feran’s whereIstand Blog

This actually started as a comment reply to Tall Paul’s recent entry on religion, but it got a bit long so here’s an entry instead, in response.

~~~

People always say that God is omnipotent etc. etc. we can’t understand God, “divine plan” yada yada, but the Bible explicitly states that God created Man in his own image. Also in Hebrews 5:9, it states “And being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation to all them that obey him;” ~ meaning that Jesus was not initially perfect. He was the Son of Man and became the Son of God. We are Sons of Man, and according to the Bible with the Spirit we can achieve eternal salvation. It also states that Jesus is an “author”, meaning he’s a guidelines for others to also “become perfect” by “killing the flesh” – Jesus died on the cross as a symbol for ridding ourselves of worldly attachment because in John 15:18-19 it says, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” If you compare to the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism:

1. Life means suffering.

2. The origin of suffering is attachment.

3. The cessation of suffering is attainable.

4. The path to the cessation of suffering.

Therefore Jesus and Buddha said the same things, and yet!! And yet so many people preach this Bible nonsense with no actual scripture backing.

Consequently, if we are to follow the Bible’s teachings, we are to follow Jesus as an example and learn and understand the deeper allegorical and metaphorical meanings of spiritual texts (e.g. The Bible, the Torah, etc.), to understand that they are using imagery and symbolism to teach philosophy to find inner spiritual peace.

Thus, I state – point in fact – God helps those who help themselves.

The Bible does not teach blind faith.

Argument: Given that Christians believe that Jesus is the path to salvation, then doesn’t it logically follow that following Jesus’ teachings will lead to salvation? And if Jesus says to believe in him, do you believe in Jesus by just believing he’s God and then thinking that you get the Kingdom of Heaven for free? If it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to go to heaven, then obviously there’s a contingency for salvation meaning that believing in Jesus requires that you follow his teachings and therefore “help yourself”. I think you’d shame God by having God create you in his image and then sit on your butt saying “I BELIEVE” and doing nothing about it expecting the kingdom of Heaven to be handed to you on a silver platter.

~~

For the record, I would most likely be categorized as an atheist. I am an ex-Roman Catholic and am another one of the atheists who ironically seem to know more about the Bible and various religious texts than the proponents of the religions themselves.

whereIstand Tags

• Are spiritual gifts granted to Christians today?
• Can a Christian lose salvation?

Yet another chapter in the endless debate of abortion.

I’d like to strike a vein at hypocrisy, however, this time.

People continually argue that life is precious.

So let’s take a scenario – a fifteen year old girl is raped and left pregnant. She wants to have an abortion because she knows that she can’t financially sustain the child. She knows that her family can’t financially sustain another child. But her parents won’t let her have one because they don’t believe in it.

Is it alright, then? For a child to live without a father figure, for a child to live as a bastard, for a child to go to school seeing all the other children with mommies and daddies and all he has is a mommy. To live without a father figure, to live without a proper family environment. To live with someone who most likely is NOT emotionally or psychologically or financially ready to have a child.

The child may not have the proper backing to go to college. The parents may kick the child out and not be supportive. The child won’t have a proper parenting upbringing and will most likely turn to delinquent behavior.

While all the pro-life advocates will claim they saved a life, subjecting a child to a lifetime of torture, misery, and failure, all because:

“Life is precious”.

So here’s the hypocrisy -

If life is so precious, then isn’t human life important enough such that every human be given the opportunity to live and grow up with a stable, loving family?

Why should every human being not be granted the right to grow up in a proper household?

It’s only a fact that higher-class income families have easier access to benefits for their children. That a middle or upper-class child will have a significantly higher chance at success than a kid in the ghetto or the slums, sent to the local public school full of delinquents, his peers and “friends” being drug dealers and addicts.

Why would anyone want to get an abortion in the first place?

People go around touting “IT’S MURDER! IT’S EVIL!”, so what then, every woman who wants to have an abortion is a senseless ruthless killer bent on the destruction of innocent lives?

Did you ever think there might have been a reason why they wanted to get an abortion?

Perhaps the reason is because they care. Because they know the value of a human life, and they want to get an abortion to save the child, not murder it.

So say, that, the child was instead given up for adoption or foster care. So what, then the pro-life advocates are betting on that low percentage chance that they’ll end up with a good, loving, caring family?

It’s preposterous really.

Men carry sperm in their testicles, and basically when you ejaculate, a lot of those cells don’t all breed children. So is sexual intercourse genocide? The act of childbirth is when one of those little guys happens to find an egg, and the egg fertilizes the sperm and it eventually becomes a child.

And to Christians – in the Bible, there is no definitive information on whether or not abortion is murder, and no one, not even the Pope, can claim that it is one way or the other, unless the Pope has definitely proof that he received his message directly from God.

Pro-choice is what people who have deeper insight have. They understand the value of human life, and care about human life enough to understand that it’s a big deal.

Pro-life is a shallow, baseless argument of self-righteous idiocy that doesn’t take the child’s life into account at all.

That is all.

whereIstand Tags

• What parental involvement should be required in the abortion decision of a minor?

“Yes, democracy! Government through the people, by the people! Majority rules!”

Ha ha ha.

You know, I’d like to start off with a bit of irony. A lot of Americans are under the impression that communism is:

a) A governmental system
b) A word synonymous with fascist, totalitarian states

Which is absolutely wrong. Communism is indeed an economic system where the government controls the capital of the country.

But here’s the irony – truly, we are governed by those in political power – but little do people realize that we are also governed by economics. Regardless of who is in power, regardless of what legislation they pass, regardless of whether you’re Hugo Chavez or George Bush – the real driving force in the -world- is?

What?

Money.

Yes, money. So take America, the center of “freedom” and “liberty” and whatever other horse shit spewed out by propagandized nonsense to unite the people under a sense of false nationalism and fake security while 99% of its citizens mull around like mindless fools that could care two shits about legislation or the rest of the world as long as it doesn’t affect them.

Truth be told, the thing on most people’s minds is -

My paycheck. My bills. My family.

So what really drives our lives? Money.

So if capitalism is free trade, including the freedom to take advantage and exploit others economically and financially, then utilizing an anarchistic trade system does nothing more than make democracy a de facto symbol of security belying the de jure nature of the world in and of itself.

So isn’t that the biggest scam of all? To lull everyone into the lie that they have power, that their word means something, that they live in a country that they control, when the most important factor of all – money, is beyond their control?

And yet we say we live in a free trade society, but do we actually trade?

No! We exchange our goods and services for meaningless paper that the government trades against the world economy. We exchange our services for the US dollar – to which we have no control whatsoever over, whose value is determined by the US economy, and whose rates, supply, and limitations are controlled by?

Ding! The Federal Reserve.

And in our “democratic” system, do we elect the members of the Federal Reserve? Do we?

And yet, isn’t it true that people fret whenever the head of the Federal Reserve makes a decision? As if the man were god himself, deciding whether or not to buy securities, or sell securities, balancing and toying with the value of the US dollar, balancing interest rates and value as he trades internationally, completely beyond our control?

And do we not trade our services into this man, and his dollar?

Do we enact legislation monitoring or controlling the Federal Reserve? Or is the Federal Reserve absolute?

Why do they control interest rates? Why do they control banking institutions? Why do they get to dictate the control of our dollar and our securities?

And yet, why do we -not- elect them?

What good is legislation if the driving force of this world is money? So we pass a bill for civil rights, so we make a shuffle here or there, but isn’t that just low-level thinking? Aren’t the people in power pacifying society, passing bills to make us happy so we continue to produce so they can toy with our lives like pawns on a chess board?

Very few can really debate me on this matter because very few really know.

I myself am an ex-banker. I was in the financial industry a few years ago and I owned a company with a partnership with a broker doing mortgages, and have studied excessively banking and finance.

The theory I set forth is that democracy is only an illusion given that we have no control over our economy, that capitalism as it exists in the United States negates the effects of democracy by creating an economic system that belies our country that we do -not- elect representatives for and have no control over.

So, just food for thought. Think about it, do your homework, and see what you think. Admittedly my allegations are a bit severe, perhaps exaggerated in some respects, and perhaps not. My objective is only to make you wonder.

[EDIT- 03:14PM] More Fun Thoughts

an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, esp. as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.

“capitalism.” Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 19 Mar. 2008. .

If capitalism is an economic system in which the production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained by private individuals or corporations, then is it not true that exchanging our services for government backed securities (the US dollar) defying the entire point of capitalism? The value of our services is then determined by the value of the dollar, and is no longer privately controlled.

The dollar is also volatile in that it is controlled by an unelected body – the Federal Reserve.

http://www.pathtoinvesting.org/experts/thefed/exp_im_thefed_032.htm

By manipulating the money supply the Federal reserve can control interest rates, and thereby control the movement of money and thereby its value.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard

The US dollar used to be backed by tangible goods. In fact, the US dollar used to be a redeemable certificate for gold. Later the US moved to fractional reserve banking. The problem was that whenever the President went to war, he could not borrow money against items that weren’t there, so by making the dollar only fractionally backed by actual tangible goods, he could issue more money to fund his war campaigns.

Eventually the dollar was no longer backed by gold.

Oh here’s a fun YouTube video – I downloaded this off of a torrent once before:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IH9B2sfrkM

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north229.html

*shrugs*

And that’s it, I won’t mention this topic again.

whereIstand Tags

• AlanGreenspan
• BenBernanke
• Is democracy the most effective political system?
• Is capitalism the most effective economic system?
• Is the Federal Reserve necessary in a free market?

Taking a step away from the political nature of the site, I’d like to make a post regarding the hypocrisy I’ve seen on forums regarding a destruction of the supposed ‘purity’ of Kendo if it were made an Olympic sport.

For those of you who do not know, Kendo is the Japanese art of swordsmanship. As with most martial arts, it is not merely a sport, but a way of life. Kendo practitioners as well as other practitioners of martial arts embrace the philosophy of killing the “self” or conquering death (see Zen Buddhism) as achieving enlightenment. (Sound similar to Christianity and Christ?)

The true meaning of death is a metaphysical and metaphorical representation of the concept of separating one’s sense of being and existence from one’s physical body; meaning that we as humans are not completely under the guiles of the environment to which we live in, prey only to our own physical and lustful desires and attachments, but rather exist in ’spirit’, ascending primitive comprehensions and instead being a type of entity with a consciousness.

Regardless – this is not the point of the post! (I tend to ramble)

The point was that in the forums I was frequenting many claimed that Kendo would be destroyed if it were an Olympic sport, however I state that it is destroyed already. The majority of practitioners today see Kendo as a sport, as opposed to a way of life. The philosophy of martial arts is practically gone in Western culture and has degraded into something along the lines of, “OMG KOOL I GET TO HIT SOMEONE WITH A SWORD.”

The unique quality of martial arts, as most of the true masters will tell you, is not about fighting, but about finding harmony between body, soul, and spirit. Martial arts are supposed to refine the qualities of your sense of being.

But today Kendo matches do not consist of someone who is attuned with the various facets of his entity, but rather people who fight in an attempt to tap each other on the heads to score points.

Point in fact – actual katanas weigh about twice as much as the shinai (Bamboo stick) that people use in competitive matches. Also the goal of the competitors is to score points, as opposed to the deeper learning inherent within the art itself.

This being said – one, the matches are no longer a true simulation of actual swordplay, and two – teachers do not firmly ground within their students the foundation of martial arts in and of itself. Truly it’s great to put on a website for advertising that you teach the philosophy, but very few actually obtain it.

Imagining a fight with actual swords with your life on the line breeds in itself a different quality of training that transcends the normal boundaries of fighting with sticks half the weight of reality. Truly I am not suggesting to put people’s lives on the line, however, the simulation can be modified through instruction to place people into a proper mindset to refine technique and embrace the philosophy of martial arts.

This being said, so I conclude my rant full of tangentials describing my opinion on the degradation of martial arts in the modern world.