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How Can You Know God and Truth?

Posted by jefferis on April 27, 2012 in Religion
Roger Bacon (c.1214–1294) is sometimes credite...

Roger Bacon (c.1214–1294) is sometimes credited with the modern establishment of the scientific method, following Aristotle.

From the previous articles, we have shown that no one can disprove the existence of God, and that atheists believe there is no God but cannot know for sure, and so their belief is unsubstantiated. We have also shown that because the supposed nature of God as Creator of all things, if He exists, is trans-dimensional, exists outside of the 4 palpable dimensions of time and space, and not subject to the causal laws of material physics. Therefore, the scientific method has no means of verifying or measuring the reality of God. In other words, God is supernatural and axiomatic and therefore not subject to testable hypotheses or “proofs.”

Furthermore, we have demonstrated that atheist objections to the existence of God often rest upon assumptions about the nature of God illegitimately acquired from a Judeo-Christian worldview. The idea of justice and fairness, for example, assumes too much, if one starts with the assumption that the creation is evolutionary and accidental.  This God could be just as uncaring and uninvolved in human affairs as we are in the life of ants. Therefore, the question of God’s goodness does not have anything to do with the question of whether God exists or not. God could exist and not be good, as we define goodness.

Now, however, we come to a fulcrum;  a question. If God exists, how can we or could we know him for sure? Since we cannot know him by examining matter, because he is not material; and since we cannot know him by theory, or testing, or by any human endeavor of scientific enterprise, how could we know that what we know he is indeed real?

The problem, my friends, is that you are asking the wrong question. You are assuming you can discover what is hidden, what is supernatural, what is not available to human senses through the discovery process, but that is backwards. It isn’t what you discover, but how you are discovered.

Let us start with an assumption:  This God is fully self-conscious, self-aware, the Creator of all things seen and known, and unseen and unknown to us. This God started the universe and all the things within it.  Yet because he dwells outside our experienced dimensions of time and space, he must, in order to communicate with us, penetrate time and space and reveal himself to us in some way.  Surely, if he is the creator of all, he must be able to disclose himself to us if he so chooses to do so? A mute God is no god, if he cannot make himself known.

Yet this God does not disclose himself by natural means, normally, although he is able to do so if he so chooses. This God is able to communicate directly with our minds and our souls by his Spirit, supernaturally.   We call this communication “revelation.”  It is not susceptible to human investigation because it takes place immediately between the soul and God: direct speech as it were between a human being in relationship with a divine being. Just as intimately as a husband and wife making love, so too the intimacy of the soul with God is beyond description and explanation. Yet the reality of it is so real that it is more real than anything the senses can provide. Just as we know we exist, and cannot question it, so too, we who have been touched by God know that He is and can no more doubt his reality than we can doubt our own existence.

What I am saying is the only way to know the truth is to know by encounter the Truth Giver – to know the One who is Truth itself. This God who is self consistent and self-aware has the capacity to reveal himself to human beings. He reveals himself as He sees himself so that we can know him in truth. It is the only way to know the truth of the universe: it is the only way to now the reason for existence which is Love: to love and be loved. Love is the reason for the Creation. And no once can know Love until one is known by God, who is Love.

This is our testimony: over the ages, God has revealed himself to mankind, and the Bible is the written record of those encounters between humanity and God. Whether that be revelation of words, or signs and wonders and miraculous deeds, or the sweet counsel of meditation and understanding, or the songs and psalms of love and adoration – these are the records of that human and divine marriage. Finally, what God has done, since Love cannot be revealed by a formula, or explained by philosophy, or reasoned with by logic, God came himself in human flesh to show what love looks like and acts like.  There is “no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”   God came among us, and walked in human flesh, to show what perfect love looks like. He came as Jesus, but politicians, the greedy, and those with selfish interests put him to death. Yet he loved us so much, he died for us. He died so that he could impart that love to us by his Spirit when he rose from the dead and breathed on us new life.

If you want to know the truth and to know God, there is only one way: to experience Jesus personally and for yourself through the revelation of God’s own nature to your soul. Ask for it and you will receive, because he longs to have fellowship with you, but is only waiting on your permission to accept his invitation.

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Atheism is a Faith

Posted by jefferis on April 10, 2012 in Religion

Atheism is a faith just like any other faith. It is founded on a belief, not on fact or science. The word “atheism” means “no belief.” However, atheists actually do believe; it is just that they believe in “nothing.” They believe that there is no God. In spite of all their claims to the contrary, atheists must still rely upon the same resources for their convictions as do all other believers: namely, their faith. The only difference is their faith is directed towards nothing. They believe there is no “thing” out there. No God. No supernatural. No Devil. No purpose or meaning to life. Yet, they are no more rational in their beliefs than Christians are in theirs. The atheist’s lack of belief in God is simply an article of faith.

The problem atheists face is that you cannot prove that “nothing” exists. Nothing is the “absence” of some-thing. It isn’t a thing. It isn’t there, so you can’t show it. You cannot prove “nothing” is true. At most, you may find nothing where you are looking, but it does not mean there isn’t that thing somewhere else! For the same reason, you cannot prove the non-existence of God, because then you’d be trying to prove that “nothing” exists, which can’t be done. In fact, even to be an atheist and believe that God isn’t, you must first assume that God is, or you have nothing to not believe in! So, the idea of God’s existence is necessary in order for anyone to not believe in him. Atheists need God to have a faith that there is no God.

By all traditional definitions, God is not material. He can’t be tasted, touched, seen, or felt. He can’t be measured or put under a microscope. You cannot subject him to the scientific method, because you cannot measure by material science that which is Spirit. God isn’t earth, wind, or fire. He isn’t lightening or gravity or the vacuum of space. So, how on earth could you “prove” that God is not? All you can do is point to what you can see, hear, or feel and say, “that is not God,” or “I don’t see him.” You may speak of what you know, but you cannot really speak of what you do not know. And if you don’t know God, how can you speak about him at all, either for good or ill?

The realm of our experience is so limited and finite, all we could hope to say with any certainty is: “I haven’t experienced God.” But just because we haven’t experienced God does not mean he does not exist. We are not omniscient or omnipresent, so our experience is limited and tiny. All we know is in our small realm. For us to assert then, that “there is no God” requires a tremendous leap of faith. Maybe it requires even more faith to believe that there is no God than it does to believe that there is one. Listen to the faith of the atheist: “I, from my limited and tiny dot of existence on this small planet, am certain that there is no God. Even though I have not experienced all the vastness of the universe, I am certain I am right because I am so perceptive that I know what the rest of the universe holds.” Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? But that is just what the atheist is asserting when he declares that there is no God. My question is always, “How on earth could he know?” The truth is, he can’t. He is acting in faith. If faith is your only evidence, then you might as well believe that He is as believe that He isn’t!

I realize that many people are driven to the conclusion of unbelief because they are grieved over the evils of this world, or the death of loved ones, or by a thousand other causes of private pain. I cannot answer the pain with reasons why. It is beyond me. But the fact God does not put a stop to human freedom or suffering proves nothing about whether he exists or not. At most, we might wonder about his compassion, but his lack of action does not prove his non-existence. For instance, if I choose not to go to work tomorrow, I may be missing from my office and others may not see me, but it doesn’t mean I’ve ceased to exist. In the same way, we cannot prove God’s non-existence by his apparent inaction.

In the Old Testament, the Jews didn’t even have a word for unbelief or doubt. The word they used was lo-Amen, or “no Truth.” A person who doubted or did not believe was a person who lacked the truth. It wasn’t until the Arabs came up with the number zero that we were able to take this nothing, this lack of truth, and make it into a something. A zero is a symbol that represents nothing, but we treat a zero as if it represents something real. A zero represents the absence of something. In the same way, atheism is built upon the zero, and so, we make atheism into something when it is not. It has no reality in itself, but it pretends to be something. It can never be proved and it can never be affirmed. It is the belief in nothing, or, as the Bible says, it is the absence of the truth.

Atheism cannot exist without God, just as a lie cannot exist without the Truth. The only difference, then, between the Christian and the atheist is not their faith, but in what they believe. And Christians have a better ground upon which to stand, for they have encountered the God of the Universe. They base their faith on something, or rather should I say Someone they have experienced; not on something they haven’t. They have heard God speak to them, so their faith is based in unmediated knowledge. How do we hear from this God of the Universe? Well, that’s another story …

Objection 1:
Right. And Easter-Bunny-Atheism cannot exist w/o the Easter Bunny. I love the logic. As long as someone doesn’t believe in Thor, The God of Thunder, he must exist.
As an atheist, I do not believe in nothing. I believe in science, I believe in the laws of nature, I believe in truth, I believe in logic, I believe in common-sense. I believe in reality, not fantasy.

Response:
You believe in Quantum physics even though the actions of electrons violate the laws of cause and effect? That electrons move from shell to shell without passing any point between and without the passage of time? That they appear here and then there without any time in between? You accept that as true even though you cannot experience it nor make sense of it. It defies common sense and Newtonian physics. There is much to reality that is not reducible to human understanding; but that doesn’t mean it is fantasy. It just means the human mind and sense experience cannot grasp it.
The material world, you assert is true, but by definition, the material world is more space than atoms; yet you don’t experience the world as space but as constant friction.
Einstein posited a 5th and 6th dimension that probably makes the narrow experience of our 4 dimensional universe seem quaint. Yet the common sense of natural laws is probably just as limited in terms of reality as Newtonian physics are to Relativity.
Using the Easter Bunny counter-argument is called the logical “fallacy of many questions.” It is committed when someone proposes something that has not been proven or accepted by all the people involved — i.e., a premise is included which is at least as dubious as the proposed conclusion. For example, the statement that walking in the woods alone at night is unwise because fairies are likely to bewitch unsuspecting individuals, presupposes that fairies exist — a dubious proposition.
This fallacy is often used rhetorically, so that the question limits direct replies to those that serve the questioner’s agenda.

My point is that by ignoring the major proposition and alluding to a dubious minor, you are ignoring the first cause to try to make it seem a ridiculous argument by forcing a decision about derivatives. The existence of God has been a major premise throughout the world and philosophy. Fairies are a localized and regional sub-premise.
Whether or not fairies exist is irrelevant because it creates the logical fallacy of the illicit minor and the converse fallacy of accidents. If Fairies exist, it would not prove or disprove the existence of God. If they don’t exist, it would be the same result.

My initial argument relates to the entire metaphysical structure of the universe, and is a major premise. If God, then can we either prove or disprove his existence by material, empirical means. Since, if God, God is not subject to matter but the creator of matter, by what means can you measure that which is infinite and subject it to a finite test?
Most proofs against God are an exercise of hubris. They commit the fallacy of faulty generalization and specifically, the biased sample: “I have not experienced or seen God. He makes no sense to me: Therefore, I conclude, God does not exist.”
The “I” is the problem in the sample. From finite experience, a short life span, and limited knowledge of things beyond even our own planet, and in many cases, our own country or state, a person makes a sweeping generalization about the structure of the entire universe: that God cannot or does not exist. The statistical sampling and the selectivity of the data is too small to be of any value empirically.
A corollary of this approach is also hubristic: If there is a God, I demand that He prove himself to me and show me miracles.
If someone demanded I show up in his office tomorrow to prove I existed, I am not likely to show up on command. I find it completely unnecessary to prove I exist; nor would I want to submit to someone’s arrogant approach to my person. On the other hand, if someone asked for my help because they were truly in need, I am much more likely to come willingly.

Objection 2:
As an atheist, I do not believe in nothing.
Response:
You believe there is no God. Since you are not omniscient and since you cannot prove that God does not exist, you accept it on faith. You believe there is no God. It is an article of faith.
If you were to approach this problem from an empirical standpoint, you cannot devise a test to test your theorem; especially since the proposed nature of God is not material but extra-dimensional. For God to have created a relativistic universe where time and space are bounded dimensions, God would be beyond our causal, Newtonian universe, and the laws of creation would be subject to Him, not the other way around. Even if God were existing in a 5th or 6th dimension posited by Einstein, we have no measurements by which we can encompass those realities or subject them to exhaustive examination. So we cannot know all the facts.
So, rather than believing there is no God, a more rational approach would be agnosticism. Since you do not “know” there is no God, and cannot know that since you are not omniscient, then agnosticism is a more reasoned approach.

Objection 3:
If you counsel me to agnosticism about God, shouldn’t you also at least be agnostic about God Allah and God Vishnu? By your own advice rather than believing there is no Allah or Vishnu, a more reasoned approach to be agnostic about them both, would be appropriate, would it not?
My other question to you is, why would you separate Fairies or Thor by excluding them, contrary to your own advice? Exempting them for reasons of a fallacy looks like a cop out.

Response:
You seek to promote the fallacy of the irrelevant conclusion: instead of arguing the fact in dispute, the arguer seeks to gain his point by diverting attention to some extraneous fact. The fallacies are common in platform oratory, in which the speaker obscures the real issue by appealing to his audience on the grounds of popular sentiment, that since no one believes the Easter Bunny is real [except children], therefore God also must not be real, and therefore, belief in God is as ridiculous as belief in the Easter Bunny. Therefore any argument in favor of agnosticism regarding God must also result in agnosticism about the reality of the Easter Bunny.
The whole argument is specious.
However, once you enter into competing claims of revelation, whether that be Muslim, Hindu, Christian, or otherwise, you are no longer in the realm of empirical verification and you must evaluate the claims by other means. That is another topic.

God is the Axiom: the Unconditioned Ground of Being
Emmanuel Kant wrote of the unconditioned ground of being. The idea that something is infinite means by its very nature that you cannot subject it to the laws of cause and effect, because what is caused is finite, by definition, and not infinite. It is conditioned: dependent upon something else for its existence.

In morality, he wrote that you cannot provide an ulterior motive to make someone value the good. It must be valued for its own sake. In other words, if you say, you should be good because you will get a reward: money, power, fame, eternal life, etc. then the reason the person does what is good is not because it is good in itself, but because of self-interest. The selfish motivation taints the purity of the reason for the good. So, the idea of the good is axiomatic to morality, and a person ought to want to do the good because it is good in itself and for no other reason.

In the same way, the idea of God is axiomatic. What cause can cause the existence of God? If there is a cause, then by definition, God is not God, but would be created by some other agent. But God, by common definition, is uncreated and infinite. Since the empirical method can ONLY measure things by using the law of cause and effect [things that are created by causes], the very tools by which it attempts to measure, are incapable of measuring God and incapable of proving or disproving the truth of God’s existence. They cannot measure the uncaused Cause of all things. The very means of empiricism would try to subject the infinite to the finite. It would be trying to prove an axiom, which by definition cannot be proved but must be accepted. If one accepts the axiom that God exists, then all else can follow. If one does not, then nothing one says, would prove the case, for the case relies upon the first premise: that God is the uncreated Creator of all things.

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Corollary 1: Why Doesn’t God Heal Amputees?

Posted by jefferis on April 8, 2012 in Religion

Corollary 1. Why Doesn’t God Heal Amputees?
or Why Doesn’t God Do Miracles?

Although there are documented miracles that defy scientific explanation, all the evidence in the world will not be convincing to someone who is so sure they are right that they reject out of hand the idea that miracles are possible. Just as there are none so blind as those who will not see, it is pointless to try and present any of these incidents to someone who is bound and determined to reject them as a possibility. Evidence will have no effect on someone who BELIEVES that miracles don’t exist. You cannot shake a person’s faith who is already set in his beliefs. What is that old line? “Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind is made up.” So, I won’t try to make the case for miracles. I will take the contrary proposition:
So what if there are no miracles? The apparent lack of miracles is not a counter argument to the existence of God. If we follow from the primary argument, that an atheist cannot make an assumption as to the character or nature of God, then it follows that the existence of God is not determined by whether God chooses to act supernaturally or not. If God is not concerned about human life, and is allowing natural selection to be part of the evolutionary process, then healing the sick only allows the weak to continue and undermines the health of the human race. Better to let the weak die off so as to preserve the fittest among men and women.
Again, the idea that God is a loving God who works among men to heal and make whole is the product of a Judeo-Christian worldview, but the atheist has no right to assume these values in making a case for the existence or non-existence of God or of a god. The atheist must consider the possibility that God is not involved in the day to day affairs of such small and insignificant creatures on this dust ball planet. And therefore, if God is such as this, there is no reason to assume he would be doing miracles on this earth, and if not, the lack of miracles says nothing about the existence of God. God can exist and not do miracles because he has no desire to do miracles. The lack of miracles is not a positive evidence against the existence of God. It is an argument from silence and uses the unspoken assumption that God must be such and such as the Christians describe.

Richard Dawkins giving a lecture based on his ...

The primary evidence for miracles is perhaps life itself, whether evolutionary or not. The improbability of spontaneous creation of life has led even noted atheists such as Richard Dawkins posit that life was created on earth by an alien civilization. The problem with this theory, in terms of logic, is that it is only begging the question. If life was not possible through natural processes here, how could it arise elsewhere in the universe spontaneously?
The conclusion is that these two supposed proofs of the non-existence of God are based upon assumptions as to the nature of who or what God must be like… an assumption based more upon a Judeo-Christian worldview rather than an evolutionary empirical worldview. These arguments fail because they are both:

Argumentum Ad Ignorantiam (“arguing from ignorance”) — A fallacy that occurswhen someone argues that because we don’t know something is true, it must be false, or because we lack proof that a statement is false, it must be true. Ignorance or lack of evidence doesn’t necessarily mean a position or claim is true or false. Common Examples: “No one has ever proven that UFOs exist. Therefore, they don’t exist.” (Something can exist despite the absence of confirmation. Lack of proof is justification for caution or even skepticism, but not dogmatic assertions.) “There is simply no proof that God exists. Therefore, God doesn’t exist.” (God might exist even though there is no way empirically to prove it.)

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Why Atheists Don’t Exist

Posted by jefferis on March 27, 2012 in Political Events, Religion

Why Atheists Don’t Exist  or… Atheist Arguments that don’t make sense.  (Part 1)

I used to be an “atheist.”  So I know all the in’s and out’s of atheism. I could argue with the best about religion and it’s irrational delusions, about the “proofs” that there is no God, and about how everything can be explained scientifically, and that the idea of God and the need for God are just the products of a primitive worldview.  I learned from history how the Church persecuted scientists like Galileo because of perceived threats to religion, and how religious wars were responsible for all the suffering in the world. Evolution showed that all life was accidental but occurred naturally without the need for a divine intervention or creation myth. Yada-yada-yada. Knowing these arguments first hand and believing in them wholeheartedly, I can now say that most atheist arguments are illegitimate, made with bad premises and indefensible assumptions.

I like what Adam Carolla says about being atheist. He wants to be an atheist because he is lazy and he wants to be left alone. He doesn’t understand angry or proselytizing atheists, because they are guilty of doing the very thing they accusing religious people of doing: namely, making a big deal out of religion.  In other words, those who are zealous atheists and have an axe to grind have something else going on in their lives that has nothing to do with atheism or religion.

Argument One: God Does Not Exist – Proof  is Too Much Evil, Injustice and Suffering in the World.

I call this argument the argument of theodicy: If God is exists, why doesn’t he stop or prevent evil, sickness, disaster, and injustice? Since he does not prevent or stop these things, it proves he does not exist.

For an atheist to make this argument, it is usually used against the existence of God, but it really isn’t a valid argument, because the entire premise rests upon Judeo-Christian assumptions about the nature and character of God. In other words, atheists have to assume that God is both good and omnipotent, fair and just. Such an argument would not work against Hindus, who have a manifestation of God as a violent and vengeful goddess named Kali. Nor could it be used against Sunni Islam, because while Allah is called merciful, he is also not bound to any human ethical standards nor required to be consistent in all his ways. For an atheist to make this argument, therefore, he must be assuming that God, if he exists, must be both Good and Just. He is illegitimately using Christian beliefs as the foundation of his argument… which implies he holds some innate, and internal value system that is based upon Christian morality and beliefs. More on that later…

The problem with this premise is that there is no guarantee that God is good or just. From their evolutionary belief system, for example, it could be argued that God is not personally involved or concerned about individual human beings any more than we are concerned about spiders and gnats. From the washout of dinosaurs, it could be interpreted that God or a god is merely experimenting with creation with emotional disinterest. Or it could be argued, as Deists did, that God set it all in motion and then sat back and did not interfere, watching how it all plays out. God could be amused by human suffering and take some perverse pleasure in it, as did the The Gamesters of Triskelion, or the Vorlons and Shadows of Babylon 5. In other words, atheists have no right to raise a moral question regarding the existence of God, because it assumes too much what God must be like. It assumes a Christian worldview.

However, it could be argued that the very need to argue for a just and compassionate, good God is evidence of a moral conscience and a confession of belief in the way things ought to be, if there were justice and goodness in the universe. This anger or disquiet in the atheist’s mind over injustice is perhaps the very best evidence we have for the existence of God. For why should the atheist expect or want this justice unless he or she has some intimation of the way things ought to be and that reality is not conforming to this ideal? It is a sense that things are out of balance, that evil, selfishness, and injustice do indeed prosper, and they ought not to. If an atheist truly believed that there is no God, then he should not be bothered by the appearance of accident, injustice, sickness or disaster, war or survival of the fittest, because that is just the way things are in an evolutionary and accidental universe.  In fact, if he does believe in an accidental, evolutionary universe, he or she should not be troubled by the rich taking advantage of the poor, the weak being ruled by the strong, or the smart taking advantage of the simple, because it means the genes of the strong and the intelligent are prospering, while the weak are wasting away.

If one is committed to an evolutionary world view, one should also not be a liberal democrat either, for providing money and services to the poor in the form of charity only increases the weaker elements of the human race to survive, based not upon merit but sloth. By viewing nature, “red in tooth and claw,” the atheist should conclude that power and might rule by natural right, and that we should not interfere with this natural mechanism lest we undermine the evolutionary survival progress.

A true evolutionary belief system would agree instead with Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planed Parenthood. Sanger viewed welfare as a detriment to society because it increased the number of poor blacks and foreigners.

Margaret Sanger Deutsch: Margaret Sanger (* 1879)

Margaret Sanger Deutsch: Margaret Sanger (* 1879) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Organized charity (modern welfare) is the symptom of a malignant social disease… increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents, and dependents. My criticism, therefore, is not directed at the ‘failure’ of philanthropy, but rather at its success.”3 The urban poor, and their increasing numbers, she called, “an ever widening margin of biological waste.”4 Welfare, she believed, encouraged the breeding of the poor, or “human waste,” as she called them. She feared that welfare would encourage the urban poor to give birth to those “stocks that are the most detrimental to the future of the race…”5 Therefore, she believed the government should actively encourage the sterilization of those who are unfit to propagate the race, using as her motto: “More (children) from the fit, less from the unfit.”6

What I am saying is that an atheist may have a moral conscience and a sense of right and wrong based upon some assumption of a universal standard, but he has no basis for it in an atheist world view of an accidental universe, guided by the instinctive and unconscious forces of evolutionary mandates.  In fact, all morals could be seen, as an impediment to the survival of the fittest and actually be preventing the successful evolutionary process. Take for example a hemophiliac who can survive with drugs, but passes on hemophilia to succeeding generations. Whereas if he were not treated and died without reproducing, the genetic weakness would die out. In this case, charity is actually damaging the health of the human race. Note. I am being purposefully cruel here to show the consequence of true atheistic principles which are diametrically contrary to the compassionate principles of Christianity, and indeed of most other religions.

I argue instead that because such a proposal of heartlessness is revolting even to the majority of atheists, it proves in a sense that atheists don’t really exist (except perhaps psychopathic ones).  Atheists, by their general desire and belief in a moral system, and by their frustration with a world that does not display this justice, are in fact confessing a faith in an ultimate moral standard which must be upheld by a universal ethic that can only find its foundation and justification in the existence of a good and just God, who represents the created order as it ought to be, not as it presently is. This innate longing for justice and the good, is indeed evidence of an awareness of the nature and character of God planted in every human being. And while not all humans share a Judeo-Christian set of ethics, all cultures display morals and standards and ethics that are not to be violated by their tribe or community.  While atheists may argue that such morals are evidence of the self-preservation of the species and the gene pool, in fact, such morals and standards protect the weak from those who are stronger, and who could take what they wanted by power if not by “right.”

The Adam Carolla Show (podcast)

Why then, are atheists angry and mad at the idea of a good and just God? Well, if we take Adam Carolla’s view, the reasons may have more to do with personal issues than with actual objective principles of logic.  I know a lot of people who reject faith of any sort due to loss of a loved one, failure to see healing from disease, or accidental death, or the tragedy of crime or war. They have personal loss which they cannot reconcile with the idea of a caring God. Others have political motivations. They hate the moral standards that represent constraints upon behavior, whether that be fidelity in marriage, respect for the life of the unborn, or heterosexual norms. They hate the Christian idea of God, but they would have no reason to hate the Hindu gods, whose morals are more flexible. So really it is Christianity and Christians they hate, and that works towards an ironic form of intolerance. While claiming to be tolerant and asking for tolerance, these same folks often are so intolerant of Christianity that they would like to see them rounded up and killed. The vitriol is everywhere evident on any comment section of any online newspaper.

Yet none of that angry proselytizing, or disappointed sorrow actually becomes a valid argument against the existence of God. It may allow one to question whether God is indeed good or not, but the moral argument fails to prove or disprove the existence of a God who may be totally unconcerned with human existence.

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Management vs. Labor

Posted by jefferis on March 23, 2012 in Political Events, Technology
Ship steam engine SkibladnerI am working on under an NDA for some software companies doing beta testing. While a team of testers evaluate and work on the products, we keep running into small and inconsistent errors. They aren’t repeatable or reproducible, but they are there. While we clamor for fixes,  we are also aware that the employees in charge of development are under product deadlines and under the thumb of the corporate bigwigs, set on getting the product out the door to meet revenue projections. Those macro decisions are considered more important than the minor bugs they can clean up “later” after the product is released, when the entire market becomes a huge beta market!
Which reminds me of a story. I am also a pastor, and I was talking to one of my “old timers” in the church where I served. He told me a story about management vs. labor I will never forget. He was a WWII vet who was working at the Cooper-Bessemer Plant in Grove City PA where they made ship and train engines.  They had long time skilled workers who could manually router a piston’s cylinder bore to within 1/32 inch tolerance. They had been making engines this way for years. Well in the 1960’s they hired some young gun out of business school to be a manager. The particular engine they were working on had “passed” the mechanical measurement tolerance tests, but the older worker protested. He said that something didn’t “feel” right and there was something wrong with that engine. He was over-ruled by the know-it-all manager.  That engine got put into a ship, and the engine blew. It cost the company millions of dollars and time, distance, and labor to replace that engine in the new ship far across the sea.
Calopus (ship) The engine of the 'Calopus', Th...
All I am saying is that something doesn’t “feel” right… That seems to me to be why most software releases aren’t really solid until the .01 release or later… Now I know why…
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Facebook is Bad For Business – The New Timeline and Old Ad Policy

Posted by jefferis on March 22, 2012 in Guns and Ammo, Political Events, Technology

Facebook has turned a corner and run into a wall. The new Timeline, being forced upon Users and Business Pages alike is a complete disaster. People are screaming mad. 

“Timeline is overly complicated and ugly. It looks like Myspace and dozens of other crappy social networking websites that people specifically came to Facebook to AVOID. By forcing this overly complex layout on us it takes away exactly what we all liked most about Facebook. This site was never meant to be a scrap booking website, it is meant to be a social networking site where I can communicate in the most direct and concise format possible. Once that is taken away from us then we really have no further reason to be here.”

My first Facebook business page for a client, UsedGunsPa.com, is set to have people click into the Web Page rather than the Wall. The wall is for ongoing comments, but the web page is a mockup of his regular website. It seems that you can now get to the web page, but you cannot direct your clients to it. Now, if you don’t post every single week, your page starts to look neglected on your Timeline.  So, while Facebook forces this new direction on everyone, it will be interesting to see how many businesses give up on FB. I already advised a client today not to bother with FB for now.  Other friends and business partners have told me they hate the new model.

But that isn’t the worst part of Facebook.  Facebook’s ad policy is very arbitrary. I see ads on FB for rifle scopes and hunting equipment from big advertisers like Cabela’s, and tons of ads for self defense and concealed carry organizations, but when we have tried to advertise accessories like rifle scopes or the new Slide Fire Solutions’ Conversion Kits for AR-15’s, all our ads get shot down. There is no appeal and no one to talk to. It is very arbitrary. The policy actually states:

Ads and Sponsored Stories may not promote firearms, ammunition, paintball guns, bb guns, fireworks, explosives, pepper spray, knives, tasers, or weapons of any kind, including those used for self-defense. Ads and Sponsored Stories may not directly or indirectly link to landing pages where users can purchase any of these products.

What is so hypocritical about this is that Cabela’s website sells rifles, ammo, and other weapons, including knives, but their ads get a pass, while our ads get disapproved. Could it be that the amount of money you are willing and able to spend causes FB to look the other way?   And why can we not advertise what is legal: arms for self-defense. After all, it is those arms, and those in the hands of the military, that allow FB the freedom to pursue its business in the first place.

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Google Has Gone Pornographic

Posted by jefferis on February 6, 2012 in Technology
Lately, I swear, I am logged in to Google and have safe search set to “moderate” (which is recommended) and whenever I search for Youtube or Google videos, part of the finds are filled with unrelated results of pornography  with x-rated images and ads for  gay porn. This never used to happen. I had to switch to safe strict, but I’m thinking  if a person is not logged in, he has no safety settings. If your kids are searching online,  all the freaking filters are down, and they are putting all sorts of stuff that should be x-rated and adult-only for everyone to see.  I never used to see this type of stuff. Has Google lost its mind? 
 
It is crazy that it is this uncontrolled.  You would think that Google should set safety to “strict” by default unless you opt in to adult content…  This is weird beyond belief. Can you imagine your first grader using the community library computer to search for videos and getting these results? 
 
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The Dangers of Cloud Hosting

Posted by jefferis on January 21, 2012 in Technology

One of my companies uses cloud hosting on ASMALLORANGE.com for 4 websites, three of which are high volume vBulletin sites: IGOTASUBARU.COM, IGOTAEVO.COM, IGOTASTI.COM, and IGOTACOMMUNITY.COM. All of them are offline as I write this piece. Although ASO is trying its best to recover from this disaster, it is costing us thousands of dollars in memberships and vendor fees, because not only will we be down for a couple of days with no explanation to our customers, but when the cloud crashed, it lost ALL of our data. Fortunately, we have full backups 5 days old, so our initial loss will be small, but our service and reputation will have been greatly harmed. We have lost some  of our customers and vendors, far more than we will get in recovery from our host company.  I will reprint our hosting company’s explanation below. I’d like to find out who their third-party cloud provider is so that I know never to use them.

This failure confirms my suspicions of using the cloud for stored data for its stability and security. If someone hacks the cloud, for example, everything you hold dear is in some off site, universally accessible open-ended cloud.

While ASO has been very apologetic and their tech is working to restore our sites, I am hoping their move to in-house servers will provide us a much safer and secure experience in the future. Another catastrophe like this and we’d have no choice but to find another provider or set up own rack servers.

Because all of our account information was lost, we were fortunate to have done a full backup from our cPanel for each of our vBulletin sites. It is actually easier to restore from scratch with a full backup than partial backups of the customary Home, MySql, and email scripts separately. Now on to the ASO explanation of this failure:

I want to apologize for the lack of updates on this issue – it has taken us a while to fully look at the situation before we had any information to release, much longer than would have hoped.

The cloud storage configuration, which is made up of a 16 disk SANarray, can tolerate one drive failure and continue to operate normally. This automatic failover provides the reliability that has made cloud platforms popular. In last night’s incident, however, the SAN array had two drive failures, which is beyond the tolerance fault level of the system.

Currently, attempts are being made to rebuild the array and regain access to the data, but this is a tedious process due to the nature of the failure and the methods of recovery. At this time, we have no definitive ETA for when this will be completed.

We will update you as soon as we have more definitive information regarding the state of the drives and the array.

█ Jen Lepp
█ Director of Operations
█ A Small Orange LLC
█ http://www.asmallorange.com
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Whitehouse Birth Certificate is Indeed a Forgery

Posted by jefferis on January 5, 2012 in Political Events, Technology

I am not and have not been a “birther.”  Frankly, if Obama was not born in the USA, then international powers far greater than our democratic institutions are at work, picking and choosing our “leaders” for us. However, after watching this video on YouTube and downloading the birth certificate myself and opening it in Illustrator, I can attest that the document the Whitehouse posted is a forgery. Someone, either knowingly or stupidly, did a very bad job at a counterfeit.  Any document that is scanned in, which this document should have been, would be a flat document, where no parts would be able to be pulled apart in Illustrator.  However, the idiot who forged this document forgot to flatten the file and left all the Illustrator layers intact, showing exactly which elements were doctored.  This documentary is of several parts and you can view it here:

Obama Birth Certificate Faked In Adobe Illustrator – Official Proof 1

This leads me to a question, however, if Obama was really born in the USA, why all this effort to create a forgery?

A second question would be, if he were not born in the USA and not legally allowed to serve as President, would all the legislation he signed become null and void?

 

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Redfield Scope

Posted by jefferis on December 19, 2011 in Guns and Ammo, Technology

Trying Out a New Scope – The Redfield Revolution

Just before hunting season this year, I took my .30-30 Marlin and my .30-06 Winchester Model 70 Lightweight out to the range to sight in. To my dismay, at 100 yards, I could not get the Winchester inside an 18” grouping with a 3×9 power scope, so I put it aside and took my trusty Marlin with a 4x, which was getting me within a 3” grouping. I bought my Winchester second hand from a dealer 15 years ago or more, and never had a problem with it before. The last season I used it, I jumped a deer in the field and shot it on the run with no problems. So this targeting issue made me wonder what might be wrong.
I called my buddy, Jeff Nesbit, before I went on my trip and he said, “Bring the rifle in and we’ll take a look at it,” but I didn’t have time to go to his shop before opening day. So last week I went into the store and Dick Nesbit, Jeff’s dad, put it up in secure bench rest to bore sight the rifle. When he did, he said, “There’s something wrong with the crosshairs… When you move your position, they line up differently each time and that shouldn’t happen. There is some misalignment inside the scope.” It was an old, low cost Simmons scope that came, used, with the rifle, and I hadn’t been happy with it because of the narrow field of view. He asked how old the rifle was and I told him the story of its second hand purchase, and he said “It could be off if there is rust inside the barrel, but one way to tell for sure is to put a new scope on it and try it out. If you can get consistent shooting from the new scope, that would eliminate the barrel. The rifle is worth something if there isn’t a rust problem.”

Nesbit Guns offers free mounting and bore sighting with any new scope purchase, as long as the rifle is pre-drilled, which most new rifles are. Dick showed me a couple of scopes… and inexpensive Tasco and a Redfield Revolution 3-9 40mm for about $159. I chose the latter, since, if I had to get a new rifle, the scope would be worth porting to a new purchase; and if I didn’t need to, I plan to keep the Winchester a long time.

1" grouping at 50 yards with front rest only

I took the gun out to the range today, and I’m glad to report that after sighting in the scope, I was able to get a 1” grouping using a front rest. Now this final test was at 50 yards using 180gr Winchester ammo. I wanted it about an inch or so high, which will put me about on target at 100 – 150 yards. This grouping is a little to the right, but I was starting to get a bit tired. I initially was sighting in at 100 yards, but I forgot to bring my binoculars, so I wasted about 10 cartridges before moving to the 50 yard target. What I really wanted to check was that the barrel was not a problem and I believe the photo proves it. I plan to do some serious, long range practice before next deer season, but it was starting to rain and I decided that was enough for one day.

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