First read this.

Any shred of belief I might have had before that we are children of a loving God just went out the window. All this about the natural man being an enemy to God unless he yields to the spirit is crap. We are specifically designed to not yield. What a cruel joke an omnipotent being would play on his billions of subjects, especially when the stakes are so high.

Global warming is a hoax.
Gay people can be ‘cured’.
Raping a virgin will cure you of the ‘thinning disease’.
Tax cuts stimulate the economy.
Giving people unemployment doesn’t.
Reagan ended the cold war.
Obama was born in Kenya.
Black people are inferior.
Fluoride in our drinking water is a communist mind-control plot.
Elvis is still alive.
And so on.
And so on.

What does God do with the unrepentant? Throw them out because they’re no good? Says something about God’s ability to create something, then, doesn’t it?

If I sound angry, it’s because I am. I was sold a bill of goods. So were you, in all likelihood. I was raised to believe in and hope for the Kingdom of God (Zion) to come someday, and it looks pretty hopeless right now. The predictable future for humans is not Zion. We aren’t on our way there. We are on our way to 1984. Humans would rather lie to themselves in order to be right about something–“we have always been at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia”–than to confront the truth and build a utopia. We would rather die than tell the truth.

This is why we don’t have any utopias. Humans don’t want utopia. We want the pain, misery and conflict that comes with believing things that are demonstrably untrue. We love suffering. We wouldn’t trade our suffering for anything in the world. And that’s not hyperbole: we really could have anything we want in the world if we just gave up our stupid lies, and we don’t! If we wanted to, we could, and we don’t, therefore the only logical conclusion I can see to draw is that we don’t want to live in Zion! We want to live in hell, and we’re doing a damn fine job of making that way for ourselves! Damn us all!

This week would have seen Robert Heinlein’s 103rd Birthday. I love this quote:

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.”

I’m 13 for 21…

I dreamed last night that I went to church, to my geographic ward. They just got a new bishop, a nice man who’s very risk-averse. At least that’s my read of him. The hymnbooks were new and there were new songs in them, and we tried singing one of the new hymns for the opening song. It didn’t go very well, partly because the hymn started with a rest and people couldn’t figure out where the downbeat was, and partly because the bishop, the music director, and the chorister were all trying to conduct at the same time. It didn’t work well.

Normally I try hard to forget my dreams as soon as I wake up; I’ve found it helps my mood. But this dream managed to drop anchor before I had the presence to cast it off; and while dreams are empty and meaningless, I found the imagery interesting enough that I thought I’d post it here and let you all pick at it.

More followers than posts? I think I’ll up the post count so the followers count will rise to exceed it! 😉

I just finished watching “Transformation: the Life and Legacy of Werner Erhard.” at 77 minutes, there’s a lot less to it than I thought there would be, but it did answer basically all my questions. An interesting snippet towards the beginning talks about a shift in the spiritual / religious world away from what we might call “subscription-based” organizations, where you put, say, $10 into an envelope every week, and toward “fee-based” models, where you pay $250 one time and get some defined product from it.

I think both models are flawed; moreover, I think all the models out there are flawed. All organizations have a process by which you “get in,” and more often than not it seems to involve money: paying tithing, dues, fees, bills, bribes, purchasing something… I’m not committed to that. I’m also not committed to signing something or saying something or going through some ritual… these are meaningless. (As is the money bit.)

My church doesn’t exist yet. (Actually, I don’t know if it’s appropriate to call it a church, but “David’s church” seems like the best placeholder for the present.) This is a question I have about my church: what will the initiation process look like? How will a person “get in”? Will the process accomplish anything, and if so, what?

As a bonus, I’m thinking about how one might create an organization of which you become a member simply by existing. As far as I can tell, there’s only one such organization in existence right now: the Matrix. And I am not committed to the Matrix or anything about it. (What “it” is, is a subject for another post.)

Why is integrity necessary for things to work?
What is the Matrix, and how do I get out of it?
Can there be a complete list of useful ways for a human being to be?
When a church is completely transformed, what will arise in its place?
What’s worth living for?
What problems remain unsolved in the realm of Christian theology?
What stands between us and Zion?
How do we really know anything, anyway?
Is money necessary for the world to work?
What was the original sin? Was there one?
How am I to judge righteously but not judge unrighteously?
What’s the nature of authority?
How do you determine what you can do to truly serve someone?
What’s the difference between legitimate needs and addictions?
How does a person escape addiction?
How did I get to be the way I am?
Is there something wrong with me, and if so, how do I fix it?
Why are people so unwilling to accept things which are basically proven, like biological origins for sexual orientation and global climate change?
How can I affect this phenomenon?
What is worth knowing, and what is worth doing?
Why am I living my life? What for? To what end?