tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-81364412040951172592024-02-02T15:46:01.081-06:00My take on Christianity & lifeWith a grain of salt.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.comBlogger58125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-48171052447808695172015-06-08T16:32:00.000-05:002015-06-08T17:52:06.782-05:00Would I take my wife's family name?Ancestry.com's revenue last year was over $600,000,000. People obviously care about their ancestry. We care a great deal about our past. About our family. About our legacy. Often all we have to connect us to our past is a name. The name is very very important. And when you switch names, against tradition, you can steal your future descendents' their legacy.<br />
<br />
A man does not own his name. He is borrowing it from his ancestors so he can give it to his son. And his son has a responsibility to carry it on to HIS son. If a man takes his wife's name, it is effectively the end of his family line. Furthermore the family name gives a man a connection to the past, to his ancestors. He feels a part of the greater family, as long as he keeps the name.<br />
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I for example, know that my family was a family of shoemakers. That is what Schamenek means. although in Houston, Texas, the name is quite uncommon, in a section of Pennsylvania, the Schamenek family takes up an entire page in the phone book. When my grandfather (Charles Joseph Schamenek II) died, my father (Charles Joseph Schamenek III) was shocked at how many other men at the funeral were also named Charles Schamenek. This was a very moving moment for my father, and if I'd have been named Charles Joseph Schamenek IV, it probably would have been moving for me too.<br />
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Family names are important to men.<br />
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I know what you're thinking. "That's not fair. What about the woman? Is her family name not important to her too? Women have been expected to carry on their husband's family name for thousands of years."<br />
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First, fairness is impossible here because there can only be one family name. Someone will have to give up the last name, so we absolutely have to approach this rationally.<br />
<br />
But why? Why do we have to have a single common family name?<br />
<br />
When you marry you create a new family. Families have a common last name, especially immediate families. It would be strange for an immediate family to be made up of father John Tailor, son Bobby Tailor, daughter Sally Tailor, and wife Jane Goldstein. When someone meets Jane absent her husband and she tells them her name is Jane Goldstein, they will have no idea whose wife she is. But if she says Jane Tailor, they know right away, especially in the past when the town only had one tailor.<br />
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See? Taking the family name is about the family. It creates unity and harmony. In times past there was a lot more practical advantage for the wife to take her husband's name than to keep her own.<br />
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Why is the wife STILL expected to be the one to give up her last name?<br />
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It would be easy to say "tradition" and end it there. In the past it made a lot of sense because the husband had business relationships that we're dependent on the recognition of his name. He was often recognized already in the community when he took a wife. The wife probably had a social life but the thing about a social life is that gossip, or news, spreads quickly. If she gets married and takes her husband's name, everyone hears it quickly. Adjustment is much faster and easier if a well-connected woman takes her husband's name. And if she isn't connected that well, then it doesn't matter if adjustment is slow. If the husband takes the wife's name, adjustment is slower. And it could affect the family's livelihood.<br />
<br />
So that's tradition. But it doesn't make as much sense these days, does it? These days the wife has just as much opportunity to be well-recognized in the business world. She might even be more recognized and respected. Should she still abandon her last name when she gets married? Should she take her husband's name when her name is so widely recognized? Of course this does to a certain extent depend on the individual. Angelina Jolie kept her name when she married Billy Bob Thornton. Pamela Anderson hyphenated when she married Tommy Lee. And Jacky Kennedy (wife of JFK) changed her last name when she married Aristotle Onassis. But we really should not look at these people as examples. Not everyone is famous. This question is really about your average Joe and Josephine.<br />
<br />
So, let's go to go back to the legacy of the family name. If tradition is not relevant anymore, then why should the wife still take her husband's name?<br />
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I must ask you this question, how important is it really for women today to carry on their father's last name? Will it be important to women to carry on their mother's name in the future? I would wager that it is not all that important and that it has never been personally important for most women to carry on the family name, especially since the family name is carried through the male line. Yes, naturally there will be individual exceptions to this, but I think the family line is more important for the man, specifically because he CAN see a clear lineage. I think it's unlikely to become as important to women in the future. At least in the immediate future. And if it's going to become personally important for women to carry on the family name in the distant future, if they are going to care to carry on the family name, the first thing that will necessarily happen is that society will have to change its perception on the importance of the family name. Men will have to stop caring about the family name for a long enough period of time (2-3 generations minimum) for women to start to be the name-bearer. Individual couples might experiment with their last names but it's highly unlikely for society itself to go through that intermediary step.<br />
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I think if we are honest, we'll acknowledge that a big reason to ask her husband to take her name is to undo thousands of years of male oppression. I'm going to explain why this is irrational in a moment.<br />
<br />
But first, let's discuss hyphenation. Why not hyphenate? Some women hyphenate. Why doesn't the man hyphenate too? Once again we return to the legacy of the family name. What happens when the kids get married? Does the daughter hyphenate? Does she hyphenate both of her parents' names? What if her name has been Sally Goldstein-Tailor all of her life and she marries Michael Shoemaker-Bookman. What is her name now? Sally Goldstein-Tailor-Shoemaker-Bookman? What about her kids? Will her son's name be Jimmy Anderson-Smith-Harris-Jefferson-Goldstein-Tailor-Shoemaker-Bookman? See? It gets ridiculous REAL fast. If we adopted this naming convention, when we address people we wouldn't ever use the whole name. We would abridge the name. We would STILL leave out names. The decision as to which name to choose will STILL be there! You might for example, take the hyphenation of the father's name and the mother's name. But THEIR names are hyphenated. So the parents will have to choose which Grandparents' names the children will bear. It becomes a HUGE mess real quick. It doesn't solve any problem. It just postpones it. And it adds more problems.<br />
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So hyphenation is ridiculous. Now, let me explain why it's irrational to try to use the last name to rid yourself of the shackles of male oppression.<br />
<br />
When a couple gets married, there are 5 options.<br />
<br />
• Take the husband's name.<br />
• Take the wife's name.<br />
• Hyphenate.<br />
• Take an ancestor's last name (EG: the wife's mother's maiden name.)<br />
• Make up a name.<br />
<br />
If your intention is to undo millennia of male oppression then the only option you would have would be to abandon both of the family names and make up a new family name. You see, the wife's mother's maiden name is actually the wife's grandfather's name. It was his name first, decades before it became the wife's mother's maiden name. So as you can see, it is impossible to avoid the male dominated naming convention if you want to maintain a connection with the past, with your family, and your ancestors and in fact the rest of humanity.<br />
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So, no matter what, the woman is taking on a man's name. It's either her father's name, her male ancestor's name or her husband's name. Either that or the couple chooses a completely different name, in which case, they create fragmentation in their family tree. They lose a connection to their past.<br />
<br />
So, because this issue is related to feminism, let's examine it from the wife's perspective. Here are her choices:<br />
<br />
• Keep her father's name. (It's the name she has known all of her life but she is lying to herself if she thinks she is undoing male oppression.)<br />
• Hyphenate her father's name with her husband's name. (Putting off the name choice and making that choice even more difficult for her children.)<br />
• Take one of her male ancestor's name. (Again, lying if she thinks she is undoing male oppression.)<br />
• Make up a new name. (Remove herself from her family tree and reject her husband's family tree.)<br />
• Take her husband's name. (If she has to choose one man's name, it might as well be the name belonging to the man she adores, respects and loves above everyone else, right? She gets to receive all of the advantages and benefits that go along with tradition. She embraces a new loving family, and they embrace her. She remains connected to generations in the past and the future.)<br />
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The choice should be clear. The reasons a wife chooses a man's name and not the other way around, although not immediately obvious, are clear.<br />
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Men feel the desire to carry on the family name. So a woman who doesn't want to take her husband's name decides not to because she wants to undo male oppression. But, as I indicated above, keeping her own name doesn't undo anything. Her name is still her father's name. Plus she likely does not care about the legacy of her father's name, especially if her reasons for keeping his name for herself after marriage is because she wants to undo the male domination.<br />
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See? No matter how you slice it, rationally speaking, it makes the most sense for a woman to take her husband's name. No other choice is as rational.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-44964425497870445152012-12-14T11:15:00.001-06:002012-12-14T11:15:59.207-06:00A new definition for moralityMy new definition goes like this:
<br>
<br>Morality is a prediction about the consequences of an act.
<br>
<br>If you think there's a high risk of negative consequence, then you will view the act as immoral. If you don't think there's a high risk of negative consequence, then you will view the act as moral.
<br>
<br>So, consider moral relativism. How does moral relativism play into this definition? It doesn't. Moral relativism disconnects morality from consequence, saying things are right or wrong depending on "personal opinion." This is of course totally wrong because right and wrong are subjective. It's meaningless to say right and wrong are personal opinions if you don't have some objective standard. The standard has always been the consequences of the act. Moral relativism deletes consequence from the equation, thusly:
<br>
<br>Morality = ?
<br>
<br>Without consequence on the other side, the equation is out of balance and tenuous… without meaning.
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<br>Moral relativism has no meaning except to give people permission to do whatever it is that they want to do.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-69271561398423274662012-10-30T11:37:00.000-05:002012-10-30T11:37:18.700-05:00The lie of "life's not fair.""Life's not fair." What a ridiculous disrespectful lie. First, people who condescendingly tell others that life is unfair believe the person they are telling it to is an idiot for ignoring some obvious truth. But they don't realize how illogical it is to say "life's not fair."<br />
<br />
The phrase "life's not fair" implies that life for everyone is unfair. Life is unfair to everyone? Am I the only person to see the contradiction here?<br />
<br />
The word "life" here is all inclusive. In this sentence and in meaning it says "life for everyone." If the word "life" didn't mean "everyone," then you wouldn't be telling the person that life is unfair. They already addressed the inequality of life when they said, "it's not fair."<br />
<br />
So you are really saying "life <span style="color: #3366ff;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">for everyone</span></span> is not fair." But life can <strong>NOT</strong> be unfair to everyone! If it is unfair to everyone, then it can not by definition be unfair. Unfair means there is an imbalance. Life cannot be unfair to everyone. If it was, there would be no imbalance.<br />
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If life is unfair to some, then it must by definition be advantageous to others. We all know that some people are charmed. Life gives them success with little effort. They find money easily. They make friends easily. They look good without working out. They are exceptionally talented. They find love quickly. They attribute their success to hard work, and they no doubt have worked hard. But they fail to recognize the hard work that the guy who mows their lawn and cleans their pool has had to endure for the entirety of his life. These charmed people are the people that say "life's not fair." They don't even realize that life is more than fair to them.<br />
<br />
So the phrase "life's not fair" is incomplete. It should either be "life's equally unfair to everyone" (a very clear contradiction) or it should be be "life's not fair to some." It has to be unfair <strong>to some</strong>. And it's completely meaningless to tell someone that. When someone says "It's not fair" that's exactly what they are saying.<br />
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You are better off just agreeing with them.<br />
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Next time you tell someone that life is unfair, consider how the contradiction makes you look. It is not true.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-50023591030741326282012-09-15T11:20:00.001-05:002012-09-15T11:37:47.382-05:00What is free willThis is really fascinating to me. In fact, this is the root of all of my philosophical reasoning. It happened when I saw an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation when Commander Data's personhood was put on trial. For him to win the right of self-determination, they had to prove that he was sentient. That he was alive. And they attempted to define life. Well, I wasn't satisfied with their definition. For me, life was much simpler to define, although condensing down into a short elegant sentence is proving to be far more challenging. The idea is simple though. Life takes energy and uses it to affect the physical world. Of course a billiard ball has energy and it affects other balls. So what's the difference between the cue ball and the stick and the shooter? Free will. Over the past decade I have been exploring this question of free will and I think I have finally been able to at least condense THAT into a single short and elegant sentence. Here it go:<br />
<br />
Free will is our effect over cause.<br />
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I will explain it this way: with a batter hitting a baseball.<br />
<br />
What causes the bat to hit the ball? The batter.<br />
What causes the bat to swing?<br />
The muscles of the batter.<br />
What causes the muscles to move?<br />
The decision to swing?<br />
What causes the batter to decide to swing?<br />
Seeing the ball and understanding the purpose of swinging.<br />
What gives the batter the purpose to swing?<br />
<br />
You see, we could go on like this forever it seems, trying to ask why why why why, like a 4 year old who has just learned that there's a cause for everything.<br />
<br />
We can keep going up the chain of cause and effect and for free will to be real, we have to eventually see an incident where one event had an equal chance of occurring one way or another way, and the only outside force on that event was the will of the batter. If you can keep going back in time and if ypu never find a cause of an event that involves the will of the batter, then the batter was entirely at the whim of cause. He has to have control over cause to have free will.<br />
<br />
He has to effect cause.<br />
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And you see, this has some very serious and far reaching consequences, especially for the Christian, who absolutely MUST believe in free will, otherwise the God who will send some people to eternal torment in hell and other people into eternal bliss in heaven must be a tyrant if free will is an illusion.<br />
<br />
So, the cognitive dissonance between my deterministic view of the world played against my faith has structured my view of the world. I cannot simply dismiss God. And at the same time I cannot dismiss logic and reasoning. There has to be an explanation. And that is what I have been searching for.<br />
<br />
Of course the popular understanding of quantum physics gives me an easy out. Quantum physicists believe that there are cases at the quantum scale that are probabilistic. That simply observing something is enough to affect it. I could just accept that and procla this as the answer for my cognitive dissonance. Oh if it were only that easy. The problem is that I feel that scientists must be missing something. There HAS to be a cause for an atom to go one way or another. Our observation might ultimately lead to effect the outcome, but the chain of events between our observation and the outcome itself is not even considered. Ever since the double slit ecperent was done 100 years ago man has thought that we control the world. I'm n<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875);">ot convinced. Something is happening to cause the photon to turn into a particle. We can't be the only cause. I don't know what it could be, but observation itself can't be the only thing at play.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875);"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875);">So, I continue on, in search of free will, because I must.</span>Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-1355966584225442492011-11-11T11:11:00.000-06:002014-09-25T12:30:11.991-05:00Ooooo! It's 11:11!In the metaphysical world apparently seeing 11:11 means something. If you <a href="http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=gmail&rls=gm&q=11%3A11">google it</a> you'll actually find that it means all sorts of different things depending on their belief system but in general it's supposed to mean that you are on the right mystical track. But if you think about it logically can you blame people for seeing it all the time? They really have no choice.<br />
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It begins with the desire to be special. How cool is it when the odometer in your car reads all ones? When it's 11:11 or 1:11 you appreciate the cool factor of all 1s and you think, "wow that only happens twice a day." Then you hear about people repeatedly noticing 11:11. They say they see it several times every week. They can't explain it. They say that when they look at the clock and see 11:11 they don't know why they looked at the clock at that time. They just had this urge to find out what time it was (even while they ignore the fact that wanting to look at a clock is by definition a spontaneous impulse.) Then they discuss in wonder about the meaning behind it all and conclude that their constant reminder about the time makes them special. You want to be a part of this special crowd too, and before you can say synchronicity you find yourself checking the time at 11:11 all the time.<br />
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How to explain it??? Is your vibration somehow synchronized with some cosmic mystical source guiding your light as it penetrates the essence of your chakra? Hardly. It's actually quite simple to explain. It's your subconscious mind. It happens to be a superior time keeper. Its responsible for a lot of biological functions that are dependent upon excellent timing so it stands to reason that it knows when 11:11 is. When it becomes aware of your desire to know that it's 11:11, if you happen to be near one of the clocks it knows about and you are in a ready state, say driving, or in an elevator, or walking down the street, it will simply alert your conscious mind to wonder about the time. Then you get this inescapable urge to check your watch.<br />
<br />
Bam! You are a member of the 11:11 club. Aren't you special? No. Not really.<br />
<br />
Now, some proponents of the 11:11 theory will say something like, "I notice 11111 or 3.14 all the time and you can't predict that." It's true that you can't predict when you will notice pi or the number 42 or 11111. But you do know that statistically speaking, you have as much a chance of running into 11111 as you do any other number between 0 and 99999. But you pay attention to the times you see the numbers that are special to you; or more accurately, your subconscious mind does. It is after all a lot more alert to the world than you are. It processes information far faster than your conscious mind does. So when you are driving on the road and you see a license plate made up of some random digits, your subconscious mind ignores it. But when it runs across some digits that it understands have meaning to you, it alerts your conscious mind to take a look.<br />
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BAM! Proof that you are special and in synchronous relationship with the universe.<br />
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Or is it? Uh... no.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-53813577821650405342011-01-03T18:30:00.017-06:002011-03-08T13:01:04.292-06:00Actual Contraceptive Use and the Pregnancies that ResultTake a good look at this chart. It illustrates exactly how NOT effective birth control is and how our almost religious belief in contraceptive affects pregnancy rates.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRRq8TzkDRr5oaL3zNR-MW66EPUNfVlQK-0X6_5r_JrKJHvkoVrV51Bbv_oYxvBma8_aOiNj2dffembcJ62VGgEyfyBZbjOaF92y4z2hcQ5i37a-E6v-XWBvO_f-u-2S78JvppaF84NKFW/s1600/Birth+Control+Efficacy+Numbers2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" h5="true" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRRq8TzkDRr5oaL3zNR-MW66EPUNfVlQK-0X6_5r_JrKJHvkoVrV51Bbv_oYxvBma8_aOiNj2dffembcJ62VGgEyfyBZbjOaF92y4z2hcQ5i37a-E6v-XWBvO_f-u-2S78JvppaF84NKFW/s640/Birth+Control+Efficacy+Numbers2.png" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">(For a copy of the excel spreadsheet, send me an <a href="mailto:pregancychart-alx@sneakemail.com">email</a>.)</div><br />
If you don't believe the numbers, take a gander at this website:<br />
<a href="http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contr_use.html">http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contr_use.html</a><br />
<br />
What does the chart mean? What can we conclude?<br />
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43,000,000 women are said to be engaging in regular sex. 38,000,000 are said to be using some form of contraceptive. Of those 38,000,000 women who do use contraception, they collectively engage in so much sex that almost 2 and a half million of them will become pregnant within a year.<br />
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That is 6.55% or 1 out of every 15 women.<br />
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Think it's that bad because I lumped all of the contraceptives together? Want to consider a single contraceptive? Okay, how about the number one contraceptive. 1 in 11.49 women will get pregnant each year. Yikes. That's even worse than the general contraceptives. That means that the pill actually brings the average down!<br />
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Okay. How about the condom? 1 in 5.75 women will get pregnant. Twice as bad as the pill.<br />
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Ah, but what if we combined them. What if she is on the pill and he still wears a condom. SURELY that will virtually eliminate the possibility of pregnancy. Hardly. Out of every 66 women who regularly engage in sexual activity (probably less than the population you'll find in every night club on a Friday night), one will get pregnant within a year.<br />
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Also, take a look at the difference in effectiveness between condoms and withdrawal. Wow. I would wager a guess that you consider withdrawal to be the epitome of unsafe sex. And when you think of safe sex, you think of a condom. But they aren't that much different. Condoms are only 1% more effective.<br />
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Well, obviously this chart illustrates the necessity of education, right? Well, you might think so because if 43,000,000 women are engaging in sex and only 38,000,000 them are using contraceptives, that leaves 5,000,000 women who don't use contraceptives<span style="color: red;">*</span>. And because of this, 4 and a quarter million of them will become pregnant. This is more than twice the number of pregnancies by the 38 million women who have sex with contraceptives. But if these women did all use a contraceptive in the same percentages, almost 300 thousand of them would still get pregnant. That's not an insignificant number.<br />
<br />
And it doesn't negate the fact that there are still almost 2 and a half million women each year getting pregnant from so-called protected sex. It is a strawman argument to bring up the 4 and a quarter million women who get pregnant from unprotected sex because the important point is that contraceptives are causing more pregnancies because they cause us to have more sex than we would have without them.<br />
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One more thing about education. 89.4% of the population of sexually active women are using contraceptives! I don't think education is going to increase that number by very much. Clearly, sex ed has done its job. People are convinced that contraceptives work.<br />
<br />
They are in fact BRAINWASHED into thinking that contraceptives work. Oh, we all know that contraceptives aren't 100% effective, but that doesn't stop people from acting as if the contraceptives are.<br />
<br />
So what's the conclusion?<br />
<br />
<b>SAFE SEX IS A MYTH!</b> If anything the belief in safe sex CAUSES us to act recklessly and to have sex much more than the contraceptives are designed to handle. The result is MORE pregnancies than before the pill changed our attitudes about sex.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: red;">*</span><span style="font-size: small;">Because withdrawal is considered to be a means of contraceptive, this means that "no method" is the male ejaculating inside the female every single time he has sex with her throughout the year. I don't think 11.6% of all men ejaculate inside the woman every single time.</span>Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-69587596666560468552011-01-01T01:11:00.005-06:002011-05-31T02:18:05.277-05:00Pre-marital sex leads to specialization and that leads to incompatibilityThe most common excuse people give for pre-marital sex is "we should find out if we are sexually compatible." Two problems with this.<br />
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#1 It's widely accepted that the longer you are married, the better sex becomes. The first time you have sex with someone is usually not the best.<br />
#2 If you don't have any experience, then you haven't developed any tastes.<br />
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If you both wait until you are married, you are both virgins when you are married. You have NO experience so you aren't likely to have developed certain tastes about sex. You might be intrigued with different positions, role-play, oral sex, anal sex, toys, handcuffs, candles, feathers, ice, bondage, and maybe even kinkier things. But you don't know what you like and don't like yet. You will discover your tastes TOGETHER. You aren't likely to love kink if you haven't ever experienced it. And if you try it with your spouse and he or she doesn't like it, then you aren't likely to get kinky enough for it to become important to you. You won't even know how important it could be to you.<br />
<br />
The lovely thing about discovering sex together is it truly enhances the bond. The sexual bond isn't just about pleasure, hormones, and vulnerability. It's also about discovery. And I think the importance of this discovery is undervalued today.<br />
<br />
The problem with incompatibility isn't that people have too little sexual experience before they marry. The problem is that they have too much. Each person who has experience with sex before marriage has become a specialist. Then the task of choosing a mate includes finding another specialist who fits you. But if you don't specialize before you marry, then you and your mate will specialize together, and you will have harmony in the bedroom.<br />
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Most of the people saying "you need to find out if you are compatible" are coming at the question with their own experience in mind. They are assuming that one of the individuals will have had experience. But that's not always the case. And if it is, then you should be open if the person you want to marry is a virgin and recognize that some of your specialization might have to change. But it doesn't have to be bad or even boring. Rediscover your love of sex with your new spouse, especially if they are a virgin. And if both of you have experience, then forget it. Try to find common ground. Marriage is all about compromise. If you can't compromise in bed, then it's probably going to manifest elsewhere first.<br />
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One final thought. If you are one of the people who says "you need to test drive the car before you buy it," fine. Are you willing to wait until you are ready to "buy" the car before you test drive it? Are you willing to wait to get engaged to this person before you have sex? No? Then this argument is nothing but a red herring. You are having pre-marital sex because you are immoral and can't control your urges. Stop trying to act responsible because you aren't.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-15261239883541673682010-12-27T01:56:00.005-06:002010-12-27T03:18:24.860-06:00Respect is NOT earned. It is DIS-respect that should be earned.There's a lot of confusion over the word "respect." It can mean two things: courtesy and honor. What is honor? How does it differ from courtesy? Well, let me tell you.<br />
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I realized some time ago that there are 3 levels of respect.<br />
<ul><li><b>Courtesy</b> - How you treat everyone, stranger or best friend. You are polite to them. You don't insult them. You don't talk badly about them behind their back. You don't argue with them in public. You don't try to make them look bad. It's mostly about what you don't do. You don't disrespect them.</li>
<li><b>Disrespect</b> - There are two kinds:</li>
<ul><li><b>Feeling of disrespect</b> - How you think about people who prove that they are not worthy of courtesy.</li>
<li><b>Action of disrespect</b> - You might also sometimes "disrespect" someone, by doing the negative things listed under courtesy, even if you respect them. When you do this, you are likely to change their opinion of you and they are likely to start to disrespect you, both in feeling and in action.</li>
</ul><li><b>Honor</b> - How you think about someone who is wise. It's deeper than just treating them with courtesy. Your thoughts about them have grown. How you treat them is related to how you feel about them. You are much more likely to be obedient towards someone you honor than someone you are just courteous towards. You think higher of someone you honor than you think of yourself. But you might still disrespect them (action) from time to time.</li>
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You know, you hear this a lot:<br />
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"Respect must be earned."<br />
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And in the same paragraph the same person will say:<br />
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"I treat everyone with respect."<br />
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Here is where the confusion between courtesy and honor really surfaces. If, when you say "respect must be earned," you describe courtesy, you have it backwards. We must by default treat everyone respectfully... with courtesy... until they have demonstrated that they don't deserve it. It's only until you think about respect in terms of honor that you are right to say "respect must be earned."<br />
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I see a lot of people do this. They are clearly thinking one thing: courtesy. But they are describing honor.<br />
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Is this important? <b>You BETCHA!!!</b> If you are thinking and describing courtesy when you say "respect must be earned" then you are advocating treating every stranger you meet with disrespect until they have proven that they are worthy of courtesy. Maybe this is why people treat each other so badly. They buy into the "respect must be earned" philosophy and treat each other with dis-respect until that person proves they deserve respect. It's backwards. How is someone going to earn this courtesy if you are treating them with disrespect? Are YOU going to treat someone courteously if they are treating you disrespectfully? If they don't treat you courteously, are you going to start to respect them? No. So you must understand how important this issue is.<br />
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Of course in general we do often "treat everyone with respect." But the effect of "respect must be earned" still manifests itself quite a lot too. Far too often I feel.<br />
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So I think it's time we recognize the difference between courtesy and honor and we start to treat EVERYONE with courtesy, irrespective of our beliefs on the phrase "respect must be earned."<br />
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Indeed. We really must treat everyone with respect.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-86075307416049630662010-09-06T10:49:00.003-05:002010-09-06T11:15:15.484-05:00Closed mindedness is the fear of truth.Open mindedness isn't just about listening to the other side. It's considering the idea that they might be right and you might be wrong.<br />
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It isn't just about expanding your worldview. It's also a willingness to let your worldview contract. It isn't just about additive: I now believe that Noah was a real person and the remnants of his Ark are somewhere in the mountains of Ararat. It's also reductive: I used to believe in aliens but now I don't.<br />
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If you are a witch or you practice other unGodly activities, receiving salvation can deeply contract your worldview. If Satan has deceived you with twisted logic and your understanding of scripture is flawed, it can be especially difficult to have an open mind, especially when you believe you are being a good Christian and change will contract your worldview.<br />
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It is always good to have an open mind because the only thing that can conquer truth is closed mindedness. Truth will always conquer deceit if the mind is open but deception will not conquer truth if the mind is open. Having a closed mind is evidence that something isn't quite right with your belief because deceit fears truth and its only defense is blindness and pride. Truth does not fear deception so it doesn't mind hearing other points of view.<br />
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Open your hearts and your minds to God's truth. Allow His wisdom to enter. When a believer challenges your faith, do not react with fear, pride, or a closed mind. They might be right. They might have received a revelation from God to instruct you. You don't want to be closed off from God's wisdom do you? Open your mind to allow God's truth in.<br />
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Of course the other person might be wrong and you might be right. When that happens, if your heart with God is good, you will know who speaks the truth. Hopefully the other person has an open mind too and is willing to allow God's truth into their heart as well.<br />
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But if they are right, then you need to have an open mind to allow God's truth inside. Determining what is truth can be difficult, but we have a power that Satan does not: The Holy Spirit. God will protect you. If what the other person says is false, God will let you know. Trust God. But examine yourself in the process. When you disagree with what they are saying, is it the Holy Spirit guarding you, or do you disagree because of closed mindedness? Be honest with yourself. Accept change if God wills it. It can be difficult and quite often receiving truth can take time. Always be aware of the little seeds God is planting in your heart. Nurture them. Water them. Feed them. Harvest them when they ripen.<br />
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Always question your doubt. Is it closed-mindedness or is it really the Holy Spirit?Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-56083781692541255932010-07-29T23:16:00.001-05:002010-09-03T05:19:09.934-05:00An unpopular notion: Unhappily married ever after.Oh this is going to be unpopular. I wonder if I should even put this out there. It might immediately turn some people off, especially before they learn about me. If you don't know me, and you are reading this, just put it on the back burner. It might be better if you don't read this until after you get to know who I am. If you do end up reading it, and are appalled, please put your immediate instinct on the back burner. Keep an eye on me. Doubt me. But please don't just write me off as a lunatic.<br />
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Wow! Did I entice you or what? The topic is about divorce so don't get too excited. It's not about an uber-controversial subject like same sex marriage or abortion. It's "just" about divorce. But I am advocating an extreme position. A very unpopular position, even among many Christians. I'd refrain from posting it but this topic is too important to ignore. So let's get into it.<br />
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Divorce is far too common today. It's accepted. Is that okay? People say it is. But it's really not. Why? Because it's going to get worse. The acceptance of divorce as a way out creates a sort of feedback effect that makes people more likely to divorce. It is getting worse, so much that it has transformed marriage. People fear divorce so much they choose to eliminate marriage altogether and become life partners. I don't mean same sex partners. I mean heterosexual domestic partners. That's got a whole different set of problems associated with it. I'll ponder those and report on them later but for now let's focus on divorce.<br />
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What I realized is the acceptance of divorce allows people to take their pre-marital relationships too casually. In many Christian circles, divorce is not an option. Even in the case of infidelity. I know that can be difficult but forgiveness wouldn't be meaningful if it was easy. When forgiveness is easy you dismiss the apology, saying "think nothing of it." But a spouse who cheats can't apologize enough. We can't apologize enough for our rebellion against God either, but God forgives. Not because it's easy. He forgives us because we are that important to Him. This kind of forgiveness is meaningful. So too is the forgiveness for infidelity. Your spouse is so important to you that you are willing to forgive him or her for anything, even infidelity. That is unconditional love. Anything less would be conditional.<br />
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Most cases of divorce do not happen because of infidelity though. They occur because of "irreconcilable differences." Well, if you find that you're irreconcilably different from your spouse, you didn't do your homework before you were married, did you? Is Divorce okay for you? Absolutely not. If your marriage suffers from bickering or backbiting or differing perspectives on life or name your sin, then you missed something in the courting process. You didn't test one another enough before you said your vows. Now your punishment is to remain married and unhappy.<br />
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Wow! Really Alex? You really believe this? Absolutely. Yes. You made your bed. It's your fault. If you divorce you only reinforce the idea that marriages are disposable. This isn't to say that divorce is a picnic. It's terrible, sure. But ripping the bandage off is nothing like keeping the bandage on for the rest of your life. If you are mature and accept your punishment, your unhappy marriage can now serve a purpose: teaching other people that they must make sure they are marrying the right person. And your bad marriage will be well known. People will gossip about it. And the longer the awful marriage lasts the longer the lesson can be taught. I know it's harsh, but if life's lessons were easy then we wouldn't learn anything.<br />
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Holey cow! Now you can see why this is unpopular. Even many Christians have a hard time with it. But if you are a Christian you must accept the infallible word of God. And God tells you that you must not divorce. There is one single case in the new testament (Matthew 19:9) where Jesus (in a roundabout way) gives permission to divorce in the case of infidelity. But we already covered infidelity. It can be overcome. And I believe that Jesus' apparent permission had something more to do with the attitudes of the time. Things are different today. So I think it's clear in no way should a Christian couple get a divorce. <b>EVER!!</b><br />
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Of course the proper solution is to fix your marriage. Come to terms with your differences. Accept them. Learn to live with them. Change your perspective. Meet in the middle. Compromise. Or outright change. Ask for advice at the church. Or from your friends and family. See a marriage counselor. But if all of those things fail, then it is still not okay to divorce. You should have done your homework and you should let your unhappy marriage be an example that tells the world, "this is what happens if you don't court properly."<br />
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So why do I believe this? Today's attitude about divorce increases the likelihood that you will divorce. By accepting the notion that you can get divorced as a last resort, you can take your pre-marital relationships more casually. You don't do your homework. You don't test. You don't prove. Oh, you might live with each other before you marry to test the waters, but that creates a <a href="http://smartalx.blogspot.com/2009/12/5-arguments-about-cohabitation.html">completely different set of marital problems</a>. I'm gettin' sick and tired of frikkin' 'splainin' to people that they shouldn't live together before they get married. The statistics don't lie. If you live together first, you have an 80% chance of splitting!! So living together is not testing the right way. Testing takes time and a different perspective than just falling in love, or more likely, lust. (After all, what cohabiting unmarried couple doesn't have sex too?) When you walk down the aisle, you need to know at the bottom of your heart that you will be with this person until death. Not because you are against divorce, but instead because you have proven it to each other. If you don't do this, then you don't deserve to be married. And if you do get married, and find that you are incompatible, then you deserve your punishment. You must stay unhappily married so you can be an example for others.<br />
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It seems that we aren't learning anything any more. We are in fact going backwards. People are living together because they are afraid of divorce. That's not right. The answer isn't to fear marriage. It's to make sure you are compatible. Not by living together, But instead by spending time together. By asking questions. By watching them live their life. If divorce wasn't an option, more people would be doing this, and the result would be a greater number of happy marriages.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-55045177900230424132010-06-05T22:51:00.005-05:002010-06-07T23:00:10.340-05:00Give up control when things get out of control.So I'm thinking about certain things while I'm driving back home after helping Micah move and I'm thinking about prayer and mostly about giving God control. You know letting him be the driver in my life. It occurs to me that this issue of control comes up. How do you give control to God, without laying like a lump in bed all day long? You have to actually get out and do stuff. You aren't a puppet. And God doesn't want you to be. So I'm pondering this issue.<br /><br />We hear this a lot in Christian circles. "You have to give God control." I think that "control" though is not the problem. I don't think the problem is that people try to control their lives. Controlling our own life isn't all that bad. If you want to be a veterinarian, you have to be proactive and go to school, educate yourself, meet the right people, and find a job. You know, actually make the dream happen. So control isn't really a problem.<br /><br />I think generally speaking people should still be allowed to have some control over their lives but there can still be a problem. God sometimes does need to step in from time to time to remind us, to keep us on His path. So I think the problem is GIVING UP control when things get OUT OF control. We don't want to give up control when it seems that God takes the most control, when things start to go awry.<br /><br />What I think is really being said in this Christian advice is that people are too married or attached to a certain outcome or a particular plan. I suffer from this A LOT. Because I like to plan things. I like to see things work a certain way. I'm a designer at heart. I want things to work right. Things working according to their designed intent goes straight to my heart. The stinking iPhone's battery is SUPPOSED to last all day long! Why do these programs crash so much? That person shouldn't be in the right lane. That person shouldn't be in the left lane. So I find it extremely difficult to let things go when things aren't happening according to "what's right."<br /><br />When this happens I feel things are out of control, and my reaction is to try to seize control. So I think THIS goes directly in line with what a lot of Christian advisers say. I think what they are really saying is go with the flow when things start to veer off course. When things don't go according to plan... to YOUR plan, maybe thing aren't supposed to go according to your plan. Maybe God's plan is better and you need to just accept it. When you react, rather than try to steer everything back towards your plan, react towards the new direction.<br /><br />It's like you are on a rafting trip and approaching a fork in the river. You want to go right but the current is pulling you left. And you fight it and try to force yourself to go right when the river wants you to go left. If you would just accept the left fork, maybe it's a better trip. God is the current. The problem isn't the control. You are still in the raft paddling and steering. The problem is that you aren't letting go when you have to.<br /><br />When I have a plan that isn't working, I pray to God. I say things like, "God why isn't this working? What am I doing wrong? What is getting in the way? What is going wrong? Why can't I do this? Why can't I have this one thing?" All of those are bound up by... me. They are a reaction to my plan. Well, what about God's plan?<br /><br />So I've decided to try to think about this when things start to go awry. Make little adjustments to see if they "take." But if they don't, then accept the new direction. If I want to plan a date with a girl and traffic is preventing me from meeting her on time, don't fight it. Call her calmly. Let her know I'm running late. React. Don't try to force things by rushing through rush hour traffic and risk dying. Accept the path God put me on. Maybe we won't see the movie. Maybe something better will come up. Whatever happens, I'm sure God's plan for the date is better than mine.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-47912612489779891212010-06-01T00:31:00.006-05:002010-06-28T23:55:58.501-05:00Why even think about evil?If you've been following my blog, you know that I like to think about good and evil. Especially evil. I question evil. What it means. Does it exist?<br /><br />But what does it matter? This question in my mind? Is it all semantic? Does it matter that the guy who abuses his wife is not technically evil? What use is it to say that Hitler was just mentally derranged instead of evil? He still did evil acts. Isn't that what matters? Don't they just need to stop doing evil things? Who cares if someone is evil or just crazy? They did evil! Right? Is my thinking about all of this just mental masturbation? Unproductive thought?<br /><br />Then I get a grip and remember what prompts these thoughts of mine to surface. The reason I concern myself with these issues is because other people don't. People don't make movies about the bad guy. Not trying to understand him anyway. It seems aside from the law enforcement and psychiatric communities no on wants to understand the evil mind. But I know that there is a PERSON inside that "evil" body. Someone who loves and fears and dreams and wants good! Yes! Even so called evil people want to do good! They may have a twisted idea of what good is. But they still want to do good. Everyone on Earth thinks it's good to do good. This I truly believe. (And it's something I feel is proof that God exists. C.S. Lewis gave me the idea.)<br /><br />All of these thoughts and ponderings of the evil mind I do because when we start to think of these people as PEOPLE and stop thinking of them as demons, maybe we'll be able to, you know, help them and reduce the number of evil people in the world. Evil people are evil for a reason. Maybe it can be controlled, or handled differently, or the unstable person can be reached before he becomes maniacal dictator bent on genocide. I don't know. The point is we shouldn't just wash our hands of someone and resign them to hell just because they do evil. They are people too. Sure, they need to be punished. No doubt about that. But they are victims too. Hitler was a victim. Yes he was. His life didn't end well, did it? Do you think if he was sane he would have done everything he did? No. He was a deranged drug addict.<br /><br />I know this is a hard pill to swallow. I know the real victims deserve justice. But don't confuse revenge for justice.<br /><br />Would it not be fruitful to get into the mind of evil people and see what makes them tick? I don't think enough people consider the mind of bad people. They are "just bad" and need to "just stop being bad," right? But it's not that easy. You can't just "stop being bad" any more than you can just "stop being male." We are who we are and we do what we do for a reason and the more we study those reasons the better understanding we can have about these people. Maybe we can actually stop the next Hitler.<br /><br />THAT is why it's important to consider the PERSON contained within the evil body. And THAT is why I think about evil. One day I would like to write a book taken from the perspective of an evil person. I wonder if I could do it. I'm not evil enough. I hope I'm not. Is my imagination good enough to compensate? Actually I really don't want to get into the mind of another Hitler. I really would like to get into the mind of a jerk though. What makes a jerk tick? That might be an interesting story to ponder.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-47463648349323541662010-05-31T23:48:00.017-05:002010-06-07T23:28:03.695-05:00Don't begin your prayers with "if."I saw in a movie long ago a girl after a date said to herself about the boy walking away, "if he likes me he'll turn around and look at me." He turned around. "Yes!" she squealed to herself. Cute. But come on. How real is that? Did the guy actually like her or was he just being nice? He might have liked her but was him turning around the signal? She could have said, "if he likes me he'll stop and tie his shoelace." Ridiculous.<br /><br />People will give you advice, say about a girl. They'll say "you have to be direct with her. Tell her your intentions right away before you enter the 'friend zone.' Most girls appreciate guys being direct." But what about the girl who likes to move slow? What about the girl you HAVE to befriend first? Well, the advice giver will say "if being direct doesn't work out, then she's not the girl for you." WHAT A COP OUT! How ridiculous is that? He's saying one of two things, either HIS ADVICE is what MADE her the right girl for you, or the 5% of girls that this "advice" doesn't work on aren't right for anyone, because, after all, his advice is supposed to work for every guy. He doesn't realize that if you had followed the advice her GIRL friend told you, to befriend the girl first and approach things slowly, she would have grown to realize how compatible the two of you really are. If you do that, all of a sudden she's the right girl for you? Just because you chose someone else's advice? The advice has no connection at all to her being the right girl. You are either compatible or you aren't. All you can do is be yourself and try to win her heart the best way you can.<br /><br />How many people are we compatible with? A lot. A whole lot. I think we are compatible with a lot more people than we realize. But how many do we end up with? One. Ideally. Does that mean you aren't compatible with the other people? No. Compatibility is a constant. You are either compatible with someone or you aren't. Sure it changes over time, but generally speaking you either are compatible or you are not. So the reason you don't end up with someone, even though you are compatible, isn't because you are only compatible with just one person. It's because conditions weren't right when the opportunity was at its best. Opportunity wasn't good enough, no matter how compatible you two are.<br /><br />I hate it when people say things like "if so and so then it wasn't meant to be." No. You don't get to dictate the terms of a cause and effect relationship. Nature does. God does. It's like praying for something. I read in Boy Meets Girl, how Joshua Harris's girl prayed to God, "please if it's your will that Joshua be the man for me, tell him NOT to call me tonight." She believed that if Joshua was strong enough in Christ that he would hear God's word and fight the temptation to call. Nice idea, but completely faulty. Sure, in this case God said yes, but what if God had said, "no?" What if Joshua prayed a contradictory prayer? Would she have known? What if God had bigger plans? What if His plan was BETTER than hers? What if God said "no" to this girl? If Joshua hadn't called, then maybe he just wasn't interested. Or worse, what if he DID call but God said NO to this girl's prayer because He wanted Joshua to be proactive and to chase after her. Now he calls her and she loses interest, all because she THOUGHT she had a bargain with God. She didn't necessarily have a bargain. God doesn't say yes to every prayer, and if you give him an ultimatum or a bargain, watch out.<br /><br />Think about how ridiculous this prayer would be... "If you don't want me to be with this guy, let me win the lottery tonight." Wouldn't it be great if God worked that way? I'd get both. I'd get the girl of my dreams one day then the next day say, "Ok God, if you want me to be with her then can you confirm it by letting me win the lottery? Thanks." Riiiight. God's not a vending machine.<br /><br />Don't dictate to God. Don't bargain. Ask? Sure. Pray? Definitely. Beg? I guess. Fast? Yes. But don't think a bargain is going to work.<br /><br />In short, don't begin your prayers with "if." He might say "yes." But then again, He might say "no." You'll never know if he said "yes" or "no," even if your condition is met. Just because you prayed for a condition, and the condition was met, it doesn't mean He said "yes" to the prayer. Be very careful about these sorts of prayers.<br /><br />I do believe Jesus told us not to test God. You tread on thin ice when asking these sorts of questions.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-90496570680875136252010-05-17T03:40:00.002-05:002010-05-17T03:44:12.141-05:00Quick Movie Review: Gran TorinoI didn't expect the ending of Gran Torino, but I wasn't surprised it ended the way it did. Clint Eastwood understands what it means to be a man: Strength, Responsibility, Doing the Right Thing, and most importantly Sacrifice.<br /><br />If you want to see a man being a man, watch this movie. Clint portrays a vulgar abrasive racist old war veteran, but in the end he exhibits true manliness. The character might be a bit difficult for some Christian people to watch through most of the movie, but he more than makes up for it in the end.<br /><br />Watch this movie.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-77210074682666502482010-05-14T09:46:00.014-05:002010-05-14T11:18:35.558-05:00Do you separate yourself from Christianity by denying the church?What's wrong with Christianity today? The good Christians are leaving the religion.<br /><br />Do you call yourself spiritual but not religious? Do you say you believe in Christ but you don't like the religion of Christianity?<br /><br />I don't find it necessary to qualify my relationship with God with words like Spiritual or Anti-Religious Christian. I am a Christian. Protestant is the only qualification I need. Okay, non-denominational Christian. If people don't understand what it truly means to be Christian, my denying it and separating myself from the overall Christian community (dogmatic as they are) only supports the mistaken belief that all Christians are bad people. I don't need to defend my faith from people who hate Christians. If they even only dislike the judgmental hypocritical fair-weather Christians, they aren't much better. I am Christian. The Christian faith isn't the problem. Bad Christians might give the rest of us a bad name, but denying the name Christian because of some bad apples is shameful. The problem isn't the religion. It's some people in the religion. I'm not going to deny the religion because some people give it a bad name.<br /><br />There are a lot of atheists, agnostics, new agers, witches, Muslims, Buddhists, even satanists who are genuinely nice people. You need to separate yourself from THEM, not Christians. When you say that you are a believer but not Christian, you join the crowd that includes nice atheist, good witch, and peaceful Muslim. Do you want to be one of them? Do you want people to associate you with atheist? Or witch?? Or SATANIST???? Or do you want people to think the reason you are special is the fact that you follow Christ? What do you want the world to think causes you to be so nice? Good genes? Good upbringing? Your pride? No. THAT isn't what it means to love God. You glorify God, not yourself. THAT is what will separate yourself from non-believers.<br /><br />You aren't supposed to point the finger at yourself. "Yeah I'm a nice guy. I worship Jesus, but I'm not one of THOSE Christians." That statement glorifies YOU! Not God. Not Jesus. You are telling the other person that you are nice DESPITE the fact that Christ dwells in your heart. Are you kidding me???? That's not the way you communicate Christ's love. That only glorifies you. Stop it! <br /><br />To clarify to non-believers that you aren't like those other bad Christians gives the bad Christians power. Show your non-believing brethren what a true Christian is like. If you exemplify Christ's love and the non-believer has heard you say that you don't affiliate yourself with the overall Christian religion, you only prove to him that the overall Christian faith is flawed. But if you defend the Christian faith and you exemplify Christ's love, then the non-believer will more likely associate Christ's love with Christianity, not you. They aren't supposed to associate Christ's love with you. Not you exclusively. You aren't the only good person in the world. You aren't the only good believer. You are supposed to be just one of millions or billions of good Christians. To deny and separate yourself from the overall Christian community points the glory of being good back right at you. That is virtual blasphemy.<br /><br />YOU aren't great. GOD is great.<br /><br />Get over yourself. Defend your faith. Prove to the world what it means to be a good Christian.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-36508123391786635322009-12-05T04:21:00.004-06:002011-01-02T22:48:40.598-06:00The 5 arguments about cohabitation<span style="font-weight:bold;">1) The Trial Marriage</span><br />
It's a very popular notion that living together is a good idea. You have a trial marriage and test yourselves and you don't have the hassle of divorce if you find that you are not compatible. This is of course an excuse. People live together before they marry because they want to, not because of some high moral principle. That doesn't negate the logic behind the argument, but is the argument really all that sound? Are you really tested enough when you cohabit? We'll answer that question later.<br />
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<span style="font-weight:bold;">2) The Statistics</span><br />
Christians love to cite studies and surveys by many different credible sources that have found a correlation between cohabitation and divorce. They make other claims too, such as couples who cohabit before they marry are not as happy after they marry and their children are less healthy. This may or may not be true. Correlation does not necessarily equate to causation. A more reasonable reply is that people who think you should not cohabit before marriage belong to religious groups who also believe that you should not get divorced. One might logically conclude that these Christians are not actually as happy as they like to claim. But that ignores the studies that show that more of them are happier.<br />
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<span style="font-weight:bold;">3) The Fairy Tale Argument</span><br />
This is the worst one. It's the "we have a fairy tale marriage and we cohabited" response. Again correlation does not necessarily mean causation. You may have a fairy tale marriage but cohabitation didn't create it. Had you waited to live together until after the wedding you would still have the fairy tale marriage. You should have stuck with the rebuttal that people who don't cohabit stay married because they think divorce is wrong.<br />
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Anyway, whether or not your marriage was a success is immaterial. Marriages that were a continuation from cohabitation fail more often than marriages that did not come out of a cohabitation relationship. Your success does not disprove the statistics. But is there a danger to cohabiting? We'll discuss that in a moment.<br />
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<span style="font-weight:bold;">4) The Christian Rebuttal</span><br />
The whole cohabitation argument is a red herring. The fact is you have two groups, one that has Christ at the center and another that doesn't. It should be no surprise that the group that has Christ at the center is more successful... well, unless you aren't Christian. In fact those who think cohabitation is right really have a lot of trouble explaining the statistics. The best they do is bring up the fairy tale argument.<br />
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But getting back to the red herring... what matters is that couples that don't belong together don't get married and those that do belong together stay married. The fact remains that people who cohabit are divorcing more often than those who don't cohabit. Even though they have trial marriages... even though more of these relationships break up before they marry, these people are still getting married when they shouldn't. What can account for that? Well, it seems the defining variance is morality and religion. Couples that share a strong moral center are more connected. They are on the same page. Their goals in life are complimentary. They aren't room mates who happen to be in love. They aren't independent. They are interdependent. They aren't two individuals sharing the house and bed. They are one couple sharing a common life. Yes, there are many couples who cohabit who share these same traits but they still lack the moral center. They don't have the strength of a ruleset that is bigger than they are. If they are non-Christian they also probably lack the advantage of a church that will do everything it can to help the couple with any marriage problems. A couple without a strong moral center is definitely more at risk.<br />
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Those who are religious tend to remain happily married. Note I said happily married. There is a cause and effect relationship here. The effect is happiness. The cause is the Holy Spirit. Studies have shown that couples who did not live together before they marry are happier.<br />
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This isn't the strongest argument though. It religiously biased. But there are other differences between cohabiting couples and non-cohabiting couples.<br />
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<span style="font-weight:bold;">5) The Secular Logic against Cohabitation</span><br />
The fact remains that people who cohabit are still more likely to divorce. They choose to cohabit to prove that their marriage will last. But for 70% of them, despite their trial run, their marriage still doesn't last! Well, what happened? What did their cohabitation prove? Nothing. So all we are left with is the fact that they lived together before they were married because they didn't want to wait.<br />
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Unlike the non-cohabiting couple, the cohabiting couple believes that they have tested themselves. Have they really though? No. There are tests that a married couple endures that a single couple living together doesn't. Children for example. That's a big one, but of course there are some unmarried couples with children. Generally though the unmarried couple won't endure 18 years of parenting without being married. Maybe one or two. Eventually they will probably marry and have to raise the children through all of the stages of childhood development. This is definitely going to test the marriage. There are other tests too. One of them will lose a job. One of them will lose a parent. One of them will feel the pressure to relocate for their career. There will be very big tests. Of course all marriages are tested. So is there something to protect the non-cohabiting couple? Yes. The shock of commitment.<br />
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The shock of commitment is one more difference between a couple who cohabits before marriage and a couple that does not. It is the strongest argument against cohabiting and I believe it explains the statistics. See, when a couple first moves in together, it's great. It is a bit of a jump, but not nearly the jump that happens for a couple that doesn't cohabit before they marry. When THEY move in together, it's coupled with a brand new life together. It's coupled with commitment. The cohabiting couple is going through the trial run because they don't trust that they will have what it takes to endure the tests in marriage. Sure they have commitment. Perhaps a bit more (at that time) than if they decided not to live together. After all, it's a huge deal to break up after you have been living together so you aren't going to take that step if you aren't somewhat committed already. There is a lot invested so naturally they have more of a commitment than a dating couple who don't live together. But the commitment that goes along with the cohabitation is nothing compared to the commitment of marriage. And even moreso, the feeling of commitment after the marriage is MUCH stronger after a non-cohabiting couple marries.<br />
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The cohabiting couple who gets married just continues doing what they did before they got married. The only difference is they are no longer planning a wedding. Now they get to live their lives. But they lack the adventure of living together for the first time. The only thing they might do is purchase a home together as a newly married couple. That might add to the excitement but imagine the excitement if they'd waited to live together.<br />
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This sudden change from single to married is exceptionally strong if a couple did not live together before they got married. They are so grateful. Getting to the wedding was a struggle. Sure they loved each other. Sure their relationship improved. But they had to be patient. They had to be strong and withstand temptation and societal pressure. They had to stay determined. They no doubt had cold feet, but they fought their fears and remained vigilant because of their love for one another. All that effort paid off after they married. Now they have achieved something. Marriage is like an award to them. The rings on their fingers symbolize more than love and commitment. They symbolize the time they were together before the wedding. They also symbolize the hard times when they were apart. The rings are a reminder of what it was like before they won the award of marriage. They are a reminder that they really really really want to stay married.<br />
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A dating couple that decides to move in together approaches things much more carefully. They gradually approach marriage. The entire process of commitment is a gradual one. They slowly reach the commitment of marriage. So they don't feel the jump when it occurs. The wedding is a mere ceremony to celebrate the commitment they already have. It doesn't give them a commitment. The ceremony itself gives the non-cohabiting couple a bit more commitment. In fact, they really feel it. I believe the cohabiting couple won't feel it as much. It might be there, but it's more subtle because of the jump.<br />
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Now they are married and are inevitably tested. If they did not live together first, they feel the extra strong commitment created by the jump from single to married. Their "coupleness" is accentuated. They earned their marriage. But they also know that their marriage needs to be protected. So they are careful. They approach the tests differently than the couple who lived together first. The couple that cohabited is more likely to feel secure. In living with each other they believe that they have proven that they can withstand any test life throws at them. They are more likely to take their commitment for granted, and that puts them at risk. The tests can sneak up on them and rob them of their commitment before they even realize it. The next thing they know they are putting a checkmark in the "irreconcilable differences" box, and they can't explain why. They tested themselves but found out that the testing they endured before marriage was little preparation. In fact the testing before marriage only gave them a false sense of security.<br />
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And THAT is the main danger with cohabitation: the false sense of security. You MUST remain vigilant when you are married. Marriage takes work. It's not all pixie dust and granted wishes. You have to endure. You have to be careful and watch out for trouble. If you let your guard down, you will lose it all. Cohabitation sets you up for that. That is why marriages that begin with cohabitation fail more often than marriages that did not begin with cohabitation.<br />
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That's not the only danger of cohabitation though. Consider how difficult it is to break up when you are living together. It's incredibly difficult. Breaking up without the added burden of having to find a new place to live is hard enough on its own. But it is easier. I propose to you that some couples who live together would have broken up if they did not live together. They do NOT break up specifically BECAUSE breaking up is so difficult for them. They stay together even though in their hearts they feel that they are not compatible. It's easier to go with the flow and hope that the marriage ceremony is going to change them somehow. Naturally this is not true for all couples who decide to live together before they marry and it's probably not a significant portion of the 70% of cohabiting couples who eventually do divorce. But it is an additional issue that you will more than likely have to deal with if you do decide to live together before you marry.<br />
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Remember, most people who live together before they marry DO end up breaking up. Even if they marry, 70% of them will divorce. And considering the fact that we know that 50% of all marriages end in divorce, out of the couples who do not cohabit before they marry, only 30% of <span style="font-style:italic;">them</span> will divorce. Don't believe me? Consider if 200 couples marry. 100 of them lived together before they marry. 100 of them did not. Eventually 100 of those total marriages will end in divorce. We know that 70 of the couples who lived together before they married end up getting divorced. 70 of the 100 couples who divorced cohabited. That leaves room for only 30 non-cohabiting couples to get divorced. So <span style="font-weight:bold;">You actually have more than twice the chances of marital success if you decide NOT to live together before you marry!</span><br />
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Something to think about isn't it?Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-78006529989221781522009-10-20T02:04:00.011-05:002010-03-28T01:22:54.182-05:00The logic behind the pro-choice position, or why you should abstain.Let me begin this post with something. This post is about a very controversial position and I am attempting to posit a theory to help me to understand a position I disagree with. If you disagree with me, please hold your temper and understand that I am not approaching the topic in this case with judgment in my heart. I am simply trying to understand the opposing side. Please before you form any judgment, read the entire post.<br /><br />Now to the article: abortion.<br /><br />I, like many Christians, am pro-life. Yet I am not pro-life because my religious leaders told me to be pro-life. I am pro-life because it's obvious to me that the fetus is alive. We should protect our young. I can't imagine a woman wanting to pay a "doctor" to rip her own child to pieces. It just doesn't make sense to me. I honestly believe that in 1,000 years people will look back at our time in horror at the practice.<br /><br />Like most pro-lifers I have been completely baffled at the logic of the pro-choice position and have dismissed the pro-choice position that the fetus isn't a child as nothing but a heartless excuse to engage in casual sex (usually outside of marriage.)<br /><br />I have been pondering the confusion for a few years now and I think I have finally begun to start to understand why pro-choice advocates support someone's "right" to have an abortion, even when they sometimes think the life being aborted is a sentient, feeling, little human baby. And some do, yet they are still pro-choice.<br /><br />It begins with a lesson in the statistics of birth control. The most absolute form of birth control is sterilization, but even that is not 100% effective. Statistically speaking 3 out of every 1000 sterilized couples will become pregnant within one year. While this seems very close to absolute, it is absolutely NOT absolute, especially considering the sexual appetite of man. It is actually quite high. After all, if 1,000,000 sterilized couples engage in sex, 3,000 of them will become pregnant after one year!!!! WOAH! That number is far from absolute. And that number is reapeated the next year.<br /><br />Now you must realize that this is the most extreme example, and most of the people who get sterilized are married. The most common examples, especially for single people, are birth control and the condom. They are far less effective. In real world use the condom can be as low as 70% effective. The pill only slightly moreso. But let's be optimistic and say that each are 99% effective. Well, that means that 1% of all people who engage in regular sex will become pregnant within one year. Holey Moley! That means that out of (a ridiculously low number of) 1,000,000 couples engaging in regular sex, 10,000 will become pregnant. Again that is EACH year! And again, this is OPTIMISTIC! And again that is out of a sample of 1,000,000 couples!!! Need I remind you that there are over 6 billion people on the planet. If only 1% of them are having regular sex then they will create 300,000 pregnancies IF all of them use condoms or birth control perfectly!!! And we all know that most people do not use their birth control properly, if they use it at all. So that 300,000 pregnancies is actually much much much higher. <br /><br />And you thought that the sexual revolution was a good thing.<br /><br />Of course many of these 60 million people engaging in regular sex do want their babies, but I think these statistics are very telling for people who do NOT want to get pregnant. I hope you see how my point demonstrates the severity and huge responsibility that you must accept when you have sex.<br /><br />This responsibility is precisely the point. I think this might just be a dividing line between the pro-life position and the pro-choice position. And it also helps to explain why the dividing line so often becomes a debate between Christians and non-Christians. After all, the Christian faith is against casual sex, especially outside of marriage. And most women who have abortions are not married, although I know that there are some. Christians believe that you do not have a natural right to have sex whenever you want. The people who do think that you have a natural right to have sex whenever you want are typically not Christian, although there are some of course. Christians do sin and can be deceived by what they see in the world around them.<br /><br />So, the Christian just does not understand how important sex is to the part of mankind that appreciates the value of a healthy sexual life. And in our opinion this part of mankind does not fully comprehend and appreciate the responsibility that comes with a sexual lifestyle. If you consider the statistics, you can see why.<br /><br />Now, I do not think that the sexually active people are fully ignorant of the responsibility that comes with a sexually active lifestyle. They do after all support the use of contraceptives. A short while ago I had an epiphany. I came to the conclusion that most people in the western world believe that sex, especially within the confines of a committed relationship, is very important, before and after marriage. This realization was so ______-changing that I felt the need to create polls in several forums. The results completely confirmed my suspicion. Sex is very important to people today, before and after marriage.<br /><br />They know that there is a very real chance that they will become pregnant when they have sex. They don't feel that this is right because sex is just so important. So their answer is of course, abortion.<br /><br /><br />Oh blastitall. I forgot to finish my thoughts. I'm too tired right now, but I'll include some, but remember, they are unfinished.<br /><br />A parasite is not related to its host.<br /><br />Also, I, unlike many people, do not support abortion, ever. Not when the life of the baby is at stake. Not when the life of the mother is at stake. Not in the case of incest or if the baby will be deformed or impaired. And absolutely definitely most positively not in the case of rape. I know these difficult situations are controversial. I can at least understand situations that put the mother's life in danger. But not rape. I know it's horrible to say but women have been giving birth after rapes for thousands of years. I realize that the growing baby inside your belly is a reminder of the horrible incident you want to put behind you. But I personally can not think of a greater silver lining that a brand new life. Yes, it was horrible, but now you have a baby! Babies ate WONDERFUL gifts!<br /><br />Knowing the condition of the birth is a new phenomenon.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-28292568015358240422009-10-07T14:37:00.009-05:002009-10-07T15:49:39.383-05:00How's this for a definition of evil?While studying <a href="http://smartalx.blogspot.com/2009/10/bart-simpson-allegory-for-humanity.html">the morality of Bart Simpson</a> I think I figured out a good definition of evil. Here it is:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Someone who does not want to do good.</span><br /><br />Easy, right? So obvious. Maybe a little bit too obvious. Enough that you might miss what I really mean, so let me explain.<br /><br />The standard measure of evil is Hitler. But maybe Hitler isn't the best example to use in these cases since there is so much emotional attachment to his figure. (see my comment) So rather than use that tired example I'll use a more fun one: James Bond villains. They generally want to take over the world. But to what end? Power? Greed? No. Not all of them. What do they want? Utopia. They want to create peace. Their methods might be a bit unorthodox, but their end goal is the same: goodness. They believe that they are doing good. In fact, EVERYONE believes that they are doing good.<br /><br />This is why I don't believe in evil. Everyone thinks they are doing good. And I think it's pretty darned good evidence for the existence of God. The general "tide" or "current" in humanity is towards goodness. Over time we should gradually get to be better and better people because we all struggle towards goodness.<br /><br />Unfortunately, although evil seems fairly easy to define, it seems that good is far more difficult. The struggles we have (indeed many wars were fought over this) are reconciling each others' definitions of "goodness." There are few universally accepted definitions of "good," so one of the main goals of philosophy I think is to study mankind in such a way as to discover that universal definition of "goodness" so we'll have a tried and true yardstick by which we can live and know that we are doing right.<br /><br />This is why I especially like my definition of morality: free will. I think it covers all bases. Read the <a href="http://smartalx.blogspot.com/2007/11/i-have-defined-morality.html">article</a> for more information.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-61104008615286804862009-10-07T13:57:00.010-05:002009-10-07T15:45:53.529-05:00Bart Simpson: An allegory for humanity.I got into a discussion with some people online about The Simpsons and I told them about my belief that they generally teach good moral values on the show. They completely scoffed at my thought and ridiculed me soundly. But I stand behind what I said.<br /><br />You can really see what I mean if you study the bad seed, Bart. Bart is not intended to be a positive role model. Bart is an allegory of the nature of all mankind. He is an exploration of the duality of good and evil and a lesson that good triumphs. He is constantly struggling with temptation and having to deal with the consequences of his sinful tendencies. It's actually quite Christian in its nature. He always (and by extension we) learn(s) a valuable life lesson, although it's rarely spelled out "I learned something today" South Park style.<br /><br />If you are a fan of the show, you no doubt remember when he killed a bird with a BB gun. Or when he was caught shoplifting. Or when he got Principle Skinner fired. Or in this latest episode, when he got Miss Krabappel fired. In this episode she tells him something particularly ground shaking, "You are bad on the inside." That completely shattered him, and the fact that he was so shaken by her accusation shows just how good he really is. If he was truly evil, it wouldn't matter that someone said that he was bad on the inside. (This is where <a href="http://smartalx.blogspot.com/2009/10/hows-this-for-definition-of-evil.html">the definition of evil</a> became clear to me.)<br /><br />Whatever you feel about Bart's nature, the one thing you must conclude is that he is not rotten to the core. He is in fact good inside. When his pranks go overboard he always feels bad for it and attempts to make things right. In fact, the majority of the shows involving him are almost always largely composed of his attempts to right his wrongdoings. The show is really about good.<br /><br />So we can really study Bart and learn something about ourselves. Although we do tend to make mistakes, we should always try to do good and to make our evil deeds right. And in general, that's exactly what we do, because we are good.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-43986502193532979422009-09-10T02:04:00.005-05:002010-03-28T01:24:16.989-05:00Review: Glee is not High School MusicalI really don't want to spend a lot of time on this. There is just so much I'm overwhelmed. So I'll be brief.<br /><br />Glee is a terrible show, especially if you are a Christian who doesn't like the world's values changing. They clearly have an agenda. They do the classic technique that I am seeing so often today. They must have conflict but they don't understand subtlety so they make everything black and white. The writers portray the things they don't like as negatively as possible just so they can set up a change of heart.<br /><br />Example 1) The wife of the main character is not a nice person. She is awful. Then they show how the guidance councelor (an otherwise very nice person) is in love with the same main character. Clearly they want the wife and the husband to divorce so the guidance councelor to get together. See? They set up a terrible situation so they can end it and provide an ideal situation.<br /><br />Example 2) The glee club needs more members so they are going to have a rally in front of the whole school. It is completely lame and the glee club students know it. So they decide to change the routine to a very sexy show, far too explicit for a high school rally. Again, they set up a bad situation so they can counter it with a far more pleasant one.<br /><br />Example 3) They show a "chastity club" event. Well the christian in me shouts for joy at that idea. Fantastic! And lo and behold the bad girl, a gorgeous cheerleader, is in charge of the whole club! Good for her. Of course this comes after a scene in which she tries to bribe her boyfriend into quitting the glee club by offering up a feel of her breast. Anyway, her hypocrocy isn't the issue, it's the way the writers portrayed the chastity club. They apparently don't think of a chastity club as a way for high school students to get together for wholesome non-sexual activities, nor in lessons by a responsible knowledgeable adult about the dangers of engaging in sexual activity so young. No, they apparently think that a chastity club is an excuse for boys and girls to get together and indulge in sexual activities! They begin by showing how the girls talk about using their bodies to manipulate boys and they show the boys talking about girls in the most disrespectful ways. They have absolutely no interest in being chaste. But that is nothing compared to the activities that happen when the boys and girls get together during their meetings. In this meeting, they take a blown up balloon and I guessed that maybe they would pass the balloon from person to person by only using their mouths or something. Well I didn't like that idea but then I soon found out how wrong I was. They didn't kiss the balloons. They used the balloons to allow them to grind their hips together. Each couple would hold the balloon up in the air with their hips, and they would proceed to grind on each other, as if they were making love with the balloon between them. I could actually hear in my mind the thousands of Christian parents around the country turning the TV show off telling their kids that enough is enough and their kids would not ever be watching this show. And shame on any Christian parent that actually watched that scene with their kids and did NOT turn the TV off.<br /><br />Back to the balloon scene. The cheerleader's boyfriend ends up popping the balloon, thus killing an angel according to the bad christian cheerleader. Then of COURSE the main female character has to jump in and tell the whole group how groups like that one actually end up causing more teen pregnancies than sexual education about contraceptives and such. Why one of the characters actually berated her for "using the C word!" What the crap???? How utterly cliche! Of COURSE programs like that one would fail. That one encouraged indulging in sexual thoughts and activities! It's all well and good to teach about contraceptives but the first thing you must teach is that abstinence is the only appropriate option!<br /><br />I really dislike how they paired the antagonist (the female cheerleader) with Christian values while the good girl believes in, or at least enables, progressive attitudes towards sex. They clearly want to fight the belief in chastity.<br /><br />If you are a Christian parent, please don't let your chlldren watch this show. They are not teaching Christian family values. They are teaching new post-modern progressive ideas that pre-marital sexuality should not only be tolerated, it should be embraced.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-67483015218217407052009-09-10T01:46:00.004-05:002009-09-10T01:59:57.029-05:00King of the Hill gets one right.I still stand by what I said about King of the Hill being a completely evil show, but they did do one thing right. For several seasons one of the main characters' wife (Nancy) was having an affair. They made it a big joke because Dale is the type of person who suspects everyone of everything, yet he is clueless of the obvious hints that his wife is cheating on him. Cute. Shoot! His child is clearly the son of a Native American and he still never puts two and two together! I hated this part of the show but finally they did the right thing. Nancy fell back in love with her husband and ended her affair. And the show in which it all comes out is handled very poignently.<br /><br />I think this might be the only thing the writers of this show have ever done right.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-85487868644237607352009-08-15T17:35:00.003-05:002009-08-15T17:47:20.490-05:00Life's purposeI believe that God has a plan for us. I think that He has a vision about what we were meant to be. I think at the core each and every one of us is a singular sort of person, complete and whole and able to be with God in the flesh. But Adam and Eve were the only people to have ever been this kind of person. Then they sinned and everything went bad. All of Adam's descendants are now damaged, from birth. And what's worse? The damaged people of the world damage us even more.<br /><br />Even as a newborn baby, we are damaged because of original sin. But, severe as that taint is, the infant is at his LEAST damaged the moment he is born. He will never be as undamaged as he was the moment he left his mother's womb, until he gets to Heaven. The world's damage to the infant is incalculable.<br /><br />We are in fact so damaged that we are blind as to what God wants us to be. We might believe something about ourselves and not realize how wrong we are. We have been brainwashed by the world. And with the power of the media and the moving tide of "progress" today, the brainwashing has never been so complete.<br /><br />So I think that one of God's purposes for us is to heal us. To undo the damage done when Adam and Eve ate the fruit. Obviously, we can not do it ourselves. Our greatest healer is Jesus. We are to look to Him for healing. But we can not ignore other people. They are one of Jesus' most important tools. He doesn't just use people though. Of course we have the Bible as our main word, but we might learn from other books as well, even secular ones. Sometimes a TV show can offer us inspiration. Even nature can offer us some insight. Seeing a rainbow at just the right time can give someone hope. Watching animals behave in a peculiar way can actually teach us something, even change our hearts. All of these come from Jesus and the Holy Spirit and we should look for them daily, no, as often as possible.<br /><br />Truly God wants us to be whole again. He wants us healed. Once we are healed we can be with Him completely, as Adam and Eve were. That is what God wants. He wants to be with us again. That is what I think we are meant to do here on Earth, to help one another to become whole again, with the power of the Holy Spirit. Open ourselves up to Jesus and accept His gift of forgiveness and healing. We will of course never get to perfection on Earth, but we can look forward to receiving it in Heaven. And we will. God be praised.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-49426146592883553182009-08-06T02:46:00.010-05:002009-10-07T15:53:58.968-05:00Getting people to do things "your way"<span style="font-family:arial;">I happened upon a reality show where one roommate was making life difficult for her roommate because she wanted them to be as ecologically sound as possible. They had to take 3 minute showers. They had to turn off all the lights all of the time. They had to watch what they were doing constantly. It was aggravating how controlling that girl was.<br /><br />Here's some advice to anyone wanting other people to do things "your way." If it really matters how people do things, make it easier for them to do it your way. You want the lights turning off when someone leaves the room, install motion activated switches. That way they never have to even turn a light on. You want to conserve water, capture rainwater or grey water to use in toilets and such. They won't have to worry about water at all. You worried about energy usage? Install solar panels. You don't like them adjusting the thermostats? Install programmable thermostats.</span><br /><p><span style="font-family:arial;">These are of course examples, expensive ones. Not everyone can afford a solar array. But the point remains. If it's harder for them to do it your way, why would they <em>want</em> do it your way? Especially if you have a bad attitude about it all? If you are incapable of making it easier for the other people to do things your way, then you'd be better off picking your battles and compromise.<br /><br />You'll never get people to do things your way with a controlling attitude. The leader's job is to make the follower's life easier, not harder.</span></p>Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-60790555425114645072009-08-05T17:03:00.007-05:002009-08-06T03:54:12.468-05:00It's difficult to fall in love with someone you don't trust.<span style="font-family:arial;">Have you ever known couples who fell in love and married in a very short amount of time? Months? Weeks??? I have heard of some, curiously all Christian, which seems bizarre considering the Christian stance on divorce. But these couples seem to make it work somehow. How do we explain this phenomenon?<br /><br />My guess is they get to really know one another very quickly, because they already know what to expect from a true Christian. I realized something, a reason why I am hesitant to say that I love a girl too soon, despite extreme feelings of affection for her: trust. I have always said that love is selfless, that if you can't put them above yourself, then your affectionate feelings are selfish. If it's about how they make you feel, then it's not love. It's infatuation. It's not necessarily a bad thing understand. It's part of the process of falling in love for most of us, because we are programmed (by society) to look out for number one. But as you grow in your relationship with that special person, you start to realize that the "whole you" (which includes that other person) is actually more important to you and you naturally start to put them first.<br /><br />Here is the first explanation of Christians falling in love very quickly. Christians who have been able to genuinely practice putting themselves last all of their lives are more able to put their significant other first more quickly because they don't need to make that transformation from me to we. They never think if themselves first and as a consequence they are able to very quicky demonstrate their faith to the person they are interested in.<br /><br />Another reason why they fall in love so quickly is regarding trust, or at trust's root, knowledge about the other person. It's difficult to fall in love with someone you don't know... or know to trust. So how do you know that you can trust them? Generally time is the only answer, but... if you are a particularly strong Christian, and you find yourself attracted to another particularly strong Christian, you might be a candidate for finding love quickly.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">What I really think I understand now about these Christians who fall in love so quickly, and the reason why in the past I would take time to fall in love (a couple of months, maybe 3 or 4), is that I didn't quite trust them. Why not? Because we were both a bit too worldly. Because they were worldly, I was unfamiliar with their beliefs. I had to learn about them first to determine how much of my beliefs I would have to compromise to be with them. Some girls made me realize that I would have to compromise too much. Other girls made me regret doubting their faith. They fell in love far quicker than I and my reticence left them disappointed. By the time I'd caught up, it was too late.<br /><br />Now I see that it should be easier as a strong Christian, not more difficult. Christians have a specific set of core beliefs that make us who we are. If you are a strong Christian falling for another strong Christian, finding that trust should be easier because we know what to expect. Finding trust with a worldly person is more difficult because you don't know what they believe in. There are so many belief systems, many of them incompatible. You have to learn more about that person and really examine how compatible your beliefs are. If you don't strongly subscribe to and understand an established belief system, like Christianity, you will always find it difficult to trust another person you date because you will never know what to expect from them*. If you don't have any obvious common ground with the person you are interested in, you have to learn a lot about them first. You have to learn what beliefs they subscribe to. But if you are, say, a Christian, all you have to do is learn how strong of a Christian they are. Find out if you are both at the same point in your development as a Christian.<br /><br />Sure, it's not 100% automatic. You'll always need to learn about people you date, and even strong Christians differ on many core beliefs. But knowing that you share a majority of your core beliefs from the start gives you a sense of security that you cannot have with anyone else. You don't have to be so protective. You don't have to focus so much time learning about each others' core beliefs. You can spend more time learning about the <u>other</u> things that make each of us unique and attractive.<br /><br />Many Christians doubt other people <strong>A LOT</strong>. Comes with the territory. But amongst the Christians that we trust, we can put real faith in each other. All you have to do is prove to each other that you are a strong Christian, and you will automatically know a lot about each other, especially your beliefs. So if you are a traditional strong Christian interested in another person, all you have to do is find out if they truly aim to embody Christ's love in the world. Once you do that, as long as there is chemistry between the two of you, love will surely bloom. True love. Unfailing love.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;color:#9999ff;"><em>*The world's answer to this problem is to create a blanket "acceptance" of all belief systems and to not intrude, force your beliefs on them, and not meet in the middle. Curiously this "open mind" actually encourages closed mindedness because we aren't "supposed to" challenge one another's beliefs. Progress is slow without challenge. Christians challenge each other's beliefs all the time. It kind of defines us. We try to become better through Christ every day. We can only achieve that by listening to advice from other Christians.</em></span>Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8136441204095117259.post-57242503481771279912009-07-23T16:15:00.001-05:002009-07-23T16:15:39.029-05:00How to forgiveI think I learned a lesson in forgiveness. There are occasions in which a good friend of mine will stop talking to me, for no apparent reason. Well people don't just do that. There is a reason. Something that I don't realize that I did. If the person would tell me, then perhaps I could explain, or apologize, or mend my ways and stop doing whatever it is that made the person stop talking to me. But they don't do that. They hold a grudge. Now of course this is completely unfair to me since I am at people's whims about whether or not they will just up and decide to hate me one day. But then I have to ask myself, do I want to be friends with a passive aggressive person like that? So I move on. But the issue remains. Why don't they forgive.<br /><br />It's easy to point at other people and tell them that they do something wrong and should change their ways. But sometimes you realize that the other person is the man in the mirror. So I've been examining forgiveness in my own heart. It stems from this deal with complaining. I have a couple of blog posts regarding complaining. I don't think that complaining for valid reasons is wrong. In fact I think people complein far too little. See my blog post about why I think this way. But there is an attitude today of exhuberant forgiveness. Now, on the one hand we are commanded by scripture to forgive as Jesus did. On the other hand we can't just let people get away with everything they do to us. Spare the rod you know. Rude people need to learn that they are rude. And yes, many rude people know it, but I would say that the majority of rude people are not on the extremes. There is just a general ignorance of common courtesy and etiquette these days, and this is something that we all should hold one accountable for. So these kinds of complaints, let 'em rip.<br /><br />But what about when someone really does you wrong? How can you forgive someone for really changing the direction of your life? Well, the answer came to me when I was examining the concept of free will. See, a lot of people believe that free will is an illusion. They say that everything you do or say is predestined, not necessarily by God (although some do say that), but by circumstance. When you round a corner, you bumping into someone has a lot to do with your speed, their speed, your concentration, theirs, the vector, the diameter of the arc that you are turning, the center of that arc. There are in fact more variables to the intersection of your two paths than we can imagine... because you must also consider why were you 2 feet away from the wall? Why were they running? There are so many factors that determine what we do it's a wonder that we even feel that we have any free will. I am on the fence about free will. If it weren't for Christianity I probably would abandon the idea of free will altogether, for what just God would send you to hell if you couldn't prevent it?<br /><br />So I began wondering how Jesus would deal with some forgiveness issues, and why. And I realized that Jesus would not only know what someone did, but exactly why. He knew why a woman committed adultery. He knew why someone committed murder. He knows why we do the things we do. In fact, it's possible that he knows that we don't have enough free will to do the things that we should, and maybe that is why he is able to forgive all of mankind. Then it clicked. I can do the same thing! All I have to do is assume that the other person lscked the free will to do what was right.<br /><br />So if you want to forgive someone, but don't know how to justify it, consider this. Even if you do believe in free will, imagine that the other person didn't have enough free will when they did you wrong. If free will exist, I do believe that it is variable. Some people have more free will than others. In fact this is the way in which I define morality. So I assume that the other person's level of free will was so diminished that they couldn't help but to do me wrong. Then I search for reasons to explain why they did the thing they did. They didn't realize. They weren't brought up right. They are young and immature. They were having a bad day. They assumed that I was the bad guy. Their feelings were too involved. Once you begin to believe that the other person is just as innocent as you, then it becomes easier to forgive them.<br /><br />That is what I am planning on doing from now on. When someone does me wrong, I'm not going to just say, "I forgive you." First, they might take it wrong. They might think that I am being passive aggressive myself. I still have to let them know what they did to me. Second, if I don't tell them what they did wrong, they can't learn a lesson from it. This is just like your first day on the job and you take a coffee break for 15 minutes and company policy is 10 minutes. The boss tells you "I know you don't know our policy so it's okay this one time that you took 15 minutes, but from now on you need to limit your breaks to 10 minutes." So that is what I plan on doing. I'll let them know that they did me wrong. I'll tell them that we are still friends, but please don't do it again. And an apology would be nice.<br /><br />This is what Jesus would do I think. If not, I pray that He lets me know.Alexhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14277527481833237244noreply@blogger.com0