The Mathematics of Religion: One God, but whose?

Updated 3/31/2017

The Mathematics of Religion

.....between religion and arithmetic, other things are not equal. You use arithmetic, but you are religious. Arithmetic of course enters into your nature, so far as that nature involves a multiplicity of things. But it is there as a necessary condition, and not as a transforming agency. 

No one is invariably "justified" by his faith in the multiplication table. But in some sense or other, justification is the basis of all religion. Your character is developed according to your faith. This is the primary religious truth from which no one can escape. Religion is force of belief cleansing the inward parts. For this reason the primary religious virtue is sincerity, a penetrating sincerity.

In the long run your character and your conduct of life depend upon your intimate convictions. Life is an internal fact for its own sake, before it is an external fact relating itself to others.

Religion is the art and the theory of the internal life and strife of man, so far as it depends on the man himself and on what is permanent in the nature of things. But all collective emotions leave untouched the awful ultimate fact, which is the human being, consciously alone with itself, for its own sake.

Religion is what the individual does with his own solitariness. It runs through three stages, if it evolves to its final satisfaction. It is the transition from God the void to God the enemy, and from God the enemy to God the companion. Thus religion is solitariness; and if you are never solitary, you are never religious. Collective enthusiasms, revivals, institutions, houses of worship, rituals, religious tomes, and codes of religious behavior, are the trappings of religion, in its passing forms.

Accordingly, what should emerge from religion is individual worth of character. But worth is positive or negative, good or bad. Religion is by no means necessarily good. It may be very evil. The fact of evil, interwoven with the texture of the world, shows that in the nature of things there remains effectiveness for degradation. In some the religious experience the God with whom you have made terms, may be the God of destruction, the God who leaves in his wake the loss of the greater reality. 

For those that say, "God is everywhere, all around us." Your God, nor mine, may not be everywhere.
He was not in that café in Kabul that was just blown up by a terrorist, at least not my God!
He was not in that store or building that was terrorized by some crazed person with a gun that shot those innocent people, at least not my God.


Do you believe in GOD!
A question that frequently emerges from people who are deeply religious, but unfortunately what they are really referring to is..............Do you believe in THEIR God?
Believing in God is, in the long run, not as important as living your life as if you believed in God and even more importantly extolling the attributes of a good, kind, and just God.


When asked that question I usually would reply, which God is that? Is your God a tolerant God? Does your God say that only those who follow your religion, will be welcome into Heaven, and there are many religions? Will your God accept everyone who lives their life not only in acceptance of other's beliefs but also condemning people who practice evil in the name of God?


If you believe in God, then you must believe in Satan, the God of evil. Where God is the semblance of creating order out of chaos, Satan is the opposite, striving to create chaos out of order. Those who practice harm to innocent people, in the name of God, are worshiping Satan.


All religious leaders need to take a stand against Satan's followers. Any terrorist who wages war for their god has fallen away from the teachings of their church, synagogue or mosque and is now in league with Satan, the god of evil, the god of hate.


Pity the Atheist, which they vehemently deny is also their religion, Atheism, but it speaks to the act of being tolerant of others beliefs, which Atheists are not. They say they only believe in science. They are so arrogant that they say they would not believe in God if he came down and stood before them. Otherwise you're just an agnostic, in wolf's clothing.


Atheists have no history of being or doing good or living your life as a person who rejects evil for the sake of being a good, kind, and just person. They force their beliefs upon others, just as all religions do, but demand you denounce what goodness any religion preaches. If they were tolerant of others, they would not be so demanding and they would be encouraging goodness over evil.




In considering religion, we should not be obsessed by the idea of its necessary goodness. This is a dangerous delusion. The point to notice is its transcendent importance; and the fact of this importance is abundantly made evident by the appeal to history. All religions have defectors that still claim allegiance to their religion, be they Christian or Jew or Muslim or Buddhist or Mormon or whatever. The deeper they go into harming not only those outside their religion, in the name of God, but even those believers in the same religion, the closer they come to actually worshiping Satan. Satan worshipers revel in dominating the many by the few.




So ask yourself again, WHO IS MY GOD!

You are the sum total of all you have experienced, learned, thought, felt, believed and acted upon. 
What you are -- is inside of you, influenced by external forces, both good and bad. 
You are -- what you believe, based on who taught you and how you interpreted their ideology. 

My God lives and can only live, inside of me, guiding me.

Excerpts from:

Religion in the Making by Alfred North Whitehead (1926)

http://alfrednorthwhitehead.wwwhubs.com/ritm1.htm

Suggested reading:

The Psychological Origin and the Nature of Religion by James H. Leuba

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/39511/39511.txt

 DON'T BE BLUE 

Has HE seen the Elephant?

Michael Moore calls our soldiers cowards!

"Has Michael Moore seen the Elephant", or anyone else who wants to criticize our soldiers?

http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,Galloway_062304,00.html

One phrase familiar in enlisted men's writings is, "I've seen the elephant," or, "I'm off to see the elephant." Used to describe the experiences of war and soldiering, the term has many possible origins. Old soldiers in the Civil War coined a phrase for green troops who survived their first taste of battle: "He has seen the elephant."

This Army lieutenant sums up the combat experience better than many a grizzled veteran:

"Well, I'm here in Iraq, and I've seen it, and done it. I've seen everything you've ever seen in a war movie. I've seen cowardice; I've seen heroism; I've seen fear; and I've seen relief. I've seen blood and brains all over the back of a vehicle, and I've seen men bleed to death surrounded by their comrades. I've seen people throw up when it's all over, and I've seen the same shell-shocked look in 35-year-old experienced sergeants as in 19-year-old privates.

"I've seen that, sadly, that men who try to kill other men aren't monsters, and most of them aren't even brave - they aren't defiant to the last - they're ordinary people. Men are men, and that's it. I've prayed for a man to make a move toward the wire, so I could flip my weapon off safe and put two rounds in his chest - if I could beat my platoon sergeant's shotgun to the punch. I've been wanted dead, and I've wanted to kill.

 "I've heard the screams - 'Medic! Medic!' I've hauled dead civilians out of cars, and I've looked down at my hands and seen them covered in blood after putting some poor Iraqi civilian in the wrong place at the wrong time into a helicopter. I've seen kids with gunshot wounds, and I've seen kids who've tried to kill me.

"I've sworn at the radio when I heard one of my classmate's platoon sergeants call over the radio: 'Contact! Contact! IED, small arms, mortars! One KIA, three WIA!' Then a burst of staccato gunfire and a frantic cry: 'Red 1, where are you? Where are you?' as we raced to the scene...knowing full well we were too late for at least one of our comrades.

"I've heard men worry about civilians, and I've heard men shrug and sum up their viewpoint in two words - 'F--- 'em.' I've seen people shoot when they shouldn't have, and I've seen my soldiers take an extra second or two, think about it, and spare somebody's life.

"They say they're scared, and say they won't do this or that, but when it comes time to do it they can't let their buddies down, can't let their friends go outside the wire without them, because they know it isn't right for the team to go into the ballgame at any less than 100 percent.

"That's combat, I guess, and there's no way you can be ready for it. It just is what it is, and everybody's experience is different. Just thought you might want to know what it's really like."
YES, I've seen the elephant.






 DON'T BE BLUE 

Consequences => Choices

When I was learning to take tests, one of the benchmarks of taking tests was that anything with "All" in it, was false. Not so when it comes to the choices you make and the consequences that result. All choices have consequences!

Choices have 6 stages, related to the 5 senses plus one, which really could be plus 2 if you insert intuition.
Any or all of these could be involved in the consequences of the choices you make.
The first is just thinking about it. The more you just think about it, the more likely one of the 5 senses will come into play. But just thinking about it could be the point of no return in regards to the consequences that could result. Part of thinking about a choice could be effected by your intuition about the consequences, but intuition may not become cognizant until one of the 5 senses kicks in.

Any of the 5 senses could be the trigger to making the choice.
Smell and sight could be the first stage depending on which one becomes the one which jolts your mind, or hearing the known or unknown sound, or even the lack of sound.
A reflex action of touching something, the interaction of taste and smell because taste is largely dependent on smell.

The consequences though are time insensitive. The consequences of the choice you make could be instantaneous or not realized until after you die.
The quicker consequences are realized as being either good or bad or neither, the easier it is to change or reverse them if desired. The longer it takes to determine if it is good or bad, the less likely they can be changed or reversed. Most people just learn to live with consequences that don't cause them physical harm.

The point of No Return is the defining point of consequences. The point of no return doesn't usually start in an instant, it builds until turning back has escaped the thought process or the consequence has reached the tipping point of disaster and good consequences don't have a tipping point, they just are. Beyond the point of no return lies truth and the understanding that the sign posts along the way were missed.

I know you'll come back home Dorothy, when your return from OZ.




 DON'T BE BLUE 

Do we really need gun control? GET SERIOUS!

Do we really need gun control? 
YES, to some extent, but how about regulating automatic firearms and BULLETS!

No, Really, REGULATE THE BULLETS! 

We can and should regulate the sale of ammunition and the tools to make ammunition. 

One box per month per household! 

Seriously, if you need more than a half dozen rounds to bag that deer, moose, duck, pheasant or any other BIG game you are shooting at, you are a very poor shot. 
If you need to practice, go to a shooting range, which should be the only place you can buy more ammunition. Use it there, because you can't take it home.  You should have to turn in all of your spent shells in order to buy any more, that way you can't horde them.
Why do you need 5000 rounds of ammunition to protect your home? 
If you can't protect it with just a few rounds, MOVE!

And it should be against the law to send guns and/or ammunition through the mail, 

NO ONLINE ORDERS ALLOWED.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/no-really-regulate-the-bullets/266332/
It's already illegal to send explosives through the mail and bullets are explosives, we should be enforcing that law.

Every citizen has near instant access to firearms and ammunition trough the Internet!
The United States is so saturated with guns that seeking to control them is futile. People own and use guns made in the early 1800s; guns made last month are on sale in stores now. We have a centuries-old accumulation of armaments that shows no sign of evaporating.

But there are two things that are needed for a gun to work: 

the gun and the ammunition.

Well, ok, actually three, but let's take the uncontrollable human out of the equation. Limiting guns may be hopeless. So why don't we focus on the bullets? A gun can be made from any number of common household objects, they can even be made by 3D printers.
But making bullets is much, much trickier.

 Bullets are so easy to come by that that huge stockpiles exist throughout the country. But unlike guns, bullets are single use. While attempts to remove guns from the streets would either be incalculably slow or require heavy-handed, dangerous government action, curbing the ability to buy ammunition would mean a natural diminishment of the arsenal that remains. Every time a bullet is fired, that bullet is rendered useless forever.

Perhaps the best argument in favor of limiting ammunition, though, is this. The mantra of firearms advocates is the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which reads:

The 2nd Amendment doesn't say a single thing about 
THE RIGHT TO OWN BULLETS!

Bear all the arms you want. Make your own at home. Without a bullet to fire from it -- or, at the very least, far, far fewer bullets -- we can achieve what the Founding Fathers really sought: a stable & secure nation.

This bears repeating:
Do we really need gun control? 
Yes to some extent, but how about regulating automatic firearms and BULLETS!

"THE ONLY THING NECESSARY FOR EVIL TO TRIUMPH......

IS FOR GOOD MEN TO DO.....

NOTHING!"

Which is exactly what the United States Congress is doing----------NOTHING!

 DON'T BE BLUE 

The new $10 Dollar, US, Note, will have a woman's portrait on it.

Treasury officials say Alexander Hamilton no longer fits the bill for the $10 note, we need to replace it and plan to replace him with the face of an American woman or women. No one has been picked, so here is a list of prospects.
Sacagawea and Susan B. Anthony are on the list, but they've already been used on US Currency, so we should give someone else a chance.

Here's my My SHORT LIST.

1754-1832
Molly Pitcher - Patriotism in battle
At the Battle of Monmouth, she brought water to Continental soldiers, attended the wounded and also replaced her fallen husband at a gun.

1811-1896
Harriet Beecher Stowe - Antislavery, fiction
Famous for her controversial novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, an antislavery story based on her experiences. Also spoke against slavery.

1860-1926
Annie Oakley - Sharp-shooting and entertainment
Gifted with uncanny marksmanship and star of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, she established herself as a famous western folk legend.

1897-1937
Amelia Earhart - Aviation
Famous for flying across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. She attempted to fly around the world, then disappeared July 2, 1937.

1929-1994
Jacqueline Kennedy - As first lady, Jackie Kennedy became an international icon of style and sophistication, and dedicated great effort to restoring the White House with historic furnishings and art.

1929-2006
Coretta Scott King - civil rights, music
Known as the First Lady of civil rights, Coretta carried on the dreams of her husband, Martin Luther King Jr.

AND some others I think that are likely to make the final cut.

1744-1818
Abigail Adams - Politics and writing
She wrote lucidly about her life and time in letters, and exerted political influence over her famous president husband John, and son, John Quincy.

1752-1836
Betsy Ross
supposedly made the first American flag

1821-1912
Clara Barton - Aid to soldiers and free education
Organized and delivered important aid to Union and Confederate soldiers. Started the American Red Cross. Started a free school in New Jersey.

1837-1930
Mary Harris "Mother" Jones - American Labor Movement
“Mother” Jones was present as a labor organizer and speaker at many significant labor struggles of the 19th and 20th centuries.

1880-1968
Helen Keller - Social reform, writing and lecturing
Deafened and blinded by a childhood disease, she overcame her disabilities, then worked for the blind and numerous progressive causes.

1928-
Shirley Temple Black - Diplomacy, acting
Becoming a diplomat later in life, Shirley Temple was perhaps the most famous child star in history.

Click this link for the big list so far.

Who's on your list?


DON'T BE BLUE

Those squirrels are onto something and George Washington Carver.

That’s what new research published in the International Journal of Epidemiology has found. For the study, researchers analyzed the nut and peanut butter intake of more than 120,000 adults aged 55-69 in the Netherlands, as well as their mortality rates years later.

They discovered that people who ate tree nuts (such as almonds, cashews, and walnuts) as well as peanuts, had a lower risk of dying from cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, respiratory illness, and neurodegenerative diseases — essentially all the major causes of death — during the time period of the study. The results were the same for men and women.

Participants needed to eat at least 10 grams of nuts or peanuts a day to see the benefits, researchers found. Luckily, it’s not hard to eat that amount daily.

While peanuts typically aren’t touted for their health benefits as much as tree nuts, researchers discovered that they were just as effective as other types of nuts at lowering a person’s risk.

Nuts are amazing, they're packed with fiber, have a form of omega-3 fatty acid that can help lower the risk of developing heart disease and can help lower cholesterol, and they contain flavonoids.

Peanut Butter? (best to make your own)
But while researchers found a link between living a longer life and nuts, they couldn’t say the same for peanut butter. The process of getting peanut butter from peanuts (which involves high temperatures) can destroy some of its health-boosting amino acids, and possibly some of the fatty acids. And unfortunately, it’s the same for natural peanut butter as well as sugar-added versions.

If you want the same benefits in Peanut Butter, you have to make your own. I make mine in a micro food processor and I find it best to use five different nut varieties with no peanuts. 

But just using peanuts is also fantastic. 

Keep them refrigerated.

It only takes a small amount to get the health benefits, an ounce of nuts is a serving, and all you should need on a daily basis.

George Washington Carver was born into slavery in Diamond, Missouri, around 1864. The exact year and date of his birth are unknown. He was a prominent African-American scientist and inventor. Carver is best known for the many uses he devised for the peanut. Carver went on to become one of the most prominent scientists and inventors of his time, as well as a teacher at the Tuskegee Institute.

Carver devised over 100 products using one of these crops—the peanut—including dyes, plastics, gasoline  --- and --- PEANUT BUTTER.

DON'T BE BLUE

1968 Pontiac Firebird 4.1L OHC Sprint

I guess most guys have a fond memory of their 1st car. 

This was mine.

1968 Pontiac FIREBIRD Sprint OHC-6 250ci Engine (4.1L), unusual in that it had a single-overhead-camshaft inline, with six cylinders and a 4 barrel carburetor. The manual 4 speed transmission received a hotter camshaft, which boosted the horsepower ratings to 250 hp, which at the time, meant nothing to me, as I didn't know anything about cars, still don't, except........ 

Pontiac exec John DeLorean designed it.

There were only around 1,200 Sprint models produced (exact figures are elusive), and ragtops are certainly on the scarce side, and I had a phobia about convertibles at the time. Sprints were high-performance and you had to put premium gas in them. 

Should have kept it!

DON'T BE BLUE?