It’s a funny title indeed. Fueled by two separate situations in the past month, I think it important to explain further using these examples.
This was a comment I saw on a page recently “have never bought into the invisible dude in the sky thingy.”
Despite the obvious problems with capitalization and sentence structure, this is really just an example of how simplistically God can be looked at. “invisible dude in the sky thingy”? I mean, come on.
I don’t know anyone who actually believes there is an “invisible dude in the sky thingy”.
Although, it’s not uncommon at all for people to believe that theists are somehow lacking in cortical activity. That we believe outlandish ideas of a cumulous-clouded heaven with winged harp players worshiping a white bearded old man that resembles a LOTR wizard.
The very fact that you can actually search Google images for “God” with success proves my point exactly.
But why is that view so common? Where did the idea that theists are so dimwitted arise?
Is it because society is truly a bunch of simpletons or has it been programmed to believe it?
I think it’s both, but since there’s nothing I can do about the former, I’ll discuss the latter.
The programming has come about by the complete over-simplification of heaven. Preachers and evangelists have been making some really detrimental errors when describing how much “fun” heaven will be.
Which leads me to my second example:
I was at a church service recently and the pastor said “Turn around and greet three people.” After we were done he said “Great! Now just think. When we get to heaven we will do that for eternity!”
Uh… Woohoo.
No one wants to go to heaven.
No one wants to go to heaven, because it’s assumed to be a place where there are worship services and Benny Hinn marathons all day long…for eternity.
If that’s the case, I don’t know about you, but hell seems like a viable option for me.
I have no idea what the real heaven is like but I guarantee that the creator of the infinitely complex universe in which we live would not think of a place like that as an “upgrade” for His chosen ones. I would suspect he would be a little bit offended for us even thinking that way.
Like I said, I don’t know what the real heaven is like but my thought of heaven is incomprehensible, like a 3 dimensional world for a stick figure drawing.
When America won the revolutionary war we forgot one thing. We took our freedom, we developed an unprecedented constitutional document all our own, and we transferred our loyalties from the Motherland to the new America, but some things didn’t change. The Imperial system of measure was kept to haunt us for the next 233 years and counting.
The Imperial system of measure is the one we Americans use: gallons, pints, quarts, miles, feet, pounds, etc. (fathoms, pecks, grains???)
The Metric system is what everyone else uses: liters, meters, kilometers, grams, kilograms, etc. It’s a base 10 system just like we use to…count.
Smart…Very smart.
There are only three countries not using the Metric system today. United States of America, and two other countries that I just found out exist.
There’s no need of this. We had our chance 200 years ago and missed it. Our own Ben Franklin brought the Metric system to France but was unable to convince the American people that the base 10 metric system was in fact superior to our modified Imperial system. Which is sad since Americans bought the absurdity of Daylight Savings Time (also Franklin’s contribution), but decided against the simplicity of the Metric system.
Just think, we would no longer have to use Google conversion to find out how many inches are in 13 miles. (Not that too many people actually want to know that…I think it’s just the idea.) We could just move the decimal point to find kilometers! Brilliant!
And if finding an easy way to calculate how many inches you get per tank of gas is not convincing enough…
How many women would love to have a weight of only two digits? 100% you say? Well let’s do it. Let’s go on the Metric diet.
200 Imperial weight = 90 Metric weight
The only thing we’re measuring with the Imperial system is our own stubbornness. As if the world doesn’t think we are stubborn enough. But let’s not just switch because “everybody’s doing it” because that’s just giving in to peer pressure, let’s switch because there are 63,360 inches in a mile. And because “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” But later said he had no idea how much that was. Everyone else confessed the same.
Yeah, you read it right. I said it, “Obama is white.”
I’m sick of hearing all this race nonsense getting thrown around. Genetically he’s just as white as he is black. His mother was white and his father was black. So if you can call him a black candidate, I can call him a white one. Race should not be an issue in this election. Despite what some of the black community leaders try to spread, most of the American people are not racist. 50 years ago it may have been an issue for the elections but it’s 2008, I don’t even want to hear it. I’m not saying that racism is completely abolished in this country, like slavery, but what I am saying is that we have to put things into perspective.
There are several reasons why I consider him “white”, and will continue to label him as such.
First, of all, because genetics couldn’t help us in figuring out what race to consider him, since he’s exactly as white as he is black, than maybe this will.
Which looks more like Barack Obama the guy on his left or the guy on his right?
Ya, that’s what I thought.
Second, this eliminates the race card in the election. No one can be racist, because all the candidates are white.
Thirdly, this helps him. I’m not saying I want him to win, but then again, I’m not saying I want him to lose. If he runs as the “white” candidate we all know him to be, he’ll probably win. If anyone else has noticed the last 43 presidents have been white. That’s 100%. That gives him a lot better odds.
Lastly, by bringing the ambiguity of his race to the forefront, I can bring up his biggest downfall. If Obama is half “white” and half “black”, shouldn’t he be at least half “outraged” at Reverend Wright’s racist rhetoric?
Fuel prices may be one of the hottest issues of today. I think it basically stems from the fact that Americans don’t really care what goes on as long as the price of gas is low. Ethics and integrity is willingly thrown out the window so long as the price of gas stays affordable.
The truth of it all is that we will never “run out of oil”. How do I know? Supply and demand. If we were in danger of running out of oil it would become extremely expensive. As supply decreases prices increase. So how much are we willing to spend for our personal transportation? That’s what it all comes down to, because the closer we get to running out, the higher the price will get. It’s not going to skyrocket to $20 a gallon in a year though, as the supply gradually decreases, prices will gradually increase. Eventually, we won’t be able to afford it.
So what happens when oil prices creep up beyond our willingness/ability to pay? We find other ideas. Car companies won’t sell cars if people don’t buy gas. So they will be forced to make cars that are affordable or go out of business. You can bet that everyone who uses oil now will quickly find some other form of energy that their technology will run on.
Although we will never run out of oil, we will need alternative fuel sources for when the prices become too much for the average person. What’s the best idea to solve our problems?
Hydrogen? Corn? Nope. Algae.
Algae will be the future of fuel. Algae as a fuel source is incredible. Some types of algae are made up of 50% oil, which can be made into bio-fuel.
Advantages of Algae Fuel
After the initial building of algae farms it would cost 1/3 of what we spend every year buying oil from other nations.
The money we spend on algae fuel, is not leaving our country, but actually helping to stimulate our own economy.
Algae farms could be used to clean up waste streams from humans or animal farms.
Corn can produce 100 gallons per acre per year whereas algae can produce 4,000 gallons per acre per year.
Using 80% of the acreage we now use for bio-fuels, we could fuel the entire United States using algae farms.
The acreage used for algae farms is likely to be desert land, which is unused land anyway.
A corn crop takes a year to grow, an algae crop can be grown in a couple of days.
Conclusion
As long as we can a.) get oil companies to invest in this or b.) keep oil companies from ruining this, I think that this has great potential for solving some if not all of our nations fuel problems as well as some of our economic problems.
It’s a funny title indeed. Fueled by two separate situations in the past month, I think it important to explain further using these examples.
Yeah, you read it right. I said it, “Obama is white.”
