Intelligent Design or Creation?

Have you ever watched someone die from cancer? Have you ever been in the room when they take their last breath?

Have you ever seen an eight year old go thru chemo? Screaming when they have to go to the bathroom 'cause their bowels are completely screwed up due to an almost non-existent immune system? How about a two year old?

The big three religions (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) all claim that their god is all knowing, all powerful and omnipotent. Christianity (and Judaism I think) claim that their god is all loving as well (not sure about Islam).

So here's a question. If an all powerful and all loving god either created or designed humans, why would we get cancer?

One reason is that people bring things like that on themselves through choices (smoking, drugs, whatever). OK, that could be true for some adults. But what about the children?

Another reason is that we (humanity) brought it on ourselves because Eve ate an apple; that started all of the diseases and suffering of mankind. OK, fine, let's assume that is true for now.

But if there was an all powerful omnipotent god, then wouldn't it know that the odds of the apple getting eaten were pretty good beforehand (I mean, we're talking omnipotent right?). So when god created or designed humans, it did so knowing that at some point, two year olds and eight year olds had a good chance of getting terrible diseases and going through more suffering than some adults ever will. Horrible suffering, you can't really imagine if you haven't seen it.

Let's think about it another way. What if you found out that some person, let's say Robert Mugabe, the dictator (or El Presidente for Life :) of Zimbabwe had taken children and injected them with AIDS because of something their parents, or grandparents, or great-great-great-great-great-great-etc.-grandparents did. Would you think he was a nice guy? Would you think he was worthy of worship?

So you have to think, either god is a sadistic @#@! who created humans knowing that children were going to end up suffering immensely. Or that god is really not omnipotent because it didn't realize what would happen with the whole childhood diseases thing; because an all loving god wouldn't want children to go thru that, I wouldn't wish it on the children of my worst enemy. But if god isn't all loving, or isn't omnipotent, then what else did the bible get wrong?

Or perhaps there's another answer, a simpler answer, one that we might even be able to find scientific evidence for? Nah, probably not.

Gay Marriage Amendment

So I've been doing some research on the whole gay marriage thing. Especially in relation to what the bible has to say.

I've decided what we need isn't an amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. We need an amendment that defines marriage as it is talked about in the bible.

The bible talks about marriage as between a man and a woman. Actually, to clarify, it also talks quite a bit about marriage being between a man and WOMEN. There's plenty of places where polygamy is mentioned and not condemned. So I'm all for polygamy now, I need some more wives.

So in general, regarding marriage, adultery is not supported. But there are some exceptions. In many cases where a woman is unable or unwilling to have children, she will let her husband sleep with her maid (and sometimes sister I think). Anyway, we don't have a maid, but I'm thinking about having Molly Maids send over an entire crew that I can go "in unto", woohoo!!! I also remember reading an article in the NY Times about some college students who have taken the whole cleaning thing a step further; they will clean your house in the nude, that will just make the whole thing easier. Plus I would get to "go in unto" my slaves that I find attractive as well.

So I'm ready for the amendment to get passed and do some Song of Solomon stuff with some extra wives and maids.

Also, for you women, we might as well go ahead and enshrine the whole "obey your husband in all things" in the constitution as well. Because guess what, you can't pick and choose what you support out of the bible, not if you're really a christian. If you're going to use it to be against gay marriage, you have to support everything else it says about marriage.

Otherwise you're just a bigot.

Why I'm Voting Republican

I'm thinking I will have to vote republican for president this year. Why?

Well, I think the US needs a president who doesn't know how to use a computer. It's only 2008, the intertubes have been easily accessible for about 12 years now, there's no need for someone who will run the country to actually be able to use a computer. Besides, I'm sure his patriotic, America's best interests at heart handlers will tell him everything he needs to know, and it will surely be unbiased.

I'm voting republican 'cause I really like $4.00 gas, I think it should be higher. Exxon really needs more profits, according to them, they have a really small profit margin, much smaller than other companies. I really think they need to break some more profit records, $40,000,000,000 isn't enough. Most of their profits go to the little people anyway. Their CEO only made $400,000,000 last year, it's only 1% of their profits, I bet you probably made more than that off of your stock in Exxon last year right? He deserves to make about 5,000 times more than me anyway, he's that much better of a person. Plus, he should pay a lower percent of that $400,000,000 in taxes than me, he worked hard and deserves it. I'm just lazy, so I should pay more.

I think this video sums up the rest of the reasons (except for one, I talk about that below) that I'm going to vote Republican.

The final reason I'm voting Republican (and the reason a whole lot of others are too): Obama just has too much melanin in his skin. Let's be honest, he's a little dark for me. While my great grandfather had a lot of melanin in his skin too, I can pretty much pass for a whitey, so I'm going to take advantage of that. It's just too soon for someone like him to be in charge. Besides, he'll probably put a whole lot of other's with high melanin levels in charge of federal agencies. I mean, look what's happened to the State Department since Condoleezza "All Kinds of Melanin" Rice took it over.

So there you have it, I'm voting Rethuglican, and you should too...

What are you going to do forever?

So I'm sure you've seen those signs in front of churches: "How will you spend eternity?"

So I'd like to turn that question around to the religious people out there. How will you spend eternity, or better yet "What will you do forever?"

Have you ever really thought about it? Do you really understand how long that will be?

What are you going to do for all that time? At what point will you get so bored that you want to kill yourself (but you're already dead, so how will that work?).

I'm completely serious here. The average person lives about 80 years give or take. You're basically an adult for about 60 of those years. I'm sure you have already been bored in your life at one time or another as it is.

Imagine 100 years, just try. Now 1,000. That might be OK; there would be a lot you could learn during that time. Of course, if you don't enjoy learning new things, you could be in trouble. How about 10,000 years? How about 1,000,000. Now take that times 1,000 and you get 1 billion. 1 billion years. I don't think most people have the capacity to really understand how long 10,000 years is, let alone 1,000,000,000.

You aren't going to be able to do anything "exciting" or "dangerous". Again, you're already dead so you can't take any changes because nothing bad could happen to you.

How about sex. It seems that man Christian based churches think that there won't be any sex in heaven, especially since sex is a sin. Perhaps you would get to have sex with your spouse if you were married before you died though. What if you were married and your spouse died and then you re-married (allowed by many religions). Do you get to have sex with both spouses in heaven? At the same time? Man it's going to suck if you're single when you die if this is the case. If a woman has had breast implants does she get to keep them or does she revert back to the original size? How about breast reductions?

So really, what are you going to do forever?

Movie Patterns

What are Movie Patterns? If you enjoy big blockbuster type movies, you may not want to read on, this may spoil it for you.

I started noticing patterns big time when I watched the movie Armageddon, but since then, I've noticed them in a lot of older movies as well. In fact, Armageddon seemed to be nothing but patterns once I started thinking about it. I'll pick on Armageddon throughout this category of my blog as I present patterns. Photography by Howard's End.

Movie patterns are like software patterns, you'll find them all over the place once you know what they are. They are things that are repeated over and over in modern movies, sometimes in slightly different form, but the basic premise is the same. Patterns are also the reason why I much prefer IFC (Independent Films Channel) and independent films in general anymore, they don't always have the same patterns over and over. You can notice these patterns on TV as well.

Here are some examples:

Sing-Along

This pattern seems to be in almost all “standard” movies. There is some song (or songs) in the movie that the target audience can sing-along with. This type of pattern must be a big hit with the movie test audiences, sometimes there are even more than one. You will usually find the entire cast that is present in the scene singing along with whatever song is taking place. I guess you might find audiences singing along also, but I never watch movies in the theatre any more. I don't remember the sing-along in this movie, but there was at least one.

Hate -> Love Buddies

This occurs sometimes as the main plot of a movie, for example, Midnight Run with Robert DeNiro and Charles Groden; or sometimes as a subplot, such as Armageddon with the Bruce Willis / Ben Afflek characters. The patterns basically goes that two people start out hating each other and end up loving each other (or at least a large amount of respect). As with the Willis / Afflek relationship, many times there is a son / daughter thrown in as the cause of the friction.

The Roger Ebert Monster Ending Pattern

I call it this because I remember Ebert mentioning it once a while ago. This pattern basically states that the monster (or bad guy) is never dead the first time you think they are. They may show up several more times before they are really killed. This is in so many movies, you ought to be able to remember some yourself. Men In Black; Die Hard; etc...

The Big Walk

I'm not sure what else to call this one. It's where you see a line of people walking down a hallway (or something like that) to “their destiny”. The first time I remember seeing it was in The Right Stuff, when the astronots were walking down the corridor in their full space suits. And then it was repeated exactly in Armageddon. I've seen it in other places as well.

That's it for now, I'll put more movie patterns out there as I think of them.