Response to a question in Facebook "What should be legal?"

What is law?  A law must have a consequence (e.g. punishment).  In the case of natural law, gravity keeps us on the ground.  On earth, we measure the consequence of the law of gravity as a force (9.81 meters per second per second).  We can use this force to our benefit (e.g. cracking open a walnut by dropping a bowling ball on it) or to our detriment (jumping off a building).

 

For the purpose of this discussion I will confine my political ideas to the US constitution and laws created by its states. Politically speaking, the US creates laws in congress and we execute or enforce these laws through the administration of the executive branch.  To enable readers to follow my logic I submit the following sequence of events:  If I run a stop sign, I could get ticketed.  If I don't pay the fine and I am pulled over again, I could be arrested.  If I resist arrest, the cop could use force to detain me.  If I overcome the cop, take his gun, and run, I could be hunted down for assault and possibly shot at were I to use the weapon against the cops.  Ultimately, the political consequence of breaking the law is the loss of life to some degree or another.  It may seem a bit of a stretch to say that the reason that I pay a traffic ticket is to preserve my life, however this is my position and I welcome the reader to challenge it.

 

Establishing that laws must have consequences, justice is the enforcement of punishment equal to the degree of violation of another person's rights (an eye for an eye).  The authors of the constitution declared life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as unalienable rights and submitted that these rights were self-evident.  Using the rights as the basis for my arguments, my freedom stops where yours begins and this line is drawn through relationships.  To illustrate this point, consensual sex and rape are the same in performance however, the latter violates a person's right to pursue their own happiness.  On a smaller scale, if my brother grabbed a $10 bill without asking me while driving my car to buy himself some lunch it would not be the same as a stranger grabbing the $10 for themselves because of relationship.  To answer the question, "[W]hat is it that determines an action is legal or illegal?"  I submit to you that it is a mutual agreement between two parties. 

 

Consequently, what should be legal is ultimately determined by a contract or covenant.  Politically speaking, the contract that exists between us and our government is the constitution.  Just as the state constitution can not prescribe by law anything that violates federal law we can not legally make contracts with one another that violate the laws of our county and state, etc.

 

It should be noted that drugs, gambling, and prostitution are already legal to some degree and depending where you are.  The term legalization is interpreted as the expansion of what is already legal.  In light of the aforementioned, I will attempt to address the legalization of drugs.  However, there is one more level of depth I must add to the above.  In its attempt to protect the people whom it represents, the state must protect us from the social consequences of a behavior without creating a measure of correction that the enforcement thereof exceeds the cost of the unbridled behavior.

 

Should it be made popular by way of the democratic process, I advocate the controlled legalization of all drugs so long as the controls in place are equal to the degree of risk placed upon society.  If someone wants to experiment with a chemical it should be medically prescribed and supervised.  The cost of administration should be offset by the consumer and the drug should be taxed to offset the cost of government auditing (by the FDA perhaps).  Arguably, the cost of the drug could potentially be more than illegal methods of procurement however, the costs may out weigh the obvious risks (e.g. purity, theft, assault, etc).  Additionally, if the anticipated decrease in cost of waging war on drugs is realized (to include the cost of counseling and hospitalization), this savings could be applied to the cost of government monitoring and thus decrease the cost of the drug itself.  The drugs should be administered by a Psychiatrist who can offer counseling in conjunction with the drug and who would submit significant findings to peers for review and potentially advance the body of science itself.  I propose that the increase in the number of curious individuals who wanted to experiment with drugs would be greatly offset by a decrease in the number of drug abusers.  Abuse here, is defined as usage beyond a consumers ability to function in society.

 

Even without any monitoring at all, there are still some laws we can not escape.  The damage that drug abuse does to the body is based on irrevocable natural laws and this is the risk taken on by the consumer.  The political laws that exist today are an attempt to protect us from the social consequence of operating in a universe governed by natural law.  In other words, even in total anarchy Rousseau is correct in saying "Man is free, but everywhere he is in chains".  It would be a fun thought exercise to create a government based on the idea of being immortal.

God wants relationships, not religion.

Why was Christ was put to death? Why were there people who hated Him? Who were these people? Were they homosexuals? Were they pro choice? Were they people who preferred to stay home and watch football instead of go to church? No, in fact, they were the super religious, conservative, fundamentalists of their time. Over and over again the phrase, "Religion killed God," has played in my head for the last week or so. Science, Christianity, and the very belief in God is under attack and I attribute it all to the same evils that exist in religion.

I feel strongly that God hates religion. "Obedience in better than the fat of rams." Obedience to what? The spirit of God guides us to Christ who teaches us of the Father and it was Christ who taught that our Father's kingdom is within us. The Babylonians did not understand this, which is why they though they could build a tower so high it would enable them to reach heaven. That tower was one of the first "churches" built and men have been building them ever since.

I have watched quite a few YouTube videos lately. I have notice that theism (belief in God) is under attack by a series of successive videos created by various atheists. First let me state that every (without exception) atheist I have met in person, I judged to be a highly intelligent, kind, moral person. This is significant because I met many atheists as a missionary. The majority of atheists I see presenting arguments on YouTube however, have faulty premises, faulty logic, and sometimes both and seem to hold a contempt for theists in some cases, especially Christians. To be clear, this post is not a personal counterstrike on atheist but an attempt to bring logical, intelligent people to an awareness of the war that is ensuing about them.

Atheism seems to be gaining popularity in this country which is disturbing to me because this growth seems to be fueled by a religious and fervorous, dogmatic belief that their is no God. To prove that something exists is infinitely easier than proving that something does not exist which is why the assumption in science is that something does not exists unless it is observable. Not only is this fair but wise because otherwise we might as well believe in the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny and all other creatures of imagination. So as far as science is concerned, there is no God. To be real it must be proven, but to be dogmatic about atheism is more foolish than the religious fanatic who is dogmatic about the earth being created in six days.

I can respect a person who says, "I do not believe in God because I have yet to see any evidence of such a being." Likewise, I would expect the same respect in return for my belief in God and my testimony that I have experienced His divine influence in my life. To witness the majesty of the universe and of life is, in my opinion, observable evidence, though not conclusive, which is why it is a belief.

I recently watched Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and Richard Dawkins in his interview with Ben Stein said that if you believe in evolution then you can not believe in God. Perhaps I do not fully understand evolution because I don't see why God could not have been the author of such a process if that is in fact the way it happened. However, what troubles me is that the process of evolution is still very fuzzy and Intelligent Design theorists have come along to challenge the paradigm. So what is the reaciton of the Darwinists? They treat evolutionary biology like a religion and act as though it is sacrilegious to challenge Darwin theory.

I think of Poor Charles Darwin, and the tremendous suffering and humiliation he went through as a scientist. To this day, religious fundamentalists think he was an evil man. The Vatican Church put so much pressure on Darwin that Charles renounced his Theory before he died. You would have thought that the Catholic church would have learned their lesson with Galileo but that's how incredibly ignorant religion is. Now here we are, centuries later, with all our knowledge, education and advanced marvels of civilization and now we witness a body within the scientific community acting like a bully? First we have the crusades and now we have terrorists dressed in lab coats flying their planes into the twin towers of science.

So I submit to you, that this is the very type of thinking that killed Christ. It is a spirit of pride and one of hostility towards any new way of thinking. If we are to to be Christian, we must shun any connotation of religiosity. We must be open to new ways of thinking, and if we find that we disagree with these new ways then we shall resist the ideas while loving our neighbors and the new ideas they share. Even if you do not belief in God at all, it would be wise to adopt this attitude. How many more must needlessly suffer or even die?

Desire: Origionally written 2006.05.16

From a young age, I have had a sincere desire to help humanity in a substantial way.  If I may, I would like to share with you something that I have dedicated much thought.  As a Christian, I have spent many years studying various books on the Christian faith to include both the old and new testament.  I have also studied extensively other major religions and philosophies of the world in order to gain a better understanding of humanity.  As the son of a physicist, I have grown up with the idea that God is the ultimate scientist and by virtue of this fact I have become very familiar with the scientific method.  In addition, Psychology is a field of study that greatly intrigues me and as such, I have dedicated a great deal of time trying to figure out what exactly makes people tick.  These are my "credentials," and I present them with the hope that you will listen with your heart what I am about to share.  I feel compelled to share this with you as I strongly sympathize with your cause and therefore desires.

 

The following is a model of how I believe the human soul operates:

 

Desire - Hope - Faith - Knowledge - Understanding - Wisdom - Joy

 

In this e-mail, I will explain my understanding of the first facet of this model: Desire.

 

The best way to present this is to ask the following:  If you had to create artificial life how would you go about doing it?  How would you program a computer to be aware of self, and so on?  This is what I have come up with

 

We as humans are not so different from computers.  We process things by "1s" and "0s.”  What a computer cannot process is the "maybe," the "1" and the "0" at the same time.  Without getting too technical, a photon can behave as a particle in one case, a wave in another, and in some cases as both at the sometime.  In short, if we were to create a computer that was capable of this type of processing it would outperform every computer today combined by 1000 times.  In essence, you would have the raw computing power of the human brain, a Quantum computer.  The theory of quantum processing is nothing new and in fact may be possible in the next 20 years or so.

 

All this is to illustrate the way in we process information.  That is, we seem to perceive a thing as good (one), evil (zero), or not sure (maybe, 1/0).  I define "good" in this case as that which accomplishes the objective.  I will use the cliché example of a bank robbery to illustrate this definition.  Since the objective is to acquire the money with minimal effort, a gun proves to be effective in accomplishing this.  In this case having a gun is good as it helps the robber accomplish the objective.  However, we moral and upright citizens judge this thing as "not good" or evil, as it obviously impedes others from obtaining their objectives of financial stability and so on.  As such, we achieve greatest good by obtaining the greatest objective, which is, joy for all.  This is objective is what I call the divine objective.  Of all the intelligences in the universe, the one most capable of achieving this objective in its perfection would be the supreme intelligence, which is God.  God seeks after the divine objective and therefore is the source of the divine good.

 

This of course, is not an attempt to out-think all the great philosophers of the past rather an effort to explain what I think "good" is.  However, many of the great philosophers have concluded that man bears within him some intrinsic knowledge that is not learned in the mortal realm.  Plato used the term, "recollection" to describe this knowledge.  Using the Socratic Method, Plato used the character of Socrates to ask a slave boy questions until the slave boy came to understand a square root without Socrates providing him with any information.  I believe that each of us has the knowledge of the divine good within us.  Therefore, when presented with a perception of the world around us we compare the perception to the "recollection" and determine whether the perception is good (one), evil (zero), or not sure (one/zero).  Our entire day is filled with millions, if not billions, of decisions like these.  To my understanding, this is the most basic processing that leads to the myriad of human emotions that we experience.

 

Humans experience only two types of desire: the charitable desire to share joy with others, and the selfish desire an attempt to protect the loss of joy.  This of course is a natural instinct; we are programmed to avoid death.  Death, of course, would be the ultimate loss of joy.

 

To better understand selfishness, we must examine the cardinal sins.  It is interesting to note that the cardinal sins correlate with what I will call, the seven "selfs", and their opposing virtues:

 

 

 

         Sin            Self              Virtue

 

      1. Sloth          Self-Conservation Prudence

 

      2. Anger/Wrath    Self-Defense      Justice

 

      3. Gluttony       Self-Nourishment  Temperance

 

      4. Vanity/Pride   Self-Esteem       Humility

 

      5. Greed          Self-Sufficiency  Faith

 

      6. Lust           Self-Indulgence    Chastity

 

      7. Envy           Self-Improvement  Gratitude

 

Your “It’s all about me” workshop addresses these, “selfs,” and helps us understand how to walk the path of avoiding the cardinal sin without overshooting the mark.  The mark is a principle known in Buddhism as the middle path, or in Taoism, the harmonious balance of the Ying and Yang.  Many times, we focus on only one particular virtue, because it is a weakness of ours, or because we felt inspired by a Sunday school sermon.  This focus, of course, diverts attention from the other virtues and inevitably leads to unhappiness.  However, when the attention is on being happy these virtues will naturally manifest themselves.

 

The advertising industry spends billions, if not trillions, of dollars a year convincing us that a particular product will bring us happiness.  This industry employs various techniques to get us to visualize the product in our lives and the promised fruits of joy that accompany that product.  One of the many tactics used is the drink-our-beer-and-you’ll-be-sexy technique.  The desire to be sexy itself is not wrong, but exploited in this particular instance.  If a man were to succumb to this ploy, he might find his beer belly less popular than his originally trim physique.  Of course, there are women out there who find a beer belly sexy but this is beside the point.

 

Conclusively, desire is the ultimate source of power.  To master one’s desires is to master one’s own destiny.  Again, the advertising industry knows this and does whatever it can to influence this power to their favor.  The “It’s all about me” workshop helps us recognize areas where our desires may be invested in the wrong things and redirect them to areas of our lives that are more fulfilling thereby increasing the overall joy of that individual.  This increase in joy naturally permeates to others which why I find your work to be a great benefit to humanity.  I wish you the very best in your work and personal life and thanks again for the compliment.

The Divine Good

Throughout time there has always stood the difficult task of defining what is good and what is evil.  To those religiously affiliated, the answer that God is good and the Devil is evil suffices.  To philosophers this circular logic is derisory.  I have come up with various thoughts; however, the following seems to be my best argument: 

Good is that which directly or indirectly contributes to obtaining an objective.  By this definition, it means that to a Bank Guard a gun is good because it helps him do his job of protecting the bank.  It also means that to a bank robber, a gun is good, and shooting the guard first helps the robber steal the money.  How is it that two opposing forces see the same thing as good?  In this grand universe, what is the ultimate objective?  I call it the Divine Objective.  Using this definition, that which contributes to obtaining the divine objective is ultimately the good, or the "divine good."  The opposite would also hold true in that there would be a Divine Evil.  Even so, what is the Divine Objective I have argued many times that it is happiness however, it seems that this answer makes many devout people of faith uncomfortable.  I cannot imagine any other answer to be superior.  What is greater than happiness?  I am confident that even the best alternative answers offered would still only be an ingredient necessary to this end.  If there is no joy in what we do and ultimately what God does then certainly we are already doomed.  So again, I submit to anyone: what is greater than happiness?

Happiness

He who is wisest is happiest and he who is happiest is wisest. God is the wisest and therefore happiest of all.

Why is the grass green?

Those who know me best, understand that I am the kind of person who wonders why the grass is green. Those same people understand that I can not leave a question unanswered and so I will always try to offer up the best explanation that I have at the time. In my attempt at such, I may come across as as a "know-it-all" unless you understand that deep down, I am praying that someone has a better answer; because as much as I love teaching I love learning that much more. Therefore, I will tell you why the grass is green however, this blog is the place to one-up me; and if you are successful you will be considered the friend to my soul.

"Green" is a word used to describe a color in the English language. It means nothing in and of itself unless an agreement on the usage of the word has been established. Typically, we come these types of agreements rather quickly if you consider that as a child someone shows you a color and tells you that it's "green" and you call it such from that point forward. What about the color blind? Those with red-green color blindness sometimes confuse the two colors when presented with each other. Here we have cause for disagreement that is typically overruled by the majority; leaving the minority to be labeled as abnormal. Science has discovered the cause of the abnormality but in order to do so, science had to define green as, "a light spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570-nm," and a nanometer (nm) as a unit of length in the metric system, equal to one billionth of a meter. Furthermore, for these definitions to have any meaning, a metric system had to have been established. To appreciate the measures (pardon the pun) taken to ensure this consistency in the metric system great lengths (sorry) were taken. The following describes the history of the meter:

"[A] meter was originally defined as ¹⁄_10,000,000 of the distance between the North Pole and Earth's equator as measured along the meridian passing through Paris... The meter was later redefined as the length of a particular bar of platinum-iridium alloy; then in terms of the wavelength of light emitted by a specified atomic transition; and now is defined as the distance travelled by light in an absolute vacuum during ¹⁄_299,792,458 of a second."

Thus, the green that we see in grass is the result of a light spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of aprox. 545nm reflecting off the chlorophyll within the cells of the plant. All of this to illustrate that our entire reality is based on relevant perception. We measure one thing by comparing it to another.

What about the touchy-feely stuff? How do we measure love or joy? The implication is that the same process applies when it comes to spiritual matters and even understanding God. Although I do not believe that by any temporal means we can measure an infinite God, I do believe that by using a standardized system we can make tremendous advances in understanding His creation and thus the Creator Himself. By a means of spiritual reverse engineering, I believe that science can help those of faith to understand their creator and in doing so we stand to gain a greater understanding of God's nature. May this increase in understanding lead to wisdom and a "unity of faith" (Eph 4:13).