I had a nice discussion on Predestination vs. Free Will tonight - no clear winner but my brain hurts. When the subject comes up and I'm asked my position I say "yes". I'm a little of both and I believe that Scripture supports both but leans heavily towards predestination especially in the area of Salvation. At the same time I find the idea that God would predestine people for Hell loathsome. If we are fully predestined then what is the point of missions? If we are fully predestined then to choose rightly or wrongly is chosen for us.

Does not compute.

I was arguing with a Calvinist. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, Calvinists are big on the predestination thing.

I'll ask my mother about it - she's like a walking encyclopedia of Christian theology. I know that she believes that Salvation is predestined but I don't believe she'd go so far as to say everything is predestined (as my friend did).

For me this is an important topic as I spent a little over a decade believing that God existed, Jesus was His Son, and that I had no interest in being forgiven except to save my ass. Now this is a troubling set of ideas to have because their logical conclusion is that you're not only going to hell but you've got a whole lifetime of seeing it coming.

Shiiiiiiiiit.

And so I roasted. I believed that God existed and that the Bible was true but I didn't believe I was truly repentant. I figured I was just worried about frying for an eternity - who wouldn't be!? At the same time I also didn't think I could repent whole-heartedly with the specter of damnation hovering about - it would remain "fire insurance".

Even more distressing was the Calvinist position that some are Elect and the rest are "fucked" (my words - more accurate if you ask me). What if I was fucked and just happened to win the cosmic "Screw you" of knowing it was coming and not being elected to do anything about it? Can there be a more depressing train of thought? That's the kind of thinking that makes you cross your fingers and hope the atheists are right. The "religious people are too weak to accept the truth" standpoint bothers me as giving up my faith, at that point, would have been a great comfort. If I'd been able to convince myself that God didn't exist that'd have been a great comfort to me - phew, I wasn't going to burn!

There came a point where I had no doubt that I was going to Hell. Oddly, rather than taking this as license to do whatever I wanted, I instead mourned the fact that I could never be made right with God and that ultimately nothing I did from that point on would matter because I was just going to Hell anyway.

And then I realized that's not the reaction someone who didn't give a shit about God would have. I believed, I cared, and I wanted better.

However, my questions about predestination stuck with me. Would a loving and just God predestine the larger part of mankind to Hell? The obvious answer would be "no" but I wondered if there was something I was missing or if Free Will answered that conundrum. I see holes in both sides of the argument that could probably be filled by a combination of the two.

I'll punish my brain with more of this some other morning.

BP and the Feds are doing a great job. I'd compare their efforts to a riding mower running a daycare.

On day 3 of the spill the Dutch offered to let us use the ships they have for taking oil out of water - both BP AND the Feds turned them down. Several companies with boom, ships for deploying boom, and nontoxic methods of oil removal contacted BP and the Feds and offered help - they were all turned down. People living along the affected coastlines have been banned from aiding in the cleanup.

What is the purpose of turning down aid? Are we really worried about the Dutch? Why blanket the gulf in toxins when hair and hay have been shown to sop up the oil while leaving the water behind?

Either BP and the Feds are incompetent morons or they're purposefully allowing the disaster to continue.

I smell something fishy and it isn't just all the dead wild life.

Meanwhile, Congress kills the bill to limit the EPA's ability to circumvent Congress. Non-elected officials with the power to make laws that Congress doesn't get to look at and approve - that sounds Constitutional!

Mr. President, please start the ass-kicking in your own cabinet, in your own party, and then move onto correcting any Republican corruption you can find. Please be the President you promised to be. Clean house - the American people WILL back you! Your poor poll numbers are derived from their sense that you knowingly ignore or approve of corrupt and two-faced officials.

You can be Carter 2.0 or you can change directions and become a President without party and without pity for fools who would fleece their country and strip their freedoms.

Be HONEST - Abraham Lincoln isn't remembered for his pretty face!

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hVwK0KHNx8zNZllGOsezjfqUKoRAD9G8SFE80

A border patrol agent opened fire on a group of teens who had been chased from the U.S. side of the Mexican border as they pelted him with stones - a 15 yr old boy was killed. Border patrol agents are authorized to fire upon stone throwers. Mexican border agents aimed their rifles at the border patrol agent. Mexico is calling for the extradition of that agent.

If the United States government does anything other than flip Mexico the bird I'm going to pissed. We're not allowed to enforce our laws or protect ourselves? You're going to attack our law enforcement agents with law breakers standing in front of you throwing stones? Mexico is incapable of keeping its own house in order but it's telling us how to run ours?

What really bothers me is that their agents threatened ours. Really, Mexico? You can't handle your drug lords but you're going to threaten the largest and best trained military in the world? Of course you are. Because the whole world recognizes that we're not monsters even as they make speeches condemning us as the same. Our leaders might not always be the best but the American people aren't interested in conflict. Terrorists and belligerent minor nations bank on us not having the stomach for a fight.

So Mexico will puff out its chest and act macho. If it has half a brain it'll stick with posturing. Nobody wants our border to turn into a duplicate of N. and S. Korea's. It won't be the United States who feels a loss if things turn nasty.

Moving on, Iran does something entirely unsurprising - they laughed at U.N. sanctions and continued working on nukes! President Obama and the U.N. have done an amazing job assuring President Ihazacrazyjob that we aren't going to do anything but whine impotently. Iran will have to nuke or invade a country before anything will be done...of course after they've nuked somebody it's a bit too late.

Meanwhile, Turkey and Morocco grow increasingly militant. The world is a lovely place full of maniacs who want to kill you! Hugs for everyone!

You can't hug your children with nuclear arms - but you sure as hell can nuke them till they grow some extras!

In class today we were discussing gender roles and I admitted I played with dolls growing up. The other guy in my group also admitted to doing the same. Somehow we then went on to talking about setting fire to Barbies and chucking stuffed animals into ceiling fans. I found it entertaining how feminine our pasts initially seemed and then how stereotypically destructive and aggressive it became. It also struck me as a very natural progression rather than a "But I'm still manly!" objection.

When I was little I played with dolls and I didn't see anything wrong with that. Seeing as my little sister was usually around I think it pleased my parents to see us getting along. My sister grew up wanting to hang with my buds and I so despite all the "girl toys" my parents gave her she turned out tom-boyish in attitude but feminine in dress. I'm just glad that I have someone to watch horror films with. She doesn't often ask me to watch rom-coms with her but she knows I'll give most films a chance. I have been pleasantly surprised at times.

I grew up playing sports and pointing toy guns at friends. Then girls started turning into women and for some reason I became more interesting to them. Oh, the irony - I had absolutely no interest in their attention. I did discover something that I liked about girls. No, not breasts. I discovered that they liked talking. My buddies must have experienced more head injuries growing up as they were disinterested in or incapable of having a conversation that wasn't about video games or "boobies". Despite my mental maturity I was slow in discovering the attention absorbing power of the female body.

So while most guys were interested in talking with girls in hopes of scoring, I was actually interested in talking. This didn't turn out well for me as when you're at that confusing age girls believe that boys only pay attention to them if they're "interested." Being clueless, I was ill-equipped for avoiding confusion and hurt.

Eventually I entered college and pumped my fist - I was finally going to be meeting other mature intellectuals! My hopes were dashed when I realized that my youthful appearence (read: looking 14) made most people ignore me. You see, when a Christian woman goes to a Christian college she is going their expecting to find a husband. Why? Because every jackass (male and female) suggests that college is where Christians enter one by one and exit two by two.

I, looking exactly like the dork I was (and am), was not marriage material. I had glasses, I had acne, I was 90lbs soaking wet, and I looked like a freshman in high school rather than a freshman in college. I was more likely to be (and was) hit on by high school freshman than anyone my age. I was two months from graduating from college when a barber asked me how many more years of high school I had left.

Needless to say, I was not the droid they were looking for...and I'm a nerd. But I like being a nerd. I like weird things, being weird, and meeting "weird" people. Weird is interesting because it is different. I started studying psychology to figure out why I was weird and I stuck with it because it introduced me even more weird.

Oh, happy ending as this is going on too long - I met a bunch of super awesome friends who are delightfully weird and love conversations on everything from the silly to the deeply meaningful! Yay!

I'm such a nerd. I love reading a good book on history, religion, or politics. I'm not opposed to reading science articles but if they move too far into the jargon it becomes less enjoyable. All in all, I like learning -  especially weird or goofy things. For example, I was thrilled to learn that the male platypus had venomous spurs in its hind legs. Who'd have thought that such a goofy-looking critter would be packing a dangerous and exceedingly painful venom? Not me, that's for sure!

Seriously, everything but the people in Australia wants to kill you dead. Even the Koala bear is vicious. Tiny, cute, and vicious - try to pet one and see how many fingers you get back. The leaves it likes to eat, btw, are poisonous. That cute, little bear eats poison...probably why it's so cranky.

Did you know the Crusaders ATE one of the towns they attacked during the First Crusade? Well, their planning of the Crusade kind of sucked and after several months walking they reached some mountains chuckfull of people who wanted to kill them. After a few weeks of that, the weather decided to hate anything not in a cave and it rained and pushed a bunch of guys off cliffs. AWESOME.

The Crusaders left the mountains PISSED and starving so when they saw cities and towns full of people who were brown and totally looked like those assholes who'd been shooting at them they went MEDIEVAL ON THEIR ASSES. Ironically, those towns were full of Christians who just happened to be brown. Lacking faxes, the Crusaders didn't get the memo that believing in Jesus doesn't make people white. After they killed everybody and set the place on fire they ate some of them and went onto Jerusalem where they slaughtered every person they could catch - blood was said to run stirrup-high. The blood part is a myth - couldn't have been more than ankle deep...which is still a lot of blood.

So the Crusaders did a great job killing all those damn...Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the area...for being brown and "looking like those guys who shot at us." This also allowed Islam to take over the area because all the Jews and Christians who had been living there were no longer living...there.

When things are going well I'm sad that I'm mortal. When things are going poorly I'm sad that I'll probably live to 90. For the majority of world it's more blessing than curse that our lifespans are limited.

I'm in a class on global leadership and we've been watching happy films. But seeing as I described them as "happy" you should probably assume I was being sarcastic...because I am. To summarize what we were watching, Walmart and Disney are douchebags to put it nicely. They keep their foreign workers on starvation wages - 7 to 14 CENTS an hour.

American cash goes a long way but guess what those wages buy you in Bangladesh? A shithole made of cardboard and scrounged metal and wood and one meal a day. There days are 14 hours long as a rule and sometimes they're forced to work 24 and then not paid overtime (or at all) for those extra 10. If the workers complain they're fired, beaten, and then JAILED.

Most of the workers are females between the ages of 13 and 24 and they fire anyone who reaches 35 without quitting or being jailed. Why 35? Because they're "used up." They get 2 bathroom breaks in a 14 hour day and 1 meal break that last 15 minutes. They inhale fabric fibers the entire day and the rooms they work in can reach 100 degrees during the day - no fans either.

They're paying their labor so little that there is no cost of labor in manufacturing the clothing they sell for $19.99 back here. Both companies could still make a good profit exporting their labor to Bangladesh even if they paid their workers a living wage. A buck an hour would probably be plenty - a freaking DOLLAR.

Walmart love to roll things back - especially wages and human rights. Disney's house wasn't built by a mouse but by slave labor.

Mockery rather than an position - typical. Atheism doesn't offer answers. Its purpose is merely to cast doubt. It is empty. It's a cruel joke that thinks highly of humanity (portions of it) while lowering the worth and thinking of the same. It's a pacifier for lazy intellectuals that want to paint believers with their own fears and weaknesses.

But don't feel bad, atheists, we're all hypocrites on some level.

I, on the other hand, offer mockery and a position. God exists and His will gives existence and purpose to humanity. He is the skeleton key that perfectly fits the teeth of Truth. He will have the last laugh and it won't be very funny for a lot of people.

I, however, am well camoflagued by the blood of Christ. When God kicks in the door of reality and starts shooting, I won't be eating the buckshot of vengeance. Please note that I am not righteous but rather hidden in the righteousness of Christ.

Did you know that dolphins are just gay sharks? Did you know that that is a line from Glee? It makes me giggle.

That was the transition to less serious matters. It's nearly 5am so it's far too late for me to be wearing my "this is serious business" cap. And I do mean late - I've been up all night. If I can stay up a few more hours I can attend church...otherwise I'm sleeping through it again. If I don't go how will future generations be indoctrinated? (bwaha, haha, mwahaha). I'm such a villain. Isn't it shameful, my giving those children moral instruction and purpose?

Sarcasm - the lowest form of wit. I'd parody atheism but atheists already do such a darn good job of it.

Now I'm just being mean.

On a more serious note, isn't it interesting that two thieves flanked Jesus as he was crucified and they came to entirely different conclusions about him? One of them was like "Hey, retard, if you're God get us down from here. Can't, can ya?" The other believed in Jesus and Jesus promised he would join him in heaven that very day. They were both presented with the same man, the same experience, and same facts but who they believed Jesus to be was drastically different. While this obviously have religious significance it also illustrates a common theme within human history - same event/data/whatever and two different conclusions.

Polar bears can swim.

Whenever I see a religion vs. atheism posting I'm tempted to enter the fight. Usually it's a waste of time. The atheist's arguments generally have huge holes in them and those are plugged with hyperbole. They also tend to be rather smug in their presentation like they've discovered a truth only the greatest of minds and purest of souls can grasp. What should be the obvious conclusion of their "revelation" is that everything is meaningless. The idiot and the genius both end up in the grave - and it seems like the idiot often gets there last. The evil live longer and the good die young. Of course "good" and "evil" are just empty labels based on what a particular culture and/or society believes.

Great job, you've stumbled upon a philosophy of life that makes life pointless and limited. And for some reason you feel like robbing people of their "ignorance" is more noble than letting them remain happy, stupid sheep. I'd ask you for a reason to live but that too would be pointless. Continue to live or killing yourself is of equal value so might as well go with whichever is easier - and I'm sure that'll fluctuage eventually.

You have no point so why bother trying to make one? Go blog about...something else. Meh, forget that suggestion. You might as well blog about religion and how dumb you think it is. Any blog your write is of the same value - zilch. Enjoy your pride - a lot of good it'll do you. You're still going to die and end up as nothing. You're worm-food, I'm worm-food, and anyone who survives us will be wormfood eventually.

I'd say that reading this was a waste of time but seeing as all time is wasted because all actions end in the same result you might as well waste it here. Hi, I'm JJ and I'll be eating up a small portion of your doomed existence. I do have some good news though; nothingness is very easy to take.

So bring on your arguments, lay them all before me. I'll congratulate you on how well worded they are and then present your prize - a reminder that you're heading for the void. Quit running, take up smoking, drink until your liver cries - enjoy yourself. Here's a drinking game to pass the time - every time you spoot a typo in a post take aa driink. I gave you some easy ones to get started on.

Please don't take from me just because you've got nothing to offer.

A terrorist organization runs Gaza and uses its people as shields - but Israel is the bad guy. The anti-Israel voices who I have been talking with seem to think I love Israel and give it a pass for all its misbehavior - that certainly isn't what I meant to imply! No, what I meant to imply is that Israel has the right to defend itself and that in the case of the flotilla they exercised that right even if a little hamfistedly.

That being said, Israel treats non-Jews like crap. They generally don't kill Christians or Muslims but they do treat them like second-class citizens. I have little doubt that Israel would abandon its alliance with the United States if it didn't need us strategically. They really don't seem to like us...though most countries don't like the U.S.

The United States is like a rich relative nobody likes but everybody pays attention to so they can get some cash. America is dangerous and rich - as both of those qualities wane the world will treat us with less and less deference. Canada and Britain are like friends who find us a little annoying but still hangout with us. Otherwise I'd say America doesn't have any true friends. Europe smiles at us but it doesn't like us. Russia and China only want our cash.

For the record, I'm apparently a Jew...and a Greek...and an Arab...and a Native America...and a Euro-Mutt...and possibly African too. Apparently my ancestors were lovers, not fighters. That or my family is involved in a genetic version of Pokemon - we have to mate them all!

Wow, spent way more time on that blurb about Israel than I meant to...

RACE CARD IS IN PLAY

My sister and I used to be mistaken for twins and now we look nothing alike. She's mistaken for being Greek, Italian, or Hispanic on a regular basis - which is to say she's brown. I am never mistaken for anything but a white guy. Nobody ever bothers categorizing my whiteness. My father, 100%~ Dutch, is the dark parent. My mother is the reason I am cursed with an inability to tan (thanks Ma).

My sister and I are treated differently because of our skin tones...well, that and she's generally considered "hot" and I'm considered "Her Brother." But back to skin! My dad is flagged in airports for looking "Middle Eastern" - his name and actual pedigree couldn't be more white without being named Blanco McWhiteyskins. My mother, on the otherhand, is so white that only Janet Napolitano would mistake her for a "man-made disaster."

POLITICAL ZING (the HEADSHOT of blogging!)

I see color - I'm not visually impaired. But otherwise it's just coloration - it lends novelty and some indication of ancestry. I've encountered racists in every shade so it's irksome to have that albatross hung solely around the necks of whites. THAT'S RACIST. And you know what? Almost everybody loves chicken. Stereotyping blacks as "lovin' them some chicken!" is ridiculous. If you eat meat you probably "lovin' some chicken" from time to time.

Racism isn't going away as long as we let people use it as a weapon.

A pundit asked an interesting question last night: what's the difference? N. Korea sinks a S. Korean ship, killing 48, and the world shrugs. Israel gives the blockade runners every chance to bring aid peaceful and then is attacked and most of the world swiftly condemns ISRAEL - Israel killed 9 people in defense. 

What is the difference? Why does the world give Kim Jong a pass and immediately jump on Israel even though there's video evidence that the Israelis were defending themselves. Kim Jong bushwacks his neighbor and besides S. Korea, nobody seems that angry. A little finger wagging but not much else.

N. Korea is protected by China; Israel has no true friends. The United States has abandoned them in everything but name. Israel is no angel but it deserves better that it's getting.

The unfair treatment of Israel infuriates me. There are too many pundits siding with the blockade runners on grounds that dismiss all evidence and logic. It's clear that their minds are made up.

It really bums me out that our southern coast are getting destroyed. I hate BP but I smell government cheese on the air. BP has certainly been negligent but giving the government control is only going to put a different, corrupt and stupid group of people in charge. Damned if we do, damned if we don't - how appropriate our coast is growing blacker and flammable!

News rumors suggest that Iran is making two nukes at once - care to guess what two countries it hates most? If you guessed the U.S. and Israel then you're smarter than Obama and Team. They're tougher on BP  than on N. Korea or Iran.

All of this barely touches on the ridiculous, the stupid, and the wrong floating around the news and elsewhere. I don't like focusing on the negative but I hate injustice and I will point it out so we can zombie-mob it to death. Love always, mercy for those who'll take it, and justice to protect the proceeding!