Irresponsibility 101

As a conservative who believes in responsibility, I naturally disagree with much of the spending that President Obama and the 111th congress have shoved through the legislative process. However, we can whine about democrat spending till the cows come home or until the cowboys start winning, and it will not make much difference. Fox News reports that NASA is being forced to spend $500,000,000 on the Ares I rocket, which is cancelled. Last October, President Obama signed into law a new NASA plan, which canceled the Constellation program, an umbrella program that included the Ares I which was meant to replace NASA's aging shuttles. However, even though the program was canceled, congressmen inserted clauses into NASA's budget to prevent NASA from cutting jobs related to the program in their states.

Before anyone claims that is a good thing (they are protecting jobs, right?), may I point out that the money being spent on the program is tax money, i.e. money that has been taken from tax payers. Put simply, money is being taken from the American People to pay American People. In other words, the American People are paying themselves; and that assumes that none of the money is being spent over seas, which I find highly unlikely. It should also be remembered that we technically don't have the five hundred million dollars in our pockets, that money is being borrowed from the next couple generations.

At the same time that we are spending half a billion on building technology that may or may not be used, congressmen are talking about cutting military budgets in order to reign in the budget, despite the fact that we are fighting a war.

Bringing spending under control is simpler than many people are making it. Stop spending money we don't have on programs we don't need just so that you'll look good to your constituents.

Priorities?

This Wednesday Mexico, and 10 other Latin American Countries presented amicus briefs against Arizona's new immigration law to the 9th circuit Court of Appeals. The 9th Circuit Court allowed them to submit the briefs, and Arizona Govenor Jan Brewer is understandably irritated. Before I comment on the precident of foreign nations sumitting legal documents to American Courts in American Cases, I would like to look at another issue that is developing at the same time.

On September 30th, David Hartley and his wife Tiffany were jet skiing on Falcon Lake, which sits on the American-Mexican Border, when they were attacked by members of the mexican Zeta drug cartel. David was shot in the back of the head, and fell into the lake. His wife tried to turn around and get him, but was driven off by gunfire from the cartel members. In the last few weeks, Mexican authorities have done little, and have denied the little help our government has offered. The few who have tried to help have suffered the consequences, such as Rolando Flores Villegas who took up the search for Hartley's body and was found beheaded on Tuesday. The State Department has remained for the most part silent on the issue.

If the Mexican government really cares about the welfare of the people of Mexico, they should spend more time and energy on stopping drug cartels and less time worrying about Arizonan's limiting illegal immigration. The drug cartels are doing more damage on the border than anything else. The Mexican government has no interest in slowing down illegal immigration, a decent amount of money comes into the country from jobs made possible by America.

If you take a second and think about it, what kind of precedent is set by a foreign nation submitting legal documents to a civil court dealing with a constitutional case? American Law lives on precedent (It's always easier to say 'they said it first' when you are critisised) and what is used today will be abused tomorrow. If mexico can submit amicus briefs in this case, then why should Canada not submit amicus briefs against gun rights, Pakistan against women's rights, any African nation against business ethics? Foreign nations have no jurisdiction in domestic maters of our nation. If anything, Mexico should be apologizing for the number of it's citizens who violate our law on a daily basis, and not just by crossing the border.

Priorities people, priorities. Get them in line, and your problems will begin to diminish.

On Critisism

The last few days I have spent some time looking at critiques of various writers, and several on G.K. Chesterton have set me wondering as to how we can make an objective critique of a writer, mainly because there are some writers I dislike almost as intensly as some seem to hate Tolkien and Chesterton. After some thought, here is what I have come up with.



You cannot dismiss someone's arguments simply by saying they are not a trained philosopher or scientist. In the past, and a little today, people educate themselves. If someone has made stupid mistakes, it will take little or no effort to point out said mistakes. If you want to dethrone someone from a wrongly held seat of cultural authority, show what is wrong with their work, and how that corrupts what they have to say.



It is not enough however, to prove them wrong by showing how it conflicts with your beliefs. The two places that philosophies and worldviews can destroy themselves by having conflicts. If an idea conflicts with itself, or how the world works, then it can be viewed as false. Too often ideas are dismissed because they do not fit a belief system they are attempting to challenge simply because that belief system is the one held by the reviewer.

The problem is that it is difficult to show where an idea conflicts with how the world works, but if there were no problem, philosophy would not be fun.

Christianity v. Life

I have been looking at a lot of different books and blogs about and by atheists and christians, and I have to say that the amount of weight given to the study of plants and animals is far out of proportion to it's actual importance. Despite the fact that most of our construction of 'pre-history' is based on falicious assumptions and straight up guess work, it is still treated as the irrefutable refutation of theism in general and Christianity in particular. The fact is that such pre historical guestimating is far less important than what the world is doing now, or within the last two hundred years.

The fact is that Christianity fits reality better than any other belief system. You can say that we can have morality without God because we have no need of logic, that life is illogical and thus has no meaning (using logic to prove such), but the fact is that people living their lives know that logic and reason are basic pieces of how life works. No one has ever lived their life without logic and no one ever will.

You can say that Christianity is cruel and causes people guilt, but it also gives them redemtion, while aethism gives people dispaire and leave them in it. Christianity has a problem of evil only when you demand that God be accountable for everything and man for nothing, but when man becomes responsible for his actions, the problem vanishes. Evil is still there, it is still painful, but it is not a permanent part of the cosmos as it is in aethism or eastern philosophies. You can say, as Budhism does, that good and evil, peace and war, life and death, are all the same, but people do not live that way.

You can say that we are chance products of matter and that thoughts and emotions are simply chemical reactions in the brain, but again, people simply don't live that way. Some people may find it convenient to blame behavior on such chemical reactions, but the theory undercuts itself by denying man's ability to theorize.

You can say that what we do doesn't matter, that it will all vanish, but man cannot live that way, and those who have tried usually end up blowing out their brains. Life and man only make sense in Christianity. Why are we continually amazed by how fast or slow time moves? Why can we not simply accept murder and rape as good? Why are we sad when people die? Why are we consumed with love, burn with hate, sink in despair, or rise in joy? Why do our hearts leap at the sound of the horns of Rohan as the Witchking stands at the gate of Gondor? Why do tears start to our eyes as random people pay their respects as Lt. Col. Michael Strobl escorts the body of PFC Chance Phelps home from the Iraq War?

Before people bash Christianity for being "full of contradictions" (Which are usually idiotic readings of the scripture that a six year old can understand), they might want to look at the bleakness of their own beliefs, and look at the hundreds of ways that such beliefs simply do not fit reality.

Hurrah for Good Old Southern Manners (and guns)

In my Arthurian Literature class this week, we have been discussing Chivalry (how you act as a warrior) and Courtly Love (How you act as a lover) in the romances of Chretian de Troyes. Most of the young men in the class still open doors for ladies and give up their seats on the bus (To be fair, there were a good number of Corps people there). What was interesting was the small number of girls who would want their boyfriend to be a 'courtly lover', a grand total of zero. I think the reason was the impression that such a friend would be a push over. Maybe, maybe not, I have no experiance in that area so I can't talk much lest I set my foot firmly in my mouth.

What I can talk about a little, and was slightly disappointed we did not discuss, was Chivalry, a code of conduct for combat. If they have no code of conduct, are you still bound by one? Obviously there are boundaries, i.e. if they use human shields or launch missles from hospitals you can't do it either. However, the practice of taking prisoners is dependent to a large degree on the assumption that the prisoner will not suddenly blow up in your face or pull a knife when you turn your back.

Also, in combatives this morning we learned something very interesting. Who always wins an unarmed fight?

The guy who's buddy with a gun shows up first.

Fiction

I would highly encourage all of you to read Martin Cothran's article 'The Rhetoric of Amazement', I think he is spot on in what he is saying. I would like to add just a few thoughts of my own.

Fiction, and Fantasy in particular, has been attacked as escapist, full of lies, and not worth our time, etc. Much of this stems from the pragmatism that has become the trademark of modern times. Like everything else, fantasy can be good and bad, but it is not bad because it is fantasy.

Fantasy is an instrument that allows the author or creator to do two things. The primary joy that Tolkien and many other Fantasy writers had from their work was the joy of creating. It is the same joy that God felt when he made heaven and earth, and it is a reflection of his image in us. Also, fantasy is and always has been, a tool to explore and make moral points. Until recently, if you wanted to know how to or not to act you looked at heroes and villians in legends. You followed the example of Hector, Beowulf, Diomedes, Sir Gawain, and avoided the actions of Paris, Unferth, or Loki (The modern 'dark hero' has changed all that, but another time). Humans learn best by experiancing, worst by lecture. Literature and stories is one of the best ways to learn without actually making every mistake yourself.

Just as we would neither subsist on a diet of sweet potatoes nor on a diet of cookies, neither should we subsist on only one type of literature, much less disregard it completely.

Guns and Bullets

I have been looking at rifles in the last few moments of spare time I will have before I head back to the Corps, and I just watched a video of a guy bad mouthing the AR-15 something fierce. Very Annoying. The AR and the AK are built on two different mindsets for two different purposes. In their own niche, each weapons performs very well, especially when you tweak them a little.

The AR is built on the American military philosophy that superior training and equipment will always beat superior numbers. Thus, the weapon constructed by a number of tight fitting parts that enhance accuracy, but are less tolerant of foreign matter or bad maintenance. Thus, the IRA used the Armalite AR-15 in Ireland (ever wonder about the name Ire-land, a land full of ire, but I digress) for accurate, sharp combat, then ran home, cleaned the thing, took care of it, and used it again.

The AK, on the other hand, is built on the Russian philosophy that if you throw enough people at the enemy, you'll win sooner or later, probably later. Put another way, quantity over quality (that's why Russia does not make semi-auto AK-47s, they are all fully automatic). The AK can spew out a lot of hard hitting lead in a short time, even if you just pulled the thing out of a bed of quicksand. The reason for this is that the gun is made of fewer, looser fitting pieces, so there is more wiggle room for dirt, mud, and general junk to get in without jamming the gun. The problem is that this wiggle room destabilizes the firing chamber, so after about a hundred yards, accuracy goes out the window. The AK is an excellent gun if you are fighting (or hunting, I tell my dad) in thick brush or if you will be using it for long periods without being able to clean it.

Both guns are great, but neither can do the other's job. If you try to make them, don't get mad that they don't measure up.

Wishful Logic

Last night the Bastrop GOP put on a forum dealing with the issue of the proposed ACC campus being built in Bastrop. In return for getting a campus on the wrong side of town that over three years will grow to serve 1,100 annually, Bastrop will become co-signers for ACC's $444,000,000 debt, a debt that will grow after ACC buys land and builds a $38,000,000 campus. The reasoning behind this bad investment goes something like this.

1. Bastrop has a low household income level,

This is caused by Bastropian's low education,

Therefore, more education will raise income level.

2.If we bring in an ACC campus, then more people will get a better education.

3. Therefore if we bring in an ACC campus, then Bastrop will get a higher income level.

All three arguments are seriously flawed, however, as the propositions and conclusions are either false, do not follow, or both.

The most solid argument of the three is (1). Education and income level are fairly complementary. If you have one you are likely to have the other. The problem is that young people in Bastrop are not staying in Bastrop if they can help it, at least as far as I can tell. This is me speaking without any studies or polls, but from what I have seen, if young people can leave Bastrop, for the most part they do. Hence, giving Bastropians a better education would not necessarily raise the income level since the recipients of that education would simply leave the Bastrop area.

Argument (2) is where the real problems are. First, it assumes that Bastropians would get a better education if they could, which is not true for the majority of Bastrop youth. It is an unarguable fact that Bastrop High School is rife with problems ranging from drugs to pregnancies to violence. Less than 40% of BHS graduates go on to take any form of higher learning. That means that over 60% of Bastrop Youth do not take advantage of distance learning or any of the easily accessible college campuses around Bastrop. Former Mayor Scott suggests that if we put an ACC campus right next door then the young people will attend. Some of them will, it would be foolish for them to turn down free education. The second reason that this argument falls flat is because it assumes that the people a new campus would attract will make good use of the education. Those that want a good education in Bastrop can get it today with distance learning or at one of the many ACC campuses nearby. The people who enroll in a new campus will be the ones who are, for the most part, free loaders who will not put their education to good use (I am speaking generally here and from my own experience, which is, I admit, limited).

Thus, when we arrive at Argument (3), every proposition that it is built on is false, and thus it is left without a leg to stand on. This was former Mayor Scott's only reason for pushing the project, and I was suprised to not see any kind of statistics from him on average income in any of the cities ACC has annexed in the past. Instead, all I got were figures from Mr. Parmalee showing that the cities themselves annually lost around $2,100,000 dollars to the program.

Also, we are being told that the campus will add nine cents to property taxes for ever hundred dollars of property value. We are promised that the rate will not rise, but Austin was told the same thing when ACC first began, and the rate has since almost doubled.

Yes, Bastrop needs to do something to fix it's education, but this is like saying the best way to fix a house is to make it taller, never minding the fact that the foundation is shifting. Throwing money at something and building newer, bigger, emptier buildings (think BHS Performing Arts Center) will not fix the problem. There are numerous other options that Bastrop can look at, the ACC proposal is far from the best.

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

The dominant issue over the last few days has been the attempt to build a mosque only a few blocks away from Ground Zero. The propriety of such a building at such a sight is questionable at best, but can we please, focus on the issue and not throw up smoke screens all over the place? No one is suggesting that mosques should be restricted across the U.S., there is no persecution of Muslims across our nation, we are not throwing them in jail or forcing them to meet secretly in homes and woods as many Muslim nations continue to do to Christians and Jews. No, all we ask is that they not build a Mosque only a few blocks away from the most horrific massacre of Civilians this nation has ever suffered, an act committed by men who claimed to be dedicated Muslims.

To claim that this is religious persecution is nothing other than silly, when one looks at a map and sees that there is a Muslim place of prayer less than half a mile from Ground Zero, and a mosque less than two miles from the site. Why exactly do we need another, bigger mosque, right next door to the place the twin towers stood? Also, bear in mind that the property was bought for a very low price, on account of the fact that the building that stands there now was damaged by landing gear from one of the planes that crashed into the twin towers.

I mean, what is it about the site that Muslims have to build a mosque there? Why? I'm not saying that all muslims are complicit in the acts of 9/11, but the Imam who is trying to build the mosque has not exactly gone out of his way to show his horror at the acts, claiming that America was complicit in the attacks, having created Osama Bin Laden. I'm not trying to heap abuse upon anyone, but building this mosque seems just a tad bit unncessesary.

A Difference of Opinion

I was reading an article on the movie Salt the other day, and it mentioned that while young teenage males are watching Angelina Jolie beat up men bigger and stronger than herself, acting as a female Jason Bourne, young girls are watching Edward and Jacob rescue Bella Swan from one sticky situation after another. Bella is no passive puppy getting carried everywhere by Edward and waiting helplessly for Jacob to come save her, but the burden of protecting the girl falls on Edward and Jacob, and even her dad does his best. In Salt on the other hand, it is the woman who is doing the saving. So girls are looking for strong men, and boys are looking for strong women. Just a note to the feminist crowd, you might want to start by informing the girls what they want before telling society what the girls want. And guys, man up, and I don't mean go to the gym (though that's good too). Open doors for girls whether they are six, sixteen, or sixty, give up your seat when there are not enough to go around and let the ladies get in line first. There is a reason the Middle Ages were known for true love, the men were chivalrous.

There are many people who find it difficult to wrap their heads around the hatred that displayed toward theists by atheists such as Christopher Hitchens, P.Z. Meyers, and Richard Dawkins. Many write it off as simply hatred against those in disagreement, others claim the hatred is simply doubt about atheism being manifested as anger toward Theism. While there is a bit of truth in these explanations, they do not explain the anger for one basic reason. They dramatically under estimates the effects of believing something is really true, especially when that something concerns the existence of God and moral standards.

Most, if not all, atheists have bought into the theory of evolution, which makes very clear statements about good and evil, the nature of man, and what the world should be like, or what utopia should look light. In general, good is strong, pleasant, and natural, evil is weakness, pain, and self denial. Man is only one step on the evolutionary ladder and is not intrinsically more valluable than any other organism, and the world only progresses as fast as evolution. These statemnts are in direct contradiction to the tenents held by many theistic belief systems: God determines right and wrong (our enjoyment has little or nothing to do with it in the short run), man is unique and above all animals, and history will end with mankind going to heaven and hell.

Now, if everyone were to stay at home and hold these beliefs to themselves, there would not be as many arguments. The problems arise when we try to make laws, run nations, and set policies. If you oppose abbortion, stem cell research, or euthanasia, then you are obstructing the atheistic march to utopia by slowing evolutionary development in the human race. If yuo oppose gay marriage, incest, bestiality, or polygamy, then you are opposing good (pleasure, that which is 'natural') and advancing evil (denial of one's urges). When you support prayer in school, the mention of God in the pledge of allegiance, or the mention of Intelligent Design in schools, you are filling children's heads with nonsense from humanities dark and barbaric past, ideas scientific atheism hates as much as most people hate Fascism (which is, by the way, good atheism).

Thus, Atheists have no problem with theists who leave their beliefs at home, but their wrath is hurled up at those theists who point out the harm in atheistic ideals and attempt to prevent them from implementation. Another way of looking at it is a comparison of war. In wars such as the American Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars, there was a measure of respect between soldiers. Religious war is different, combatants in a religious war are fighting because the other side is evil. Thus, there is no respect between sides. Theism vs. Atheism is by definition a religious war. Atheists see Theists as full of ideas harmful to the human race, and thus see them as unworthy of common rules of decency and argumentative etiquette.

A brief disclaimer: Much of the above is generalization and I realize that. If I wanted to speak specifically to every case I would have to write a book. Someday I might, but please realize that there are exceptions to just about everything I said, but the general rules still holds.

Ulric

Ulfric

In time long lost not in lore recorded

Ulfric, unforgiving of wrongs oft unsheathed his sword

To right wrongs past. He remembered them all.

Long his wrath was known both wide and far.

At long last he ceased, and his long ships beached,

his sword he sheathed in peace. His spear put away.

He meant to make peace, and more to stay

at hearth and home in rest no helm to don again.

His war raiding behind no remaining bitterness

Did he hold, nor dream that harm from others

Should to him travel through toilsome seas.

Yet wrong he reckoned strength of ruinous hate

the wild wraiths, his rage had wrought him.

A high hall Ulfric soon had built

So to honor honest warriors, those who mightily

had fought for him, and friends also

in fields from home.

Red gold he gave them, A generous king he was.

Yet his generous gold swiftly given away,

was taken and torn away from tender hands

In distant wars long won. Now withered cold

he deemed those deadened hands. Wrong he deemed them.

None who came in kindness whether kin or

Stranger, worn and weary, Ulric would turn away

Far and wide his winsome manner swiftly was spread

Many heard and harkened to hear that name

To know, near enough, where nested their gold

The gold now given was great in records

both great and grim its ghastly trail

was cut and carved all across the North

from hand to hand it had harmfully passed

with boiling blood swiftly and brashly shed

it was horded and harrowed by hateful men,

till Ulfric unmade its owner and unlooked for

brought it, healthy homeward. And handed it

into the keeping and cups of kings and beggars

who came and cared to stay in that kingly hall.

The words of wise bards never was missed

in that great thralldom, as they nobly

told their tales and showed their talents.

His wife he winsomely bedecked in white diamonds

and green gold bracelets and gilded rings.

His sons were sung of in ships and lands

far off for their strength and fine mettle.

He taught them tender peace and in terrible war

he showed them strength. Even so kings

must rule their realms.

One late night, long ago as laughter filled

the mighty hall more than ever, and mirth was overflowing

A runner sought Ulric's ear to render a message

from shore.

Ulric was weak and old, soon weary of life.

He sought to spend his final days in the sun's warmth.

He forgot his fated end.

Warriors with torches swiftly wound their way

toward the teeming hall, greed tore their minds

and forced them forward with fire and steel

to take the gold and torch the hall.

Little time he had, Ulric had not lost

courage or cunning, and carefully directed

where the women should leave, with children and young

Yet his wife would not go, and waited with Ulric

for the fire and blood to fill the golden hall.

The raiders arrived with ravings of hate.

They rushed the iron door, how wrong they were.

They were cut and wasted, by willing blades,

None could match Colwch, Ulric's coldest son.

Of peace he learned the least, now lithe and quick

He swung his sword as death's scythe.

None came through his door.

Ulric's oldest son, Olmar was almost as strong,

but more keen and cunning, his claim was a bow,

he skewered them striving up, to scale the stairs.

None came through that door.

The last, so lore recounts, was soon lost.

By Dallion, who deemed war and deadly things

as hateful and worthless horrors, so he despised them,

And would learn little of war, but luxury he knew well.

A blade cut of his head and carried it away.

In his stead Ulric came, old and stately he stood.

His mighty sword mangled foes again,

his most lovely wife, with spear and sheild

stood at his side. .

In fury the flames were thrown, and fast burned

into the hall, heavy smoke sifted and hung

in the hall, the home of great Housecarls.

The raiders retreated, let the fire wreak its havoc.

Those in the hall took stock,

and deemed it best to dash out

and attempt to flee lest all should die.

Cutting, cleaving from the door was Colwch's blade,

Olmar the oldest was behind, hard on his heels.

They led, none lagged behind with little courage.

The raiders fell and ran before that rush.

Blood and bravery always broke the foe.

But only barely, for Colwch badly

Was wounded to death. They waited

on a high hill, trying to help Colwch,

but cruel steel cut away Colwch's life.

On that hill were they by thanes surrounded.

About brother's body they stood and baited the foe.

Thrice the greed driven thanes surged

up to Ulric's blade and Ulric smote

them down as in days of old but death

would not wait, biding with patience

the time to claim tender lives.

Ulric fell, his final strength forever gone,

Cut and hewn again, his adversaries

dearly paid to deprive him of dearest breath.

Upon Ulric's body died Ulric's wife.

As they lived and loved so were they lost.

All about the aged body his able men defended

Yet one by one they fell wasted and dead.

And dearly were they deprived of dearest life.

Yet the wall was weakened and warriors slain

So long at last was Olwen left

Standing strong and alone sword in hand

brother and father both were sheltered beneath his shield

the raiders withdrew to regroup the wreckage of their force,

none could match the might of Ulric's men.

Once more they marshaled and mustered the few

death had not harvested and harrowed swiftly

the son of strong Ulric. Screaming they rushed

up the hill now heaped with Housecarls

and thickly with thanes and raiders thronged in death

Olwen's bow sang sweet and clear, dealing swift death.

As they clambered over the dead, closing the distance.

Done now, his bow was broken, he beat them back,

Swiftly drew sword and dagger. His shield was broken.

With wounds beset and by warriors defeated,

defeated and doomed, to death he fell,

beside his brother.

Why does Creation matter?

A certain friend of mine, who I respect deeply and look up to, recently told me that as he didn't see why the creation debate was so important. This is something that I believe most people don't think about much, but the literal validity of Genesis one through three is just as important as the literal validity of the Gospels and the rest of the bible. If any part of the bible is not accepted as absolutly true then the entire structure of biblical theology collapses.

If one approaches Genesis one without any preconceived notions about what we should find and reads the text, it could not be said more clearly that God created the earth in six literal days and rested on the seventh. The typical aversion that 'days' in the passage really means ages simply does not hold water because it is impossible to say 'literal day' in Hebrew more clearly than to add 'morning and evening' and a number to the word for 'day'. The examples that are brought up for the word meaning 'age' are interesting on two levels. First and least importantly, they are usually explained in English phraseology. "We say dawn of a new day for mankind, when we mean the begining of a new age", "night had fallen on the era of Rome" etc. What we say and how we say it has no bearing on what and how the Hebrews said things a few thousand years ago. Secondly and far more importantly, of the few examples that are brought from scripture, none contain a number combined with either 'morning' or 'evening'. One must either accept that the Genesis account is true and God created the world in six literal day, or Moses got his facts from the wrong source or used an unfortunate set of words, thus throwing out the whole idea of biblical infallibility all together. You must make your choice.

There are four problems with trying to shove ages into the days of creation.

1. The sequence does not fit. You have morning and evening, light and darkness before the sun is created. The world does not start off as a sphere of rock and dirt, but is covered by water. You have birds flying before there are any creatures walking on the earth, all direct contradictions to the way many naturalists believe that life originated on earth.

2. You have imposed on the biblical text something that is clearing contrary to what is presented, thus destroying the infallibility of the scripture, which leaves you open to a world of problems. A common defense is to say that the days referred to are not necessarily earth days. This might be possible, but with the creation of light and its separation from darkness on day one, and the creation of the 'sun, moon, and stars' commonly taken to mean the planets and galaxies other than earth, you are ripping the text apart to make that claim. Additionally, as one wise man once told me, it's a theory, but where is your evidence?

   1. With the infallibility of the bible destroyed, and the days grown into ages, you have several problems. How do you determine when day means day? Context, most people would reply, but the context in Genesis makes it clear that God is speaking of literal days.

   2. The largest problem of all is that the creation account is God's first appearance to man, and it is wrapped up in his identity as ruler of the universe. You cannot change days into ages of evolutionary progression without loosing some part of god, his omnipotence (death and evil became part of creation and he doesn't like it but he can't stop it) or his holiness (evil is there and he put it there). No longer did God create a perfect, deathless, sinless world teeming with life and joy, with work not as a curse, but as a natural and enjoyable part of life and declare it all good. God created a world full of death, the great engine of evolutionary progression, millions of organisms are rotting and fossilizing before your first fish wriggles his way onto land and gets zapped by the finger of God and provided with a breathing system. At the end of the sixth age of your creation story, God looks down upon a planet already full of death and disease, and declares it very good.

There are three ways that you can progress from this and deal with death and suffering in the world. The first is to accept that God did the best he could, but was simply unable to prevent death and suffering from getting into this world. The problem with this approach is that now you have an impotent God who can't really save us. Besides, once you deny God's omnipotence we are no longer talking about the God of the Bible or any kind of biblical principles or theology.

The second way is to deny God's holiness. Nobody wants to do that.

The third way is to me the most infuriating. It attempts to keep both God's holiness and his omnipotence by saying that God fed the evil into the world on purpose and it's all part of a grand plan. That's fine except for two basic, fundamental problems. First, that's in direct contradiction to the bible (Romans 4:12, 8:18-22, Ecclesiastes 2:23). Second, its in direction contradiction to how the world works. The only thing it fits is a theory.

“It is one thing to say that the God of the bible is horrible, causes death and genocide, and use that as your explanation for not believing. That view is wrong simply on the basis of facts and has its own set of problems, but it is far preferable to a view that God is holy and created death and suffering, for while one mistakes the nature of God for evil and calls it evil, the other mistakes the nature of God for evil and calls it good. When you see the young boy struggling not to cry because his puppy died in the middle of the night, tell him that your God sees it as good. When you see the boy weeping because the girl he just married died in childbirth, tell him that her death is not a result of a broken and abnormal world, but a result of your God's perfect universe. When he watches his strong son who just got a scholarship to play football for a top university contract cancer, and slowly die, killed by organisms invisible to the eye, tell him that God delights in those creatures, and created them to kill.

“But” you protest “death is good, it releases us from this world, suffering makes us better people!” Does it indeed. Show me where! It was suffering that drove Adolf Hitler to his madness, it was suffering that drove the German people to accept him, it was suffering that drove the Russian people into Communism. It may be that for some people, some suffering creates better character qualities, but that does not make a rule. Also, it is a mistake to glorify a thing for that which it creates. You stand like the woman who stood on the bus and mentioned here hope that World War II continued for a long time, because it provided a good job for her husband. Hardly had the words left her mouth when another woman stood up and slapped her across the face. “Don't you ever say that again.” She said, “my husband is fighting over there.”

Now your whole world has changed because you based your faith not on the Word of the One who made the universe, but on the world of a man who has been studying a small piece of said universe for a few decades and has declared in his ultimate wisdom that god was wrong and he is right, the world must be billions of years old, far older than the bible claims. Deriding a faith based on things heard and seen he praises his scientific knowledge, based on faith of things unheard and unseen. His dating techniques assume that he knows the starting point is clean of all decayed atoms which he is counting to determine the age of his sample, and he assumes that the decay rate has been the same since the dawn of time. He ignores the fact that the layers in the rock that he counts as an age apiece have fossil trees growing right up through thirty or forty layers, and if he counts the dark and light rings in the arctic ice that he claims represents a year each, he'll find that the P-38 fighter plane we found a few years ago slipped back in time a century or so and crashed in the arctic around the Revolutionary War.

If we cannot trust God about how the world began, how can we trust him about how it will end. And if we cannot trust him at all, the end of the world is the least of our problems.

Fully Automatic America

I just finished watching "Fully Automatic America" on Youtube. The film was produced by Vanguard, a cultural commentary group that has done a few other presentations on guns before. The film took a look at guns in America and their effect on our culture. The people who produced the film may have been trying to come across as impartial, but when they blatantly ignored the most obvious conclusions and made statements that are patently untrue, it seemed as if they approached the subject with a forgone conclusion. The main journalist, Kaj Larsen, visited a gun range in West Point Kentucky, said of the .50 caliber sniper rifle that "It's actually illegal in warfare to use that against people". The video was posted to Youtube on January 14, 2009. The Barrett M82A1 .50 caliber sniper rifle was first used by the U.S. military in Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s. The .50 caliber has risen to immense popularity with American, British, and Canadian sniper teams as anti-personnel weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan because of their potential to make instant one hit kills at ranges exceeding two thousand yards, ranges at which the lighter .300 Magnum has lost most of its accuracy and killing power. The statement that it is illegal to use the .50 caliber against personnel is flat out wrong and points to either a lack of honesty or the most basic research.
Larsen then went on to look at gun violence in Camden New Jersey, which has been listed annualy among the top ten most dangerous cities in America since 2002 by the FBI. Pointing to the large number of guns available on the streets and the ease of obtaining guns in nearby Pensylvannia, he identified the problem with Camden as being the availability of guns. When he asked prominent town citizens they said that the problem was caused by three factors: availability of guns, gangs, and drugs. Larsen did not even mention or consider this in a scientific manner. When you have a common component and you believe the component to be the cause of an effect, you must have the effect in both places where you have the cause. The guns in Camden are nothing like the guns in West Point, Kentucky, where a nine year old was shooting a .50 caliber machine gun. If guns are the problem, the greater availability and lethality of guns in West Point, Kentucky would make that city far more dangerous than Camden. West Point County has a crime rate 84% below the national average. Camden has a violent crime rate over five times the national average. The more obvious conclusion might be that it is not guns that cause crime, but drugs and gangs combined with easy illegal gun access and difficult legal gun access. Larsen also failed to point out that Camden has a history of massive political corruption all the way up to the U.S. Senate level. Gangs and drugs are and always have been causes of crime and instead of looking to find where the problem was, Larsen spent his time trying to prove that guns were the problem.
Continuing in the same vein, Larsen made the comment in another video, about less developed countries in Africa and South America claiming that the massive number of cheap guns has fueled the wars in those countries and that we should stop worrying about WMDs and stop the proliferation of small arms. Larsen completely ignored the fact that small arms are the only defence that millions of people around the world have against oppression and intimidation. He did mention that everyone has a gun to protect their home, but he seemed to forget the words as soon as they left his mouth.
Again, if guns were the problem, then when guns are absent we should expect to see peace. People in Africa and South America have been brutally killing each other since they found out how to sharpen bamboo and stone.

Mr. Larsen and Vanguard did not come to the discussion open minded, but with an ideological ax to grind, and he willingly ignored basic reasoning and research practices that should be employed in any kind of documentary that seeks to deal with important issues.

An Ode to Progress

Onward! Onward, ever we go Onward!
Nothing will do but to go Forward!
Progress must be our only theme
Our parents were fools, and the past obscene!

Where we go,
no one seems to know.
But press forever onward!
If the way is hard
Or strewn with dead an dying,
We shout above the mothers crying,
"Forward! Forward! Never back!"
The only thing we seem to lack
is any idea of where we are going.
But on we go, never slowing.

"Faster! Faster!" comes the call,
"Progress will finally save us all!"
All that's good must be Progressive,
While all our troubles are just Regressive.
What lies behind they will not say,
only that we musn't go that way.

"You'll turn back the clock,
Become a laughing stock!
For all that's good we must go on!"
So looking back is frowned upon,
But when we look ahead,
All we see are mounds of dead.

But onward we must quickly go,
and it is wrong we are put of so,
by the sacrifices that must be made,
Our onward progress they only aid.

As others rise to take our place
we urge them forward in the race.
"We can now do so much more
than our fathers did before!
If we should do the impossible task
is not a question we thought to ask.
Progress! Progress!" we softer cry,
"Onward, Onward, till we die"
The voice continues slow and broken,
faster, faster, away from Eden.

Notes on a New Arthurian Story

So I'm thinking about trying to create a new Arthurian story, and while trying to decide how to start it off a few interesting things came to mind that are helping me shape the context of the story.

1. Arthur's name, and the names of some of his knights, are puzzles that nobody can solve to everybody's satisfaction, since they seem to have qualities of Latin and Gaelic names. Also, a number of his knights have Gaelic names.


2. The accounts of Arthur all agree on two important things. He was a mighty warrior and both he and his men were known for their ability to fight on horseback.


3. Most accounts of Arthur place in him a period of great unrest and bloodshed in Britain.


4. The earliest accounts of Arthur are all from Welsh sources. The Historica Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae both Welsh histories compiled by Welsh monks and scribes and nearly all of the early legends that mention Arthur are Welsh in origin, most prominantly the the tale of Culhwch and Olwen, and the Welsh Triad.

Combine these suggestive facts together and they point to one particular period of time and to a particular type of Arthur; a Celt raised by Romans who stayed behind with his sword brothers and tried to served protect Briton against the raiders after the Roman Legions left.

During the Roman occupation of Britain the primary inhabitants of the land were Celts from various tribes who later became the Welsh and Irish. It was common practice for Romans to take the sons of prominent members of various kingdoms or tribes and raise them as romans. This served the practical purpose of holding the natives in check, providing soldiers to help garrison the Roman forts, and eventually to spread Roman customs and beliefs among the Celts when the young men were finally released from Roman "hospitality". Such mingling would create names that would be difficult to attribute to either side, since especially toward the end of Roman occupation in Brition, the Celts would have influenced the Romans almost as much as the Romans had influenced them.

If a young Celt was brought up into the Roman occupying army, it is very likly that he would be attached to the cavalry auxilia. They were not meant to do the heavy fighting that legionares were, being used primarily for scouting and tipping the tide a pivital points in the battle. Even so, wearing roman armor and weilding roman weapons, the auxilia would be far ahead of any weaponry deployed by the occupied Celts and later, the invading barbarians from Northern Europe. On horseback, armored and armed with Roman steel against lightly armed raiders with iron weapons, a relativly small mounted company backed by a larger, if poorer armed, local force could dominate a battlefield.

If Arthur were a hero who had defended early Britain against Saxon invaders, we would expect to find numerous mentions of him in Welsh and Irish stories, legends, and chronicles, which is exactly what we find.

On a more personal note: as much as the film King Arthur tried to be true to the scant historical evidence that we have (they even included the battle of Badon Hill), they messed up on at least three basic counts. First, ancient peoples did not use modern cuss words with anything approaching the regularity that Arthur's knights did throughout the film. Second, longbows and crossbows were far, far in the future when Rome fell. Third, and most importantly, Lancelot has nothing to do with Arthur, having been added in by a Frenchman named Chretien, who has singlehandedly done more damage to the Arthurian story than any other single man in history.

Total War and Total Fascism

Total War

Recently, I had an argument with a certain personage on the subject of Total War, not the game, the practice. The modern idea of modern war dates back to William Tecumseh Sherman, a Union General in the Civil war famous for his destruction of Atlanta and his march to the sea. Sherman believed that for the war to be won, everything of any value to the enemy must be destroyed. While this initially meant “everything necessary for the enemy to produce articles of war” it eventually expanded to include anything that might support morale. After the war, Sherman toured Europe teaching European generals his doctrine of total war. They took his teaching to heart, and in World War I, France was almost completely destroyed by massive artillery barrages, and millions of soldiers were killed or permanently injured by the use of poisonous gasses. Total war was taken to new levels in World War II when airplanes enabled governments to send immense levels of destruction over long distances. In fact, it could easily be argued that Britain still exists because of Adolf Hitler’s idiotic resistance to building long range heavy bombers until it was far too late.

The modern Doctrine of Total War has two main problems. First, it has a tendency to spiral out of control, and as soon as one side no longer fears the opposing side’s destructive capability, the only limit on Total War, the ideal of mutual destruction, goes out the window. The second problem is that Total War is essentially Fascism relegated to warfare.

Fascism, boiled down to it’s bones is the belief that the end justifies the means, that we should pursue not that which is right, but that which we think works. If the Twentieth Century taught us anything, it was the danger of this idea. Under this belief, Hitler and the Nazi Party killed thousands of Jews and began one of the bloodiest wars in mankind’s history to safeguard the German people, Stalin wiped out millions of Russians to create a better Russia, Neville Chamberlain signed thousands of Czechoslovakians over to Nazi Germany to save lives, and the U.S. Government supplied weapons and military aid to dictators such as Saddam Hussein in order to prevent the world from being oppressed. Every single one of these attempts failed.

The problem with fascism and its various branches, is that man simply cannot see far or wide enough to see the consequences of our actions. We may solve the problem at hand, but we often cause a thousand more problems that never existed before. When we stop seeking out the right thing to do, and pursue the “efficient” thing to do, we have fallen off the path of reason because we can’t define what is and is not efficient! The world was designed one way, good actions cause good results, bad actions cause bad results no matter how well meaning the doer may be. This is the point that Tolkien makes in “The Lord of the Rings”, that good can never come out of evil.

A smaller and more minor problem that plagues advocates of Total War is their claim that you must do “whatever is necessary” to win the war, or something of that sort. I severely doubt and fervently hope that the personage with whom I discussed this topic does not wish to return to the use of poison gas in war, or wants to start nuking Afghanistan and Iraq.

Once one decides to pursue what they deem to be efficiency over what is known to be right, they have started on the path to fascism and foolishness. They draw lines based purely upon what they feel, and as soon as “necessity” drives them across the line, they happily draw another, and on ad infinitum.