All Quiet On The Agnostic Front

I've been wondering a lot lately if blogging is a form of therapy or if the amount that I blog just reflects how calm I am inside?

It's not that I don't have much to say, I just don't feel the urge to say it as much anymore. I certainly don't ever see myself posting as much as someone like PZ Myers, but then, my life doesn't revolve around the day to day issues of science and religion. I'm a computer programmer.

A lot has happened since I started this. I found a better job and left the company I had been at since I graduated from college 14 years ago. I weened myself off of Effexor which I had been on for the last 4 years (well, I just did that over the last few weeks and I'm still feeling some effects of it leaving my system).

Unless I'm in traffic I tend to be very calm now. That wasn't the case 4 years ago. I would have gotten off of Effexor last year but there was always something going on that made me think "now is a bad time." But after moving to my new job in October I figured "no better time than the present."

I do have challenges that I will have to face in the next year. My son, having lived in two different houses every other week since for the last 7 or 8 years is having some trouble adapting to the changes around him. I remarried over 2 years ago and his mom moved in with someone back in March. His life has changed more over the last year than I had imagined. When he was younger he would bounce back from environmental changes much sooner. I would notice a few weeks of crankiness or bad behavior then things would calm down. But not that he's going on 10 years old I see that the response time is slower. He is really starting to think deeply about his parents, his life, etc. It seems like he can't figure out where he stands, where his place is in our lives. So, the next year will be interesting. I'm sure this is an important time for him developmentally...the pre-pre-teens?

If I don't post again in time for Christmas then I wish you all a good one. Even if you don't believe in God, Christmas is still fun...

Does Evil Prove Satan Exists?

I saw this article today and it made my stomach lurch thinking about what these people did to their sister: Brothers jailed over murder of toddler

It made me think that while I'm certain a benevolent God wouldn't allow an innocent to suffer like that, and therefore there must be no benevolent God, what does this say about a being that simply commits evil? Someone like Satan? Is it possible that the men charged with murder were possessed by demons? I know my parents would say so. My mom would be certain that those men were being controlled by Satan. It seems everyone around them was under some sort of shroud of evil, she would say, which is how the mother allowed it to happen to her own child.

How does one classify this form of abuse? I was about to say something about this not being your typical form of domestic violence but then what is typical? An abusive husband or father going too far and hitting their loved ones? Is that not evil? Is that normal? The sort of person who commits that type of abuse seems treatable to me. Not with an exorcism but with therapy and perhaps drugs (or maybe drugs was the problem?). At what point does an act of violence move from the realm of "normal" to that of evil, to be attributed to a supreme evil being?

Also, how does the abusive behavior go from being the act of a single, sick individual to having group participation? What force drives others to go along with something so obviously wrong? The easy answer, in my opinion, is to say that the devil made them do it. That Satan moved into their hearts. But to leave it at that opens us up to further acts of violence. If nobody studies the psychology of these types of events then we will continue to simply attribute them to evil.

What if, after lots of study, we are able to come up with a better list of warning signs to help prevent this type of abuse? In this case, there was obviously something going on as evidenced by this paragraph:

Social welfare groups admitted that while there had been concerns about baby Nia, she had somehow 'slipped through the net'.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could make a better net so children like Baby Nia wouldn't fall through? I think the only way to do that is to stop thinking small and attributing these events to evil. Humans are capable of great good and great evil and we must learn how to reduce the evil in the world.

God Punishes California Again!

I have certain relatives who think that a while back God punished California with wildfires and mudslides because they started allowing gay marriage.

Well, it seems that despite the attempts of those Godly Californians to make the mighty man happy he seems to be pissed at them still!!!

Prop 8 voter's house gets burned

Perhaps he is only burning the houses of people who votes AGAINST prop 8? Wouldn't heart attacks and brain aneurysms be easier on the environment?

Or maybe, and I doubt my kooky relatives will see this, maybe there is no God out there starting disasters when he's pissed at what people do.

Double standards (ah those SERBIAN thugs)

While the Fort Dix attackers are never explicitly called "Albanian" in the media, Miladin Kovacevic is constantly being labeled as a "SERB thug". I certainly agree that he is a thug, but I don't see why the fact that he happens to be a Serb is constantly being pushed on us by the media. Any agenda there? If he happened to be -- let's say -- Jewish, can you imagine them calling him a "Jew thug"? Certainly not. That's only reserved for those evil Serbs. The media are just making sure we remember that Serbs are dangerous.. and evil.

That's why when we think of a Serbian immigrant, we think of this:



But NOT this:


Or this:


Or this:


Well done, media, in creating an atmosphere in which even our names can be used as against us. Well done!

A Good Feeling...

What a great night for this country...

7 Years Later and There are Still Loopholes

7 years ago people were ranting and raving about how the 9/11 hijackers were able to stay here with expired student visas.

The Patriot Act was passed along, with FISA, and later the removal of habeas corpus, so we should be safe, right?

Well, read this: Obama's Aunt Living Here Illegally

How does someone who is living in state owned housing get to continue to stay there after a deportation order?

I use this as an example not because I have something against Obama or his family. I use it to show that despite all the freedom we have GIVEN UP over the last 7 years Bush is still FAILING at doing his job: Execution of the law!!!

Imagine if instead of a sweet little old lady she was instead an EVIL TERRORIST?? OMG!

I guess if you read DRUDGE and FAUX NEWS and listen to that moron HANNITY then your brain will be so full of mush that you will come to the conclusion that Obama's Auntie is a terrorist. After all, if all his friends are terrorists then all his family must be too.

The thing in that article that I think people will overlook is:

In Boston, Lydia Agro, communications director for the Housing Authority, said Onyango had been screened and approved for public housing as an "eligible non-citizen" when she moved in in 2003. She said the authority is not notified of deportation orders and did not know Onyango was related to Obama until two days ago.

Did ANYONE in the Bush administration do any brainstorming to think up all the ways they could make sure deportation orders were followed?

Is there ANY communication between the states and the federal government?

Perhaps the real problem isn't illegals overstaying their visas. Perhaps the real dangers have been taken care of. But this just seems too easy a loophole to close.

What do you think?

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