Investigations

Last night while reading Jesus the Christ by Thalmage, my scepticism and criticism of the Bible began to increase and I was becoming even more convinced that there was no actual proof, no exceptable validation, no real way to verify the veracity of the scriptures. The Bible could be just as easily a work of fiction as it is the Word of God.

 As I contemplated my thoughts and entered my ideas, in my wife's kindle, I had a thought come to me about the purpose of the Torah and its relationship to the Bible.

I grabbed my wife's i-pod, got on line, and referenced wikipedia because it is a great place to find concise explanations for practically everything.  It may not be the final word on anything but for my purposes it was easy and convenient. What I found really surprised me. The Torah is actually the same thing as the first five books of the Christian Bible.  The more interesting thing was that the process for copying the Torah has been so precise and safe guarded by religious fervor that no error, alteration, or interpretation has been allowed for 2600 years.  Specially trained scribes have used the same type of parchment scrolls, the same exact letters and figures with the same writing instruments to, supposedly, make exact copies of the original since Moses' words were written down originally.

Accept for the LDS Book of Mormon and its claimed miraculous inception I was not aware of any way to physically verify that God really exists because there are no, commonly experienced spiritual manifestations, supernatural occurrences, or interventions of the divine that can be proved and accepted as real.

As I read the wikipedia entry it dawned on me that the purpose of the Jew for 2600 years has been to provide the only, and the first, temporal evidence of God.  For 2600 years the Jews have been the sole keeper of the faith and the caretakers of the actual word of God.

Conversely the Bible traces it beginnings and owes its content to the Jewish people and the christian faithful but because of its checkered history, evidence of wanton manipulation, systematic generalization through creeds, the existence of multiple interpretations, misinterpretations and subjective revisions its authenticity is discounted if not completely repudiated.

Because the Bible is practically nothing more than a collection of hearsay and poetry that can not be verified or validated, the Bible and the stories about Christ are just as easily a divinely, or not, inspired metaphor as they are recollection of actual events written sometime centuries after the event.

As a consequence the whole notion of God and Jesus Christ is subject to skepticism and criticism. Because religion relies entirely upon faith for its acceptance and because there are no spiritual manifestations, supernatural occurrences, or divine interventions that don't require the observer to exercise his or her faith the concept of God is suspect in today's world of scientific scrutiny and narcissistic personality disorders.

The Torah and the Book of Mormon are still relics of faith. They are however the greatest actual evidence of God's existence.  In a temporal and mortal world where everything even science eventually requires faith as a basis for belief, 2600 years of proof and a second witness a with miraculous inception justify the faithful embrace of God and the acceptance of Jesus Christ as our savior.

Add to that the millennial recurrence and world wide belief in a God based on personal testimony gained, by the individual, through reading, studying, pondering, praying and practicing the concepts of religion and through daily inspirations one receives when their minds are receptive and their lives are in tune with the spirit of God.  The critics will continue and the nonbelievers will protest but their efforts are nothing more than what they protest against and that is faith. " Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1)

Illegal Immigrant Status

Yesterday Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney was questioned on the Latino channel about his position on deportation of Illegal Aliens. His response should have been.  The oath of office requires the enforcement of laws. I am sorry that approximately 12 million people have chosen to violate the laws of the United States and as a consequence create lives for themselves based on that illegal act. It is unfortunate that some of their actions end up harming the rights and liberties of legal citizens of the US who are dependent upon their elected leaders to act according to law and not according to their personal feelings.

I am sorry that the actions of those persons here illegally have created a situation which expects the current laws be broken or disregarded to accommodate them and their children.  I am sorry that past presidents and congresses have not upheld their oath of office and allowed this situation to grow to the point of a national and personal tragedy on both sides of the issue.

It will be my responsibility as President of the United States to defend and protect the constitution and enforce the laws of the land. Because of the miss-action, in-action, and illegal actions of the past administrations my responsibilities will be made more complicated, difficult, and heart wrenching.

Correcting this untenable situation on the behalf of the legal citizens of the United States will be my sworn duty and obligation. I believe that safegarding the rights of the legal citizens of the United
states is my role as president. I do not believe that it is responsibility to disregard or abandon the laws of this country to accommodate the plight of illegal immigrants.  Addressing the circumstances which the original laws did not anticipate because they were written with the expectation of enforcement will now have to be addressed because the desirability of living in America is only possible because of the rule of law.

Addressing the circumstances which have arisen because too many people have entered illegally as a result of past administrations not enforcing the law will be one of my administration's most difficult responsibilities.  My policies will be, while I am in office, to hold accountable agencies responsible for enforcing the laws with the express purpose of stopping the flow of illegal immigrants, to work with congress to develop a workable guest or worker visa program, to work with the immigration agencies and citizen groups to identify and accommodate those persons that can qualify for naturalization or recognize their citizenship, and as a last resort deport those living here in violation of the laws and visa requirements.

Am I willing to deport 12 million people from America.  I don't think I will have to. People are willing to abide by laws that are enforced. I intend to enforce the laws and work to fix the broken systems so that the legal citizens of this country are protected and those who want to immigrate are fairly treated.

The notion that there should be no borders doesn't work when everyone shows up at the same place and expects the circumstance that attracted them there to remain the same.

Time

From the beginning of time, I am not talking about man's history, I am refereeing to  the very the instant of existence everything was stamped with an expiration date. The universe's lifespan might be in doubt, but constallations are winking out as we speak, rocks eventually turn to mud, and man's fleeting micro-moments are only notable because man keep records and passes them on to the next micro-moment occupant who, even though they don't know it, are simply waiting for the the electricity to go off and plunge collective mankind into the dark ages with little hope or even desire of recreating the recent past.

Much of what a human learns is lost to the cosmos but there are instances in the scheme of things when an idea blossoms and life is changed for the next person in line.  The proverbial wheel, the recently obsolete movable type, the boom and bane of the industrial contraptions, the hyper active electromotive force and fortune of the world, and the most effective mouse trap of all times the integrated circuit.

Each of the future changing ideas are the children of subservient thoughts and preliminary concepts. Are they, were they inevitable or would the world be a different place if the person thinking the thought either did think it or was not in the right place at the right time. There is quite a bit of anecdotal evidence that throughout history there was more than one person who has the same or similar idea at nearly the same time.  So the air plane, the car, the television and countless other things were inevitable.

Does that make people expendable? Can whole villages of people be brutally massacred by the Gigues Kahn's of the world and it not make a bit of difference to the remaining world's population. Would we still arrive at this future after several millennia?  Does it mater to the future if half of the world's population falls ill and dies from the bubonic plague? The is some evidence that over population was a contributing factor and the plague only hastened the eventual death by starvation. But was there an idea whose time had come and the person who was going to bring it to light unexpectedly die. Sentencing the world's population to time at hard labor instead of revolutionizing the world and saving all of those people. Only to cause the world to arrive at over population in the 19 century rather than the 21st.

Useful Morons revisited

There seems to be little one can do to counteract the affects of the, communist endeared, useful morons. It apparently is in our genetic makeup and surfaces as morons or red necks. They exist and can be easily influenced by the unscrupulous politicians and power gluttons. This is not a good situation but for the most part they are self-involved mindless dwebs that tend not to do anything on their own. If the despots are corralled then the usefulness remains untapped and the world blunders onward.

However the little busy moron that keeps stirring-the-pot are very harmful to the world order because they actively engage themselves in counter productive and harmful activities in the name of some anti-establishment ideology. It is the busy moron that upsets the balance of power and initiates harmful movements that too many politicians hitch their carts to. It is the busy moron that causes the issues to be over exaggerated and hyper-inflated.

Some social progress can be attributed to the busy moron because inequities do exist. However, unscrupulous individuals do take advantage of it with little or no concern for the consequences of their actions or about rectifying the problems created..

It is not that the initiatives are necessarily harmful but that the unintended consequences are where the greatest damage is done and the morons either can't or won't think it through. The politician's exploit it for their purposes and the dumbed down media types are too simple mined to recognize the true issues and report them accurately or are they are actually complicit in the perpetration of the debacle.