''And so I genuinely felt obliged to call...'' ...you out.

I know, I know, ''it's just a picture, Mike!'' and I should ''chill out.'' But I couldn't help but think that some people accept this without any further thought on the matter. So here we go:



1.) Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

Before I get too far into that, let me preface with this: God is love. Forced love is no love at all. If God created no possible avenue for humans to choose evil, that would be God, forcing us to do what He wants. If God imposed His will for perfection on us, He would no longer be who He is. ''So you're saying that God has limits?'' I'm saying that God is bound by His love for us, and His intolerance of evil. He allows us to make choices, even if it breaks His heart that we choose our own destruction. God does not force anyone to do anything. This is not an issue of ability; but an issue of God giving us a chance to choose for ourselves.



2.) Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is the author suggesting that if God doesn't ''step in,'' and put a stop to all evil, that God, Himself, is evil? I suppose it could appear that way to some. But what if God forced each person to surrender all freewill to Him; and to do exactly as He wishes? He would have a bunch of ''robots.'' He wouldn't really have ''us;'' --that would be God, just taking what He wants. He could have a bunch of robots any time He wants, but what God really wants is us. This is why our ability to choose is so important. Malevolent? No. Heartbroken? Yes.



3.) Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

He is both able and willing. ''Then how did evil come to be?'' We are the ones God allowed to choose evil or good. Any evil in the world exists because we chose it. God doesn't force us to do anything.



4.) Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him ''God?''

He has given us sovereignty over our own destinies. He will eventually deliver us over to whatever it is that we have chosen for ourselves.



So? That still doesn't prove God exists!

Correct, but it does deconstruct this argument.





And about the comment at the end ''Atheists. Winning since 33 A.D.'' I can appreciate a good joke, and that was clever.

...Except the fact that this was actually the dawn of Christianity. Since Christianity is ''just one more theist religion'' to atheism, the dawn of Christianity is more accurately described as the point in time that atheism began to fail more and more, as time progressed to present day.

On a hike!!

Here are some pictures I took from these hills my friends from work and I took a hike on :-)

There were frogs, coyotes, avocado groves, eucalyptus trees, thorny plants, long, steep climbs, and ALL kinds of FUN! :-D

Devil's Advocate

A good friend from high school commented on the post ''Negativity:''

Sorry Mike, I must play devils advocate here, but in it may gain you perspective.

Violence is bad, hate is bad, chaos is bad, lies are bad, mmmk. I'll get that outta the way.

But there has never been reform without violence (sad but true). Which means, no one in power (read power as corrupt, as we all know absolute power corrupts) is willing to sacrifice that without violence (violence here, is read as "revolutions and retaliations" against said power). From chaos, comes order, and from order, comes chaos.

Hate is a negative emotion. True. I personally hate, hate :P. But without such emotion aren't we all idle when people without much culture and love hit the scene? When our brothers and sisters are killed, we could never keep the streets clean without a inkling of such emotion. Ever want to run up to Charles Manson and give him a big hug, and tell him everything will be ok? Naw, he deserved to rot in jail because he didn't just hate, he spread it. So my point here is, fire sometimes, sadly, must fight fire. Hate and love can go hand in hand. I, for instance, am filled with hate with politics lately, due to its corrupt nature, and that springs from my love for the American people. I love the fuck outta them. So I hate seeing the repetitive bad choices that are made for us by these people "representing us".

Chaos and disorder. Ahhh, here is an interesting one. How is this defined? Its a very difficult one to truly define. If the universe was built on a big bang, a nuclear explosion of sorts (pure chaos, random subdividing) has it not created order? We see planets revolving around stars and amazing beauty that has defined for us, the laws of physics. Don't get me wrong, I believe in God, this is just an example. Another example is, if we create enough law, do we not therefore create chaos from it all? We are granted freedom of speech by our bill of rights, yet if we speak our mind in public its illegal. If we speak our mind in court its contempt. If we speak our minds about somebody in a way they don't like, its libel. If we speak in protest, its illegal. If we speak about not liking a president, treason. Sounds pretty chaotic to me, almost like a law that isn't enforced (freedom of speech) is creating chaos by being layered over by a bunch of laws that are enforced. Create enough laws, and you have created chaos.

Lies are in the same grouping. But its on the same page as the others, if you lie to save a life, its not bad. We all know this much. Its in deceptive evil that lies are truthfully bad. To deceive someone in order to do something else evil, which is normally where the problem with lies is. Truth sometimes is sometimes falsely confused with fact in some peoples heads. Fact, is fact, it is infallible, no way to argue it. But truth, realize, most of the time is not infallible. It deals more closely to peoples perspective then fact does. Fact cannot be argued, but sometimes we find that peoples "truths" can be. Which does create more problems, but it remains keyed to observational ability and perspective regardless what we do.

:)

Figured I'd throw that out there... Not arguing with your points, they're very valid. I just believe in exceptions to every rule. Or, chaos, if you will. :)

Kudos, and hope your doing well out there Mike.
Take care bro




This is not an argument, but it is a peaceful debate.



Here's what I said:


Being devoid of hate doesn't mean always being a ''nice guy.'' Hate towards another person destroys its host. It's okay to hate our enemies, as long as a clear idea of our enemies is maintained: our enemies are hate, ignorance, fear, arrogance, poisonous ideas/beliefs. Flesh and blood are not our enemies. Love does not mean withholding punishment, and love does not mandate that evil should be tolerated. Sometimes violence is necessary to apprehend those who spread evil.


Perhaps humans can create laws, but that does not mean that they are creating order rather than disorder with those laws. It's easy to tell which one came first: order or chaos. Shuffle a deck of cards. If they come out in bridge order, then time is moving backwards and chaos creates order. Indeed, as time progresses, order ''loses'' to chaos. Chaos is the absence of order, not the other way around.



Not all lies are in the same grouping. If a lie can stop a murder from occurring, then that lie must've been a little closer to ''virtuous'' than other lies, based on the intentions of the liar and the consequences of that lie. The person who told the lie had greater things in mind than simply preserving truth at any cost; a valiant undertaking, but there are, at times, more important things. Our version of truth is not all encompassing of everything that truth is, so, to sacrifice the other virtues so that our own distorted version of truth might be kept unbroken, will not create ''good.''


This also means that the virtues, as we know them, can't be trusted as 100% pure. But it still stands that they're much better than their respective ''voids.''

Now this is the California I came back for

He was totally oblivious to me until I whistled to get his attention.




A sea anemone! They try to grab you if you touch 'em! (yeah, it's actually their poison/stinging cells that shoot into your flesh, but it's on such a small scale that it feels like it's just really ''grippy.'')

This all used to be under water back in the summer.

At least the fires made some vivid sunsets.

The water was lavender. Wow.

Negativity

Negative emotions. I've had beef with them for a long time. I think I have a little more insight on them now. This is a work in progress.

Since it's in the blog lately, I'll use ''No on Prop 8'' protesters as an example. Specifically, those who shout obscenities, make obscene gestures, throw things, and generally be violent, rude, and disrespectful. They try to fight back against hate with even more hate.

Now, rather than just being wronged, and being beaten that way, they have turned around and surrendered themselves to the guidance of the very mindset of hate that defeated them in the first place. They enslave themselves to it, accomplishing the goals of hate, and being completely ruined.

Hate has never defeated hate because hate is just a void of love. If you add a big hole in the ground to another big hole in the ground, they don't cancel each other out. They make a hole bigger than either of the first two.

It's not only ''not worth it'' to hate a person, it's counterproductive, self-destructive, crippling of free-will, hypocritical, since we hate their actions, and yet we let hate drive us to retaliation....the only thing worth hating is hate itself; but even that can't be carried out with hate. Hate must simply cease to exist if it is ever to be stopped. Love fills the void that hate is. It displaces hate into nonexistence.

There are principles to order and truth, yet none to disorder and lies. Order and truth hold information, patterns, and evidence of design.

Voids (chaos, lies, disorder, hate) are easy to define. There is no pattern, information, or design in chaos, for example. There is simply nothing there; it is a void. In that respect, hate is no different.

Virtues (love, truth, order) are harder (or impossible) to define, just like many who struggle with questions like ''what is love?'' and ''what is truth?'' with much time spent scratching the surface of these questions.

Anger can never stop anger. Fear will never stop itself in its own tracks.

Nevertheless, be true to yourself. You can't do right to deny what you're feeling, but you do have the ability to define what you feel. Align yourself with virtues, and don't let an unguarded thought infect your mind with a void. If you do, it will cause your thoughts to reproduce more copies of itself, and they can take over, just like a virus.

Proposition 8: restores hetero-marriage--and religious oppression

The real dilemma with Prop 8 comes from this fact: We don't live in a Christian nation. It's true that many people SAY so, but really, we don't.

There were a lot of Christians in the beginning, but this nation was not even founded on Christian beliefs, no matter what anyone says. This whole idea of ''America,'' ''Land of the Free, Home of the Brave,'' ''USA'' and whatnot, was only ever conceived in the first place to ESCAPE RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION. Freedom from religious oppression.

Half the signers of the delcaration of independence were deists and/or masons/freemasons. same thing as those who signed the constitution. (http://freethought.mbdojo.com/foundingfathers.html, http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/mashist.htm, http://deism4u2xplore.tribe.net/thread/03ef5d80-932c-436a-a3fb-eecf70645e62)

What will happen with Prop 8 is this nation, designed to be ''religiously impartial,'' will be offering special rights to a certain religious group, and not to another. There are rights that only married ( http://lesbianlife.about.com/od/wedding/f/MarriageBenefit.htm ) couples share.''Freedom from religious oppression....just as long as you're Christian'' is what Prop 8 really stands for. If it were really after sanctity of marriage, why would it only attack gays? Why not the divoce rate, as well? Why not those drive-thru wedding places in Vegas?

--Hold on...I'm about to rant, and it won't be pretty--

Just because God rained down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah, doesn't mean that you should try to emulate his actions. Let me ask you a question...that ''great commission thing'' where you're supposed to go into all the world and convert it to christianity...how's that going for you? When you told the gays they were going to hell for their evil lifestyle, did that win anyone over? Then why the hell would you get a different response when you try to make a LAW against gay marriage? Does that ''great commission'' tell you to go and make laws, or does it tell you to make converts? You're really bad at this.

You know what you're showing the rest of the world with Prop 8? You're showing them a person who will fight TOOTH AND NAIL for something that doesn't affect ANYone else. Why not attack smoking? Make that illegal. That destroys the temple of the holy spirit, and second-hand smoke is deadly! Why not put a tougher punishment on drunk driving? See, those things actually kill people. Gay marriage? Not a chance. And what's more sacred, marriage, or life itself? Let's face it: Love your neighbour: FAIL

So I went to Crystal Cove today...

Note: some of these pictures are huge.