The Only Serious Philosophical Question

'Europe is dying, exactly as Poledious said about ancient Greece in the third pre-Christina century. The century which is intellectually as similar to our own - the sceptics, epicureans and cynics. He wrote this: 'the fact is, that the people of Hellas had entered upon the fools path of ostentations, avorous and laziness. Were therefore unwilling to marry, or if they did to bring up the children born to them. The majority were bringing up at most one or two.'

'That is where Europe is today. That is one of the un-sayable truths of our time. We are undergoing the moral equivalent of climate change and no one is talking about it.  Albert Camus once said 'the only serious philosophical question is why should I not commit suicide.' I think he was wrong; the only serious philosophical question is why should I have a child? Our culture is not giving an easy answer to that question.'

Another Christian Movie (Just Like Pulp Fiction)

Random Thoughts

1. I haven't used Xanga much recently.  Since I finished seminary I've mostly been preaching and working.  At one point my boss was on the verge of firing me.  Somehow things have come to the point where he and another person are dickering over how much of my time they each get.  The other guy wanted half my time---my boss wants to give him a day and a half at most.  I think the current situation is preferable to the previous one!
2. I've been accumulating topics for writing a book.  I want something that collects what I think are the important ideas about Christianity and organizes them coherently.  Some of these ideas are:
   
   • The Eternity and Personhood of God (yes, these go together!)
   • The Trinity
   • Why the Word?
   • The Great Web---connectedness and how it forms us
   • The Church---what and why?
   • Walking with God
   • Resurrection---what it isn't and what it is
   • The way of Grace
   • God really is love
   • Righteousness vs. morality
   Right now I'm obviously in the brainstorming phase.  If I can write something compelling on all the above topics I think it will begin to take shape.
3. Recently I was given an iTouch by Apple.  Those of you who know me will also know that I haven't willingly bought anything by Apple for a long time.  However, I liked the iTouch, especially after I jailbroke it.  Now I have all kinds of fun "apps" on it, mostly free ones that were on one of the rogue "app stores" that you can use after you jailbreak your iTouch or iPhone.  Today I found that there are people out there who have hacked the code for my digital camera and come up with their own firmware for it!  I was amazed!  For example, I was wishing I could take "raw" format pictures, not .jpg pictures because .jpg loses a bit of quality especially for pictures of the sky (like the moon).  Then I found that this new firmware allows exactly that!  There are so many features that I'm just amazed.  To be honest I had only begun to learn the features of my camera, and now there are literally a dozen or more new ones that this free firmware upgrade gives.  I think it's really neat that there are still people out there, the true "hackers", who are trying to get every bit of performance out of whatever hardware they have.
4. I am frustrated about keyboards.  At work I had to start using a USB keyboard because I'm using a KVM switch to switch between two computers in my office, and that only takes a USB keyboard.  But my former keyboard was an old AT style keyboard that I kept (I actually have 2 of them, hoping that at least one will work).  I got an adaptor to make it work with a PS2 connection.  I have similar keyboards on my computer at home.  So I was wondering if I could plug these keyboards into USB ports.  I bought some adaptors that let you do it but they weren't actually converters, they just rewired the connections so they'd fit in a USB port.  So they didn't work, I needed something that actually converts from PS2 to USB signals and everything.   I found on the internet that there's a company that makes adaptors for this very purpose!  My life is saved!  Or at least my keyboards are saved!
5. For some time I've been playing with the idea of starting a weekly blog.  Not here on Xanga, because I don't like the way Xanga is putting ads all over my pages.  The ads make their own statement and it's not always the statement I want to make.  Since I have a web server set up, it wouldn't be too hard to get a blog running on it.  But I guess it's hard enough that I've been too lazy to do it.  Perhaps I should just get a free blog like on blogger.com or something like that.
6. Some of my recent posts have been kind of hard on Obama.  According to Jimmy Carter, this means that I'm a racist.  I just want to assure everyone that I'm not a racist.  Some of my best friends are half-white Indonesian Kenyans born in Hawaii.  (Actually the last part was a bit of humor.  I don't really have any friends that are half-white Indonesian Kenyans that are born in Hawaii.)
   
7. I suppose this is enough randomness for one post.

More Obama Worship

I suppose you could say that it's actually "president" worship.  But here it is from Chris Matthews on "hardball".  (Disclaimer: I don't watch it, nor do I watch other television shows of political commentary.)

MATTHEWS: I have never heard anybody yell out to the President. There is a hush in that chamber. When Reagan came back from being shot and all the other nights I've been there, it’s a hush. It's a religious experience to be there when the President speaks. And for somebody to speak back to the President like he was his equal, in that setting, is beyond, well it’s beyond words.

It all falls under the generic category of "Caesar worship".  Government is God.  (Note the hint of resurrection from the dead that Matthews injects with regard to Reagan.)

Wow, They Really Said It!