Is your god God?

The true God can not be defined, but the dictionary does define the word "god." The simplest definition for the word "god" is supreme being. The phrase "supreme being" is often used interchangeably with the word "god." The phrase "supreme being" is on old phrase and we hear and use it so often that we may have never stopped to think what it really means. Supreme means means highest or greatest in importance. Being means something that exists. In more modern terms, therefor, the phrase "supreme being" and word "god" simply mean the most important thing.

We all have things that are important to us or values. Possible values include having money, your family, your lover, your friend, having friends, your spouse, your child, your parents, having sex, having power, feeling loved, being happy, knowing the truth, being respected, logic, an ideology, using a drug, being healthy, having an education, safety, being thin, food, our country, our nationality. If you listed your values and prioritized them from highest to lowest in importance than whatever is at the top of your list is your god at that time. Therefor at any given moment we all have a god. Different peopole have different gods. This god may change from moment to moment as different things become more or less important to us.

The things we value are in themselves good. If they were not good we would not value them. Our values van cause problems, however, when we prioritize them incorrectly. When we put being thin over being healthy we can become anorexic. Being thin is a good thing but it becomes a problem ween we put undue emphasis on it. Our jobs and carers are good things but if we put to much undue value on them we can become workaholics.The same can be said of all the things we could possibly value except God.The reason for this is that Gos is the true supreme being. When we make something other than God our god than it will csause us problems because nothing other than God is the true supreme being.

Throughout a lifetime any single person may have had many different gods.

While the true God is the true supreme being, the phrase "supreme being" does not define the true God, because the true God is more than the supreme being. The true God may or may not be our god depending on if the true God is the most important thing to us at any given moment or not. Weather wi admit it to ourselves or not at every moment of our life we have a god. So while it is true that there is only one true God there are hundreds if not thousands of gods. The question is nor whether we have a god but: Is your god God?

It is like truth. There are two kinds of truth; objective truth and subjective truth. Objective truth is how reality is. My subjective truth is how I think reality is. At Some points my subjective my agree with the objective truth, at other points it does not. There is only one objective truth but we each have our own subjective truth. Our objective truth may change over time. It may become closer to the objective truth or get farther away from it. Problems arise in areas where our subjective truth does not match with the objective truth. So, in the same way, the question is not weather we think we have the truth or not but does our subjective truth match the objective truth.

Happiness

1. Happiness is to the soul what health is to the body, therefore virtue is to happiness what exercise is to health. (6/9/13)
2. The biggest cause of unhappiness is a selfish obsession with happiness. Don't focus on your own happiness. Focus on the happiness of others and you will be happy. (11/15/12)
3. Happiness is feeling loved by someone we love. If we are unhappy than we do not feel loved by God or we do not love God.
4. You can not be happy when you are full of hate. (7/22/11)
5. "Happiness is not a destination...it is a way of life." ~unknown (2/2/12)
6. In 2004, people who said they were conservative or very conservative were nearly twice as likely to say they were very happy as people who called themselves liberal or very liberal (44 percent versus 25 percent). Conservatives were only half as likely to say they were not too happy (9 versus 18 percent). Political conservatives were also far less likely than liberals to express maladjustment to their adult lives. For example, adults on the political right were only half as likely as those on the left to say, “at times, I think I am no good at all.” They were also less likely to say they were dissatisfied with themselves, that they were inclined to feel like a failure, or to be pessimistic about their futures. Further, a 2007 survey found that 58 percent of Republicans rated their mental health as “excellent,” versus 43 percent of political independents and just 38 percent of Democrats.
   FP: Why are political conservatives so much happier than liberals?
   Brooks: About half the “happiness gap” is explained by two demographic differences. Conservatives are far more religious than liberals, on average, and much more likely to be married. Faith and marriage both strongly improve life quality for most people.
   The other half of the gap is explained by differing worldviews. Conservatives generally look at society and see a collection of individuals. They naturally believe, therefore, that personal action is the right focus for our attention. Liberals are much stronger at the level of the collective. For many on the left, individual action is a silly, futile focus if we want to make any meaningful social change; the community or all society requires change (even by force) in order for real progress to be made.
   This worldview difference dramatically affects happiness levels. Simply put, it is easier to be successful in relying on your own actions for things that are important to you than to rely on the actions of everyone else. Conservatives feel more in control of their world than liberals do; liberals are more likely to feel like victims when others don’t behave the way they “should.”  -FrontPage, 3/6/13
7. Thesubjects of this study where ranked into three groups based on how happy theyreported they where. The death rate of the happiest third of subjects (3.6%)was less than half the death rate of the least happy third of subjects (7.3%).
   
   

Faith and Reason

To those who say we should only use reason and never faith, I ask "Do you have faith in reason?"

12/28/10: Faith without reason is foolish "Reason without faith" is self-deception.

12/28/10:

You can not have reason without faith because reason is based on faith. Reason is based on certain assumptions that can not be proven and therefor must be accepted on faith. For example, reason is based on the assumption that reality follows the rules of logic. This assumption can not be proven because to prove it requires logic, but to use logic to prove it amuses that reality obeys the laws of logic and is therefor circular reasoning. Therefor we must accept this assumption on faith to accept the conclusions of reason. In other words you must have faith that reality is logical before you us use logic. You must have faith in reason before you can accept the conclusions of reason..

The Problem of Evil

To say the existence of evil disproves the existence of God is like saying the existence of darkness disproves the existence of light. If there where no light there would be utter darkness but we wouldn't know it because we would not know what light is. In the same way if there was no God we wouldn't know what evil was. The fact tat we know what evil is suggest there is a God.

Proof of God

The reason we can not use reason alone to prove the existence of God is that we can not use reason alone to define God. Before we can prove any thing we must clearly and precisely define our terms. If we are allowed to make up a "definition" of God than we can easily prove that God exist. If we define God as love than all we have to show is that love exist to prove God exist. If we define God as the ground of being than all we have to show is that anything exist to prove God exist. If we define God as the cause of the Big Bang than if we prove the Big Bang happened we prove God exist.

Agnosticisms

1. The agnostics have it right when they say that the human intellect alone can not prove or disprove the existence of God. Where the agnostics go wrong is leaving out the possibility of divine revelation if there is a god. (12/27/10)
2. "Agnostic is the Greek word, for the Latin word, for ignorant" - GK Chesterton  (4/16/13)
3. 
   

Critique of Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant tried to use reason alone to derive moral principles. The problem with this approach is that our immorality causes us to think irrationally. Therefore we must be moral before we can use logic to correctly to derive moral principles, but how can we be moral without first having moral principles? This is why morality leads to an upward spiral and immorality leads to a downward spiral. If we apply the moral principles we know we will be able to reason better and discover more moral principles, but we must first start with a moral principle and not reason. This also explains how very intelligent men can do very immoral acts. It starts with a simple immoral act. that act affects their ability to reason morally and leads to more and more heinous acts.

Heaven and Hell

While I believe that God loves everyone, I don't believe everyone is going to heaven. What determines if we go to heaves is not if God love us but if we love God. You visit your mother because you love her. She may love you with all her heart but if you don't love her than you would not visit her. Those who chose not to go to heaven do so because they love something more than God. Hell is simply eternal separation from God. Sin is choosing something other than God over God, When ever we sin we chose to separate ourselves from God. If we die without reconciling with God than we will remain eternally separated from God.

2/20/11 God loves everyone but not everyone believes it. It is not that God loves us that saves us but our faith that God loves us that saves us. God does not send anyone to hell. Those who go to hell do so because they chose to. They chose to go to hell to try to get away from God. They try to get away from god because they fear God. They fear God because they do not believe that God loves them. They do not believe that God loves them because of their own gilt and shame.

6/21/11: "The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." — John Milton (Paradise Lost)

7/5/11 If you can not find heaven while you are alive you will never find it when you are dead.

Love is Dynamic

The more you love something the more you will love it.

Love

1. Introduction 
1. Importance of love 
2. Definitions of love 
1. wanting what is truly best for your neighbor- St. Thomas (7/14/11) 
3. Types of love 
1. Natural love, part of our biologig/evolutionary make up. Un learned 
1. Eros (3/8/12)
2. Affection  (3/8/12)
3. Friendship (3/8/12)
2. Supra natural love- agape, the topic of the remander of this paper 
4. Preconditions for love (3/8/12)
1. You can not love if you are not free.  (2/25/11)
5. What love is not
1. A feeling 
6. Source of true love is fruit of the the holy spirit 
1. Love like fruit is a gift of God that we can not earn. 
7. The main thing blocking love is guilt and shame. 2/17/11
8. The ultimate test of love is a willingness to suffer for the other is needed. 93/8/12)
9. While we can’not earn it there are things we can do to cultivate it. 
10. Controverises 
1. Becoming one with the beloved vs remaining separate (M. Scott Pedk) 
2. Method of this outline 
1. Corth list 15 things that love is 
2. All of the charistericts of love must exist together for it to be true love 
1. Kindness without selflessness is not love but selfintrest 
2. “Humility” without selflessness is not only not true love but not true humility 
3. Without honesty love is fantasty

2) Patient

a) Versions

1) Is patient

2) Never gives up (The Message)

3) Is patient (New Living Translation)

4) Endures long and is patient (Amplified Bible)

5) Is long-suffering (Young’s Literal Translation)

b) Patients is the ability to delay gratification, it is also being content with the present.

c) We can become so focused in the past or future that we lose the present

d) The importance of patients

1) Patientiences is also listed seperatly as one of the fruits of the spirit

2 ) The marshmallow experiment

e) The key is living in the moment

1) We can only experience God in the present

f) All the other aspects of love depend on patients if we are not present in the moment we will miss opertunities to be kind.and politr

3) Kind

a) Is kind

b) Cares more for others than for self (The Message)

c) Kind (New Living Translation)

d) Is kind (Amplified Bible)

e) Is kind (Young’s Literal Translation)

4) Content

a) Is not jealous

b) Doesn’t want what it doesn’t have (The Message)

c) Is not jealous (New Living Translation)

d) Never is envious nor boils over with jealously (Amplified Bible)

e) Doth not envy (Young’s Literal Translation)

5) Not attention seeking

a) Does not brag

b) Doesn’t strut (The Message)

c) Is not boastful (New Living Translation)

d) Is not boastful or vainglorious (Amplified Bible)

e) Doth not vaunt itself (Young’s Literal Translation)

6) Humble

a) Is not arrogant

b) Doesn’t have a swelled head (The Message)

c) Is not proud (New Living Translation)

d) Is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride) (Amplified Bible)

e) Is not puffed up (Young’s Literal Translation)

f) The principle of annomunity

g) The first step in humility is to admit our pride

h) Never defend yourself

i) Never seek honor

7) Polite

a) Does not act unbecomingly

b) Doesn’t force itself on others (The Message)

c) Is not rude (New Living Translation)

d) Is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly (Amplified Bible)

e) Doth not act unseemly (Young’s Literal Translation)

8) Selfless

a) Does not seek its own

b) Isn’t always “me first” (The Message)

c) Does not demand its own way (New Living Translation)

d) Does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking (Amplified Bible)

e) Doth not seek its own things (Young’s Literal Translation)

9) Easygoing

a) Is not provoked

b) Doesn’t fly of the handle (The Message)

c) Is not irritable (New Living Translation)

d) Is not touchy or fretful or resentful (Amplified Bible)

e) Is not provoked (Young’s Literal Translation)

10) Forgiving

a) Does not take into account a wringed suddered.

b) Doesn't keep score of the sins of others (The Message)

c) Keeps no record of being wronged (New Living Translation)

d) it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong] (Amplified Bible)

e) Doth not impute evil (Young’s Literal Translation)

11) Just

a) Does not rejoice in unrighteousness

b) Doesn't revel when others grovel (The Message)

c) Does not rejoice about injustice (New Living Translation)

d) Does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness (Amplified Bible)

e) Rejoiceth not over the unrighteousness (Young’s Literal Translation)

12) True

a) Rejoices with truth

b) Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth (The Message)

c) Rejoices whenever the truth wins out (New Living Translation)

d) Rejoices when right and truth prevail (Amplified Bible)

e) Rejoiceth with the truth (Young’s Literal Translation)

13) Takes it as it comes

a) Bears all things

b) Puts up with anything (The Message)

c) Never gives up (New Living Translation)

d) Bears up under anything and everything that comes (Amplified Bible)

e) All things it beareth (Young’s Literal Translation)

14) Faith

a) Believes all things

b) Trusts God always (The Message)

c) Never loses faith (New Living Translation)

d) Is ever ready to believe the best of every person (Amplified Bible)

e) All it believeth (Young’s Literal Translation)

15) Hope

a) Hopes all things

b) Always looks for the best, Never looks back (The Message)

c) Is always hopeful (New Living Translation)

d) Hopes are fadeless under all circumstances (Amplified Bible)

e) All it hopeth (Young’s Literal Translation)

16) Endurance

a) Endures all things

b) But keeps going to the end (The Message)

c) Endures through every circumstance (New Living Translation)

d) Endures everything [without weakening] (Amplified Bible)

e) All it endureth (Young’s Literal Translation)

Much of the confusion we have about love comes from our sloppy use of language when we speak about love. When we say we"love ice cream" we usually don't mean we love ice cream. If we truly loved ice cream we would never think of eating ice cream. Eating ice cream destroys the ice cream and to truly love something is to never do anything that would harm the thing we love. What we mean when we say we "love ice cream" is that we love eating ice cream. When people say they love money some mean they love having money while others mean they love spending money. You can love having money and spending money but the one you love more will determine if you save it or spend it. When a man says he loves a woman he may mean he loves a woman and/or he may mean he loves having sex with a woman. The two things can be in some situations the opposite of each other if having sex with a woman causes the woman harm.

2/13/11 ‎"Love is like playing the piano. First you must learn to play by the rules, then you must

forget the rules and play from your heart."

2/16/11: Love is becoming one with another. 3/9/11 or being identified with another

3/9/11: Hate is not the opposite of love. Hate is actually a part of the love process. Love does not have a true opposite . The closest thing to the opposite of love is the absence of love and the closest thing to the absence of love is apathy. If you love something you will hate whatever stands between you and the object of your love. You can not love justice without hating injustice. You can not love God without hating evil. You can not love everything. You can not love justice and injustice. You can not love God and evil.

Truth

1. God is the one and only Truth. (10/28/12)
1. Jesus said "I am the way and the truth and the life. " If we truly loved Jesus than we would love the truth and follow the truth wherever it lead us, even if it leads us away from our preconceived ideas of what is true. (5/14/13)
2. The truth is like beauty. You'll know it when you see it. (6/22/12)
3. True statements are not the Truth but only point to the Truth.
4. True statements tell us about the nature of reality. False statements tell us about the nature of their proclaimer. (5/21/13)
5. The truth is what is. (2/21/12)
6. "The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it."- H.G. Wells (7/20/11) 
1. This comes from handling truth with the imagination rather than with the inteelect. (1/121/12)
7.  The truth is not something you can discover through an democratic election. (7/22/11)
8. "It takes a very long time to learn that a courtroom is the last place in the world for learning the truth." -Alice Koller (7/28/11) 
9. Truth draws strength from itself and not from the amount of consent it arouses. - Pope Benedict XVI( 7/25/11) 
10. ‎"The truth, indeed, is something that mankind, for some mysterious reason, instinctively dislikes. Every man who tries to tell it is unpopular, and even when, by the sheer strength of his case, he prevails, he is put down as a scoundrel." - H.L. Mencken (9/15/11)
11. The truth should never cause anger. If it does than tou have been living a lie. -Tamatin Arasi (1/21/12)
12. The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.”-Gloria Steinem (1/21/12) 
1. This says more about the nature of Gloria Steinem than it does about the nature of truth (1/21/12)
13. 
    

Good and Evil

Good and evil are obvisouly opposites. Things can be oposits in at least two ways. One way is for the opisites to be two distinct thins with opisite charectistics. Examples are the north and south magnitic poles. Male and female and positive and negative charge. In each of these the examples the opsites are distint things that can be described apart from their opisite. Another type of oposites is whwn one of the opisites is simply the absence of the other. Examples of this type include light and dark and hot and cold. In these examples one is the absance of the other. Darkness is the absence of light. Cold is the abance of heat. It can some time be difficult to determine whar type of opsites a pair are and in the case of one being the absence of the other. which one is which. Is light the absence of darkness or is darkness the absence of light?. At one level both statements make sence, but as people learned more and more about light it became clear that light was a form of electromafnetic rediaction with a certian wave length and freciency. There have been books written about light but all you can realy say about darkness is that it is the absence of light. Darkness is not made up of some partical in the way light is made up of photons. As we study a pair of opisites more and more, we may find that we can say much about of one of the pairs but only that the other is the absance the opsite. When this happen it shows that the oposites are not two distinct things but one is a distinct thing and the other is the absence of it.

As we study good and evil more and more we learn that we can say much a bout the various forms of goodness such as love, truth, joy. There have been books written about each. It may seem at first that we can also say much about evil, but a close examination reveals that the much of what is said about evil is not about evil itself but about evil itself but the causes and effects of evil. We may speake about darkness as causing poor viaion or we can tell how to mane a room dark, but this in not about darkness itself but the cuse and effects of darkness. Some people equate pain and suffering with evil. There is much that can be said about pain and suffreing bur I donot beleive that pain and suffering are the same as evil.

If evil is the absence of something than how can it cause anything? Eveil can not create anything but it does cause things atleast in relation to goodness. It is analogious to cold causing the formation of ice. Cold is the absence of kinetic enerhy of molicules (ie heat) but it causes ice to forn

Many diseases are caused by the absence of a nutrient or other factor even cancer eichis the poliveration of cell is caused by the absence of one or more regulators of cell growth. In the same way an evil man does not have someyhing a good man dees not., but an evil man lacks somethong a good man has.

First lets look at pain. The capacity to feel pain is not only not evil but the capacity to feel pain is a good thing. If we had no ability to freel pain than we would not know to remove out hand from a very hot object untill after we were burned. In this since pain is like a smoke detector or warning light on our cars dash board.

There is a difference between pain and suffering. It has been said that pain is inevitable but suffering is optionai. This points to the distinction between the toe suffering is our reaction to pain. I beleive this is because the only thing anyone cans say about evil is that it is the absence of light.

It has been said that: "All that is necessary for evil to persist, is for enough good men to do nothing." I disagree. I believe good is to evil as light is to darkness. It would make no scene to say that all that is necessary for darkness to exist is for the light to do nothing. All that is necessary to end darkness is for the light to exist. All that is necessary to end evil is for the good to exist.

3/10/11: There are two related aspects of evil, not seeing the good and not being the good. Not seeing the good is more like the darkness due blindness than darkness due to the absence of light. It is subjective darkness in an objective world of infinite light, but it is not like the blindness of a person who loses their sight. It is like the blindness of a person who loses their life. Dead people don't see and you can not transplant a living eyeball in a dead body and make it see. Evil is spiritual darkness that results from the spiritual blindness that results from spiritual death that results from the separation of our spirit from the Holy Spirit which is the source of all spiritual life.

Not being the good in a similar way is the result of being cut off from the Holy Spirit which is the source of all good, of all love, joy and peace.

Loving God

To think God created the universe in 6 literal days is to think of God as less loving. After all love is patient.

Predictions

1.  The Republicans will take over the house and senate in the November 2010 elections. X
2.  The U.S. Will go into a Depression in 2011.X
3. Obama will not run for reelection in 2012. X
4. Palin will run for president in 2012 but will not win the in the primary. X
5. Ron Paul will win the Iowa caucus in 2012 with at least 27% of the vote. (12/29/11) X
6. Iowa: Paul, Romney, Santorum, Newt, Perry, Bachmann, Huntsman (1/3/12) X
7. NH: Romney, Paul, Huntsman, Newt, Santorum, Perry. (1/10/12)
8. The Euro will colaps in 20012 causing a global recession. (1/10/12)
9. The Supreme court will rule the individual healthcare mandate unconstitutional. (3/28/12) X
10. Romney will be the next President of the U.S. (8/21/12)

Mercy and Justice

1. Mercy is to Justice as Faith is to reason. (2/9/12) You can not have mercy without justice.
2. Mercy and justice are both aspects of God's love. (2/9/10)

Power and Coruption

Contrary to the popular saying, power does not corrupt, but it does make it easier for the corruption that is already there to express itself.

Idiolotry

Some have said pride is the chief sin while others have said idolatry is the basis of all evil. I think the solution to this dilemma a is in seeing pride as the chief form of idolatry in which we make ourselves a god.

9/16/10: We have idols because we falsely attribute to people and objects things (e.g. happiness, comfort, peace, meaning, purpose, freedom and self-worth) for which God is our ultimate source.

12/26/10: Or we love the gifts of God more than we love God.

You know you’re a liberal if:

You know you’re a liberal if:

(Why liberalisms is a mental illness)

1. Your idea of giving to the poor is asking the government to take money from those richer than you and giving some to the poor to ease your conscious for not giving yourself.
2. Your idea of “family values” includes two men sodomizing each other on a regular basis.
3. You use the words “love” and “sex” interchangeably.
4. Your idea of personal responsibility is to have the government take care of all your problems for you.
5. Your anti-war if the war was started by a Republican and pro-war if it is under a Democrat.
6. Your believe religion is the cause of all the problems in the world.
7. You worship the Earth and/or animals.
8. You think killing unborn children is a right.
9. You think healthcare is a right.
10. You think killing unborn children is a form of healthcare.
11. You think rights come from the government and not from God.
12. You think the only difference between men and women is “plumbing.’
13. You honestly don’t see affirmative action as racists.
14. You think all problems can be solved by simply spending more money on them.
15. You think character is not an issue.
16. You think two people are joined together in marriage by the government and not by God.
17. You think unions are good and businesses are evil.
18. You trust the government more than the free market.