Alas, Discordia, Cruel Mistress, My Love!

So, I’ve been thinking I need to make a new post. Been a long time, eh?

For those of you who don’t know me personally, you will not understand my fascination with the word/goddess Discordia. Those of you who are huge fans of Sthephen King might know of it from reference in the later books of the Dark Tower series as a kingdom of sorts, while those of you who are up on your Roman mythology will know her as the goddesss of chaos (Eris in the Greek myths.)
A few of the supernerds like myself will know of Discordianism, a parodyish quasi-religion laid forth in the Principia Discordia, with a following of those of us aware of such things as the Illuminati! books and paraphenalia.
Now, let me just lay this out. My personal religious beliefs are extremely odd, and at times seemingly conflicting.
But the Discordian in me needs to rant about things that I have suppressed for awhile, so here goes.

I am extremely upset with lots of the people I am closest to for trying with a ridiculous amount of conviction, to impose wretched Order upon me, when we know that the purity of Chaos is what is true. Διχόνοια είναι όμορφη, όμορφη είναι χάος. Let the tenets of Chaos be preached in your lands, and let the evils of Order be expounded upon, for with Order is the downfall of the Universe.
But Eris, my love, my Goddess, she has again cast her servant to the ends of the Earth, seeking her guidance as far from the true place as possible… Abandonned as I am, my faith in Our Lady Discordia shall not leave me. Though I walk alone, she has merely leapt upon my back to goad me to holier acts. For my Lady, I shall persevere.

Now that that’s out of my system, I must confess most people will find it extremely unintelligible, but to fully understand you would have needed to read a particular story I wrote in high school about how the bungling followers of Eris, led by me, the worst of all the bunglers, went on a journey to find the Apple of Discord, only to search in all the wrong places before being smitten by Our Lady Discordia… multiple times. As it wasin a parody vein along with Discordianism itself, perhaps it shouldn’t be read too much into.
But… if you read this far, may Eris guide you, Allah forgive you, Jesus love you, the Buddha smile upon you, and Cthulhu deem not to devour you.

Birthday Wishes and Religious Wrangling

So, happy birthday to me. That’s right, I turned 20 yesterday, and you know what? It kinda sucks…. I don’t get any new privileges, and my sense of entitlement and extreme arrogance I got from being 19 got taken away… aside from everything after 21, 20 is the worst birthday ever….

But on to a more important topic. No doubt you’ve heard of the recent rash of terrorist attacks. This sort got me thinking. First, about how that the guys who plan, but don’t participate in, suicide bombings are the luckiest terrorists of them all. Secondly, about religious extremism.

Islamic extremist have their terror attacks and so forth. Christian extremists have their abortion clinic bombers, witch, trials, Inquisitions, heretic burnings, Crusades, and millions more, no doubt. But what about Buddhist extremists? You never hear about those…. oh wait, yes you do. Remeber those Buddhist monks, who lead a peaceful protest against Myanmar’s government, and some of them got killed by the military, but they didn’t resort to violence? They actually started more peaceful marches? Remember that?

Yeah, so I guess my point here is Karl Marx was absolutely correct when he said religion is the opiate of the masses. Religion can be skewed and manipulated to justify, condone, and fuel atrocities without number. But then again, maybe he was wrong about Buddhism eh? Buddhism looks like it’s a pretty nice step up from these other “peaceful” religions, don’t you think?

Prodded into writing…

Ok, so apparently, I have a …fan? One that I didn’t actually tell to show up here. Amazing, isn’t it? So I suppose, I’ll do her the favor and get my ass writing. But I’m going to write about what I want to write about.

So… I guess I should try to live up to the title I chose. So, let’s talk… uhm… the philosophy of morality and religion. Why not? Specifically, let’s talk about the problem of evil. So this quandry is one I’ve written more than a few papers on. 

The basic idea behind it is pretty simple. The question is, more or less, how there can be a God if there is suffering. Now, I could rattle off a ton of theories by renowned thinkers, but that defesats the purpose here. So, I’ll ask the multitudes of you. Or just the three of you. What are your thoughts on this topic? Why does God allow people to suffer, if He even exists?

Political tripe…

I really, really, really wanted to avoid turning this blog political. But, I can’t help it anymore. I need a place to bitch, and since it’s my blog and I do any goddamn thing I want. So here it goes…

I am so sick and tired of the far-right wackos and the far-left wackos overestimating their own numbers. People, please, if either side had a majority our country wouldn’t be governed by so many CENTRISTS.

Now, I consider myself a liberal. Hell, I’d be label a left-wing socialist if I ever ran for office (and more credibly so than President Elect Barack Obama). And I’d love that title. But, I’m no where near the furthest left person out there.  The real problems I have are these.

I was talking to a woman about liberalism and why she should vote for Barack Obama. Well, she said he wasn’t liberal enough. I said, ok, but he’s more liberal than McCain so, that means that he’s a step in the right direction. She almost got violently adamant about voting for a third party candidate (it was Cynthia McKinney). I said that that’s a waste of a vote, because even if I and everyone like me voted for her, she’d still only get enough to legitimize third parties next time. This woman starts arguing with me about if me and everyone like me wvoted for her, she’d win.

Well, that certainly isn’t true. Ultra-liberals and ultra-conservatives are so blatantly minor in this contry that even us heavy leaners can’t push them to the top.

To talk about the flip side, I was talking to someone about Sarah Palin. They were claiming that she was great, and the only reason McCain did as well as he did. WRONG! Palin appeals to a very minor portion of the Republican base. Look how many prominent conservatives blasted her! Is that not the tell tale sign? McCain did so well because he is and always has been a fairly moderate Republican. He sold his soul this election, but I think he tried to make up for it with his concession speech last night. Good for him.

Ugh… Sarah Palin is NOT the future of the Republican party. At least, I hope they realize this. Because if she is, then either the party is doomed, or Canada is going to have a HELL of alot more occupants.

My advice to the Democrats: You will have complete control for 2 years, start a liberal realignment. Push the center to the left.

My advice to the Republicans: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, realize that the ultraneocon religious right is WRONG! Please, go back to the old days of Teddy Roosevelt and Ike Eisenhower. Then we can have a country that we can really call our own.

And in closing, I’d just like to say shame on all of those states that passed measures to discriminate against homosexuals. I am deeply ashamed to be part of this country because of how those got passed. WAKE UP AMERICA!!!! It’s time to give all of our citizens equal protection.

Just for laughs

So, I figured I’d try something with this. I suppose, if anyone looks at my blog they’ll expect it to have something to do with philosophy, and why shouldn’t it? I’m a philosopher, after all.

In that regard, I’ve decided to see if random wanderers would be interested in joining a discussion of philosophy. Now, this first topic may not necessarily be “philosophical” in the strictest sense, BUT it is something that interests me, and hell, science is a philosophy of sorts, and lots of “sciences” are more closely related to root philosophy like logic than any science.

 

Time Travel: A Study  was to be a research paper by my associate and former colleague James S. Jennings. Mr. Jenning’s research did not get off the ground. In fact, it was partly my fault, because at the time this was taking place roghly 5 years ago, he was without Internet access most of the time, and the primary research lane we had chosen, being starving high school students in a small town in rural Illinois (technically, TWO small towns, but, that’s not really important), was naturally, online.

 

Out of ignorance, we established a Yahoo Group themed around our research to attract other like minded scholars to contribute their ideas. We, in actuality did attract the attention of one person, a fairly intelligent fellow, who as I have not asked for permission to share his name or his thoughts, will remain anonymous, however, we also attract a host of people who used our group for uploading irrelevant materials, contributed nothing in terms of research or even musings, and generallly just bothered me.

 

I say me because I had regular Internet access and was put in charge of maintaining the group, thought I was not obligated to pursue independent research. I did make conjectures and other things, but nothing backed up with any sort of fact or even theory.

So, I’ve been rambling, so I’ll get to the point. Recently, while checking my little used email accounts, I discovered someone had left a comment spouting a less than credible theory, which it so happens, actually reminded me of the group and piqued my interest in the subject again. Sooo… it’s been on my mind.

Let’s get down to brass tacks. The questions I pose to you are as follows: What technical scientific evidence do think (or know) exists, and how and why does it prove or disprove plausible time travel? In my personal opinion, I tend to think that wormholes and string theory allow that time travel might be possible, if you tamper with the fabric of the universe enough. Any scientists out there who can expound upon these ideas?

Another more philiophical pair of questions about the ethics of time travel: first, is it wise to allow Joe Public access to time travel? If not, then is it ethically acceptable for the government or scientific community to disallow the access to what would undoubtedly be a miracle of modern science? In that vein, would altering history be plausible or ethical? No doubt some changes could be good. Preventing assassinations of prominent figures like JFK, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or Abraham Lincoln or preventing certain cruel or poor leaders, like Hitler or Stalin,  from rising to power wouldn’t be bad, would it? On the other hand, if we are given a gift such as this, would it be an abuse of our civilization’s not inconsiderable power to change thingsto suit what we think should have happened?

In a general note, I’d like to ask for opinions of all kinds, using any sort of argument you would care to. I seek perspective from everyone and everything, though I do believe certain things provide more credible arguments. With that in mind, if you do wish to join in a discussion, please do have an ACADEMIC argument. Insubstantial arguments will be ignored, for the obvious reason that you can’t argue with nothing. One last thing, please let’s keep this debate civilized.

 

End rant.

Under Construction

Ok, so, I know my billions of fans are finally glad to see me blogging.. ok, more like the 10 people who might possibly think it’s interesting. Anyway, to those people I say I may or may not make regular posts and I certainly won’t until I’m satisfied with the layout. To people who do not know who I am… well, let e just say, hello, and if you see anything that catches your fancy, feel free to say something.

 

At this point, I’ve rambled enough. Love and peace.