Back "home"
Mood:  happy
Now Playing: "Welcome Back" from Welcome Back Kotter
I got back to my apartment in Ithaca yesterday. I didn't get to post because I was busy reuniting with my girlfriend, installing Sim City Rush Hour, buying my textbooks and grocery shopping for food to last me until Saturday when the apartment bus goes to the grocery store. I'm a little ticked because I missed another day and I didn't even have anything pressing, such as homework, to do.

Well, I may write more later or I may not. I'm still getting used to being here and also want to try and spend as much time with my girlfriend as possible before classes start.

More Carlos
Mood:  chatty
Topic: other blogs
Check out this post by Carlos. I love his writing style as well his commentary. This should be apparent since this is my third time referencing one of his posts.
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I COMPLETELY agree with what Carlos is saying here. In fact, I heard on NPR a few years about about a museum buying a new work of art. Apparently this guy was taking a crap into a can, sealing up the can and selling it. What kind of thing is that? That's not art! It's just disgusting!

And the whole spilling paints and calling it art. That's so ridiculous. It's one thing to have a certain technique like splatting your paint in a certain way to create a pattern or lack of pattern, but it's something else to just spill paint without any technique and call it art. That's not art, it's just an accident!

My own Campaign
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Site Info
As I sit here and watch the caucuses being rerun on CSPAN with candidates trying so hard to get people to join their camp I think of the campaign I'll be running when I get back on campus. When I get back to school I'm going to have another blitz campaign to get people to check out my site. I make my away message contain exhortations to visit my site and blog. This one will revolve around the fact that I now have a domain name and therefore it's easier to remember how to get to my blog and site.

Portable phones
Mood:  happy
I don't know what sense this makes, but have you noticed that a new battery on a portable phone is more expensive than a cheap portable phone? In my house we've NEVER bought new batteries for our portable phones. When the batteries refuse to hold a charge we just buy brand new ones because it's cheaper. Just doesn't make much sense to me for the batteries to cost most than a phone.

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?

Today's Post - Or Lack Thereof
Mood:  happy
Hey there...I have this post that I really wanted to do this last night/this morning but I was unable to write it. I'm not sure if I'll get to do it before midnight, but I didn't want to have a day w/o a post just because I was unable to get it done at the right time. So, this is here just in case I don't get to it on time because there aren't enough computers here for the number of people who need them.

Back later, I hope.

The end is near!
Mood:  chatty
Now Playing: "End of the World As We Know It" - REM
Well, the end is near when referencing my winter break. Most of my friends have been in school for a week or two (HAHA you UF people!) but I don't start school until 26 Jan. But I'll be going back up on the upcoming Wednesday.

I'm happy about going back because I'll be with my girlfriend again. Also, I'll have some time to buy my books and take care of getting ready for school. However, once I get back I pretty much consider my vacation to be over.

For one, I'm currently enjoying tshirt weather during the day. However, at school the weather's been in the realm of 17 deg F as the HIGH! At night it's been going into the -20s with the wind chill.

Florida guys just don't have it that easy in New York.

I've had tons of fun at home this break. I got to read some books that I really wanted to read and I got to play Sim City 4 Deluxe. I also got to do tons of blogging which is great because I love to write.

My grandmother's coming up from Miami to visit me before I go back to NY and she'll be here through Tuesday. Therefore, I may not have a post for the next couple of days or the posts may be short. But, that's going to happen anyway once I get back into my schoolwork so I guess the exact start date is unimportant.

James Chapter 5
Mood:  chatty
Topic: Bible
Disclaimer: I ocassionally write here to reflect on what I read in the Bible...if you prefer other topics, just keep checking back or look at some of my other posts
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At first blush it seems that the beginning of this chapter is a condemnation of all who are rich. Surely, I thought, this can't be the case. Just because someone has worked hard and used their mind in creative ways should not be reason for condemnation! For there are many CEOs nowadays who are Christians and run their companies with integrity. Certainly, God doesn't hate that!

But as I read more of the chapter I came to see that the problem was not with being rich. It was with being rich at the expense of others. The chapter speaks of people not paid wages for work done and murdered for dubious reasons. Back then when there was a lot less paperwork (yes, there was SOME paperwork) it was a lot harder to track if people were indeed getting paid for work done.

So the beginning of the chapter is actually about people who are becoming rich on the backs of others. THOSE people are the ones who will face all sorts of judgement day horrors.

The next section was a call to patience with regards to the Second Coming of Christ. Christ was to come soon anyway...so just be patient for a little while. Whenever I read that I wonder if the Saints knew how long it was really going to take. Did they really think that it was going to be soon as in sometime in the current generation? Or did they understand it as soon by God's standards? Since they may have understood the world to be 10 thousand years old, they could have reasoned that God is insanely patient and therefore soon may have meant sometime in the next millenia or so.

It's a concept that's of, in my humble opinion, medium importance to Christian theology. If it meant soon as in during the biblical time period then it is obviously wrong and that could have huge ramifications for the faith. If it meant within the next few thousand years, then it's ok. However, it's one of those things that you wonder about without being something necessary to understand in order to live your life in accordance to Christian principles. In other words, being nitpicky about it will be of no real use.

The final part was just about prayer, but it didn't say anything out of the ordinary. Basically it just exhorted the followers to pray for things they need.

So ends the book of James

check yesterday
Mood:  happy
Topic: Site Info
I made a couple of posts a few hours ago, but they will show up as posts made yesterday so check those out.

2 things I really hate about the internet
Mood:  irritated
Topic: internet
First of all, I really hate when one is searching for stuff on google and types free so-and-so and the web descriptions say that the products on the site are free, but when you get there it's not. As an exagerrated exampled let's say that my search string was "free sources of food". Then a few thousand sites come up. When I look under the link at the text lifted from the site it contains something like, "this site contains free sources of food". Then when I click on the site, it doesn't actually have free sources of food at all. Instead it has a free search and to see any of the results from the search costs money.

Second, I hate when I click on a particular site from my search results and it doesn't have what I want. Then I click on another site with its own distinct URL. This new site's sole purpose is to redirect me back to the first one that I didn't like to begin with. And this continues so that basically there's really only one site and a bunch of sites that link to it.