It merely tells us that the rocks which land in a way to build the tower will be the ones that build the tower--the rest will find their resting place elsewhere. But of course this is true. If something is, then it isn't how it would be if it was not. Can anyone tell me how natural selection is adding anything to the equation? Chance is still the deciding factor as chance plus nothing is still chance and I don't consider myself a betting man.

Is it possible that the towering pile of rocks you came to discover came about by chance and not design? Sure, I guess it is possible. But just because something is possible doesn't mean that it's actual or even probable. It is possible for a bomb to go off in an a printing press and for the ink and paper to arrange itself into a novel, but that doesn't mean that any sane person should believe that it actual occurred. I'm sure that we could even come up with computer programs and charts showing how all the paper fell this way and that way, and how the ink splattered on this and then fell on that which bounced on to that, and so on and so forth. Yet, the fact remains it's so improbable that I doubt anyone would actually believe in it unless they had prior convictions placed in the idea.

But don't mind me. I'm just a evil and under-developed creationist moron with too many rocks in his head.

Beware Intellectuals

I was flipping through Paul Johnson's book Intellectuals again before I let a friend borrow it and the last paragraph resonated within me when placed in the context of what America is currently fighting against. Our country has been taken out of the hands of the people, and placed into the hands of others who claim to know what is best for us. Call me crazy, but I still believe that I know what is best for me, not another man called an intellectual.

Trust the intellectuals and you will soon find that the pretty promises backed up by college degrees and scientific studies will only lead you to the chopping block to make way for another man's utopia. Keep a close eye on this administration, for they are the dreamers, and we are the chaff which must be cleared away to build their heavenly home.

At the closing of his book, a book dedicated to showing how the elites who shaped culture were the most dangerous of men, Johnson concludes:

I think I detect today a certain public scepticism when intellectuals stand up to preach to us, a growing tendency among ordinary people to dispute the right of academics, writers and philosophers, eminent though they may be, to tell us how to behave and conduct our affairs. The belief seems to be spreading that intellectuals are no wiser as mentors, or worthier as exemplars, than the witch doctors or priests of old. I share that scepticism. A dozen people picked at random on the street are at least as likely to offer sensible views on moral and political matters as a cross-section of the intelligentsia. But I would go further. One of the principal lessons of our tragic century, which has seen so many millions of innocent lives sacrificed in schemes to improve the lot of humanity, is--beware intellectuals. Not merely should they be kept well away from the levers of power, they should also be objects of particular suspicion when they seek to offer collective advice. Beware committees, conferences and leagues of intellectuals. Distrust public statements issued from their serried ranks. Discount their verdicts on political leaders and important events. For intellectuals, far from being highly individualistic and non-conformist people, follow certain regular patters of behavior. Taken as a group, they are often ultra-conformists within the circles formed by those whose approval they seek and value. That is what makes them, en masse, so dangerous, for it enables them to create climates of opinion and prevailing orthodoxies, which themselves often generate irrational and destructive courses of action. Above all, we must at all times remember what intellectuals habitually forget: that people matter more than concepts and must come first. The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas.

Spiritual Chaos Theory

What's up with the stance of being spiritual, but not being into any organized religion? What's the other option? Unorganized religion? I'm not so sure about that, but I do enjoy unorganized cooking. Like, I'm a hungry person, but I don't believe in any of that organized cooking stuff. Culinary creeds are for fools; I prefer to just throw a bunch of random foods into a pot, cook it to well done, and attempt to drink the results through a straw. I usually serve the leftovers at my unorganized game night where we just dump five different board games on the table and each play our own game with its own rules at the same time. Sometimes I don't even tell people where the game night will be and we all just show up at random locations and play a game without any rules. It's a lot of fun.

But seriously (erm semi-seriously?), what is organized religion? Well, I guess it's religion with rules. You know what else has rules?

Reality.

If you run a red light you will get a ticket. If you heat copper it will expand. If you drink ten gallons of milk in one sitting you will die (but you will die a legend!). I can't see anyone saying, "I believe in reality, but I don't believe in any of that organized and agreed upon reality crap; I live according to my own reality!" Well, I guess there are people like that, but then they ask where the bathroom is and contradict everything they believe in. Nature (i.e. reality) calls!

Suppose I came across this book, and I was all like, "woah, this book sure claims to say a lot about this fellow named God!" And then I started taking all its propositional truth claims and tried my best to place them into a coherent system of thought and other people did too, and then we came across each other and said, "hey, we so totally believe the same thing!" So we began to get together and talk about the book and invite others to learn about it. Sometimes we would disagree and have to hash out our differences, but other times we would agree and be all like, "fo' sho', yo!" Now, would anything be wrong with this? Is there something wrong with it just because it's organized, that is, placed into an objective systematic whole?

I guess some groups might get a little weird. One group leader might claim to have infallible knowledge of the universe and some might buy into it. A couple weeks later and they are drinking poisoned vodka in the name of the potato god (no offense to any potato gods who might be reading this), but I don't see how that is a mark against organization, rather it's a mark against people being, well, crazy.

Another group might get together and the leader starts to teach of this great holy book that only he can understand and he begins to delegate responsibilities to his followers. They unquestionably believe him, start doing his will, and then a couple years later all of the believers are sharing a room at the Motel 6 while he retires with his own tropical island. Was it organized, yea, I guess, but it seems to me that it's more of an argument against, well, jerks.

We could go on all day and the property of being organized wouldn't be touched.

Personally, I consider myself a spiritual person, but I believe in religion that is true. If someone has a religious claim and it corresponds to reality then sign me up for it. If it just so happens that they have a location where they meet on a regular basis to talk about this religious truth, then that's even better. I might even bring some of my unorganized cooking to feed the masses. I'll be like that Jesus guy with fish and bread, just with less God and more sin.

How to Properly Brainwash Your Children

I can't wait to have children one day so I can brainwash them into believing everything that I do. After all, it's the only reason people believe in Christianity to begin with. It all has to do with where one was born and what they were taught to believe. It's like pants. The only reason I wear pants today is because I was raised to believe that one should wear pants.

Or not...

Why do I wear pants? Because I don't want to be punched in the face for walking around without any pants on. Why do I believe in Christianity? Because I don't want to be punched in the face by reality for trying to live according to some other nonsense. Christianity is true, and therefore I believe in it. If it's not true, then there is no reason to believe in it. Its worth is nothing, and let's move on to the next big thing. I guess we could make a religion out of American Idol or something. We'll worship whomever wins for a year, and then move on once another singer is deemed worthy of our worship.

I remember when I was growing up and I tried to pick up some scissors and my parents were all like "oh, hell no" and told me to put them down. Yea, they did that because scissors are dangerous and they wanted to teach me to be careful with sharp objects until I was mature enough for them (which might be soon). They were teaching me to live according to how reality really is. They didn't let me play with the scissors and allow me to decide for myself if they were dangerous or not.

All of this applies to Christianity. If we want to properly brainwash our children we need to teach them not only that Jesus loves them because the Bible tells us so, but the reasons and foundation for why Jesus is God, why God exists, and why they can trust the Bible to begin with. It's not merely our personal belief that Christianity is true, just like my parents didn't only personally believe the scissors were dangerous. The scissors are sharp, and Christianity is true, and therefore we should act and raise our children accordingly.

Passing on a faith without reason is teaching a faith in faith--a meaningless faith. It would be like having hope in hope or being in love with love. What is true faith? Faith in Christ--the Incarnation of the living God. The Christ who was born, crucified, and raised from the grave in space, time, and history. Faith is only worth the objective reality of the object it's placed in.

Fail to brainwash our children properly and they will end up in college and be told a lot of nonsense by atheists who will demolish their faith in faith and our children will buy into a lie and become a bunch of silly atheists as well. Our brainwashing must be stronger than the atheists, and the only way we are going to do this is if we instill in our children a faith based in reason, evidence, and reality. Not a faith in faith, not a faith based in emotion, not a faith coming from a pragmatic wager, nor a faith springing from an existential crises--only a faith based in the objective reality of the God who is there will suffice for our children.

If we don't brainwash our children first, then the culture, colleges, and celebrities will.

It's our choice.

Let's put on some pants and thump some Bibles and brains.

Rabid Monkeys For Congress!

I think I have a solution to fixing our problems with a runaway Congress. Replace them with rabid monkeys. All of them. Not only would this make watching C-Span absolutely awesome, but we wouldn't have to worry about losing our voice to a small group of people tossing away our freedom and money for the sake of personal gain.

I know, I know. How is this going to work you might ask. It's simple, really.

The next time an election rolls around everyone will vote for rabid monkeys to fill the seats. The Constitution doesn't say anything about monkeys not being allowed to be part of the House or Senate. It only says persons, and monkeys are people too, dammit. You've seen them dance while wearing those cool fez hats. It's totally rad. Therefore, they're people. Period.

Of course to fill the House you have to be at least 25 years of age and for Senate you need to be 30, but that is according to the human lifespan. Monkeys would be long dead before that, and you can't discriminate according to lifespan--or rabies. (That's just wrong. There should be a hate crime law or something against that.) So if the average human lives to be 80 and if the average monkey lives to be 25 then a monkey must be at least eight years old for the House or ten for the Senate (I rounded up just for good measure).

When it comes to bringing up new bills we shall give each monkey a typewriter. According to the infinite monkey theorem a monkey pounding away at a typewriter will eventually produce any randomly selected text so it's probabilistically certain that actual legible bills will be produced. Even if the theorem turns out to be false then the nonsense produced will be infinitely better than the current bills being debated. Every night the rabid monkeys shall bang away at the keys screaming like mad monkeys ('cause they're rabid and stuff) and the results will be posted online.

If enough people like the bill then it can be voted on by sending in bananas labeled with "aye" and "nay." The bananas will then be sorted by computer according to vote and district and placed into piles respectively. The rabid monkey representative will then choose the pile of bananas that is larger and the bill would be given to the president to sign if it passes.

Of course there is also the issue of how rabid monkeys are to deal with other nations, treason, and whatnot, but in that case we just send the party in question the rabid monkeys themselves, and after several hours alone no one will dare to mess with us again. Rabid monkeys are the ultimate negotiating tool, as you always get your way. Other nations will be sending us gifts in fear of having personal visits from Congress show up at their door to talk things out.

I think that about sums everything up and should solve all of our problems. And even if it doesn't could it make things any worse? Could it? No, I didn't think so.

Unless Congress escaped into the streets or something--but that's what our guns are for.

Fort Hood & the Battle of Beliefs

Nobody wants to admit it and the media is trying their best to sacrifice history at the altar of political correctness. The tale woven from the moment the Fort Hood killings took place was that the party responsible was a victim of a broken system. The truth, however, is that the killer was acting rationally and logically from his religious beliefs.

The killer was a Muslim who believed America was threatening Islam and he had to act out in self-defense. He was committed to giving his life for Allah to further the goal of bringing the world under the rule of Sharia Law. It's not my interest to argue if the man's actions were consistent with Islamic teaching (although I believe that they were). Regardless of how his actions reflected Islamic orthodoxy the point is that the man was acting consistently with his system of beliefs.

Beliefs are the strings of the web that make up our worldview. Beliefs are what we hold to be true, and necessarily lead to how we live our lives. Modern science was born from the belief that the world was created by God and therefore rational and capable of being understood. America was founded on the creed that all men were equal because they were created by God. The shooter at Fort Hood acted out on the belief that Muhammad had called him to wage war against the unbeliever.

I am (obviously) very opinionated. I love to share, listen, and debate beliefs with others. It's what I live for and I think it's what we were all created for. I believe that we were all created to come to find truth--the Truth that embodies itself in the Person of Jesus Christ-- and therefore (watch how this works now), I voice my opinion and attempt to share what I believe with others. My belief about the world naturally leads to how I live.

How do people react to my opinion? They quickly tell me that they are a "live and let live" kind of person. They have their beliefs, others have their own, and that's the end of it. Time to move on and get back to living life and quit worrying about what someone else happens to believe.

If you're sharp enough you can pick up on the slight of hand taking place here.

Do you see it?

The person who argues that we should live and let live when it comes to beliefs is acting out of that belief and forcing it upon everyone else. They are not living and letting live, they are saying live and let live according to how I view the world--a world where we somehow all live in a vacuum from our beliefs. But, that just isn't possible. Even the nihilist has a creed--a credo of holding to no creeds.

Perhaps if we were all islands such a philosophy could work, but the truth is that no man is an island. How we live affects everyone else around us, and how we live follows from what we believe about the world. Hold the wrong belief and you could end up slaughtering millions of people. Whether it's the infidel in the name of Allah, the Jews in the name of social improvement, or the unborn in the name of choice, the path is the same. Beliefs about the nature of reality birth action.

I challenge you to examine your beliefs and constantly attempt to conform them to the nature of reality. Reality is harsh and unforgiving. It doesn't matter how strong your beliefs are about the non-existence of gravity, walk off a cliff and you will fall to your death. Reality has shown us once again at Fort Hood that if you ignore the battle of beliefs, then you are damning the world to live and let die.

This is the Story of Love and of Living

I've always liked this because it's about me. Perhaps you as well.

The Metaphysical Naturalist Meets His Maker

Metaphysical naturalism is the belief that nature is all that exists. For the naturalist the ontology of man can be summed up on a socio-biological level. In the words of evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, "DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music." Man, according to Dawkins, is a slave to his DNA and has no actual choice in his actions. There is no room for moral or rational deliberation, only an endless string of materialistic cause and effect. Man is a robot acting to a coding written by an irrational and immoral universe.

In this short film Brian Godawa reveals the experiential problem with such a view of reality. A college professor is forced to look his theory in the face and try to find a reason why he should not be murdered after being captured by a serial killer. After all, arguing that another man (a machine) should not act a certain way is like trying to tell the wind it should not blow. The wind does not blow through choice, it merely reacts to other physical forces. The wind, like us, neither knows nor cares.

We, however, do know and care. Quite a bit, actually. Perhaps because we were created by God.

Too bad for this guy.

Sex Gone Wild

Planned Parenthood has a mission. They want to remove every barrier that stands between us and a laissez faire culture of sexual freedom. Planned Parenthood desires to completely divorce sex from every moral, religious, and biological principle you can think of. This includes the government having the ability to grant your child the right to have sex.

Sexual Rights: an IPPF declaration, presents itself under the slogan "from choice, a world of possibilities." Or in other words, anything that I can do with my body sexually should be allowed without restraint. Sex is an inalienable right, with no respect to cultural norms or the moral law. This proposed new world "must take steps to promote the modification of social and cultural practices based on stereotyped roles of women or men or on the idea of superiority or inferiority of sexes, genders or gender expressions" (p. 16; hereafter just the page number).

Why?

Because "human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights" (16). Not granted by God, mind you, but the State. These rights "are an evolving set of entitlements" (32) and therefore apply to children in relation to the "capacity of the child" (16). These rights include "sexual and reproductive health, without formal or informal barriers such as marriage qualifications, conditions related to HIV status, or discriminatory gender norms, stereotypes and prejudices that exclude or restrict the participation of persons based on ideas of gender and sexual propriety" (17).

Therefore, the State shall work to make sex outside of marriage, sexual relations with HIV, and any other currently frowned upon sexual practice as no longer taboo. If I think it's morally wrong for my wife to have sex with another man, or even my fifteen year old son to have sex with his soccer coach then I am restricting their sexual freedom. Society is changing and evolving and if the State deems that my son has the capacity to have sexual freedom, then even as his father it is not my place to tell him to do otherwise. If I wanted to dictate what my daughter could and could not wear this would be a violation of her right to express her "identity or personhood through speech, deportment, dress, bodily characteristics, [and] choice of name" (19). It would be illegal and morally wrong for me to tell my daughter to watch her tongue, restrict her from having breast implants, or preventing a name change from Cristina to Christopher. Indeed, we as a society must work to allow all persons everywhere the right to live their sexual "dreams and fantasies free from fear, shame, guilt, false beliefs and other impediments to the free expression of their desires, with full regard for the rights of others" (19).

These dreams, fantasies, and expressions are not to be restricted by any "dominant cultural beliefs or political ideology, or discriminatory notions of public order, public morality, public health or public security" (19). If I wanted to have sex in public then it would be a violation of my sexual rights to have any laws or picketing against it. Planned Parenthood wishes to make it legal and normative for humanity to partake in public sex, nudity, and masturbation.

This libido liberator wants to separate our sexuality from nature itself. If I one day decide that I want to be a woman, then I can do so on a whim and society has to accept that change in my personal autonomy. "All persons have the right to be recognized before the law and to sexual freedom, which encompasses the opportunity for individuals to have control and decide freely on matters related to sexuality" and this includes "self-defined gender identity" (18). Once the government changes all of my paperwork I am then, in the State's eyes, a woman. This would mean that I would no longer be changing or showering in the men's locker room.

This list of principles and their implications go on and on. Health insurance could not be denied to anyone regardless of their sexual practices; humanity could not be burdened with having their sexual freedom condemned to a pregnancy, spouse, or family; sexual predators could not be denied jobs because of their past; and parents could have no say in their child's sex education and experimentation.

Sex would be before all. The Alpha and Omega. The organism (or should I say orgasm) through which we live, move, and have our being.

This is Planned Parenthood's attempt of salvation through sex. Man is a religious creature by nature and he demands something to worship. He searches the landscape constantly for the means to free him from the despair that stalks him. Sex is not that savior, and unconstrained it will lead to the death of man. The Christian worldview realizes this. We're not prudes we just see sex as sacred--like a diamond behind glass. There are barriers and constraints that must be placed upon it to keep it safe. And really, it keeps sex from becoming mild. In a way, it keeps sex wild.

I would urge you to find the true Savior and Liberator Jesus Christ. Don't look to me, or a religion to find Him in. Go to Him directly and listen to Him through His Word--the Bible. The world we live in is going to come crumbling down and it's going to happen quickly if this manifesto ever gains footing in America.

Don't get caught with your pants down when it does.

Two-Thousand Pages of Tyranny

The latest bill on healthcare is two-thousand pages.

Two-thousand pages.

Two.

Thousand.

Pages.

I have right now in my hand a copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The first declares the reasons for why we separated from Great Britain, and the second provides the framework for how the federal government would relate to the people. Do you know how many pages both of these documents are? Twenty seven.

Twenty seven!

See this Bible here?



That's my favorite Bible. It's The Apologetics Study Bible. It doesn't mean to apologize for the Bible and to banish it from society like many liberals would like for me to do. Apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia, which means to present a defense. When you give your apologia you are giving your reasons for your faith. Why do I believe in Christianity? Why, I believe in it for reasons X, Y, and Z.

This Bible contains over 130 articles on every topic you can think of and how it relates to Christianity. Everything from the existence of God, to a Biblical view of human sexuality, to the basics of the laws of logic. In addition to that it has responses to cults twisting the meaning of Scripture, biographies on major Christian apologists, charts, graphs, maps, commentary, room to take notes, and everything else you can think of. Oh, and that's not including the Bible itself. You know, the sixty-six books through which God decided to tell man everything that he needed to know about life, the universe, and everything.

Do you know how many pages it is?

Two-thousand pages!

It's taken Nancy Pelosi the same amount of space to formulate something about healthcare that it's taken God and every major living Christian apologist to reveal the origin, meaning, morality, and destiny of every human that has ever lived.

Well... I guess that's not fair. Those Bibles do have really tiny print. So I'll double it to four-thousand pages. Now it has only taken Pelosi half as long as God and just over 70 times longer than the founders.

Alright, so that's the first half of the blog title, what about the second? Long books aren't tyranny after all.

What does liberty mean? I think a fair definition is a state of affairs where I get to make decisions for my own well-being. That would mean tyranny would be the opposite--someone else makes the decisions for my own well-being without my personal consent.

However, we live in a democracy and I don't get to always have my way. The will of the people gets the go ahead through those who represent us. But I still get a platform to make my personal case (my apologia if you will) and elect individuals who will look out for my interests and listen to what I have to say.

I think we would all agree that to make a respectable case for something you would have to understand the issue at hand. If I want to make a case for Christianity against position X then it would only be fair that I understand both Christianity and position X to fairly represent my opposition.

This is what I wanted to do when all this healthcare business got underway. I wanted to sit down and read it for myself. I heard one side screaming about death panels or something and the opposition demanded that they quit lying about the panels of death. "Well, forget about the he said, she said," I thought, "let's get to the heart of the matter."

So I sat down at my computer, downloaded the document, and began to read it. That's when my brain said, "why, why do you hate me so?" I couldn't understand a damn word of it. Not only that, but it referenced a hundred other documents that didn't make any sense at all. Against the cries of agony emanating from my brain I pushed onward, but then my computer gave out and told me there was no way in hell it could run all these PDF files at once and demanded I go back to watching Charlie the Unicorn on YouTube. Not only would it be easier on my computer, but my brain could actually comprehend it as well.

Seriously, sit down and try to read the healthcare bill. I'm not a genius, nor am I an idiot, but I believe my reading comprehension skills are on par with the average American. I cannot deduce anything about the bill besides maybe that Nancy Pelosi promises that she loves me and wants to be my second mother.

Have you read the documents that founded this nation? You might need to reference a dictionary from the time, but it's nothing that a normal person can't understand.

And you know, if the average American cannot understand it, then it's not written for the people--it's written for a group of dictators who want to push something down your throat without you being able to voice your opinion on it.

And that, my friends, is tyranny. Two-thousand pages of it.

I do not care if you are for socialized healthcare or not, it's something we all need to be concerned about. If you want homosexuality to be recognized by the government, if you want abortion to be allowed without restriction, if you want to be able to legally fling poo at Christians, then you go about doing it through the will of the people. What you do not do is try to shove your power trips through the system and overthrow our republic.

I'd Kill For Better Looking Skin

We can now add one more bullet to the long list of reasons for abortion: abortions must remain a legal right because it allows us to be beautiful. That's right. Abortions are necessary so we can have better looking skin. Neocutis has used the skin tissue from an aborted baby to develop a new line of lotion. Don't worry about the moral aspect--it was only a "one-time medical termination." Only one child had to lose their life for the rest of us to add to our arsenal against wrinkles. After all, wouldn't you kill one person for the betterment of millions? Sometimes certain people just have to die so we can bring in the new utopian dream.

Alright, fine, the child wasn't aborted for the purpose of using its tissue in a skin cream. It was donated after the fact, but the logic behind the reasoning can still be seen creeping behind their phrasing. It was only a one-time event out of the millions of babies that are born a year and it will have lasting results. Besides, "no additional fetal biopsies will ever be required."

For now, at least--in this field.

Do you see how we can play with words to make a case for any ideal we want to justify? It's not murdering a child, it's not even an abortion, it's a one-time medical termination. Hell, why not just make that the new norm to refer to an abortion. Are you going to choose to have that one-time medical termination? Are you pro-one time medical termination, or are you anti-one time medical termination? It adds a nice sound to it all. "For a mere one-time medical termination you can have better looking skin." "Great! I'll take three."

Where do the perverted definitions and rationalizations stop?

They don't stop.

Remember that one time you wanted to do that one thing that you knew you really shouldn't do. Remember how your brain allowed you to rationalize a reason to do it anyway? Yea, I have that problem too.

What's the safeguard against these abhorrent justifications? Where do we turn? The only answer I can think of has become politically incorrect and society seems to be turning to the government to fix its problems. Hopefully history proves itself wrong before we move from killing one person for better looking skin to killing millions for some other dream.

But hey, at least we'll look good doing it.

Come What May

A call came the other night. An acquaintance of mine who I view very much as a mentor was having a breakdown. A feeling of absolute despair had been creeping up over them for the last couple months and it threatened to eat them alive. While not suicidal, they voiced very strongly that they were terrified of where the feeling might lead them. They were looking to me for peace of mind.

I quickly ran outside with my cell phone to where I could have ample pacing room and told God that if he ever thought it might be fun to talk through me that now would be pretty good timing.

I'm not sure if He humored the request.

I guess the conversation went well. Their voice and capability to talk dramatically changed for the better over the hour. At the end they thanked me, I told them to call back anytime, and I offered the rest of the story up to God. Come what may.

Come what may.

For me the statement is one of great comfort or of great despair.

Either there is a God and life, the universe, and everything is in His hands; or there is no God and life, the universe, and everything is destined to ultimately die in heat death after being bounced around by impersonal forces and random chance.

Come what may.

The context changes everything.

Nothing haunts man more than the reality of death, which logically leads into purpose and meaning. What's it all for, and why does any of it matter? Is there a difference if I choose to end my life now, or if I die naturally at the age of 80? If there is no God, then there is no difference. If the entire purpose of man is to wiggle along for as long as he can before he dies, then whatever we do in this life--whether we model our life after Hitler or Mother Teresa--is completely the same. It all amounts to nothing, and no life lived is better than another. Absolute obliteration will be the outcome of man's pursuits regardless of the paths chosen.

It's my contention that only God, and specifically the Christian God, provides man a worldview in which he can live. Only Christianity satisfactorily answers man's deepest questions on the the issues of origins, meaning, morality, and destiny; only Christ can deliver the fulfillment that man craves--He alone is the perpetual novelty.

When I look at atheism it only stares back at me with a performance of dancers and actors without a backdrop. The show of life ends in an anticlimactic fashion. There is no resolution, no cheering, and no standing ovation. The answer for the atheist in times of confusion is ultimately the silence of an indifferent universe.

I dare not speak for you though, you'll have to evaluate your own life and its purpose. If you can find lasting happiness and meaning in a finite and fleeting world, then you're a much bigger dreamer of dreams than I.

Poetic Advice

so

if you want to change society
if you want to change the world
if you want to change a man
and see sanctity unfurled

then

never try to change the world
never try to change society
never try to change a man
but in lieu your own propriety

and

all the difference in society
all the difference in a man
all the difference in the world
will have only just began

but

society has no power
the world only corporal clod
and man can only reflect
such change glistened but from God

†

Kicking Grandma in the Face

A few months ago buses began rolling ads through the streets of London arguing that people should be good for goodness sake, forget about that God guy. Now the ads are coming to New York City with the slogan, "A million New Yorkers are good without God -- Are you?"

Am I? Nope.

Suppose I just got off the subway and I saw someone's grandmother attempting to cross the street after buying groceries. Should I help her across the street or roundhouse kick her to the face and steal her groceries? Which would be the correct moral option here?

Now think about this for a second. We have two actions to choose from. We shall call roundhouse kicking her to the face A for Awesome, and helping her across the street B for Boring. It's completely possible for me to choose either one. Which is morally right though? A or B?

What's the standard that I'm going to appeal to figure out which one is good? Where's the moral measuring device?

Is it the actions themselves? Morality refers to what ought to be. The actions are merely what could take place. You cannot infer whether something is good or bad by merely observing what took place. Nature is what takes place and nature has no moral properties. We need something beyond what is or might be.

Suppose I refer to myself. Morality is how I personally feel about A and B. Suppose I saw grandma buy a Klondike Bar, and, you know, what would I do for a Klondike Bar? Well, I'd friggin' roundhouse kick grandma to the face, that's what. It's morally good for me to choose A because that's how I feel about it.

I guess, then, Hitler was just as morally good as Mother Teresa. The same goes with Martin Luther King and the KKK. They merely had different personal feelings on humanity and civil rights. Erm.. but that can't be right. We need something beyond nature and personal opinion.

Ah, the culture, it must be the culture. Whatever the culture at the time decides is morally right. Grandma seems like a nice lady, and I think there's some law somewhere saying we shouldn't roundhouse kick nice ladies in the face, so that must be the right option.

But what if there was some society somewhere that decided once you became a grandmother instead of birthday presents everyone would roundhouse kick you in the face? If we came across it how could we attempt to tell them that they should only do that if grandma was about to eat the last Klondike Bar? We couldn't do anything about it! The society currently held that A was morally right and thus any attempts to reform culture is arguing against the status quo and therefore morally wrong. So unless Martin Luther King and homosexual activists are necessarily morally wrong, then we also need something beyond society.

What could be beyond the natural world, myself, and society that sets the standard for what's right and wrong? I guess for the atheists it would be nothing. And therefore, for them, there is no grounding for what's right and what's wrong.

My suggestion, then, is to remove the moral category from their ads until they find some basis for morality without God. The new ad sans the ethical dimension reads, "A million New Yorkers are without God--Are you?"

Am I? Nope.

How good of them to advertise for God like that. The ACLU better crack down before they go about offending someone.

Firing Blanks with Gun Control

Apparently there's a problem with guns in America. Or at least that's what a bunch of people keep screaming about. If we can make laws about smoking in restaurants then why not restrict being allowed to carry a gun? After all, smoking slowly kills a person over the course of their life whereas guns have the potential to end a life instantly. If we are going to outlaw smoking for health reasons, then surely guns should follow as well.

It's a dumb argument. Guns aren't killing people, people are killing people. If guns are outlawed then criminals are still going to have guns and be a lot more confident when it comes time to do their dirty work.

That's not the point, though. At least, that's not my point.

Legislation against guns completely misses the mark. If I were to decide to wake up tomorrow morning and go on a rampage with a gun it wouldn't be the guns fault, it wouldn't be my body's fault, nor would it be my trigger finger's fault--it would be my fault.

This is why the founders of this nation made clear that without religion and morality being taught the nation would never be successful. This was for two reasons. First, if there is no God, then there is really no such thing as morality. Morality would be left in the eye of the beholder. And second, they believed that man had a natural proclivity towards sin.

Fast forwards a couple hundred years and we are within a culture pushing God and religion out of the public square. As a result there is no such thing as morality and man is thought to not require salvation from above. The paradigm shift has lead us to what we see today. A culture which will try its best to not call evil out for what it is, while begging for the government to save them from their obvious moral malady. A society where we can walk from one class and argue that good and evil do not exist, and then (ironically) decry in another those who actually call out evil in all its forms. But then this community goes home and the contradiction can be held no longer. Televisions are turned on, newspapers are opened, and something in the heart cries out that things are not how they should be. There really might be such a thing as evil in the world. But that couldn't be from the hearts of men who are basically good. No, it must instead be from our society, from the system. Fix the society, and fix the problems. Ergo, we get ideas like gun control.

Yet, control is not the answer and guns are not the problem. I am the problem. As are you. And the Safety is not of this world.

Applying for a Nobel Peace Prize

Dear Nobel Peace Prize decision making people,

As you may or may not know there is a small battle being waged on the validity of the law of non-contradiction. You know, the law which says that if something is, then it cannot also not be. I cannot exist and not exist at the same time, that would be rather impossible. Not everyone agrees, though. Some people say that attempting to prove the law of non-contradiction is circular logic seeing that one must already have the law of non-contradiction in place if they wish to affirm it. After all, if the conclusion is that the law of non-contradiction is true, then one must have already used the law itself to prove that the law is not false as well. It's bad argumentation to presuppose what you wish to prove.

Way back in history days, as I'm sure you're aware, sometime during the tenth century A.D. a Muslim philosopher named Avicenna came on the scene and made a rather violent argument for the law. He proposed if a philosopher wanted to deny the law of non-contradiction they should be beaten and burned until they admitted that being beaten and burned is not the same as not being beaten and burned.

This is obviously a terrible way to prove the law of non-contradiction, and I'm going to make a case for a better way.

I guess you might be asking what the law of non-contradiction has to do with your Nobel Prizes for peace, physics, medicine and the rest, but I think after a few moments of deliberation it becomes obvious. If you wish to award so-and-so the award for doing such-and-such then it can't also be true that they didn't do such-and such. Surely you can see how you need the law to grant your awards. If I can save the Nobel Prize then I deserve one myself. And further it should be a Peace Prize seeing as that I am saving people everywhere from being beaten and burned until they deny that they are also not being beaten and burned.

Therefore, I am demanding my Nobel Peace Prize for the dilemma this puts you in. If you wish to say that I have proven the law of non-contradiction then you owe me the award for saving both the victims of Avicenna and the Nobel Prize itself. Yet, if you wish to deny that I have proven the law of non-contradiction then it must also be true that I have proven the law (seeing that you need to use the law to deny that I have!). Whatever your response I have earned the prize.

I honestly see no way for you to escape this. You might say that you already believe in the law of non-contradiction, but this is obviously not true as you gave a Nobel Prize to President Obama for doing nothing at all. You must also believe that he has actually done something while seeing that he has done nothing. There is no law of non-contradiction to be found in your reasoning.

I expect my award and million dollars in 6-8 weeks.

Thank you,
CB Riggs

Straightening Out Obama's Human Rights Campaign Speech

This is an area I enter into with much fear and trembling. Not because I believe that I am wrong, but because this is an issue that our "tolerant" society has absolutely no tolerance for. Two years ago, a time when all the cool kids were using MySpace, I posted a short two sentence bulletin informing all my friends that the opportunity to vote on the Florida Marriage Amendment was coming up. That is all I said and nothing more. The next thing I knew some of my fellow co-workers were calling up others and trying to get people to wage a war against me. Blogs were posted on MySpace saying some of the harshest things I have ever heard someone else say about me and all of this because I posted a short quip about an upcoming ballot. My advice is this. If you are offended or even angered about my position then may I suggest that you enter into civilized conversation with me about it. I am open to being shown that I am wrong, but the only way I'm going to be convinced of this is if I see actual reasons why.

Before I get to the blog proper let me reply to one small choice of words used to describe people like me: bigot and homophobe.

Bigotry is when someone holds to a position without justifiable support. They cling to their ideas and ideologies without reason, and they blast those who disagree with fiery rhetoric. I do not believe that is me, as I have my reasons. Whether they are justifiable is another question, but I would hope that in the least they hold meaning and content.

Homophobia is when someone is afraid of homosexuals. This is perhaps the most ridiculous response to being against gay marriage that I have ever heard of in my life. What it really equates to is "shut up." That, my friends, is bigotry. Just think about it. Take arachnophobia for example, the fear of spiders. Is a fear of spiders in any way related to thinking that spiders are morally wrong when they spin their web or crawl along your wall? No, it's merely being afraid of them. Someone could think that spinning webs is morally wrong or morally right, but that would have no effect on if they were afraid of them or not. If people out there are really afraid of homosexuals then the moral feelings on homosexual marriage is not in any way linked to it. And really, if I actually was afraid of homosexuals then I'd want them to be able to skip about in the open shamelessly. I wouldn't want a closet homosexual to sneak up on me, I'd rather them be walking around in rainbow shirts so I could hide in trash cans when I saw them coming. Finally, if I really am a homophobe, then you're a homophobe-phobe. Quit being such a homophobe-phobe.

Anyway, this is going to be in response to President Obama's speech at the Human Rights Campaign. Obviously his speech was not meant to be a formal argument for homosexuality, seeing as today nothing in politics is a formal argument for anything. However, hidden in his speech are different presuppositions and arguments that I wish to reply to. Obama is a master at sounding like he is saying a lot while actually saying nothing at all.

Standing against homosexual marriage is holding to outworn arguments and old attitudes.

This isn't something I would normally reply to, but I think it's how Obama deals with the opposition. When asked about abortion he told us that it's above his pay-grade. When referring to the Bible and homosexual marriage he argued that it wasn't clear. And now when referring to the arguments for being against homosexual marriage they are outworn and old. This is how to sidestep the issue, or in other words say that the opposition does not matter. Is the entity in the womb a human? Obama says it doesn't matter. What does the Bible say about homosexuality? Obama says it doesn't matter. What are the arguments for traditional marriage? Obama says they do not matter. What matters is his ideology. If I were a betting man I would bet that not only is Obama incapable of replying to pro-life, pro-Scripture, pro-marriage positions, but that he could not even begin to represent them.

Can you remember the last time we as a nation had a formal debate on the issues of abortion, Christianity, and homosexuality? I cannot. May I suggest that when the nation is divided on an issue that we all step up and demand the positions to be fleshed out and presented rationally? Why do we have to limit ourselves to politically empty speeches, bumper stickers, and news broadcasts of two people talking over one another? Are Americans not capable of listening to two well-informed speakers and then reaching a rational conclusion on the issue? Do we really have to rely on a select minority making laws and decisions for the rest of the country because they have some moral understanding that we do not?

Homosexual marriage is a civil right.

No one wants to be against a civil right, much like no one wants to be against freedom of choice. You want something to gain support you call it a civil right. You want to kill another person then you call your position pro-choice. A civil right is a right or freedom granted to all persons which cannot be denied. If I ran a country that guaranteed civil rights but then made a law that denied a civil right the only way to argue against it would be to appeal to something which transcends all society. If civil rights are defined by society, then they can be taken away by the same society. In short, civil rights presuppose God which is why the Declaration of Independence grounds them in the Creator. No God, no civil rights.

Now we must ask ourselves what is the role of the government when it comes to civil rights. Once again, according to the Declaration of Independence the role of the government is to secure these rights. When we keep something secure we keep it safe from harm. To secure something does not mean to create it, but to guard it.

Now, what is marriage? Think about this for a moment. What is the actual essence of marriage? What is it that changes about a relationship between two people when they get married? Is it love? No, as you can have love before a marriage. It is commitment? No, as you can be committed before a marriage. I have thought long and hard about this and to me it seems that the only real change that can occur between two people in marriage is if there is some change that comes from God. Every other factor can be in effect in a relationship with or without a marriage. Therefore, it seems that marriage is only meaningful if it comes from God. Without God we are merely using different words to describe a relationship that is fundamentally the same before and after the wedding.

So we have (1) civil rights are granted by God, (2) civil rights are upheld by the government ,and (3) for marriage to be substantively meaningful it must be a change initiated by God.

Can you begin to see how marriage must be, by definition, a religious institution that has nothing to do with the government? It also begins to emerge that if the government were to declare the marriage between a same-sex couple and a heterosexual couple as unequivocal that marriage really does become meaningless. Homosexual marriage is an assault on marriage. Of course, the government might say to itself, "hey, if people aren't getting married and having children then this society isn't going to last" and therefore decides to grant certain benefits to married couples, but the government by no means is the arbiter of marriage.

And therefore, marriage cannot be a civil right seeing as that it is not something we are born with. We are born with the right to live a life where we can succeed, fail, laugh, cry, and enter into loving committed relationships, but marriage is a union granted later in life through God. That is something totally different from a civil right. Civil rights are never added by God, they necessarily follow from being a creation of God.

Not allowing homosexual marriage is reading discrimination into the Constitution.

Too late, it's already there. The definition of discrimination is to make a distinction between two different things. The President must be a natural born citizen. If Joe is born in Florida and Ravi is born in India then Joe is eligible to be President and Ravi is not. When you go to the airport the metal detectors and designed to pick out those carrying potential weapons on the aircraft. The machine is designed to discriminate between those who have metal objects on them and those who do not. There is a distinction, or difference made between the two.

Now, let me take a moment to explain the logic that will be used here as some people miss the point and walk away thinking that I have equated homosexuality with murder. Suppose I wanted to make an argument for abortion and I came out with this:

(1) Women have a right to choose.
(2) Women can choose to have an abortion.
(3) Therefore, women can rightfully choose to have an abortion.

This is logically valid, but is the argument true? Let's change it around a little.

(1) Women have a right to choose.
(2) Women can choose to kill their children.
(3) Therefore, women can rightfully choose to kill their children.

Is this true? Do women have a right to kill their children? Probably not. Therefore, it seems that the only way the first argument is true is if we change the first premise to "(1*) A woman's choice is always morally right", but then it also follows that women can morally kill their own children which is obviously not true! Ergo, the argument for abortion completely ignores the question of if abortion is morally right. Choice has nothing to do with the moral nature of abortion! The nature of the child in the womb does!

Let's visit Obama's argument for gay marriage:

(1) The Constitution does not allow for discrimination.
(2) It is discrimination to not allow same-sex couples to get married.
(3) Therefore, the Constitution demands that we allow same-sex couples to get married.

Is this actually true? Let's change it around a little.

(1) The Constitution does not allow for discrimination.
(2) It is discrimination to send the guilty to jail and let the innocent roam free.
(3) Therefore, the Constitution demands that we do not send criminals to jail (or jail everyone?!).

Another obviously ridiculous conclusion. What went wrong here? Obviously discrimination is not the deciding factor here. What needs to be changed to the argument for homosexual marriage is that not allowing homosexual couples to get married is a morally wrong application of discrimination. Yet, as we have already seen marriage is not something that the state can grant or deny. I can be given a piece of paper or denied a piece of paper, but I cannot be granted or denied by the state something that is given by God.

Therefore, we have reached two conclusions. First, the Constitution already includes discrimination (differentiation), and second, Obama's argument does not answer the question of if or if not homosexual marriage is something that is granted by the state. Which, as we have seen, is not.

Homosexual marriage is a basic equality.

This is represented by that omnipresent yellow equal sign on the backs of cars. When I see this I always wonder exactly what it means. Obviously it's in reference to gay people and how they are equal to straight people, but I am not sure in which way they mean it. Does it mean that gay people can enter into loving relationships just as straight people can? I'm sure they can. Or does it mean that gay people can make committed relationships just like straight people? I'm sure they can as well. In fact, there is nothing preventing gay people from making loving committed relationships to whomever they want right now. The have the equal right to do this just as much as I do. I can make loving committed relationships to my mother, brother, sister, friends, or dog just as much as gay people can.

There are also obvious differences that cannot be equated in any such way. Gay people can't be in a committed homosexual relationship with each other and have heterosexual sex. Nor can two people of the same sex produce a child. I guess they also couldn't argue that only one of them must always cook and clean. So it seems to me that there are certain traits true of heterosexual people that aren't of homosexuals.

So I guess the only thing they can be referring to make it a meaningful statement is that gay people have a right to the benefits that come with marriage just as much as straight people do. Do they? I am not sure. This seems largely a political issue, and I am in no way trained as a politician. Does the government have a interest in granting homosexual relationships with the same benefits that come with marriage? To me it seems absurd to think so. There are issues like hospital visitation and whatnot that might I might bend a knee towards, but the idea that homosexuals necessarily have a moral right to the same benefits just doesn't follow from any notion of equality I can think of. And whichever ones actually do would fall under a civil union, not a marriage for reasons that we have already seen.

Finally, as far as I know, in California there is absolutely no difference between a civil union and a marriage. All the benefits that come with marriage also come with a civil union and still the battle over marriage wages. It's a battle over the definition of the word. And this, it seems, is because people know that when you change the definition of a word you change the definition of the world. Not in any actually meaningful sense, but in the eyes of those who live in the world. It would appear that the demand for equality is actually a demand for acceptance in the eyes of the nation as promulgated through the law. This is not the role of the government as I will argue in the next section.

Hate crime bills must be put into place to protect homosexuals.

Hate crimes would be laws that make hate crimes against homosexual illegal. Why? Because we've all heard the name of Matthew Shepard, the homosexual who was killed for merely being gay. Laws must be passed in order to protect homosexuals from such crimes according to Obama. This idea is completely superfluous--it's already illegal to commit crimes. If someone were to steal my stereo because they wanted it, or if they stole my stereo because I was gay it makes no difference. They stole my stereo, and that is morally wrong. Are homosexuals equals or are they not? If we're equals, as those bumper stickers seem to imply, then there is no reason to grant homosexuals protections that heterosexuals are not granted.

Further, hate is not a crime! If I were to tell you that I hated homosexuals would that be a crime? You might (rightfully) walk away in disgust, but I didn't commit a crime. In America we are allowed to hate and love whomever we please! I can hate gays, blacks, politicians, women, bloggers, Christians, or emo bands all I want, but I am by no means doing something illegal. It's only illegal when I act upon these feelings and commit a crime because of them. In fact, it's also illegal if I were to kill someone out of some sort of twisted love for them.

Let me tell you this, if we as a nation start making hate a crime then we're screwed. Period. You can't begin to make thoughts illegal. That's totalitarianism. The idea of a hate crimes bill should be something that all people should stand against regardless of if your the party that becomes "protected" or not. The government is not there to tell us how to think.

The only reason someone would be for a bill against hate was if they were searching for social acceptance.

Homosexuals are facing the same struggles as African Americans did in the past.

This is obviously true. Homosexuals everywhere are being forced to sit at the back of the bus, only attend certain schools, and not have a say in the voting booth. We can also recall that during the Civil Rights Movement comedians were mocking racists everywhere, television shows all had people acting as blacks and arguing for their so-called equality, and every pop icon in the world led a social movement towards the social acceptance of black people.

"Don't Ask Don't Tell" prevents homosexuals from their right to openly serve for their country.

This is an area I'm not going to say much about, as I'm attempting to make philosophical arguments against homosexual marriage. When it comes to statistics and sociology I am by no means an expert (I'm an expert in nothing), and it always appears that no matter what one study says there is another contradicting it or showing how it's bunk. While studies do impact my reasons, they aren't going to be any part of my actual case as I cannot actually check their validity with absolute certainty. I guess in a certain sense I am forced to pick the ones that already fit my viewpoint unless I spot something wrong in the logic or presuppositions of them.

With that being said I am not sure that this is something that Obama really needs to be focusing on right now. This is a very dangerous time in the history of the world, and major sociological experiments don't appear on the top of the list given the current global climate.

Further, I cannot help but conclude that homosexuality is linked to promiscuity. I do not mean that as a blanket statement as I know not all homosexuals are promiscuous and that all heterosexuals are no where close to being icons of propriety. Yet, when I look at gay pride parades I can't help but notice a bunch of men dancing around in their underwear. Does acting like a weirdo while wearing next to nothing really define what it means to have pride? I guess gay people might be saying that they are so comfortable with their sexuality that they can wear it on their sleeve, but this isn't a decent way for anyone to act. It doesn't matter who you are. And I can't help but feel that if such behavior is characteristic of homosexuality that they really might be a threat to morale on the battlefield.

Another reason that sticks out in my mind for being against gays in the military deals with sexual attraction. When we go to the gym men shower in one room and women in another. I'm sure all the women would be bothered if I just happened to meander into their dressing room. The same would seem to be true if I knew I was being lusted over by a gay man while I was showering. I would assume that living on the battlefield is a very personal and intimate affair and adding sexual attraction to the mix might just be a problem to the success of the mission.

People like me need to compromise on the issue.

This is Obama's big catch phrase. Let's just all find the common ground and get along. I've said it once before and I'll say it once again. On some issues there just is no common ground. When I go to see a movie and I want to see one show and my friend something else we might agree to see something that we both want to see. That's finding a compromise. However if I want to murder people and my friend does not, then there is no compromise here. It doesn't do any good to start screaming, "don't like murder, then don't murder people!" it just tells the people who are against murder to go live in a cave and not worry about society.

This is what Obama's position always equates to. He says that he knows we won't always agree on abortion, but let's just let those people who want to murder their children do so and everyone else who doesn't not do so. That's nothing but the pro-abortion side wrapped up in nice language. It isn't a compromise at all. What the compromise is is that people like me can shut up and sit in my nice little traditionalist box and the rest of the world will do as it pleases. "You can have your religion and morals inside your house and church, we get the real world."

And really, I've already compromised on the issue. I've been forced to. Civil unions are slowly being granted every right that marriages are. Soon there will be absolutely no difference between the two. The only difference will be the word that we use to describe them. And you know, if it isn't a compromise to live in a world where homosexuals get everything they want while all we have left is eight letters thrown together in a particular order, then I don't know else is.

But like I said before, this issue doesn't seem to be about anything but a specific agenda to push homosexuality down the throats of every person living in America.