Lipstick and other Cosmic Questions

tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11627808.post-1131470912449484942005-11-08T08:54:00.000-08:002007-03-24T11:32:56.116-07:00Lipstick and other Cosmic QuestionsMaster of Disaster Gerald Flurry has released the latest issue of the Trumpet magazine. I have not been fortunate enough to remove myself from the mailing list so far. Inside is a littany of articles detailing the ultimate demise of Western, in fact worldwide civilization. The result of living contrary to God's Law. Here are some of the article headings. "Wake-Up Call" "A Jewel in America's Crown-Lost" "Urban Anarchy" "Descent into Barbarism" "Tragedy of Biblical Proportions" "Israel's Bleeding Wound" Those happy little eye-catchers are just from the table of contents. The chapter headings within the articles are jammed full of woe and foreboding. One statement that jumped out at me was, "God controls the weather. The Bible says that earthquakes, droughts, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes and tsunamis are anything but normal. These intensifying disasters are not God's fault. They are our fault. National tragedies are upon us, and will increase one hundredfold because of our disobedience to God's law and our rebellion against His authority." [Note: The Bible also says that a donkey talked, and the earth stopped rotating.] Same old song and dance. PCG logic is that God created a universal law. It is not His fault that you are disobeying this law because He created you a free moral agent. You could simply choose to do the right thing. In "Mystery of the Ages", Armstrong indicates that many have never even heard the name of Jesus. Think of a Chinese peasant living a few thousand years ago. So it seems that at some point along the line, like when Adam fell from grace, God gave up on humanity to follow their own devices. But wait! God controls things like weather, and national governments. And God is calling out special people like Moses, David, Herbert Armstrong, and Gerald Flurry. So He is still playing with the works. Just like most things in cogdom, and in religion itself, there is always an answer. The answer is never clear, and the answer is never subject to scrutiny. Religion asks, sometimes demands of us to believe in things that simply cannot be proved. When I say proof, I mean directly without needing any special middle man to show us the way. As our knowledge increases we understand things that people 1000, 2000, 6000 years ago did not. Why do we struggle with that? It seems very difficult, and I cannot explain why. We accept it in engineering and medicine, but we recoil at holding religious leaders to the same standard. At some level we feel comforted. But the facts rise up like a stench in our faces. Millions upon millions murdered, misery, ignorance, hatred, politics, sexual scandals including multiple thousands of children abused. These are the things that religion claims to stand against. Yet these are the very things perpetrated by religion. Even the coggers that do not directly take part in war long for That Day when the Eternal descends with a shout and kills millions upon millions. This kind of god seems like a human with bad behaviour given super-power status. Give me a real god for once. Given that mahem and murder is gone out of fashion in most religious circles today, exception being radical Islam, many have taken to modernizing God's image. Ministers use the Bible to show attributes of God's nature that apply to today's surroundings. Pam Dewey's talk relating to the Matrix is an example of this. This is spin, and like putting lipstick on a 4000 year old pig. Nobody has answered the fundamental (or technical) questions around God's existence and what, if anything God requires of us. Sure they claim to know, and they enjoy standing at the podium giving modernized presentations using their Dell Pentium 4 laptop or PowerBook G5 using their laser pointer. But the laser beam is still pointing at a black hole. A lot of people are talking, but God's not answering. My current position on God, post cog, is very simple. God may exist. God may not. Wishful thinking, circumstantial evidence (e.g. Moses saw His rear-end), rites or feelings will not bring God into existence. Also, we do not have the capability at this time to prove that beings other than ourselves do not exist in some other reality. We are stuck with reality as it presents itself. Focus on the here-and-now and let eternity take care of itself. It's out of my control. All I can do is lead a peaceful life in harmony with nature and my neighbor. Isn't that what God really wants anyway? KTHOAsbestosnoreply@blogger.com