God and Hurricanes

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A friend of mine wore a shirt today with an interesting image. It compared God's love to a hurricane, and it was very interesting what image popped into my head. Since I have actually experienced a few hurricanes in my life, I quickly found truth in this statement, which is mostly a matter of perspective.

Like most natural disasters, people typically equate hurricanes with negative denotations. They view it as a problem. For some people, it is actually an opportunity. When I was 14 years old, we traveled to a small town in Georgia that had been hit by a flood after Storm Albert and Beryl I think ripped through the region. The man with whom we ended up working had a positive attitude. Although it meant a lot of work, it was also a chance to start over fresh.

When we let God into our lives, it frequently resembles a hurricane. Perhaps that's why so many people, to paraphrase CS Lewis, do not really desire true nakedness before and partnership with God. He comes in, like a hurricane, to tear down and build anew. In the wake of a disaster we make by virtue of our decisions, he clears away the rubble, salvages the parts that are useful, and then He starts anew to build something new, something better, in the place where the hovel of our lives once stood.

I find it very odd that many of the people hit by hurricane Katrina continue to live in squalor. People struck by other disasters, particularly in areas where it would not help the president's ego to help out like in Joplin MO, have rebuilt and built better than before. Some things were lost; some of the people realized that all they lost were things. What they gained was an opportunity, a perspective, and a personal witness that they can overcome hard things.

One of the reasons God allows bad things to happen to good people is because sometimes you have to start over. When something is damaged beyond repair, it is useful to have a means to end its course along that track. When we fall on hard times, some of us turn to the Lord, and in turning to Him, we become eligible for His help. What He offers is not in stone or steel or specie; He offers the building blocks of the soul- patience, virtue, and faith. Of those humble materials, He makes mighty men by whom He does mighty things.

Beware the temptation to disparage the storm. It may be the means to a new beginning. I know many people have faced troubling times, but if they have led you to have a closer relationship with your Creator and Savior, then they have been valuable. I would not trade the trials of my life for any chance to do it over, because I have come closer to Christ by virtue of the storms of my life, like the apostles who asked Him to calm the storm on Galilee. As I learn to recognize, hearken to, and follow the Savior, I know that a better land awaits, one that He will at least in part build Himself in the ruins of my old life as I become a New Man in Him.

Taking God's Name in Vain

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While communing with the cowboys in Colorado this weekend, I found some of their comments interesting. They were very insistent that I understand and embrace the notion that, although they were members of no particular faith, that they first bore me no ill will for being one and second were true believers in God. They based this argument on the notion that they do not curse in God's name.

Far too many people take God's name in vain. This goes far beyond cursing and swearing, although that is normally how that is interpreted. I think it begins there and goes far beyond, with people who call themselves Christians or "god-fearing men" without any intention to act upon what He commands. Far too many people go through the motions of faith without intending or planning to act according to what their God teaches. Consequently, they are far worse off than their fellows who do not believe in a God and do not follow one. These people believe in a God but defy Him! They are in open rebellion against Deity.

Many people share our Faith on paper but do not have Christ written in their hearts. They go through the motions, thinking that appearing to be a Christian makes you one of His disciples as if sitting in a garage would make you a car. What really matters is what we have done with His name. We all bear a name, and when we take upon us the name of Christ, we covenant to stand as witnesses of Christ at all times and in all places where we find ourselves. How much do our actions back up our rhetoric? It makes very good sense to me when people doubt our faith because our actions frequently run contrary to the things we preach. Everything we do, for good or for ill, we do with His name written on our heads, and the degree to which we are true to the name we bear brings either shame or honor to the God we allegedly fear and follow.

Do our lives testify of Christ? Do our lives invite people to come to Christ? Do our actions contribute to an atmosphere in which Christ would feel comfortable and welcome? If not, He invites us to repent and align ourselves more fully with that more perfect way.

We are prone as humans to focus on the larger things in life rather than what we consider to be minutia of mortality. My father told a story at church this Sunday of a man his cousin knows who is serving time in a state penitentiary. This man attributes his current course to what he calls SUDS: Seemingly Unimportant Decisions. Just as great edifices and terrible weapons and even furniture from IKEA are build step by step of smaller pieces, the run of our life is made daily by virtue of the things in which we decide to invest our time and talents. Wrote the poet: "To each is given a set of rules, the will to build and a book of rules, and each must make ere life is flown a stumbling block or a stepping stone".

It is good to not curse in the name of God. It is better to take on His name actually intending to follow Him. Otherwise, I think we are just as guilty of breaking this commandment, having taken God's name in vain. If that is the case in your life, as it has been betimes in mine, the good thing is not only that God invites us to repent but also that it can be efficacious in our lives and make both bad men good and good men better.

Blaming Objects

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Yesterday, I read an article that implicated Facebook in the proceedings of 1/3 of divorces as a reason. One of my friends made a slightly sidelong counterargument, but the train of thought for me pointed out to my mind that Facebook is a thing. Things don't do anything unless they are acted upon by people. People's lives are the sum aggregates of their choices, even when some of the things that happen to us are orchestrated by others.

When people make poor choices, they usually search for a scapegoat. It's easier to blame Facebook because admitting culpability means admitting they made a mistake. That makes them complicit in their own problems. Most people prefer to be victims, because victims get special compensation. It takes two people to fight.

The argument is often made that guns are bad because they kill people. If that were bad, Facebook would be guilty by association for anything done by anyone who uses it. I am sure they have written their terms to free themselves from indemnity. Now, I have never seen a gun actively do anything to kill a person. Some people will argue that bullets are the problem, but every gunshot-related death has involved the poor choices of a human who handled it.

People are the active agent in most of the things that happen. We are the sum of our choices. We choose what we do, and we choose how we respond to things that other people do that affect us. In the end, I think what matters most is how we handle what we have more than it is what we have. Certainly, handling a gun wisely, assuming you have one, will bring better options into your life than being reckless or stupid.

Like all other things created or used by man, Facebook isn't to blame for divorce any more than guns are actually responsible for deaths. While it may have played a part, in the end it is just a tool, something that can be used wisely if the users are inclined thereunto. All too often, however, we unjustly ascribe things of our own agency to things that are not involved at all. It's an attempt to deflect blame, avoid punishment, and skirt the consequences of choice. Most marital problems can be solved by repentance, a turning around, a turning of the heart, an inclination to one for whom one has once pledged affection.

It is an abuse of knowledge to rail against things one happens to dislike. It is an abuse of power to outlaw them. If you are offended by something, you are not usually obligated to take part. You can choose to stand up, walk away, change the channel, or refuse to stay. Elie Wiesel writes in his memoir about living in Auschwitz that the last human freedom is to choose how we would like to be in the circumstances. All too few of us choose to be the way we ought to be.

Perhaps that's why we treat other people as objects rather than as agents. You see, objects are easier to demean, easier to blame, easier to villify; agents can choose to be something else. We blame objects because we do not equate them with ourselves. People we treat as agents are people we acknowledge as part of our equivalency class or peer group. Surely, because we love them as we love ourselves, agents cannot be to blame. It must be an object, inanimate or otherwise. That does not solve the problem. It deflects it.

In the end, the life well lived is a life in which one chooses to be choice.

Useful Work

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For some time now, I have mentioned the notion of "useful work" as a universal principle. This is something I discuss in my Chemistry lectures as we deal with thermodynamics and the activities of the universe as we understand them. For those who are scientists, I will use some formulaics to demonstrate this. For the rest, you can read how I use them and trust that if I understand the relationships that the conclusions may be sound.

Gibbs Free Energy defines that the sum change of energy in a system consists of three values: work, heat and light. The work (w) is always defined as useful work, which is the energy involved in the actual chemistry of the moment (aka what we're trying to accomplish). Some energy is converted to heat (q) and the rest to light (l), which may or may not be useful. The work of chemistry is the conversion of matter from one form into another in the manner that is the most energetically efficient given the conditions in which the matter finds itself. This explains the behavior on earth of matter- it tries to reorganize itself to be stable in our atmosphere. When we want to change it, sometimes we must invest large amounts of energy to overcome a threshold activation energy, which occurs because it's energetically advantageous for the matter to rearrange under the new energy scheme. Matter adopts spontaneously the arrangement that is the most energetically efficient. This accounts for chemical geometry, chemical bonds, chemical reactions, radioactive decay, ad infinitum. It's all about greater stability and the most efficient energy in the moment.

We can sometimes force the other parts of energy to be useful. If you are cold, burning wood for heat is definitely useful work. If you are in the dark, the energy converted from a battery to a flashlight's beam is also useful work. The universe, I believe, always does the most useful thing that it can in the circumstances. It is involved in a preservation of the matter to energy ratio that best serves the momentary needs of the universe.

This is why sometimes we are personally or individually irrelevant. The universe can sometimes care less about whether or not you get promoted, fix your car, recover from a disease, or buy a new iPhone. The universe has bigger things to do. We are so vain to think that because we can force matter to rearrange on earth that we can change the climate, stop a comet, or harness the power of the sun. The universe doesn't care about us for ourselves; it helps us because we are somehow beneficial to it. Like George Carlin once postulated, maybe the universe wanted plastic, and so it tolerates us because we supply that material that it cannot make without us as an intermediate (note, I do not think that's our eternal significance)[second note: his conclusion is very sound- he says it MAY be the reason! Booyah!].

Sometimes, however, despite how inconsequential we are, the universe serves us. Although it is possible due to the chirality of prothrombin to create 251^2 possible different enantomers of that molecule, the body makes only one- the only one that is bioactive- thereby preserving not only the matter that would be wasted forming useless forms but also the energy spent to formulate them. Plants make one chiral form that is useful to humans, and they can use the form we make. Despite the fact that the earth's crust is circa 31% Silicon, we are carbon-based lifeforms instead, because carbon is a better backbone; despite the fact that the universe is pretty dry, 70% of the earth's surface is covered with water; despite the fact that it's 104F today in Vegas, the earth lies in precisely the right energy orbit to make our conditions conducive to life. The earth is in the prefect spot for us because it's in the perfect spot to keep the rest of the planets in our solar system in their proper energy orbitals around the sun. If our star, Sol, were larger, we'd be too close; it it were smaller, we'd be too far. Our sun is perfect for us, because somehow we are perfect for the solar system.

I find it somewhat paradoxical that people who disbelieve in deity still adhere to certain scientific principles. They will subscribe to the Law of Conservation of Energy and the Law of Conservation of Mass at the same time they think that "when a man dies that is the end thereof". Where does the matter go? Where does the energy go? Our memories, our actions, our thoughts, are nothing more than electrons in motion between the elements that return to the earth's crust at our death. We do not, even scientifically, cease to exist; we simply change from the form in which we find ourselves today into another one that our eyes and optics are unable to detect and that our vocabularies and postulates are unable to describe. None of that matter or energy is wasted or lost. It is converted to another form. In essence, we always have been, and we always will be. The energies we send out of our solar system are only now detectable beyond the solar system, where aliens are watching "I love Lucy" reruns and the Apollo moon landings. The energy may still be capable of capture and interpretation far beyond the limits of our solar system. What we do reverberates in ripples far from the source, even if we are unable to detect its influence. That is String Theory.

If it were not somehow advantageous to the universe for men to exist, we would not. The reason why we exist is because the organizer of the universe, He who created Heaven and Earth of the matter and energy made available in the universe's first moments, decided that it would be useful to the universe to have us in it. Everything wasteful gets changed to a more useful, a more stable, and a more advantageous form; it has ever been so for all of recorded scientific measurement. Even if we do not know the use of the heat or light, Einstein himself taught us that it was possible to interconvert energy into matter and vice versa. His famous equation E=mc^2 shows us one way. It is possible there are more. Just because we don't know other ways does not mean they do not exist.

Full truth, and full efficiency, are, for men at least, an asymptotic relationship. They are something at which we will draw ever nearer but never fully comprehend. The reason for this is because we use only our abilities, the philosophies of men. We are all imperfect, and nothing imperfect can create something perfect. That is illogical. Only true things can lead to true things. So, consequently, are most of our theories, postulates, and laws. Like I tell my students, the things I teach them are true ON EARTH. They might be different elsewhere.

Science never proves anything. It removes all other possibilities until only the truth remains.

On that, I will hang my hat.

Cheating at Cards

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It’s a common recognition that hiding cards up your sleeve is cheating. The casinos in town watch for certain behaviors like hawks on the floor to make sure not only the House isn’t cheated but also other players. The casinos want those patrons to return, win or lose. However, sometimes we shove extra copies of two trump cards up our sleeves in an attempt to cheat the system.

Freedom and Choice are cards that, once put into play, must remain in play until the game ends. Sometimes we can get them dealt back to us when a round ends, but it seems like lots of people try to play them as well as hold them back for the ultimate trump. Sort of like the way children create new terms for games like in paper-rock-scissors (Nuclear Bomb beats them all!), this is a way by which they hope to manipulate things so that they always get their way.

While waiting to go into Sunday School yesterday, a member of my congregation tried to pull both of these cards. What he has decided to ignore however is the notion that agency is not a continual thing. We actually play the agency card when we decide to be baptized as a sign and token that we will obey the law of God and keep His commandments. Baptism is, like marriage, a covenant we make with God. At that time, we have cashed in the card. Then some among us try to pull it out again, only to find out this divine gift card has a zero balance; we already cashed in on God’s grace when we decided to repent and turn to His way for our lives. In the movie, “Chariots of Fire”, clergyman and future Olympian Eric Liddel, with whose story I have previously dealt, broaches this subject. One Sunday after a sermon, his handler talks about how Liddel’s religion isn’t very free. He sees faith the same way as my fellow member saw it- that God is forcing us to do things, when we have already made the choice to do it when we were baptized. Liddel says prophetically, “You don’t have to follow him.” The choice is made when we choose to follow God. The rest of the moments of choice aren’t really choices at all. They are opportunities to prove that we really mean it.

We are no longer free to choose when we made a choice. There are sections of freeway where, once you get on, you cannot get off, turn around, or change direction for a significant section. The choice is made, and once done, it cannot be unmade any more than you can become a virgin, a fetus, or ignorant again once you choose to enter the world as it were. Once the choice is made, many people who do not like the consequence insist they can choose anew every time, but we have made a contract with God, and when we insist on that, we insist on a “living and breathing contract”, a notion which is expressly repugnant in the eyes of God. He set the terms. We accept them. If you wish forgiveness, these are the terms. Yet sometimes we insist on trying to bargain with God saying such asinine things like “If you preserve my life, I promise I’ll stop drinking” when He has already commanded us to be temperate. We ask God to bless us by offering something we have already promised to give.

The House cannot be cheated. God is not fooled by our attempts to trump Him. He is not fooled by our attempts to bargain with or bribe Him. I admit that in the past before I knew better I also tried this. Part of the reason I live the way I do is because I realize that I am eternally indebted to Him for all that I have and am, and that when I obey, I remain in His debt because even when He doesn’t bless me immediately I recognize that sometimes He has fronted me the blessings by giving me breath, a raise, or a functional car far beyond the rules of physics or mathematical propensity.

Some of the best ways by which the Adversary deceives us is by virtue of the little things. Far too many people get wrapped up in the major things, because they are sensational, because they are penetrating, but the closer we get to God, the more clear it becomes to us just how far away from Him we are. We realize that our sins of omission far outnumber in frequency the sins of commission, and we learn we need Christ even more. In his foundational Screwtape Letters, Lewis writes: “It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.” Sometimes the adversary cheats our souls by putting a silken cord around our necks and telling us that God will justify a little sin, that it’s ok to cheat a little, that everyone’s doing it. Even if that’s true, it’s irrelevant. What we ought to be asking is what ought to be.

The paradox of this entire cheating scheme is that God really wants to give us a win. His way is supposedly our own, that we are free from sin and blessed with lasting peace and happiness. We do not understand what a ‘win’ in the game of life really means, that submission is the ultimate way to get where we claim we intend to arrive. We are trying to always have it our way; if we submit to God, we will be able to always have it our way, because we will only desire what is really, truthfully, and lastingly good for us, which will be good for the universe, which always does useful work.

Amicable Companions

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Tonight, for the first time in my life I will be attending the wedding of someone who is not a relative. I have been invited to many weddings, and sometimes I send gifts or visit them personally after the fact, because I'm not much of a big group person. Additionally, I don’t usually like weddings. Mostly, I feel like everyone in attendance is outwardly happy except for me. While I am happy after a fashion, you won’t think it to look at me, as I’ll probably have that look on my face that my sister says makes me look like I’m going to kill someone. I decided to go to this one because they are only the fourth couple I’ve seen get married in the last five years that I thought was a good idea, and I want to be supportive. Plus, I guess it means I can have some free food. Lately, the media has been talking about marriage a lot because the President says he supports gay marriage. I don’t really know what to think, because nobody seems to define marriage except for the people who passed the Defense of Marriage Act, but even then it’s not specific enough. Let’s not pretend all those people have been waiting to be intimate until the government legitimated their relationships. I can count on one hand the number of people I know who are actually living celibately because they choose to. Plus, I know people will ask me why I’m not married (because I’m not dating, duh), and give me advice about how to get dates (it would help if you shave. Correction, it MIGHT help), but at least I probably won’t run into anyone at this wedding whom I’d rather not see.

For the third time so far this year, I have Saturday to do with as I please. Last semester, I taught a Saturday Microbiology course, and I would really rather be teaching class, to be honest. I know that actually MIGHT be productive use of my time. Right now, I’m just going through the motions. Outside of teaching, my life is the daily necessities of life, not really worth writing about or discussing, with neither observers nor teammates. No wonder people assume that I have no life. Nobody is around when I do something amazing or fun. Contrary to popular belief, I am not arrogant or greedy or selfish but far rather have “a great desire to find an amiable companion with whom to walk the road of life” (Gordon B Hinckley). At least in class, for a period of six weeks or sixteen, I am surrounded regularly by such amiable companions who share the road of life, even if for a short duration.

With that rather inarticulate segue and in the absence of your literal presence in my life, thank you so much for your companionship on the road of my life. I receive so infrequently the affirmative feedback that tells me whether or not my actions, choices, and conversations have borne fruit worthy for the Lord of the Harvest. As the department secretary pointed out yesterday, our department, like life, is prone to only send out negative feedback rather than encouraging positive things. Were I to act based on the little feedback I do receive, the incessantly negative din would do well to convince me that I’m an awful person. A few nights ago, I heard through the grapevine that several of my former students also are out there echoing the growing sentiment that I am arrogant. You kind of have to be arrogant to a degree to be a good professor; what value is a teacher who stands up and admits he doubts his competency to teach you? Students often unjustly ascribe both negative and positive traits to their instructors. Yes, we should be better people, but we are humans too.

It has been said that if you seek to be with better people the onus lies with you to become a better person. So many people I know think about what they ‘deserve’ without thinking about the many ways in which they can improve. We are all sinners and consequently fall short of the glory of God, and as we pair with the Savior, as CS Lewis discusses in Chapter 9 of Mere Christianity, He will remodel us into a palace worthy of His inhabitation. The problem with "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" is that it does not admonish us to that higher road that invites us to do and be good instead. Not being a bad person is significantly different from being a good one. I know many people who, like that student aforementioned, find it easy to roast me who are not themselves visibly striving in any way to become better people themselves.

Perhaps you will find as I that you are surrounded by people who discourage you from that pursuit. Another speaker whose words I have converted from cassette to mp3 talks of how, while catching crabs, he noticed that crabs will pull any of their number back down who attempt to climb out of the bucket. They cannot abide, for myriad reasons, that any of their number gain an advantage; for all of our so-called altruistic rhetoric about shared sacrifice, the only thing most are willing to share is the sacrifice of the best things for any of us if it cannot be true for all of us. Hence, we can expect, like the crabs in Hyrum’s story, to share captivity, misery, and death. Christ, contrarily, invites us to life and peace, not that everything will or MUST be blissful, but that things can be worthwhile. The same dissemblers who project evil traits onto me then complain that I will not spend time in their presence. Why would I want to? I am comfortable in the presence of people who are like me, and they have shown a disposition to anything but that.

I hope that you find a few friends who share your high standards, your noble ideals, and your stalwart faith. I find selfishness to be the root cause of most strife between people, blood related, work-related, or electively engaged in any kind of emotional relationship. Surround yourself with people who support you. Not that they necessarily always agree with you, but who encourage you to go and do and become the best You of which you are capable in the circumstances. The people whose companionship is of the highest value long term are those who truly desire and help you to become the best you can be. They do not care about keeping pace with you and holding you back; they desire you to move forward, upward, and onward. Real recognition of relationships between members of the family of man involves an understanding of the fact that when we truthfully care about others, we lose our lives for their sakes, even as Christ, for our sakes, gave His.

Remember that you were born a son or daughter of a God. You have earthly parents who participate in the process of your birth and nurture. In the end, however, you were born to lead and born for glory. I have every hope that you will become a better person than I am. Many people are threatened by that, and I understand the feeling, but if we are not improving as a people, then the adults are not meeting the needs of their children. We progress as a people when the rising generation is smarter, healthier, and wealthier in every way that matters than the previous one. For their pride, many of our elders hold us back to exalt themselves, and every time they do that their posterity suffer more than necessary. Be the kind of amicable companion you desire to have, and it will help attract more of that kind of people to you. People will still hate, but you will be able to find what Aristotle calls ‘friends for the sake of virtue’ who will invite you to a higher plain thereof.

Christian Marriage

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I'm going to attempt as best as I know how to explain first of all what marriage is to me and then secondly why I am opposed to the entire notion that marriage is any business of the state at all. For my own part, marriage is a sacrament of Faith that happens to have been usurped by the government thanks to all the popes and kings who wanted power over the virtue and property of those who wed (look up Danelaw for property rules and droit du seigneur for the king's role in virtue of his subjects). Historically, marriage has been chiefly for purposes of monetary advancement; countries and fortunes align more easily than people. However, just because that is how marriage has been used does not make it true. If that were the case, I would log on to wikipedia every rassafrassin day and change articles so they were always false; by your definition that "historical precedence is truth" eventually I could after that fashion change history by setting up false precedence, but I digress.

Personally, I don't think the government has any business in marriage at all, and therefore that makes President Obama's opinion on it as equally irrelevant politically as my own in the long run. However, since marriage has become coopted by the state, which must authorize those who perform the ceremonies and license likewise those who are married, marriage has come to appear to be a 'right' granted by the state. If marriage is a right granted by the state, which seems to be the argument of people who favor gay marriage, then it can be taken away by the state. If they are correct, then the state hasn't done anything wrong; it has taken a right away that it has the power to grant or deny. Historical analysis of the Constitution of the United States finds a complete absence of pronouncement of laws regarding marriage. As James Wilson might point out were he alive, one of his major oppositions to the Bill of Rights is that in failure to enumerate rights that belonged elsewhere than to the State, we might leave out rights that belonged to the people. Furthermore, the Constitution proudly declares that "Congress shall make no law pertaining to the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." That applies to Muslims, who get special accommodations for prayers, Q'urans, ad infinitum, but it never did apply to Mormons who also, like the Muslims, betimes believed in polygamy. The idea of marriage and its particulars have always involved Faith.

Whether you affirm your love before an ordained minister or a Justice of the Peace, there are some common themes. Always the ceremony involves some sort of oath or covenant. Thomas More would remind us, were he still alive, of the nature of an oath as he asks, "What is an oath but words we say to God?" We do not make oaths to men; men die. If we swore to a man, that would free us upon his death since we would no longer be bound. We do not swear to an office, for offices are made by men. If we swore to an office, as soon as the men who made the office died, we would no longer be bound either. We swear to something eternal, which we call God.

The people who argue for 'marriage equality' never bother to thoroughly define what they mean. Do they mean they want to finally be able to copulate with a partner who is viewed salacious by society? Let's not pretend they have all been living celibate lives waiting for government to license their liaisons, for adultery, sodomy, fornication, and the like all predate this nation. Let's also keep in mind that in America they enjoy greater freedom than in any other time or under any other government in recorded history. Do they want financial gain? Do they want security? That seems to presume that they assume all heterosexuals actually mean to keep their oaths when they marry, and I know of at least one lesbian couple in California becoming the first lesbian couple to divorce. They are not immune to deception either. Do they mean children and family? Not even a transgender person can actually biologically reproduce without a heterosexual compatriot. These alternative sexual fascinations do not extend the species. What rights are actually being denied them? They are not specific.

Allow me, then, to be specific about what I mean by marriage and why I believe this is a canard. So that you understand that my views on marriage are not restricted to my particular Faith, I will tell you that my beliefs of marriage were laid down as a combination of things I was taught at a very young age, so much so that it pains me TO THIS DAY greatly to have been divorced despite the fact that everyone who knows the circumstances who knows me except my ex-wife understands how it came to be and sees that I am innocent. The idea of Christian marriage comes from the story of Adam and Eve, not because of their names, but because we recognize that man and woman, male and female, are eternal characteristics essential to our identity and that man and woman are different parts of a whole entity that makes for perfection (1 Cor 11:11). The world, and sadly many who call themselves Christians, separate one aspect of perfect unity (sex) not only as a definitive sign for the highest love but also as the justification for marriage. They regard sex similarly to the way that bulimic persons regard food- they want the pleasure of unity with the other flesh without anything other aspects similarly to the way bulimic persons ingest food only to spew it out again.

Our belief in unity and the nature of a unified connection between man and woman accounts for our views on divorce. When a man and woman who REALLY MEAN IT combine via marriage into that 'one flesh', they cease to be separate and become one, making divorce akin to a physical exorcism in which we basically cut up a living organism, in a way that is often so violent that it destroys the parts once rendered separate as well as any unfortunate children who result from the nuptials(Matthew 19:6). Many people who have been divorced tell me that they are 'damaged'. Too many of us equate divorce to the dissolution of a business relationship, the abolition of a military regiment, or a readjustment of college professors to different departmental supervision. In reality, it is much more like a lobotomy in which we cut out a part that is essential to the eternal life of what was once made whole.

Thomas More, as previously mentioned, equated the promises made as part of a marriage ceremony to their actual solemnity. As a lawyer, he was keenly aware of the concept of Justice, which means that both parties KEEP THEIR WORD. In many cases of divorce or familial struggle that has not yet culminated therein, what we find is one party who has been in open rebellion to the marriage covenant. This is why, in part, I do not believe in marriage for purposes of monetary gain, because the covenant in every religion with whom I am familiar believes in a covenant association "for rich or poorer, for sickness or health, UNTIL DEATH DO US PART" if not for longer duration. Money is fake. Facebook's IPO this morning made Zuckerberg a billionaire on paper, but in my opinion Facebook's value is largely imaginary just like money. We use gold or silver as medium of exchange because of their rarity, ease of storage, and universal exchange (See Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations) but not because they in and of themselves are valuable for much. Justice does not say that it is permissible to abandon a contract if it's simply no longer to your advantage, but justice does allow for divorce in the case when one person abandons the contract to free the other from obligation to someone who is no longer complicit with the terms. Monetary gain is frequently selfish. I will deal with this briefly in tomorrow's post. A selfish member of a contractual obligation is not inclined to keep his word. Justice, thus threatened, requires an adjustment to the person wronged. Lest you misapprehend me, marriage is not like a regular contract enforceable by the court; it is a contract between three parties: you, your spouse, and God, and God is the enforcer. You cannot get Him on 'your side' as it were; He is on His own. More on this later.

Many people who argue fallaciously that gay marriage and the like is justified make this claim because so many heterosexual marriages have failed on faulty logic. This ad hoc, ergo proctor hoc argues that "If heterosexual marriage are not perfect, then homosexual marriages should be allowed", but anyone who studies logic knows that a falsehood cannot lead to a truth. Truth must lead to truth; falsehoods must lead to falsehood. What they are really angry at is that they have caught Christians who are CHEATING. A significant number of people who made that oath to God during their marriage ceremony never intended to keep it, whether out of ignorance of the price required or what marriage requires or because they despise God himself. Mostly, they are not deceiving God as much as they hope to deceive the public, to cheat and get the gifts without paying for them or the prestige of being married or a parent without intending to pay the price. If you do not intend to keep an oath to God, perhaps it is better that you do not marry at all; while you might be guilty of fornication, it does not fix sin to add a second one.

Honesty in marriage and dating is absolutely necessary for success of the marriage relationship. Not only do we need to mean the oaths, but we need to be honest about what we mean by love and marriage and what we expect from those we love and marry. Although we use the same words, we do not mean the same things. Years ago, I attempted to date a young woman with whom I went through this exercise. I explained what I meant by CS Lewis' "Four Loves", and she decided she was not willing to pay the price to love me in a way that meant what I defined as real love. Conversely, several years ago, I worked with a lovely young lady who told me one day that she intended to marry her boyfriend so they could sleep together. While I felt at the time that this was a poor foundation on which to build a family, to my great and everlasting joy, I learned just a few weeks ago that she and her husband are still happily married, and that she is stationed at Nellis AFB just a few miles away from me. Her marriage started with honesty, and consequently it was capable of growth and an upgrade.

Love is not the reason for marriage. If love really was "all you need" then to what end have a ceremony, a contract, and a covenant? We have that because love changes. I love chocolate cake, beagles, and the US Constitution. I once loved taekwondo, laffy taffy, and policemen. Jenkins Lloyd Jones wrote an article in the Deseret News in 1973 in which he said, "“There seems to be a superstition among many thousands of our young who hold hands and smooch in the drive-ins that marriage is a cottage surrounded by perpetual hollyhocks to which a perpetually young and handsome husband comes home to a perpetually young and ravishing wife. When the hollyhocks wither and boredom and bills appear the divorce courts are jammed." The oath binds them together based on love they feel for each other today at least "for as long as you both shall live". Earlier, I mentioned that God is a party to the marriage contract. He is on His own side. His side is to form families for the purpose of creating new life. His interest is also with the children that result from the motions of procreation. As they are innocent parties and incapable of fighting for their own benefit, He looks out for them. For this reason, I believe that marriage should not be dissolved as long as children are in the home, because it forces children to suffer for the sins of their parents (Interestingly, people who support gay marriage frequently use this same argument to defend illegal aliens, that it's not fair to hurt the children for the parents, but they think nothing of divorce. It's probably because they are not emotionally involved with the aliens if they even know any. Their benevolence towards people they have not met is largely imaginary, but their hatred towards their own offspring/dependents is wholly real [Screwtape Letters]).

Often, the defendants of gay marriage deal in absolutes. In addition to their earlier logical fallacies, they deal in terms of good and bad while they talk about 'shades of grey' in other aspects of life. They say that love is good, which is true. They never consider that justice is better than love. They say that they can raise kids well; they never consider who can raise children the best. I do not have any because I know that my home, in the absence of a mother, isn't the ideal place to raise children, and so if they can find a home with mother and father committed to each other even if no longer romantically in love they will be better off. Like Miracle Max tells Inigo Montoya in the Princess Bride, "True love is the greatest thing in the world except for a nice MLT- Mutton Lettuce and Tomato..." Love is a great thing; there are things worse, and there are things greater. For a longer discourse on that, read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics. Love is, after all, just a feeling. What we call love is frequently colored by what we see in movies and books and plays, and let us not call the codependent love of "Jane Eyre" or the stalkerish love of "Twilight" or the fiduciary love of "Pride and Prejudice" the same as that we see in the first opening minutes of the movie "Up". They are very different, and I have to give Pixar credit for the first few minutes of that animated masterpiece, because it was more like what I define as love than anything in the previous three.

Marriage does not belong in the political sphere because it is a matter of morality. Unlike those who clamour for gay rights, I actually believe in the separation of church and state. Do not let it deceive you that these people do not attend a church in a form that you recognize, for their worship around the alter of 'the environment' or 'going with the flow' or 'the natural man' or Stonehenge. The Church is responsible for the conduct of its members, for their spiritual status, meant to help them live lives of righteousness and reach out to their needy neighbors according to their physical or spiritual needs. The State is responsible for the civil control of the citizenry, for their political franchise, and for the establishment and maintenance of policies contracted merely between members of the body politic. Hence, the State, since it neither recognizes nor involves deity, is not responsible for, party to, or involved in marriage, which is an oath between men and their Maker. What these people intend to do, no matter what side of the spectrum on which they find themselves, is to FORCE their views of marriage on everyone else. In fact, if marriage ceased to be a concern of the state, then the "full faith and credit" clause wouldn't matter, and DoMA wouldn't either because the state wouldn't care whether you are married or not. The fact of the matter is that most people do not live Christian lives, whether they appear on the attendance or membership roles of a congregation or not, and so it is expressly repugnant to the Constitution without an amendment to force people to live the tenants of any Faith.

I find the notion strange that the same people who insist on protection and preservation of the vegetative environment often actively engage in efforts to destroy my moral environment. As they demand I respect how they choose to live, in doing so they show their abject disregard for what I prefer. While it is unacceptable for me to pass laws that restrict their ability to live as they choose, in arguing for greater permissibility they turn up their noses at my desire to live as I choose. That is the great thing about Federalism- if you don't like it, you can move to another township, county, or state that allows it. Federalism allows for diversity of public opinion at the state and local level because it doesn't allow the federal government to pass statutes about things that exceed its sovereignty. Marriage is not for man or men alone. It involves the Lord and children who were not able to object to a union during the ceremony or alter the contract to protect themselves. Our societal conventions on marriage reflect a respect for our Maker and a concern for innocent children who might be harmed by naivete or deception on the part of the couple.

Finally, the so-called inalienable rights for whom these people clamour do not come from government. While supporters of greater permissibility frequently cite the part of the Declaration of Independence that serves their purpose, they ignore the rest. It reads "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness..." After crafting the Constitution, James Madison said, "The Constitution was written for a moral and religious people; it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." These agitators are not asking whether what they are doing is moral; making it legal will not make it moral. I have been saying for some time the following: the evil man looks at the law and alters it to match his behavior while the righteous man alters his behavior to match the law. The law of which I speak is not the law on record via federal statute; it is the Natural Law that governs the universe and defines all useful work. The debate for gay marriage is not useful work; it will not necessarily make us a better people. It will give license to licentiousness. It will lend the appearance of legitimacy to something that has never been socially beneficial to any society in the long run. It is the tail wagging the dog. If we wish to be happy and prosperous, we must become righteous. If we wish our marriages to be fruitful, we must keep our covenants. If we wish to marry well, we must become better people and seek better mates and live better lives. The Natural Law tells us that without useful work entropy always increases. If we wish to be better, we must be working at it, every minute of every hour of every day. That is the only way to get better families and satisfy the demands of the marriage contract to all of its participants and to all of those affected by it.

Searching for Truth

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Zombies are said to be on the search for brains. They do not wish to acquire them; they wish to consume them, to metabolise them into something else. In essence, this means symbolically that zombies seek to take knowledge and truth and chemically convert it into something else, some other form, something that no longer recognizes brains. If eating a brain cured a zombie, that would be one option, but it doesn't work that way, and I think I know why.

In the political arena, we often talk about partisan followers of a particular candidate or party as if they were zombies. I will not disparage any particular group. This really segues from a previous post on my blog where I pointed out that people are not really looking for truth. IN other words, they investigate the things that validate the point of view they already possess and then ignore everything else. It's very subjective, and it hurts not only them but also those who become subject to the whims of their party if they win office. It is done by politicians of every party in all of time. Only those who are interested in truth are able to help the people.

As we head into November's elections, I find it interesting what people choose to report. Notice that the media seems to have grown silent about the Zimmerman case now that his ancestry has come to light, making him closer in melanin content to the president than the man whose side the president took. Even as Obama opines the 'high military budget', NPR publishes a graphic that shows that social security expenses are almost as high as the DoD budget, and that the military hasn't received as little of the total budget since before Obama was born. As Obama boasts of how he has cut our taxes, he has done nothing to prevent an across-the-board tax hike that will take place on 1 Jan 2013 when the tax rates passed by Bush return to Clinton-era levels. EVERYONE will pay higher taxes, and people who are married will be penalized. He talks about a recovery, this president, despite the facts that unemployment is higher than any time since 1983, mortages are lower than any time since 1965, the national debt he incurred in three years exceeds the sum debt acquired by all other presidents combined, and government dependency has never been higher. Furthermore, he touts his "all of the above" energy approach despite the fact that drilling permits are down under his administration (ibid). I don't understand his advocacy of gay marriage except for the fact that it has been a coup for fundraising, especially since some of the financial incentives go away under his tax plan.

"Obama's supporters often see what they want to see in him" one story proudly proclaims. What further evidence could you request that so clearly delineates that his supporters are not looking for truth? I have been saying for some time now that most people are not looking for truth as much as they secretly hope that what they find to be truth will corroborate what they already happen to believe. If it does not validate them and affirm their preconceived notions, will they reject it or embrace it and change? I have seen people change, but it is so very rare, because it's easier to roast the other guy, because if you're wrong, you have to change, and change is painful.

Several weeks ago, a friend of mine who is a vehement supporter of Ron Paul "asked me to explain for whom I would vote". I discovered that she was secretly hoping I would support Paul, not because of what I believe but because of what he believes in common with me. This is sort of a "Paul came before the Doug, therefore Doug's beliefs came as a result of Paul's" logical fallacy (ad hoc, ergo proctor hoc). In the end, when I realized that I could say nothing to change her mind, I gave her the same counsel that the leaders of my Faith gave us a few weeks later. I commended her to study it out in her mind, make a choice, and ask God to tell her whether she had chosen wisely or otherwise. I hope she is willing to listen to the Lord.

This really comes down to a question of in whom one places one's faith. I am disinclined to put my faith in politicians, who are people and consequently flawed. If I believe in God, I certify with Him what is right; if my god is government, well that changes with administrations and comes inherent with all the flaws of limited knowledge and power. As Inga Barks once said, "There is God, and there is government. God is greater than government, and government doesn't like that". If you're searching for truth, you go looking for it. If you already believe you have it, you won't look, and so you won't find it. People tend to find what they seek.

Going it Alone

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We are actually subconsciously taught and encouraged to go it alone. Despite all the talk about group work, shared sacrifice, and how we progress as a community, all of the models we see actually set us up and encourage us to do the opposite. We are taught to do things on our own, encouraged to be lone wolves, and rewarded as individuals which dissuades us from cooperation and coordination.

When I was younger, I hated the fact that we were always treated as a unit. During my early schooling in England, when anyone in the class did something inappropriate, we all sat there with our heads down in silence. I hated suffering for the foolishness and immaturity of others. Consequently, I learned very quickly the truth of the adage that if it is to be it is up to me. Quickly thereafter, my classmates tried to pull me back and manage my expectations and lower the bar for my achievements. I have had group members actively try to hurt my grade, fellow students steal my work and publish it as their own, and even had an ex-wife claim I owed her for schooling she acquired after we were divorced. Their problems have always been my fault; their successes have always been their own victories.

I suppose it's common to men to ascribe unjustly the credit. When things go well, they like to take credit; when they go poorly, they pass the buck to others. We continue to do this because the most visible of our leaders always "Blame Bush" for things in which they had a part and take credit for things that happen in spite of them rather than because of them. Very soon in their lives, people who are conscientious take control of their destiny where they can in order to avoid being brought down by others.

Even recently at work, one of my coworkers was out unexpectedly on a Friday. Since Friday is our busiest day of the week, and since I am her backup, I knew that, although no arrangements or notification had been made, that if nothing happened my neck was on the line. After trying to find the Dean to appraise her of the situation, I left her voicemail and took the initiative to provide a solution. You see, the onus is on me for not thinking for everyone else, and it would be my fault. We are taught to do things ourselves. They can talk about teamwork and all that rotgut at our group meetings all they like, but if the team members don't act like part of a team, the work will get done by those on whom we can rely to get the work done.

Individual achievement is the only kind that seems to be rewarded. Our grades are our own. Our annual evaluations are our own. Despite the fact that they have actually added "Teamwork" as 10% of my evaluation, if someone else creates a problem, I lose the points, even if I am minding my own business. We are guilty by association, and so we dissociate and go it alone whenever and wherever possible. It comes from the misbegotten notion that we are the "captains of our soul" when there is an entire world and universe out there compared to which we are actually insignificant.

People close to me have realized this about me. When they ask me how I am, I report that "everything I control is under control" although very little is under control. Although I try to be proactive, I am often forced to be reactive by virtue of people who work best in crisis mode or according to a 'just-in-time' business philosophy. You can do hard things. In spite of the things that people have tried to do to me personally, professionally, and philosophically, I continue to advance, achieve, and excel in every facet of life I control. You can too.

When we decide to act, our attitude influences our own expectations. Although I do not believe that attitude or 'energy' alone determines our altitude, it can only help. One of my students came to me after class this week trying to manage his own expectations. He believes that he comes at Chemistry with some kind of disadvantage because of something about him about which I do not wish to know. Even as he told me he expected just to pass at best, I pointed out that Steven Hawking, despite what happened to him, has gone and done great things. "Don't let us," I told him, "decide how far you can go. You decide what price you are willing to pay to accomplish what you desire. I do not subscribe to the notion of "if"; the question for me is 'how?'" Sometimes I amaze even myself.

It is possible and scientifically likely that despite your attitude and best efforts you might fall short of your hopes and expectations. There are so many other competing energy sources, attitudes, and efforts out there that might counter and negate your efforts. Sometimes things just don't work out. Sometimes, the things in which we engage require the participation of another agent who may decide to do something else with someone else for some other end. Even if you play all your cards correctly, there is always a slim chance that someone can be dealt a better hand by chance and beat you out.

Maybe that's why I like Don Quixote so much. Cervantes' character talks in the play version about how the end is not important. What really matters is to be true to the quest. To be willing to go it alone when everyone else is complicit and somnambulent, to be willing to stand up, stand up, and stand forth at the risk of being unhorsed. Sometimes, the shepherd must be willing to give his life to save the sheep, even if giving his life means to slug away at it every day every year for a lifetime. The French say "plus cha change, plus c'est la meme chose" which means that the more things change the more they become the same. As people try to be more different, they actually become more like each other, a bunch of shrupshire sheep as it were, all going through the motions in search of meaning and unique identity. They abandon what they know because they want to be themselves, only to not notice everyone else abandoning what they knew, until very few hold the line like Don Quixote. Very few hold to the old truths, because they are 'outdated' or 'puritanical'. Few regard whether they are true.

Have courage to go it alone when you are striving for right. That's when it really matters, and that's the kind of individual effort that should be fostered, encouraged, recognized, and ultimately rewarded. That's my quest, anyway, and I welcome your company.

So Much For Privacy

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I am online because I intend to be. I have no secrets that go beyond the normal human propensities to folly or foolishness that accompany youth, naivete, and/or inexperience. I am unashamed of my past and unafraid for my future. I have a different understanding and expectation of privacy and what that means today.

There is no right to privacy in the Constitution. There are some state and local and even federal laws that exist ostensibly to protect privacy, but just as little as you are aware of their actual verbiage the government is ill inclined to actually protect your privacy. Contrariwise, they are actively engaged in a campaign against it.

One of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to privacy is the use of my SSN as an identification number. That's not what it's for. In fact, I make it a matter of normal business to deny organizations and persons access to it who have no business knowing what my SSN is. Once I took that crusade so far that I asked angrily when an IRS agent asked me for it, "Why do you need it?" "Sir," he answered patiently, "because this is about your taxes." That made sense.

Most of the things however make very little sense to me. Although the government might protect the use of your SSN, no other entity does, so as soon as they start using it as an identification number, you are sunk. Not even the US Military or the State of Nevada identify their ranks by SSNs. Sure, we have 'accounts', but that's a big sham. There are other shams, which they do ostensibly to protect us, but which clearly demarcate us as the problem. So much for privacy. We have privacy 'rights': 

• Except medical records, which we must make available to anyone that Obamacare authorizes 
• Except drones, which they government is now allowing to patrol neighborhoods without probable cause 
• Except contraceptives, which must be part of your health care 
• Except tax returns, which you must declare in order to prove you have 'skin in the game' 
• Except how much public employees earn every year, some of whom are identified by name when you see their pay 
• Except your home ownership records, some of which reveal your address, your bank account, the purchase price and your signature 
• Except with whom you engage in intercourse, which has become popular now that Obama backs gay marriage 
• Except when you try to profile people from a certain part of the world that attacked us without warning or provocation for fear they might take offense 

 You have privacy rights only if you want to get an abortion. That is absolutely protected.

Partly, we are part of the problem. We willingly give it away for a few minutes of fame because we are desperate for attention, even if it's bad. Look at all the girls posting up things asking "am I pretty?" online. Then there are the endless strings of Reality TV shows and the resurgence of Facebook privacy concerns which allows you to protect some of your information if and only if you personally go in and change settings from the default to "do not share". Consider all the requests for telephone numbers because someone 'lost their phone' or bought a new one or all the marriage groups where they invite putative attendees to publicly post their address where people who are strangers to them can read it. When they log into things or share pictures that indicate locations where they are and when, they inadvertently help people know what they are doing, where and with whom, and then complain that we shouldn't be looking. We shouldn't be sharing! What is this all for if not to protect you? We should not have to give our consent to things that protect us.

If you voluntarily give up your privacy to get something, that's a different story, like getting a driver's license or applying for Medicaid and granting government access to your driving or medical records respectively. Far too many politicians are actively engaged in things that restrict your privacy while they claim to be defending it. I do not like the Patriot Act or Drones or Obamacare. I do not think the putative gains justify the risks to the people they claim to protect. Yet, we seem willing to bankrupt the nation to protect a very small minority of people who actively resist the help. So much for "you can lead a horse to water but can't make him drink". These usurpations shall not stand. The federal government exists to protect the citizenry from threats from outside. If they want to use drones send them down to help protect the border. Anything beyond that is a huge threat to regular citizens without probable cause, and even then the benefits must outweigh the costs or anyone with half a brain would seek a better solution.

We cannot place our faith in government. Any organization made up of humans is only as good as the humans of which it is made. Humans are flawed. I have plenty of flaws myself. I do not trust bureaucrats with my information, and neither should you. We are not the enemies. We are adults, and it's time we act like it.

Resurrection Thermodynamics

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This weekend, I've been involved in two fascinating conversations with people who are not sure there is life after death. One of the people believes only in science, only in what she can see (although she has faith in her light switch and the electricity she can't see until it lights up the fixtures), and the other believes there might be something else just beyond his grasp. Again, this is an example of where Science and Religion work in harmony.

I find it slightly paradoxical that people who worship at the altar of a laboratory think that people who worship God are nuts. Ostensibly, these scientists believe in the Laws of Thermodynamics, which claim that matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed, only converted from one form to another. They teach people that "when a man dies, that is the end thereof", or in essence that what we are ceases to exist. In order to be consistent, they would have to teach that the form in which we are presently recognizable ceases, but the matter of which we are comprised and the energy that holds us together continues in a form we are not trained or able to recognize.

Suppose that I took you into space and dumped you out the airlock without a suit. The molecules of your body would immediately separate to fill the empty vacuum of space at the optimum distance. This is spontaneous and involves no energy input. However, the matter of which your body is comprised and the energy is still there; it's just so far apart that nobody on earth recognizes it as you or possesses the power to put the pieces back together. However, we believe in, go to, and pay large sums of money to doctors to do precisely that on earth, just so long as the pieces are kept in proximity and a form with which we know how to work.

What are our thoughts, our memories, our activities, etc.? They are nothing more than electronic impulses between neurons and chemicals being transferred between cells. Assuming we could create the exact conditions (which scientists are trying to do by forming living cells in a test tube), we could not only recreate the form but also the substance that is a soul. Scientists are already ready to admit that electronic signals from TV, radio, satellite, microwaves, etc., continue to echo into space and could theoretically be put back together if you knew where they were and in what form they were broadcast (Star Trek dealt with this on several occasions), but they all think that the electronic impulses from your brain, your voice, etc., cease when you die. That seems duplicitous to me. Who you are and what you do echoes forever because it's all energy and matter.

It is therefore scientifically feasible for not only the reconstitution of a person's life from the dispersed fragments but also for a literal resurrection of the soul. Mary Shelley first popularized the notion of reanimation of dead tissue, combining the biochemistry of a preserved brain with a satisfactory mortal coil in order to return to the form of life we recognize someone else who passed beyond the grave. A power greater than our own could bring back the matter of which we are comprised, recapture the energy we send out, and put us back together in the form we currently recognize. People on earth call that "recycling". What we are persists after we die, albeit in a different form, and if it's possible to create life from lifelessness, we could easily suppose that it is possible to reconstitute a life once lost. That's the theory behind Frankenstein, Trek's Genesis Device, Asimov's Bicentennial Man, and myriad other science fiction themes through all time. Scientists just can't seem to tolerate the addition of a god unless they are that god, which smacks to me of hubris. It's ok for them but not ok for mine.

Thermodynamic principles teach that there is no net change in matter or energy except when matter is converted into energy. There might even be a way to reverse that. In fact, that's the notion behind science's Big Bang Theory- that energy gave rise to matter. Otherwise, where did all the matter originate of which the universe is filled? There is much we cannot explain, like how that much energy could be contained in a small space just before the big bang and where the energy originated in the first place. Its form may change, but it is still there, and so likewise what we are and do and become persists, albeit in a different form through all generations of man and throughout all eternity. Whether we contribute to entropy or to a more perfect union lies in the decisions we make and the lives we choose to live. We will rise again, in some other form, in some other place, at some other time, because all that is has been and will be, and what we are will live again. Whether you believe in the Force, or Mother Earth, the laws of Galileo or Copernicus or Newton, or in the God of Abraham, every one of those believes that matter and energy continue, even if they dispute the form it will take. We will live again; our ability to recognize that fact and the form we take probably depends on how we live while here, whether we advance to a higher energy level or decay to a lower nuclear energy. Each of us will adopt in the end the form of energy which gives us the greatest stability, because that maintains the rules of the universe, at least as we are willing and able to conceive them.

Balancing Reason and Faith

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I ran the gauntlet at work today over the notion that I am both a man of science as well as a man of faith. People in academia, but in science in particular, seem to find it not only odd but contradictory that I could be a member of both camps. They seem prone to deal in absolutes, that “if, then” or “if not, then”, and I even got to hear someone project behavior onto all people who believe in a supreme being even though she hasn’t even met a majority of believers. Science and Religion are complimentary.

Done correctly, both science and religion both arrive at the same end using different methods. Science deals with the empirical, the measureable, the visible. I do not need to go into the historical evidence from Talaro’s Microbiology book on how the Germ theory evolved and was solved only once van Leuweenhoek developed the first microscope. Just because we cannot see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or isn’t true. Religion bridges the gap between what we observe and cannot explain and what we understand. It takes on faith things that are unseen and poorly understood but which are still true.

The problem with both pursuits is that they’re both handled by men. Men of faith are by definition fallen, and as soon as you put another person between you and the divine, you introduce error into the communication. Also, we know that most communication isn’t verbal, but most of the scripture to which we have access is just words. God, like my dog when he shows me he’s happy to see me, or the plants out front, does not communicate by calling me up, emailing, or sending me texts. He communicates with me without talking with me, via impressions, feelings, and thoughts. Men of science likewise often get in the way because they are not looking for truth. I have been saying for some time that most people are not interested in truth as much as they hope that the truth will happen to corroborate that in which they already believe. So, they bend facts to fit theories, project things and jump to conclusions. I have been telling my students for years that “Science doesn’t prove anything. It removes all other possibilities until only the truth remains.” Since we are limited in our ability to conceive all possibilities and test those of which we conceive, we have arrived at very little truth.

Far too many people are not interested in truth. They are interested in rule by men, rule by opinions. Too many religious people try to speak for God, dictate to Him, and order Him around the universe rather than seeking the truth from Him and submitting to it. They want God to agree with them. When the rules are just, the wicked man changes the rules to fit his behavior and the righteous man changes his behavior to fit the rules. Science tries to bend facts to fit theories. They begin their experiments trying to prove their hypothesis rather than finding evidence to reject the opposite notion. Far too many scientific conclusions jump the shark, but when something is disproved later, there is very little hubbub, and nobody loses their PhD when their work is debunked.

The different camps of Reason and Faith could be in cooperation. Members of the camps compete, usually because they believe they are absolutely correct and because they take it as a personal assault if they are proven to be incorrect. I am happy to be proven wrong. In fact, there are several instances that come to mind where I would have rather been wrong. However, Reason and Faith are actually in cooperation, being two different ways in which we search for truth. The degree to which you are open to truth determines how well you tolerate members of the camp in which you spend the least time.

Different people react differently to visits from the other camp. I have one atheist friend who gave me the secret to this. He told me that he keeps in mind the words at all times, “I might be wrong”. Since he is willing to admit that he might have something to learn, we are able to communicate and have meaningful discussions. However, a lady I know compared me to the Son of Sam today when I told her that God communicates with me. “Do you mean to tell me that the only two people you know on earth who claim God communicates with them are a serial killer and me?” She was absolutely convinced she was right and was completely unwilling to entertain anything I had to say. In fact, she demanded that I prove there was a God, but she holds herself to no obligation whatsoever to prove that she is right. Doubtless she will take that as proof that there is no God that I couldn’t prove His existence to her satisfaction. That sounds like a logical fallacy to me…

I find it interesting how many people who claim to base things on facts and logic take to so many emotional positions. In order for either science or faith to work, the people who practice them MUST be actually searching for, open to, and accepting of truth when they find it, especially if it challenges what they believe right now. My closest friend, despite affirming that he follows the example of Spock and bows to reason over emotion, takes quite a few emotional stances or takes a stance for emotional reasons. As human beings, emotions play a part in all of our decisions, but when I make decisions while riddled with emotion, I make irrational decisions, and I suspect that is true of most people.

Being a member of both the Science and Faith camps is actually quite easy. As a professor, I have given exams with multiple choice questions where sometimes the answer was more than one of the above. Why must it be either Science or Faith? Why can’t it be BOTH? I do not need evidence to believe in God. If I knew He existed, that would be knowledge and not faith, but that would benefit nobody because you would probably think I was bonkers. I have nothing to lose. If I’m wrong, we’re all dead when we die and nothing matters, but because I am right, I have another existence to which I look forward in which I will be rewarded for choosing to believe. Besides, if others mock you for faith, you’re in good company. Even Leonidas and his 300 did what they did for faith, family, and freedom. It was completely irrational, but the logicians point to him as a hero. His faith and his logic led him to die on that field, and if I die on this one, it will be my victory, for I will have been true to the truth, or at least that portion I was willing and able to receive and wisely use.

What Marriage Means

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As the rest of the country gets their dander up about election results this week, I think there’s a bigger issue here that we’re missing. Before we talk about rights granted or rights denied and who’s being treated unfairly by whom, we need to ask another question. To what end do the people seeking marriage ‘rights’ desire them? Let’s not pretend they’re living chaste lives right now and want to suddenly be able to copulate because they can finally wed. Most of them are seeking legitimacy for their illicit activities, because if it’s legal, it must be acceptable.

When we ask people what marriage means, I bet we’d get different answers. I am not talking about what a marriage looks like, or what pairings constitute a marriage or to what authority marriage belongs. I ask to what circle of civilization that marriage actually belongs. Is it an ordinance of the church or a ceremony of the magistrate? Is it a commitment or a contract? Why do you even want to get married? What does it mean to be married? Far too many people in my opinion seem to view it as a business partnership or a tax shelter or a legal sexual liaison rather than the foundation of a family.

Quality foundations make for stronger and longer lasting structures. Now that I’m a little older than the students, I know different questions to ask when I meet potential mates, and most people do not value what I value or value what I value for different reasons. Although we use the same words in many cases, we do not mean the same things. Too many confuse lust for love, entering into marriage only because they feel compelled to go through the motions as if they haven’t been using the procreative process as a recreational outlet rather than as a means to create new life. What does it matter who marries if fornication and adultery and sodomy are acceptable and kids are omitted completely from the equation?

In order for the marriage debate to mean anything, we really need to sit down and define what marriage is, what it consists of, what it’s for, and what a successful marriage looks like. Far too many marriages nowadays are filled with hirelings who flee when the wolves threaten the flock, made for convenience’s or appearance’s sake or out of desperation for company rather than a real desire to commit to someone. Yes, people change. That does not entitle you to be selfish. To flee a person because they changed is a selfish and immature attitude. It is no mark of maturity to say, “Be what I want you to be or I will make your life miserable”. I feel bad for the rising generation because they, unlike myself, have very few examples of good marriages and good matches from which to draw reference points because their parents made love, not war, and can’t commit to anything except spontaneity, which they use all too often as an excuse to avoid having to keep their word.

If marriage is about you, you’re on the wrong premise. Love, and all the steps that are antecedent to it, is about someone else. So, if you’re marrying for rights or tax breaks or equality or anything else that’s selfish, you’re in the wrong. Period. You don’t get married for you. If you want to have intercourse, there are plethora opportunities for that without mucking up the lives of people who might like to actually be loved rather than be someone to whom you ‘make love’. Making marriage legal for people who are not interested in making a family isn’t going to legitimate their fornication or sodomy. Legalizing moral wrongs does not make them moral; it makes them legal.

Moreover, I cannot fathom the morbid fascination with activities that are private. Even as they clamour against the government for invasion of privacy, these people parade their preferences before everyone. What you do in your own home is none of my business, and it shouldn’t be anyone else’s. Plus, I’d rather not know. It’s not like you’re all saving yourself for that special someone until you can marry and then finally consummate the marriage. We have nine year old girls giving birth for crying out loud!

Family foundations must be set on good ground. Sexual activity is a poor foundation on which to found a family. Finally, because we mean different things with love and marriage, frequently we find that people who enter the marriage contract have done so assuming that the other signatory meant things the way they did only to discover that they meant something entirely different. This makes the marriage contract a fraud, but rather than fix it, the hirelings flee.

As you think about where you stand, remember that things must be done in the proper order. Marriage to the right person at the right time by the right authority for the right reason is the only way to find happiness in marriage. The rest might as well be an elaborate and elongated Halloween party with a few treats but mostly tricks. It’s not a costume; it’s a commitment, and the sooner you know what marriage means to you and why you seek it, the sooner you can decide where you really stand and what part politicians actually ought to have in this at all. Give the words meaning, and your marriage will have more meaning, if you choose someone who means it the way you do.

Roots and Fruits

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At my parents' house this Sunday, a somewhat abnormal topic came up in conversation. Some kind of rodent keeps eating my mother's flowers down to the stub as soon as they attempt to sprout fresh growth, and my father was asking how to trap the rodents so they can relocate them to a different food supply. You see, they wish to enjoy the fruit of the plants they installed and the water for which they pay that nourishes them.

Although most of us think very little about plant roots, they are largely responsible for the parts of plants we enjoy. Roots bring in most of the nutrients and water the plant will use, and they provide stability, particularly when the desert's harsh winds rip through and upend mobile homes. If you are an orange juice drinker, you don't care too much about the roots as long as the tree makes quality oranges. If the trees are for shade, you don't care about the roots, just about the amount of shade the tree gives your house in the summer sun. If you are growing it for wood, you only care that the roots nourish a good tree. You see, very few of us use the roots for anything. Plants however work differently.

There are actually genes in a plant that specifically enhance root growth. When animals graze a plant, they help the roots grow strong. You see, if the roots survive, they can grow a new shoot or replace leaves or replace fruit, but if the root dies, the plant will likely die. When you pull a weed but do not remove the root, this is why they get more difficult to remove, because the roots grow stronger. Let's not forget that plants don't make fruit unless the roots can support it. Before any other part of the plant grows, and sometimes when the world is blanketed in snow, the roots begin to grow. Root growth determines the ultimate amount of shoot the plant is able to sustain, and roots that are strong can resprout old trees, which you see with grape vines and cottonwood trees very often in Nevada.

This past Sunday, a leader of my Faith talked about love. He asked members of the congregation to tell him what love means. Mostly, like people usually do, they gave canned answers. He then pointed out that those are the fruits of love. Love isn't something we do. It's a state of being; it's who we are. The acts of love that evince of its presence grow naturally out of a strongly rooted love, and they are just its fruits.

In part at least, the strength of the root determines the quality of the fruit. If we are firmly rooted in good principles, the behavior that people observe and of which they wish to take part will also be good. If we are rooted in the philosophies of men, in fads, or in lies, then all sorts of fruit, and of inconsistent quality, will cumber the branches of our character. Not all of us are placed in the best of soil with access to the choicest of nutrients, and not all of us have the benefits of great climate or care. However, some of the most impressive trees I have seen are the bristlecone pines that line the escarpment of the Sierra Nevada. They are some of the world's oldest trees, and they stand amongst the rocks and against the elements for millenia. The fruit of their roots is that they are firmly planted in the rock for men to see for all time.

Whatever you wish to be, remember that the fruit depends upon the root. Nourish and care for the roots, encourage them to grow, and you will see a stronger shoot. No matter how many times the rodentia of the world gnaw at you, if your roots are strong you will be able like my mother's flowers to resprout and try again. As your roots grow better, so will the fruit they bear.