God Jokes
Mood:  happy
Topic: General Religion
Sometimes I get something in my head and then I just can't rest until I get it done. This is what happened today. For some reason that I can't remember, I really wanted to find a particularly funny article I read back in high school about God programming the world on a computer. After dozens of search strings and finding various takes on this, but not the exact on that I wanted, I finally found it! I will reproduce it here along with some of the other things I found along the way. The important thing to remember is that God has a sense of humour - after all, he created everything, including humour. Also, I don't think that any of these are sooooo bad as to be considered the kind of blasphemy that makes people think they have damned themselves. At any rate, enjoy!
---------
The genesis.log from God's Unix System

#In the beginning was the computer. And God said
:Let there be light!
#You have not signed on
:God.
#Enter user password.
:Omniscient.
#Password Incorrect. Try again!
:Omnipotent.
#Password Incorrect. Try again!
:Technocrat.
#And God signed on 12:01 a.m., Sunday, March 1.
:Let there be light!
#Unrecognizable command. Try again!
:Create light.
#Done.
:Run heaven and earth.
#And God created Day and Night. And God saw there were 0 errors.
#And God signed off at 12:02 a.m., Sunday, March 1.
#And God signed on at 12:00 a.m., Monday, March 2.
:Let there be firmament in the midst of the water and
#Unrecognizable command! Try again!
:Create firmament.
#Done.
:Run firmament.
#And God divided the waters. And God saw there were 0 errors.
#And God signed off at 12:01 a.m., Monday, March 2.
#And God signed on at 12:00 a.m., Tuesday, March 3.
:Let the waters under heaven be gathered together unto one place and let the dry land appear and
#Too many characters in string specification! Try again.
:Create dryland.
#Done!
:Run dryland.
#And God created Earth and Seas. And God saw there were 0 errors.
#And God signed off at 12:01 a.m., Tuesday, March 3.
#And God signed on at 12:00 a.m., Wednesday, March 4.
:Create lights in the firmament to divide the day from the night.
#Unspecified type. Try again!
:Create sunmoonstars.
#And God created Sun, Moon, Stars. And God saw there were 0 errors.
#And God signed off at 12:01 a.m., Wednesday, March 4.
#And God signed on at 12:00 a.m., Thursday, March 5.
:Create fish.
#Done.
:Create fowl.
#Done.
:Run fish'nfowl.
#And God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that creepeth wherewith the waters swarmed after its kind and every winged fowl after its kind.
0 errors.
#And God signed off at 12:01 a.m., Thursday, March 5.
#And God signed on at 12:00 a.m., Friday, March 6.
:Create cattle.
#Done.
:Create creepy things.
#Done.
:Now let us make man in our image.
#Unspecified type! Try again.
:Create man.
#Done.
:Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over of the fowl of the air and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth.
#Too many command operands! Try again.
:Run multiplication.
#Execution terminated. 6 errors.
:Insert breath.
#O.K.
:Run multiplication.
#Execution terminated. 5 errors.
:Move man to Garden of Eden.
#File Garden of Eden does not exist.
:Create Gard.En.
#Done.
:Move man to Gard.En.
#O.K.
:Run multiplication.
#Execution terminated. 4 errors.
:Copy woman from man.
#O.K.
:Run multiplication.
#Execution terminated. 3 errors.
:Insert woman into man.
#Illegal parameters. Try again!
:Insert man into woman.
#O.K.
:Run multiplication.
#Execution terminated. 2 errors.
:Create desire.
#Done.
:Run multiplication.
#And God saw man'nwoman being fruitful and multiplying in the Gard.En.
#Warning: No time limit on this run. 1 errors.
:Create freewill.
#Done.
:Run freewill.
#And God saw man'nwoman being fruitful and multiplying in the Gard.En.
#Warning: No time limit on this run. 1 errors.
:Undo desire.
#Desire cannot be undone once freewill is created.
:Destroy freewill.
#Freewill is an inaccessible file and cannot be destroyed.
#Enter replacement, cancel, or ask for help.
:Help!
#Desire cannot be undone once freewill is created.
#Freewill is an inaccessible file and cannot be destroyed.
#Enter replacement, cancel, or ask for help.
:Create Treeofknowledge.
#And God saw man'nwoman being fruitful and multiplying in the Gard.En.
#Warning: No time limit on this run. 1 errors.
:Create good'nevil.
#Done.
:Activate evil.
#And God saw he had created shame.
#Warning: System error in sector E95. Man'nwoman not in Gard.En.
#1 errors.
:Scan Gard.En. for man'nwoman.
#Man'nwoman cannot be located. Try again!
:Search Gard.En. for man'nwoman.
#Search failed.
:Delete shame.
#Shame cannot be deleted once evil has been activated.
:Destroy freewill.
#Freewill an inaccessible file and cannot be destroyed.
:Stop!
#Unrecognizable command. Try again.
:Break
:Break
:Break
#ATTENTION ALL USERS: SERVER GOING DOWN IN 5 MINS FOR REGULAR
DAY OF MAINTENANCE AND REST. PLEASE SIGN OFF NOW.
:Create new world.
#You have exceeded your allotted file space. You must destroy old files
before new ones can be created.
:Destroy earth.
#Destroy earth. Please confirm.
#SERVER SHUTTING DOWN. SERVICES WILL RESUME ON SUNDAY MARCH 8
AT 6:00 A.M. YOU MUST SIGN OFF NOW!
#And God signed off at 11:59 p.m., Friday, March 6.
----------
And now some of the extra things I found
-----------
God Creates Universe in Seven Days,
Perl Gods Not Impressed
By Brian Briggs

Boulder, CO - Self proclaimed Perl God Merrill Wallman says he is unimpressed by God's feat of creating the universe in seven days. "That's nothing I once coded a custom Apache module over a weekend, but I didn't rest on Sunday like that slacker, God. I haven't had seven days to complete a project in years, and God got one day of rest? What a lazy ass. He didn't even have to give status reports."

Wallman also noted that "God obviously didn't debug, hasn't done any maintenance, and no documentation can be found. Truly amateur work."

Other Perl deities like Chris Kosman were also unimpressed, "I've seen nothing of God's work that compares to the Schwartzian Transform. And the simplicity of the Fisher-Yates shuffle is unequalled. God could have saved a day or two if he'd just used some simple OOP and recursive functions. I mean, who really writes procedural-oriented stuff these days anyhow?"

Kosman continued, "And 'Hey, God!?' there's a MODULE for assembling nucleic proteins and amino acids. Try 'Use Biology::DNA'. These amateurs always try to re-invent the wheel. And that platypus... could only be the result of unorganized spaghetti code. Next time try running your code with '-w' and 'use strict'. Then that sort of stuff won't happen. I could go on for days."

God was not available for comment but did release this statement through a spokesperson:

I'm not sure who those Perl 'bozos' are but they better watch it. It was my first project and I think I did pretty well given my experience. And yes, I turned on 'taint mode', when I created woman from that rib. Will you people ever give it up?

--------

If God Were a Programmer

Some important theological questions can best be answered by thinking of God as a computer programmer:

Q: Did God really create the world in seven days?
A: He did it in six days and nights while living on cola and candy bars. On the seventh day he went home and found out his girlfriend had left him.

Q: What causes God to intervene in earthly affairs?
A: If a critical error occurs, the system pages him automatically and he logs on from home to try to bring it up. Otherwise, things can wait until tomorrow.

Q: How come the Age of Miracles ended?
A: That was the development phase of the project. Now we're in the maintenance phase.

Q: Who is Satan?
A: Satan is an MIS director who takes credit for more powers than he actually possesses, so nonprogrammers become scared of him. God thinks he's irritating but irrelevant.

Q: Why does God allow evil to happen?
A: God thought he eliminated evil in one of the earlier revs.

Q: How can I protect myself from evil?
A: Change your password every month and don't make it a name, a common word, or a date like your birthday.

Q: If I pray to God, will he listen?
A: You can waste his time telling him what to do, or you can just get off his back and let him program.

Q: Some people claim they hear the voice of God. Is this true?
A: They are much more likely to receive email.

-------------

Jesus and Satan have an argument as to who is the better programmer. This goes on for a few hours until they agree to hold a contest with God as the judge.
They set themselves before their computers and begin. They type furiously for several lines of code streaming up the screen. Seconds before the end of the competition, a bolt of lightning strikes, taking out the electricity.

Moments later, the power is restored, and God announces that the contest is over.

He asks Satan to show what he had come up with.

Satan is visibly upset, and cries, "I have nothing! I lost it all when the power went out."

"Very well, then," says God, "let us see it Jesus fared any better."

Jesus enters a command, and the screen comes to life in vivid display, the voices of an angelic choir pour forth from the speakers.

Satan is astonished. and stutters, "But how?! I lost everything, yet Jesus' program is intact! How did he do it?"

God chuckles, "Jesus saves."

------------

And here's something a little more serious, but in keeping with the same theme as the jokes. You can access it here The Bible through the eyes of a Programmer: Part 1

Redundancy of the Gospel?
Mood:  chatty
Topic: General Religion
Whether you are religious or have only been exposed to it in doses of any size you may have realized that the first four books of the New Testament tell the exact same story. So, what's the point of having four books tell the exact same thing?

Well, basically it's because each book serves a different purpose. I'm going to ignore, for the purposes of this post, any of the arguements that the books are inconsistent. The only arguement that I've heard with any merit is that some of them name a different person as high preist. One names one guy and another names his son. Really, in the scope of what's in the four books, I don't see this as mattering much. Now, if one said that Jesus walked on water and another said that he treaded water - that'd be a different story. But the small detail of who was high preist isn't that important.

So, if they don't say radically different things, why include them all? Again, it comes down to the target audience. Anyone who's at least been through high school level english classes knows that you have to write with your audience in mind. Writing here in this blog I don't assume that you guys know everything I know about ECE or even what that is (ECE is electrical and computer engineering) and I think that's enough for you to get my point.

So who is Matthew (or Matthew's author if it isn't him as some people suggest and a point that, having made here, will no longer worry about) talking to? Well the book of Matthew is written for the Jews. Afterall, Jesus and his followers were Jewish. In fact, in the first ~50-100 years Christianity was just considered another sect (or cult - depending on who you talked to) of Judaism. If I remember right, Josephus, the Roman historian, refers to them as the "cult started by the Jew named Jesus." But I can't remember verbatim. At any rate, Matthew therefore focuses on things that are very important to Jews such as the Geneology of Jesus, the importance of the law, and extreme villification of the Pharisees.

What about Mark? Mark is written a little later than Matthew and is mostly written for the Gentiles, or non-Jews. According to a vision received by Saint Peter, God tells him to take Christianity to the Gentiles. They have different needs and wants from the religion and there are many tales in later books of the Bible about fights over whether, for example, the Gentiles needed to be circumsized. Therefore, Mark is written to speak to them. Especially noteworthy here is that Mark contains "The Great Commission", the title given to the speech where Jesus tells his original ~300 disciples to spread the word of his deeds around the world as he ascends into Heaven. The other books merely have him go there without saying this. The reasons for omitting this from Matt may have to do with the fact that it was implicit to the Jews that they spread it amongst themselves and therefore seen as irrelevant, but I'm engaging in wild speculation there.

Next in line is Luke. Luke is written to one person. This is basically a letter from Dr Luke to his friend in Asia minor about Christianity. Being a Dr, and therefore a scientist, Luke has done research for his letter. He checks out witnesses and different versions of the accounts of what went on when Jesus was around in order to assemble his letter. This makes it the more accurate and trustworthy of all the accounts. He also wrote Acts (full name The Acts of The Apostles) to the same friend in order to explain what happened post-Jesus in the early church.

John is the last one and the one that stands out the most. This is because the purpose of the writer of John is to convey two things - 1) the meta-physical aspect of Christianity and 2) the great love that Jesus had for those around him. You see, the other books focus most on a historical account of what's going on. This one focuses on relating emotions. Therefore there are more examples of his compassion. There are also more mention of things which required a deeper understanding of meta-physics to understand. Whilst we could prove most of Matt-Luke with historical evidence. (Obviously proving the miracles is impossible) We can only hope to understand and prove things in John through the understanding of "new" beliefs such as The Unified Field that quantum mechanics and TM give us.

There you have it. The books are not there simply to hammer the point home by repeating the same thing four times. The books are there to show the different perspectives to the life and times of Jesus and allow the modern reader to pick whichever recounting of the actions best speaks to him. For someone more factual, Luke may be better while for someone who is more spiritual, John may work better.

Proof for the accuracy of the Bible
Mood:  chatty
Topic: General Religion
The following two posts came to me today in the shower, where most of my best ideas come from. They are both "religion" posts and both generally related to each other.

Stipulation: 1. God is all powerful
therfore
1a. God can do anything that does not violate logic. (In other words he cannot make true=false or a square circle for these would require an infinitely different universe)

Stipulation 2. God is omniscient
therefore
2a. He knows all events future and past and knows/understands all of the cause/effect relationships that cause events to go from past to future.

Therefore, taking 1a and 2a:
3. A God who wanted a publication about himself to be made, would be able to make sure that whatever was written into the book would be exactly what he wanted.
4. This same God would be able to also control any editing or additions/omissions from the final version.
5. Additionally, meaning would be preserved across translation

Why are 3,4, and 5 true? Because a God who knew what would happen as a result of the writings would make sure that the right thing would get written down. Additionally, a God who is ALL powerful is able to do anything. Certainly, controlling what is written down is not a violation of logic. It may be a violation of free will, but not logic.

This leads me to wonder about how this affects the logic of free will. The best that I can say is that there can be influences of will where one can have a heavy influence on someone's decisions without affecting their free will. This isn't even an effect limited to god-like entities. There are some people who exert this kind of control over others. For example, if I were a dominating person, I could get a submissive person to do my bidding, but no one would argue that the other person had lost their free will. They can rebel at any time or even simply have contrary thoughts. However, they choose to do what I say. I think it is similar with God.

If God busts out of the sky and tells you to do something, you can still choose not to do it. (ie Jonah) but you may not always have good consequences there. (ie Jonah again) Jonah could have continued to disobey and he would have died within the fish/whale/w/e aquatic animal that was, but he DID have the choice. I feel that it's like that. You can do anything, but you may continue to have opposition.

Therefore, to bring it all back together again. It would make sense for a God to ensure the accuracy of his biography while still maintaining free will.

A quick proof
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: General Religion
If
1. God is everywhere
2. Everything is somewhere
then
God is in everything.

As a necessary precondition to statement 1 we can ignore the Newtonian notion that two objects cannot occupy the same space. This is fine because with Quantum and Sub-Quantum (with some extra dimensions thrown in) infinite objects can occupy the same space.

I hope to have time to expound on this later, but I had to get it out.

Easter
Mood:  celebratory
Now Playing: "Farenheight" - Five Iron Frenzy
Topic: General Religion
Happy Easter everyone!

Today, of course, is the day that Christians celebrate as the resurrection of Jesus after having been crucified on Friday.

Many people, including some Christians don't fully realize how important this event is to the theology of Christianity. Without this single event, the whole religion is a travesty. Sure, Jesus may have said some Confucious-type stuff, but that's pretty much it without coming back to life.

You see, it's his only proof or validation of who he claimed to be. He told his closest followers that he would not just die but come back to life. Afterall, anyone can be martryed - that's no reason to follow their doctrines. But how many leaders come back to life after being killed? Not many.

So what exactly went down today approximately 2000 years ago? Well, each Gospel has a slightly different account because each author had a different agenda. Matthew was writing to other Jews. Mark was writing to non-Jews. Luke was taking a "scientific" and "historic" interpretation, and John's purpose was to show the caring side of Jesus. So I don't see any of them as more right than the others, it's just that each focuses on different details depending upon what's important to their audience.

So I'll meld it all together. As you may know - it was semi-common knowledge that Jesus claimed he would come back to life. So the High Priests had Roman guards guarding Jesus' tomb to make sure that no one could steal his body and claim that he rose from the dead. This is listed as one of the counter-arguments to those who claim that the apostles just stole his body and claimed that he rose from the dead.

Now, back in those days enbalming was as good as it is today, so some of the women who used to follow him in his three year ministry showed up at his tomb to ask permission of the guards to have access to the body so that they could apply their enbalming perfumes to his body. Yet they found the guards absent, the tomb rock out of place, and the tomb empty. Needless to say, they were a bit frantic. This is when Jesus first appears. At first they don't recognize him and mistake him for the gardner. After a while they recognize him and run off the tell the men.

Well, back in Jewish society (just like American society until the 50s/60s) women were seen as inferior and irrational creatures so the men don't believe the women's claims that Jesus has risen from the dead. Although they'd seen him do all types of micracles - this was nothing new in those days. There were a decent amount of people who did a certain amount of miraculous things. And throughout Jewish history, prophets could always perform certain feats, so they didn't believe.

That is, except for Peter, John, and James. They were skeptical, but at the same time they had been let into Jesus' inner circle. For whatever reason, he entrusted them over the other 12 main apostles (and the hundreds of other lesser followers) with more of his secrets. So they decided to go check things out. Well, they also find the tomb empty of a human, but an angel inside tells them that Jesus has arisen.

They return to tell the others and Thomas infamously proclaims that he'd have to put his fingers into the holes in Jesus hands to believe it. (this is where the phrase doubting thomas comes from if you hadn't heard about its origins before) At that precise moment Jesus appears, putting him to shame. However, Jesus forgives him - afterall how often do people come to life?

After this he appears to a few hundred people before ascending and promising to return again.

So, in a nutshell that's the ressurection story. And whether you are a Christian or not - it is the most significant moment in history for two reasons. If you believe that it actually took place, then you now are able to directly commune with God. No sacrifices or high priests are necessary to intervene for you. There is a lot of stuff that we don't understand about the spiritual realm - as anyone who has studied quantum mechanics and its applications to living - such as transcendental meditation. We have powers to heal ourselves and others that we leave untapped simply because our minds are too clouded to access it. That's just one way in which things are complex. The more I learn about science the more I realize that there must be some organizing force behind it all. So, just because it doesn't seem rational that something like sin should keep us from being able to commune with our creator, doesn't mean that it can't be true. After all, it doesn't seem rational - at least to me - that there are particles that can be in eight different states at once. It doesn't seem rational that in quantum mechanics effect can sometimes precede cause. So, who knows.

But even if what I said in the preceding paragraph sounds like nothing but babble to you, the resurrection is still the most significant event in history. It allowed a small and radical sect of Judaism to rise to dominance in the known world. Everything is the way it is today because of Christianity. Of course, there was some sick stuff that happened in the name of Christianity. Some people abused the power and used it to commit acts of genocide against Jews, Muslims, and other groups of people. But every religion has times when it is abused. Currently, radicals abuse the Muslim religion to further their political goals. They take vulnerable young men and brainwash them into thinking that they are doing good for Allah by killing innocent people. But this should not speak ill of the Muslim religeon any more than the Crusades should speak ill of Christianity. It is simply an abuse of power.

Still, you have to admit that Christianity has been one of the largest forces in history and it all has to do with one person. One person both divine and human who was killed by an oppressive regime. They didn't think that anything would come of it. Even the Roman historian Josephis, writing around 100 AD, was surprised that they were still around.

Have a Happy Easter and I hope that all goes well in your life this year.

Meditation and Prayer: Two Sides of the Same Coin
Mood:  chatty
Topic: General Religion
My church is currently doing a program called 40 days of Purpose. In the Bible, the time period of 40 units carried with it something special. When Noah was in the ark it rained for 40 days and 40 nights. The Isrealites were in the desert for 40 years before their first go at entering the Promised Land and another 40 years for punishment afterwards. Before Jesus began his ministry, he went out into the woods for 40 days.

So there's something about 40. I always wonder why 40 for it's not a multiple of 7, the other "holy number". The only thing that I can think of off the top of my head is that maybe the Jewish calendar had 40 days in it. Thus the original passage says, "Jesus went into the woods for a month," but it had to be translated to 40 days because for us a month has 30 days.

So the 40 days of Purpose that my church is doing comes with a devotional book. I bought the book because, being up at Cornell, I can't attend the services, but wanted to see what it was all about. As I read Friday's passage (I tend to fall behind on the devotionals on the weekends) I came to a realization that I had never noticed before. In the book's words, "prayer is talking to God. Meditation is listening to God."

Suddenly it all clicked. Some people say that they can hear God speaking to them when they pray, but that's like saying that I can hear someone while I'm talking. I may hear them, but I certainly can't listen. Humans can do output or input, but not both at once. So I suddenly feel better for never having been inspired while praying.

However, as I previously blogged, I often get ideas when I'm alone in the shower. This is because a shower offers to me the same thing that meditation does. It's a time where my mind doesn't have to contentrate on anything at all. Free to wander, it can access the subconcious and retrieve solutions to problems that it has come up with.

And these little solutions, I think that those are prompted by God or at the very least, indirectly by the way that he wired our minds to work. You see, one has to be a very rare person to have God speak to them in a booming voice complete with all the special effects and glowing light from above. Frankly, considering what happens to Isaiah (he gets his lips cauterized - ie burned with a hot coal) I'm glad that God wispers.

So what happens when I do TM? The same thing on another level. By doing TM I allow my mind to rest in a way that it can't do otherwise. For if I'm awake my mind is racing with all the I have to accomplish. If I sleep my mind is busy alternating between periods of rest and healing and periods of dreaming. But TM, when you finally get in "the zone" is true rest for the mind. It is an absence of all thought, if only for 20 minutes a day so that the mind can take a break. After all, it gets out of breath too!

There's another benefit to meditation. The book describes meditation as positive worry. In none TM meditation the goal is to fill your mind with thoughts on the same level as those you wish to always have. So one would, for example, constantly think of the Scriptures or some kind of proverbs. By constantly filling your mind with these things you rewire your brain. Suddenly, by the way that our brains have been created to function, you will be thinking these thoughts on your own without having to focus on them. In other words you spontaneously begin to have thoughts that are congruent with your meditative thoughts.

Incidently this is why worry breeds worry. Those people who are constantly worrying are always focused on what's wrong. This rewires their brain to alway find things to be going wrong. Thus they get stuck in a cyle. It is certainly harder than it sounds when talking about it, but if you are in this situation try to throw the proverbial wrench into the gears. If you can break the pattern for long enough you'll slowly see it fade away.

Well, I think that wraps up this idea. I'm really glad how that developed. It's funny, but my best posts seem to be the unplanned ones. The "long" post that I had previously promised wasn't this one, but rather the one on Ricin. However, once I sat down to write it, I realized that I really didn't have a LOT to say; just a few general points that I really wanted to say.

Well, I should probably get some sleep. If you don't see anymore posts until tomorrow afternoon or night, then I've listened to reason and gone off to bed. If not, you'll see another post. Still, I feel a lil burned out and think that even if I had something that I wanted to write passionately about that I would quelch my writing for want of sleep.

Satan
Mood:  chatty
Topic: General Religion
We know remarkably little about Satan. In fact, most of what we know about him comes from Milton's book, Paradise Lost. Anyone who's donte a study on Christianity and its stories (for lack of a better term) knows that Satan was once Lucifer, an archangel of God. His sole purpose was to simply reflect God's glory. He was the most beautiful of the angels and pretty high on the hierarchy. Then one day he has a revolution against God and gets 1/3 of the angels of heaven to join him. They promptly lose and are expelled from heaven. Then he decides that as revenge against God he'll ruin stuff with us humans beginning with the temptation in the garden.

I knew that story from a young age even though I only recently read Milton's book. Why? Because it is actually held as a true story circulated throughout the church. So, about 6 years ago I challenged my youth pastors to show me the passage in the Bible that described these events. I'd read a great deal of it and I hadn't come across the story. The index of stories at the end of the Bible didn't have it listed which I thought was weird. This is a big event. And I believe that I did it in a respectful way, not a true challenge but more of a request for knowledge.

Yet, all they did was dodge my question. It was in there they reassured me. Where?, I asked. Somewhere in there they replied. When I persisted they said that it was in some form that was indirect, some vision that had to be interpreted to mean that. But this wasn't a satisfactory answer because they still hadn't even pointed me to this passage.

However, we know that every being created has a function. Every being has some reason for existing. This includes angels. For example, I'm bad with names, but one of the angels is the messenger. Every time an angel appeared to humans (eg the one the tells Mary she's a virgin mother or the one who tells Joseph, her wife, to flee to Egypt to escape Herod's wrath) it's supposedly the same one. There's one who's the captain of the armies of heaven. And so on and so forth.

So I put this together with something that was mentioned in passing in The Gospel Reloaded and a book that I know very well, I began to see a new function for Satan. I'll be building up to this as the essay continues. For you see, I already knew prior to these revelations that Satan is not God's opposite. For Satan is not as strong nor as powerful as God. He is a creation of God, not a god. So now I don't even see him a diametrically opposed to God. I see him as a created being with a purpose from God.

Ready to have your foundations and assumptions about Satan rocked? Ready or not, here it comes. I think that everything that we think we know about Satan is completely wrong. I don't think that he rebelled from God at all. I think that God created him with the purpose of being The Chief Temptor. That's right, God created him to try and get us to sin. Why would he do this? We'll get to that momentarily, but first let's look at my "proof".

First of all, there's the temptation in the garden. But that's too easy and doesn't prove much. It could still fall under the revenge against God category. So I'm going to the book of Job.

Job 1:6-12 - One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and The Accusor (Satan the notes inform me) also came with them. (And now I paraphrase)
Lord: Yo Satan where have you been?
Satan: checkin' out the world.
Lord: Have use seen Job? That guy is the perfect follower of mine. He does nothing wrong and always praises my name.
Satan: Well, of course he follows you and praises you. You've given him everything. He's rich and has a lot of kids who are doing well in life. Who wouldn't praise you under those circumstances? If you were to take away his stuff he wouldn't praise you anymore.
Lord: Fine then, you can do whatever you want to him except kill him.
So Satan went off to tempt him.

So, first off, if Satan has been expelled from heaven then why is he able to go back and talk to God? Second, why is he called The Accuser? Third, why does God make a bet with him? That seems so unlike God. So if you look at this story it seems as though it is Satan's job to test people. His function is to try and make people sin.

So, we come to the question of why God would create such a being. Well, I think that God can't or won't tempt us. It's just outside of his function as who he is. However, he does use temptations to get us to grow. Afterall, anyone can say that they never cheat on their wives if they are never tempted with someone who wants to make them have an affair. So being tempted allows one to grow. However, if God can't do that then he needs a being to do it. Thus the creation of Satan.

What do you think?

On God's Life as a Non-Temporal Being
Mood:  chatty
Topic: General Religion
Every once in a while I think about what it must be like to be a being such as God is who is outside of time. The fact that God is outside of time has a few ramifications. First of all, it means that God experiences everything in time at the same time. By being outside of time He knew the last thing that would ever happen at the same time that He knew the first thing that happened. It's very hard to get your head around it.

So I wonder, what does He do? Does He skip around? This means, also that He knows the outcomes of every action at the moment that the action begins. Does this mean that interventions ripple through to the end? Or does it mean that all of the interventions that were going to happen were built in at the beginning?

In the end, I don't know if that makes any difference. I think it takes someone like Einstein to actually understand what this means. I can't even begin to think about how thinking about things and God this way affect anything - if it does.

The only thing I can think of is whether it has to do with Free Will. I will probably make this another post, but it seems that for every example of free will in Christian philosophy there tends to be an example of determinism. Like I said, I'll probably talk about this in another post and I'll also bring in some non-Christian sources in my attempts to figure out just whether or not we have free will and whether it matters that we do. (not that I think it's possible that I'd solve the problem when dozens of lifetime philosophers were unable to, but perhaps I can get a little close? q;o) )

A Theory as to why All Religions seem to lead to the same place
Mood:  chatty
Now Playing: "Losing my Religion" - can't remember
Topic: General Religion
People often quip, "how can religion x claim to be the only way to Heaven, Nirvana, etc? They all seem to say the same thing." You'll presently see that I have a very simple answer to the reason why people say this. You see, I feel that there is really only one way to do things most efficiently and so that they provide the most happiness. This is not to say that there aren't many ways to reach the same goals, but to paraphrase Chris Rock, "You can drive a car with your feet if you want to, but it ain't a f*cking good idea." Let me begin and I think that things will be much clearer.

Let's take a simple example. You live in Florida or another warm place and have an outdoor swimming pool. The tiles on such a pool tend to full of algea. There are two ways to clean it. You can use a large brush or you can use a toothbrush. Both will get the job done. In the end your pool will be clean, but clearly there's only one quick and efficient way to do it.

This is very similar to the way life works. There are people who sell drugs for a living and people who have a nine to five. They will both allow a person to have a pension plan, but one will end up in jail a lot more often.

Ok, so you get the point now. Basically I feel that it's the same way with religions. Think about the things that religions ask you to do and see if any of them do not lead to a better and more efficient outcome:
do not kill
do not steal
don't sleep with your neighbor's wife
live a life of peace with others
all creatures are a reflection of God
you are loved
you have a purpose
etc

How many of those tasks are evil or shouldn't be practiced? None of them. Therefore all religions make society a better place (when they aren't fighting with each other).

So where do we go from here? Basically, I believe that God designed certain rules to the universe including the way life and society should best work. However, it doesn't take a direct command from God to tell you how things are supposed to work. It's just obviously. Therefore people are able to independently able to come up with the same rules.

As an example: I may be wrong, but I don't think that Confucious and King Solomon were contemporaries. What's more, I don't think that the Chinese were too keen on Jewish religion when trade went on. Thus, it's pretty interesting that the proverbs of these great men contain quite a bit of overlapping. That's because proverbs are meant to be easy to remember lessons about how society should be.

Again, it doesn't take God telling you that you should be killing each other for you to realize that it's counter-productive to society. With the Jewish people I just believe that he picked a group of people to share his rules with. Kinda like he allowed them to see his hacker sheet of the way the "system" really works. Other groups had to figure it out on their own.

As a final cause for thought here. The diet prescibed by God to the Jewish nation, known to us as a Kosher meal, has been recognized by scientists as one of the healthiest diets in the world. I don't think that's an accident and at the same time I doubt that those who wrote the original scolls were nutritionists. Thus God gave them the secret of a great diet whereas other countries had to figure that out too. (As America is still doing)