Why nobody ever listens to this "radical" new age management style crap.

Well, I'm now back at university and loving it. Freshers week was good with virtually no alcohol, and so have been the other two weeks I have had here so far (okay, with the small exception of the few days of flu that may or may not have been of the swine variety that caused me to miss my first lecture of the module I will talk about in this post) have been good.

So anyway, onto today's lecture, one which is very fresh in my mind, having just come from it. As a management student, I decided to take a module in Human Resources Management - and so this was my first lecture. Now, when the lecturer starts off the lecture with "there is no God", you know the next 2 hours are not going to go well. He shows the first slide, which I adore. Following the horror of the bad HR management I experienced in my year in industry, this slide tells me everything that I already know - so wha does this have to do with God? Well, apparently, according to my lecturer, We have transformed society into one that was originally dependent on rules and regulations, one that was dependent on the state, one that said that everybody was useless, which is (apparently) what religion teaches. (hold your horses, I'll get to that in a minute - that isn't the hilarious bit). This is the age of the self - this is a world that now revolves around you, with you at the centre of it. Some psychoanalysts found that if you strip away everything that is on a person, all of their culture, their societal rules, you free them to do whatever they want. These people were free from society, free to be their own person. These people created their new subcultures, with different ideas about what they liked, and how they saw the world. They were free...? Er, no. What these psychoanalysts had developed was a technique to strip away one culture for another to take it's place. The old culture was built by... people, oddly enough. This was not the age of the self, this was the age of being taught how to try a different society. Besides, this was touted as good. I don't think it is. I think, having observed people, that those who act on what they want, what they desire, are the ones who end up foolish, and the ones who end up lost - because you do not know what you want. These new people, that were free from society telling them what they wanted, all of a sudden, became very open to the new corporations who were doing something new - telling people that if they bought their product, they would be free - that this is what they wanted. People need to be led. This is the ultimate conclusion of Marxist and Communist Philosophy - we can try to get people to work for themselves, and be their own leaders, but ultimately new leaders will find their way in this place.

So why did I find his HR values so fresh and exciting, and agree with them? Because they were all about valuing the person, and making the person feel needed, valuable, etc. Nothing to do with the psychobabble in the video - people need to feel valued because it is a great motivator - if you tell someone that they are useless, they will be - this is something I learnt first hand at work. The moment I slipped up, I was told that I was useless. This did nothing for my self-confidence. The way to treat people is to make them feel valuable, help people realise why they made the mistake, back them up, encourage them so that they don't make the same mistake again. This is nothing new. This is Christian Ethics. People have the idea that religion is based on making someone feel bad about themselves, making them feel useless, that they are unable to help themselves. This is why my lecturer said what he did at the beginning of the lecture, because he thought because of this idea, people are rejecting it. Perhaps he is right, maybe that is why people reject the gospel message, because of this misunderstanding.

But I have news for you. This is NOT the Christian Message! The Christian message is full of love. It tells you that this God, the most powerful being in the universe, who put the stars in space, who created the heavens and the earth, who created the most beautiful nebulae in space, to the most magnificent mountains on earth. This God, who can control the forces of nature - cares about YOU. He Values YOU. He wants YOU for the skills and abilities that YOU have. This is My God. Someone who cares about Me. Not some distant entity that I cannot reach, but one who reached down to me and lives in me. One who cares about the smallest issue that I have. One who cared about me so much, one who loved me so much, one who thought that both you and I were so valuable to him that he came down to visit, to show his glory here, to die for us, to save us. That is My God. One who cares about YOU and ME.

Freshers week!

Ah, Fresher's week - I remember mine, something I am proud of, as I am probably one of the few at my uni who do - I love freshers week, so many new faces, new people, all looking to get as much cheap alcohol as possible because they are now free of their parents, free to do absolutely anything they want - but as I have said in one of my earlier posts, with freedom comes responsibility - and this is what this years new freshers will all learn - eventually. University is the biggest step to maturity for most people - developing people to realise what impact they have on the world around them, what influences them to make thier decisions, who they are, and finally, what they want to do for the rest of their life. But I don't think that Student unions are doing enough to help them learn these vital lessons quickly enough - I can guarantee that over 75% of all students at Lancaster, my own uni, will drink some alcohol this week, most of them in excess - this is not cynicism, this is reality - I have seen several freshers weeks already, this one will be no different. Now there is nothing wrong with drinking alcohol, in my opinion - a few drinks is a great way to get to know some people and make good friends - alcohol loosens you up, it makes you more prepared to get engaged in conversation and have a great night - it is what I describe as the social lubricant - but it is not without the dangers of too much:

You start coming around - your eyes are bleary and tired - you open them, and as light starts coming through them, the pounding begins - boom, boom, boom - you feel like a slow moving jackhammer is penetrating your skull, and the surgeon isn't using any anaesthetic - you drag yourself off the bed- wait, something's not right - you look around the room, seems normal enough, but then you start seeing different posters on the wall to your normal room - the duvet covers are different - this is not your room. Your ears start tuning into what you can hear - the shower in the en-suite is running. You hurriedly get up, headache still pounding, mouth is feeling dry. You find your underpants on the floor and put them on - backwards - you don't care, you just want to get out, what happened last night? you can't find the rest of your clothes, so still blurry eyed, you stride out into the corridor and trip over the traffic cone on the floor. finding your trousers in the hall, you make your way towards the door to the flat - until you hear the shower stop, and the lumbering beast of a woman is now standing in the corridor. You slept with HER? my goodness, you must've been wasted, you think - you stagger out, wanting to wake up and this nightmare to end - finding your shirt on the staircase, you lumber down and walk hurriedly back to your own room. After getting a spare key from your residence office for your flat, you get back in, and all over facebook are the pictures of you passed out on the floor, with various obscenities drawn in black marker on your face. you glance accross to the mirror and see them still there. you look back, and see the next picture - that woman, snogging you, is all over the internet. But the worst is, you will never forget the screams she made after you left her flat -"I have syphilis you know!"

Now okay, this is quite a story, but is quite real, for many people - it does happen, and it is totally not worth it - this would probably be the worst morning of your life - and even worse is that all too often, it happens the other way around, with the genders swapped. There is an easy way to tell the difference between your real friends, and the ones you oughtn't hang out with - your real friends will tell you the truth and tell you if you have had enough - the ones you want to keep away from are the friends who tell you to drink more because "you haven't had enough yet".

Freshers week can be such a dangerous week - like I said, alcohol removes inhibitions, so my advice is to go easy - you can have a great time without drinking too much! Here's my top tips for reasons to avoid too much alcohol:

1. I remember a friend of mine said once: "wow, I must have had such a great time last night, because I can't remember it!" I am sure you can see the stupidity - what is the point in having a good time that alcohol will just make you forget all about it anyway? It's as if it never happened.
2. having alcohol can make you do things you will regret later - would you rather go on a night out and have a good time, or go on a night out and say/do something that you regretted later?
3. Alcohol gives hangovers - Alcohol is not a substitute for water, and it will dehydrate you - this causes a hangover - whilst as there are some touted "hangover cures", the sure one to avoid it is to only go to sleep whilst sober - if you drink too much, this could take a while and lead to you missing vital lectures, or missing events that you really wanted to go to - such as freshers fair.
4. Alcohol is an addictive drug - A little while ago a report showed that due to it's effects, alcohol would be a banned substance if it was introduced now - it is only because we have been drinking it for thousands of years that it is not banned.
5. It's addiction can lead to serious problems - you may tout the phrase "it won't happen to me", but then I challenge you to give up drinking for a month if you say that - if you can still go out and have a good time without alcohol, then good - if not, if you are miserable without it, then you need help - it has already happened to you.
6. The health problems with alcohol are serious - you liver can shut down, and without it your body cannot cope and you need a new one. Another fact about your body and alcohol, you can only process one unit per hour - your body cannot work faster. If you drink 36 units in one night, that means that the following night, your body is still processing through the alcohol in your bloodstream.
7. Tolerance to alcohol is NOT a good thing - this only means that your brain is no longer as affected by the effects of alcohol, which means that it is used to having alcohol in your bloodstream - this means you have been drinking too much, and when you don't have alcohol, you will most likely feel worse for it - it is like when you are a regular coffee drinker - my parents now have coffee mid-late evening so that they will get to sleep - their brains are so used to the caffeine that they will pump extra serototin, a hormone to relax them, into their bloodstream - when the caffeine is taken out of the blood by the liver and kidneys, the serototin is still there and makes them tired and ready for bed - the same with alcohol, your brain will compensate by adding hormones to your bloodstream to counter the effects of alcohol - when the alcohol is removed, then you will feel the full effects of those hormones till they are too reduced - this causes an addiction, because your brain may then want the alcohol to dumb down the effects of these hormones.
8. You can have a good time without alcohol - I drink only in moderation, and I kinda know when I am starting to get a bit tipsy - so I hold back - because I know if I pass a certain threshold, my attitude will not be reserved towards my drinks and I will say "Oh what the heck!" - but every time I am out with my friends, even if I have had nothing to drink, I have an awesome time.

I wanted to make it to 10, but hopefully the reasons above are suitably good. Note that not once have I mentioned God/religious reasons - because usually for every biblical law there is good reason behind it - such as the eight above.

whose blood runs reddest?

In The Merchant of Venice, one of Shakespeare's plays, and a piece of literature that totured me through GCSE English Literature, Portia, a beautiful woman whose fate is decided by her suitors opening different boxes, meets a moroccan gentleman who tries to wed her in accordance with this little game - a shakesperian Deal or No Deal if you were. She does not take a huge liking to the fellow, remarking at the end, after he goes home empty handed, that she hopes nobody of his "complexion" should come to her again - despite his attempts beforehand to make straight that albeit he has a different skin colour, his blood is just as red as hers.

On a recent trip to Germany, I visited Buchenwald, a former concentration camp during world war II. Having not really studied WWII in great depth before, I learnt a few things, the ignorant person that I am - it was not just Jews who were persecuted, but Homosexuals, political opponents, gypsies, and biblical scholars, to name but a few of the categories of people at the camp. The Nazi regime was about the cold, efficient method of "cleaning" the world of this so called "scum", because these people were inferior - did not uphold the ideals in Hitler's world, and had no place in mankind. One thing I noticed at the place was the memorial, a metal plate with the countries of all the people known to have died at the camp. The artist who installed it built in a special feature - the metal plate is heated to 37 degrees centigrade - Body Temperature. The idea was to unite every single nation on earth and say that we all have something in common - the Nazi Regime was purely about segregation, seperation, classification of everyone. Therefore, in stark contrast, the artist has united all those people whom the Nazis seperated and classified under our one thing. We are all Human.

Have we learnt from this? I don't think we have at all.

Under the Bush Jr Administration, for fear of terrorism, people were racially profiled because of their skin colour, and detained in guantanamo bay without trial, submitted to various methods of humiliation and torture.
We have had, in the last couple of decades, several regimes in which either white or black people were driven out of the country - in some areas of South Africa, which was liberated from the Apartheid movement, whites now cannot go because of fear of racial hatred.
In the Middle East, a war has been waging for centuries, in a "king of the hill" style battle, where two sets of forces both lay claim to one city as their "holy land". Each nation oppresses the other.
A big debate opening up in the UK is whether or not we should pull British troops out of Afghanistan, which on closer examination, is a debate as to whether or not we should save british troops but not Afghan citizens, who would fall to the taliban regime, which has already enforced the brutal elements of Sharia Law in the provinces that it controls - a law which puts women to a lower state in society, and carries brutal punishments, including death, for people who convert out of Islam, or practice homosexuality.

There is a fine line between patriotism and racism. Whose blood runs reddest in this world? Nobody's. We should not pull out of a country because we are losing one soldier per day. In both world wars, we kept on going through both of them, whilst losing thousands each day, and eventually we crushed the enemy - in WWII, we eventually crushed an enemy of the world - a powerful dictatorship to which the phrase "human rights" never even existed in their vocabularies.

I think we are all guilty. I will admit that if I see someone wearing a turban, I find it a little strange. If I see a woman wearing a full face covering, I find it a little off-ish, simply because it is out of the norm.

A Man stood up and said "I have a dream" - It is one of the most powerful and well known speeches in American History, in fact, throughout the world - Where Martin Luther King Jr stood up and gave a speech condemning racism in the USA, and stating that he wanted to see a country where white folk and black folk could talk to each other. Where white kids and black kids could play with each other without fear of retribution. He had a dream about desegregation of the races.

I have a dream, too. I have a dream that one day, our cities will not be made up of ghettos where "the black people live" or "the asian people live". I have a dream that one day, should we get caught up in battle, the safety of our troops will not take precedence over the safety of the citizen's whose rights we are fighting for. I have a dream that that is all that we will fight for. I have a dream, that one day, nation will stop rising up against nation over battles of wills, territory, religion or politics. I have a dream, that I will be able to walk down the street and not find it strange to see someone wearing a turban, because it will be normal to see someone, such is the integration that we would have produced. I have a dream that we do not need to worry about absurd political correctness, because we are educated enough to know what can be said and what can't. I have a dream that this does not stretch to racism, but also to homophobia, sexism, ageism, persecution against someone's religion, disability, or physical appearance. I have a dream, that one day, the world would be one.

Split or Steal?

I thought about this decision earlier today - would you split or steal? Let me explain the situation: In the UK we have a program called "Golden Balls", a horrifically complicated gameshow that would take approx 3.5 blog posts to explain. but at the end, you are faced off with another person - and the cash prize that you have accumulated at the end of the show has to be distributed to the two finalists. Each player has the choice to "split" or "steal" - if you both choose split, then you halve the money between you - which on yesterday's jackpot meant splitting around £40,000 - a rather nice sum of money. If one of you chooses split, and the other chooses "steal" - the one who picks "steal" takes all the money - but if you both choose "steal" - then you both go home with nothing. So the question is whether or not YOU would split or steal: and I will explain the reason why you should always pick split - and NOT steal - and the reason might be less obvious than you think.

the two of you have the chance to discuss what you will do - we will have two imaginary contestants for this hypothesis - we'll call them Adam and Ben (A and B for short...) - After all, surely, the only way to get the maximum prize is choosing steal, and not split - if Adam chooses split, the maximum amount of money he will take away is 20 grand - it's either 20 or nothing. If he chooses steal, however, then it is either 40 or nothing, depending on the opponent's decision. So the obvious option is to take "steal", as that is the way to get the most money. Adam, however, is not a greedy beggar, and so he chooses split - and here is why. Let us assume that Ben is greedy and wants all the money - if he chose steal, then there is no way that Adam can get ANY MONEY - no matter what he chooses - if he chooses split, then Ben walks away with all of the money - if he chooses steal, then ben walks away with nothing and so does he - therefore, for the benefit of Ben, he might as well choose split - at least someone is better off if ben chooses to steal - however, the decision is made purely in their minds - whilst as they are allowed to discuss the option first, that doesn't mean they will stick to their promises - the discussion always invariably is each other trying to convince the other that they will split, and means pretty much nothing. This is why most people often choose to steal - because if Ben is convincing enough that they will split the cash, then greed will enter Adam's mind and he might choose steal.

Therefore, the discussion is a red herring and should be ignored - because the same "conclusion" is always reached, with each person having made up in their minds if they are going to split or steal.

But back to the argument - if you start with the assumption that the other person will steal, then you get nothing anyway - the only way that Adam will get any money is if Ben splits - and Ben likewise - therefore this is the decision that they both ought to make in their heads "I might as well split - if he steals, well then at least he's got money, and I never was going to have anything" - if both players reach that decision, then they will both end up getting 20k - which is a rather large amount of money anyway!

So how then to proceed with the discussion? The last thing you want to do is make your opponent convinced that you will split therefore - as he could get greedy and take all the money, leaving you penniless - therefore the choice is simple - you have to convince him that you will steal! If Adam were to choose in his mind that he will split, he has the job of convincing Ben to do the same - so if Adam tells Ben that he will steal and that is all he came to do, Ben might as well choose split so that Adam gets the money anyway - and if adam is convincing enough about how he will need all the money, and 20k is just not enough money to help him out of debt, etc, then ben will look like a scrooge if he chooses steal - and nobody wants to do that on national television - so Ben splits, and Adam, being the nice, kind person that he is, chooses to split.

this would certainly be my tactic if I were on the show and I got into the final - I would not want to steal, since the other person rightfully deserves that money as well, you both earnt it throughout the show - and if I split, and the other person steals? Then I guess the 40k will probably cover the cost of cleaning eggs off the side of his house, and improving the security of his house so he can sleep at night, after his whole town finds out what a complete A***hole he is...

My Mum has objections to the game, and the more I think through the problem, the more I think she is right - because firstly, at face value, it is a game of deception - trying to convince the other players that what you claim is true - and trying to hide the truth - but it goes deeper than that - if we just look at this individual problem and ignore the rest of the game:

The base idea (of producing a problem that tempts both players to steal, so they can get the biger money) is poor - it assumes that both players will try to steal - so automatically it is a game that induces greed, and not only that, assumes that players are in themselves, naturally greedy individuals, thus attempting to make a statement about humanity as a whole. Secondly, and this is just at the first level, each player then has to decieve the other that they will split, when in fact, they will steal - so even at the first level of analysis, this is a game based on greed and deception.

But it then gets worse - at the second level of analysis, you both ought to split - good enough, because it is all about focussing on the other person and letting them have as much money as they choose - but in order to reach that certainty that the other person will split the money with you, you have to lie and tell the nation that you will be greedy - when in fact you intend to split all along - so the situation then forces one opponent to go from a state of righteousness to being a liar and a greedy pig - if only for 5 minutes - to force the opponent into a place of rigteousness, away from any greedy desires he may have. Therefore, the only way to be certain of coming to the best decision for the both of you, is to lie about being greedy.

Therefore, I can see where she is coming from - I have, however, seen two people choose to split the money, a whopping £140 jackpot, which they decided between themselves was not worth stealing off each other... I choose to watch it therefore, not because it produces greed, but because it shows up those that are greedy, and those that are good, honest people - and I always like to see it when two people choose to split - though that said, the episode in which they both split, one of them did add that she was relieved when the other person produced a split - meaning that she mostly expected the other person to walk with all the money - thus meaning that she was using something similar to my analysis - if the other person wants to steal, they can do - after all, it is not a large amount of money.

So in conclusion - greed does not pay - greed only offers the possibility that it would not pay - let's take a look at this whole economy shedoodle - the recession that we are a current part of (although latest figures show that we are going up) - it was caused by people getting too greedy - banks lending money that they didn't have, to people who could not pay it back, just so that they could profit from the returns on the loan - and as the whole situation collapsed around us, have we learnt the lesson of greed? Clearly the two contestants faced with the 40k haven't. They both chose to steal and went home empty handed. Greed does not pay.

Sex, Death, and Evolution... and Copernicus.

I am in the middle of reading a great book called "13 things that don't make sense" - this brilliant book talks about the thirteen biggest scientific mysteries of our time, and I have just finished reading the chapters on Sex and Death not making sense in an evolutionary context. Let me summarise for you what the book says.

firstly, there is the problem of death - and we mean natural death here, in terms of a lifeform having a limited lifespan. Eukaryotes (these are the more complex cells that make up you and I, as well as plants and animals) and prokaryotes (simpler cells that make up amoebas and bacteria) have one difference, and that is that Eukaryotes will die of old age, prokaryotes will not. And the reason for this difference is telomeres - every time you create a new cell your telomere will reduce - when this is finished, then you will die. Scientists have been able to switch off this in small animals, but are uncertain of the long term effects on humans to be able to prolong life - and the animals died anyway - we cannot live forever yet. But we know how we die, but the question is why? what evolutionary benefit is there? The argument that death evolved and stayed around because overpopulation can lead to the downfall of a species doesn't work here, since, as Richard Dawkins himself put it, evolution cannot possibly function for the benefit of the entire species or group, it can only function for the purpose of the indivdual organism that has the new mutation.

The second problem is Sex - which is, oddly enough, seemingly linked in with death - since the telomeres came about as a result of sexual reproduction - but the fact of the matter is, is that there are much better ways to reproduce (possibly not quite so enjoyable, but that is a different discussion entirely...) - ones that do not have the cost of death. What evolutionary benefit was there in having sexual reproduction? what made it stick? Why do we now have to reproduce with another organism of the same kind, instead of producing an exact replica of ourselves using our own genes to be passed on? after all, there is another cost - by having to find a mate, our offspring may inherit some bad genes, ones which could damage the chance of the species prolonging it's life.

The Author hits upon a revolutionary idea, refencing ancient astronomy. Back in the greek times, Ptolemy observed the planets and postulated that the plantes revolve around the earth - after all, we humans are special, why would God not have us at the centre of the universe? This seemed to fit with Ptolemy's observations, until some fellow astronomers pointed out some issues with their observations. exception upon exception upon exception was produced, and ptolemy's model was constantly refined and rebuilt so that everything could agree - in the end, it was a complete mess. Copernicus simplified things, and realised that the movements of the planets made a lot more sense if everything revolved around the sun, and not the sun and all the planets revolving around the earth. The new age of astronomy was born on this much simpler and more accurate model.

So the author suggests that this is what we are missing in these problems - be have the wrong basis, the wrong foundations for explaining biology - this is why it doesn't make sense yet... you can see where I am going with this. I personally think the author is right - until he starts talking babble about how they both work around each other, sex and death, and one breeds the other etc.

balderdash - so close, but no cigar, because that still does not explain the WHY in this question. Hence why he still ends the chapter with nothing resolved. Because let us stip down to the bare bones of this - what is the one foundation we are working on? Evolution.

Mental exercise here: If we took evolution out of the equation, and placed in an intelligent creator, everything makes more sense - Let us take death, for example - a lot more sensible to keep populations down, because this time an intelligent designer can actually design a species for the benefit of the whole population - evolution is simply not intelligent enough to design the world we have and live in - second to that, in the bible, during the days where people were living to 900 years old, and God saw the people on the earth getting too numerous for their own good, it says that he decided to shorten their lifespan - intelligent input for the benefit of the group. As for sexual reproduction, this is once again another piece of intelligent design - produce only two people on the earth, and by sexual reproduction a hugely diverse population can be created - diversity means that the whole group can survive - since everyone gains their own individual skill - because they might have inherited better intelligence, or stronger muscles and bones, or more nimble hands - so some can provide the law and development of the community, some can be the soldiers to defend the group, while others can be the craftsmen who can build houses and shelters - if you only have a group of intelligent people or strong people, then you are missing other skills - again, evolution is not intelligent enough to explain everything in this world - and as a hypothesis, clearly does not meet up to the standards of what we have discovered in science - and like the ptolemaic astronomic model, should be scrapped before we keep adding any more ridiculous ideas to explain what the hypothesis is just not up to scratch enough to explain.

one final thing I wish to address, and that is that you might discover another problem that we have if you look at the question that was asked - they both start with the same word, "WHY" - WHY have we evolved sexual reproduction? WHY have we evolved death? science has already answered the WHAT and the HOW - but it is simply not built to answer the why - because then it has to fall on evolution - why have we EVOLVED these traits? This is no longer scientific question, but philosophical - and it is after the origins of man - this is not philosophy of science, but the philosophy of religion - the scientific community is now touting evolution as it's new god - the new being that is the answer to all, our creator, that which is untouchable - which is why the author of my book did not question this as the foundation - Evolution is UNFALSIFIABLE - it cannot be falsified! Modern scientific method and assumption does not allow us to try and find fault with evolution. Because as soon as we come up against some evidence, or some argument against it, we immediately do not question evolution as the problem, but we look to find other reasons - despite evolution being the only missing link - we are like the greek astronomers who once they find an anomaly with the position of the planets and stars from where they should be in our earth-centred model, we find a possible addition to the model to overcomplicate things, because it cannot possibly be that our initial premise is wrong.

The search for man's origins by the path of science has become a new religion - and Evolution is it's god - the battle of creation versus evolution is a battle of religions - so for true science to keep to the evolutionary hypothesis is to tout a god as the answer to our origins - so no argument that we should find out where life came from without god is applicable, because evolution is a god in it's own right - atheism, in it's attempt to live life without God, has turned full circle to develop a new one. so how do we answer this? Well, the decision is up to science - we can choose to now rebuke evolution and carry on living our lives to develop new cures, beat cancer, discover new species and new planets, develop new technological advances - and keep god, in whatever form it comes in, out of the science books and in the religious texts, or we have to allow creationism to have a chance in the scientific world - to be credible as an alternative to evolution - and long then may the battle of which theory is right continue. If scientists choose neither and to keep evolution, then I now name you as members of earth's most modern religion, scientism (despite your religious text being 150 years old and "messiah" being 200).

Thank you. Rather important and poignant rant over.

Please note, that Scientism is not to be confused with the rather misleadingly named Scientology, which has actually has no scientific fact behind it at all)

Pro-equal oppportunities, anti equality, anti-feminist

Ok, just to clarify before people get the wrong idea - it would probably be more accurate to say I am against Female Chauvinism - which is often passed off as feminism, which not only gives true feminism (which is, in reality, simply equal opportunities) a bad name, but also makes itself look better than it actually is. This is the idea of the dominance of women (as opposed to the dominance of men) in today's society - the idea that men are useless, ignoramuses who do nothing to benefit society - that all men are lecherous, decietful, evil, and that women should have nothing to do with them - except to have sex - but they themselves are the only ones who should be capable of wielding that power - that you can only have sex by a woman's acceptance of it, simply because any man would obviously not care who the woman is, as long as they can get what they are always gagging for anyway. The other danger of female chauvinism is equality - and again, before you all come at me with pitchforks and torches, let me explain what I mean - because as you can see in the title, I am PRO- equal opportunities.

Science has proven that men and women are different - on average, men are physically stronger than women, and women have generally more dexterity than men. Generally speaking, men are better at remembering directions, but women are generally speaking, better at remembering landmarks and places. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume, that in the jobs which would favour a man's body more, such as jobs requiring heavy lifting, you will END UP WITH LESS WOMEN THAN MEN IN THAT POSITION, SINCE OUT OF THE JOB APPLICATIONS, THE MEN WILL BE MORE FAVOURED FOR THE JOB. However, imagine yourself being the interviewer for a job where a lot of heavy lifting is required. A small, weedy little man comes in for the application, and the next person up is a female bodybuilder - who should be accepted for the position? the female bodybuilder of course, since she is best suited for the job. But my complaint is against those people who say that it is discriminating against females that there are more men in that job than women - which is simply absurd, if there is any discrimination, it is purely against those who have the least muscle power - which nature has decided should, GENRALLY speaking, be women.

But this also flows out into other jobs - I constantly hear of complaints that there is not an even split of women in the workplace, and that this clearly shows that there is discrimination of women being hired for jobs - not necessarily so, I have done statistics, and you will be unlikely to find a 50:50 split. Besides, we have only just started reaching an age where women are having careers and becominbg breadwinners in their families as well - it will take time to average out - so if you look at the figures, you may well find that if you look at people in the workplace who are 40 years and over, the male-female split will be much greater than if you look at 20-40 age range, or even 20-30. Now that we have laws in place that stop companies from discriminating against gender, colour, age, and disablity, the true feminists should be happy - you have won your fair and just fight, women are equally allowed to get a job and earn money as men are - and I side with you, I believe they should, women were previously an untapped resource for today's world of business.

There is, however, one gripe that has come to my attention on which I must side with the feminists, and that is equal pay - even in huge sporting events such as wimbledon, the women tennis players get a smaller reward for winning than the men - and on average, women are paid less in the same jobs as their male counterparts - this is wrong and does need sorting, the sooner we get a law against this the better - but then that is another war won - no need to keep on harping on about it...

If I finally get back to my first point, which was that you get feminists who can do without men, who are effectively female chauvinists. Your behaviour is dangerous and worse, hypocritical - this is precisely what you criticised us for during the anti-male-chavinist movement - and I say that it is dangerous because you alienate the male gender of your own species - you turn us away from you, and to call yourselves feminists gives feminism a bad name and causes us to decide whether or not giving you this equality was such a good idea - maybe things were better when they were solely in our control. (of course, this is not true, equality is the better thing). But I would guess that the reason you have this idea is because of mistreatment by another man - this man was too a chauvinist, and outright revenge and rebellion is not the way to do things - rise above chauvinism, and fight for equality of every person on this earth.

hmm... I'm sure I was an adult only a few weeks ago

well, I have now finished a year in switzerland and I am back living in the UK - and since I am a student once more, this now means that I am living at home with my parents - and all of a sudden, my attitude and mentality have completely changed - it was only 3 weeks ago that I was a fully fledged adult, and I pledged to my parents that I was now an adult, not a child anymore, and I will therefore end up acting like one - after all, this is something that I had actually become accustomed to in the last year - but now my independence seems to have been revoked, and I have dipped back into childhood manner - no longer wanting to do work, or basically do anything my parents ask of me - I have been home a week and haven't done one of the 30 jobs that has been assigned to me to do (though to be fair, I have another 14 in which to get them done) - and I am even backing up this laziness by suggesting that I have plenty of time to get them done, nothing to worry about!

But the issue I think is this - there is only two things that have changed, the first being which country I am living in, and the second being at home with my parents. The first is unlikely to have that much of an affect - I am not so changed by the residents of the country that I live in that my entire personality is going to change - after all, I was feeling incredibly lazy in France, where I had a 2 week holiday before fionally returning to the UK - but I think there is something about being independent that allows you not just to have a mind of your own, but a body of your own as well - the only things you need to do is what you actually need to do - which for me, is my pending dissertation outline, due in when I return to uni - but that cannot realistically be started till I have completed my interviews, which will be the primary foundation of the aforementioned essay.

I think now I am back in the UK, living back with my parents, that I realise how important independance is, at least, how important it is for me - perhaps you only realise how much you need something when it is taken away from you - living in a country seperate from my parents gave me such a freedom, that I will only enjoy when I return to university.

But perhaps there is a problem on my account as well - I never had the typical "teenage rebellion phase", so I suppose that is what I have ended up with now (just a little bit later than normal) - In self reflection, to keep up my end of the bargain of acting like an adult, I should rise above this self pity and laziness, get off my backside and do some work. Maybe being at home with my parents has just gotten me lazy, because it is too easy to fall back into being a child again and let the laziness take over.

moral of the story? not really this time - perhaps it is that the blame is not always on the other person, or that laziness is not a virtue, or that independence is a good thing and helps to mature oneself - take from it what you will - even if it is just the reading of my musings that you find amusing.

Love and Romance

Romance is dead - or at least, close to it - perhaps it is still lived out in the older generations, and there are a few of us true romantics still around - but I am here to be slightly facetious. For what it is worth, Romance is dead amonst the mass of the population, and here is why. Love is a very complex thing, and I do not think that we, as a generation, have understood it properly. Because I believe that true love and true romance is to be found, and only the other day did I work out what it means to love someone (because, to be bluntly honest, I was trying to think what would characterize the perfect woman for me - so I know what to look out for. You've all done it, admit it (perfect man if you are of a female gender...) - and that the deepest love that you would ever have for someone develops from them having a unique quality, or set of qualities, that you adore in them, but are rare to find. And I stress this last point because this I think is key.

I worry about a lot of my friends, because I see them fall in and out of relationships like the phases of the moon. and I do not believe that this is healthy for them because they are getting into the "relationships" for the wrong reasons - either the desire to simply be in a relationship - I know I suffer from that a bit, perhaps it is therefore a blessing that no girl has ever found me attractive enough to want to date me - or that they feel insecure, or that they are infatuated with a person without actually knowing the real person behind.

Unfortunately this is where experience of what it is like to be in a relationship is needed, to then go on to explain why it is unhealthy - but I believe it causes a lot of emotional trauma and distress, and you gain a false view of what love really is.

So back to my original definition - when you find a unique quality in someone, a quality that you completely adore. Why have we moved away from this? Is it because of the move into becoming like sheep who all follow each other, that these days I struggle to tell two people apart because society has turned people into clones? perhaps. I will leave that up to you to decide, but the reason I think my definition is important (it is not necessarily everything that is involved, relationships are complicated after all), is because it reduces the feeling of the need to cheat, to divorce and to seperate. Because the reason this quality or set of qualities has to be rare, unique, something that you would not find in somebody else (or are unlikely to find in anyone else close by), is precisiely that, that nobody else is like them - and that because you adore those things about them, once you have them and enter a relationship with that person, you will not want to live without them. This begins the partnership that is to eventually become a marriage - that two people who cannot live without each other and become devoted to one another, work as a team and as one - when, as the bible says, the two become one flesh.

This is how it is with Christians and God - when Christians have found God, we fall in love with him - not just because he loves us, but he offers something that Nothing can ever replace - with a woman, you could argue that somewhere around the world that there may be someone like her or similar to her - but God offers unending grace and unending love, but above all, there is nothing else that exists, nothing that we can do, nor can anyone else do, to remove our sins from us, other than Jesus Christ. Why does God love us? it is difficult to say - what have we to offer the almighty, that he has no source for anywhere else? Perhaps it is that we have the possibility of being saved - nothing that any angel would ever experience - and maybe that is the quality God adores in us the most - that we can have salvation through him. (Though, I am of course merely speculating, we shall never know the full truth till we are in heaven)

The Grey Area

A number of people criticise those who say that there is only black and white, a statement I would agree with. There is this idea that there is something such as the grey area, where morals can be diluted and we are not sure whether it is right or whether it is wrong.

However, naturally I disagree, as I said earlier, I definitely side on the side of only ever being black and white. There is one reason for this, and you have probably guessed it by now if you are following this blog - God. To God, I do not believe that there is such a thing as a grey area, where people might be pardoned or might not - why? because God is a God of justice - it is his ultimate decision to determine what is sin and what is not.

But today I thought about why we keep a "grey area" - why do we say something is morally grey and are prepared to live with it?

I think there are two reasons: the first is that law is a much more complex thing nowadays. The classic example can be taken in streaming videos off the Internet - is this piracy, is it wrong, should it be illegal or not? and I think that because we don't have a modern day "ten commandments" to deal with downloads, intellectual property, and therefore what is defined as stealing, under which this may or may not fall - the introduction of technology and the more ready availability of information, and the willingness of musicians, film-makers and TV-corporations to make money from their creations, yet with the ability to make an exact copy so easy (the only art that used to be sold for a living tended to be paintings and sculptures, which is a lot more difficult to make a forgery of than it is to say, copy a DVD).

And therefore the law needs to be more soundproof for people to determine what is right and what is wrong - the vast number of downloads per day can be argued to benefit the industries, as it gets artists work out into the public domain and people then buy the records if they want to hear the real thing with more improved sound quality, picture quality in films, etc. However, on the other side, there are the people who are making money from the download sites. it is so easy to make a quick buck from the Internet by the use of advertising. I could make money from this blog by allowing people to advertise on it, but I have chosen not to since I do not wish to make money from my wisdom (or lack thereof, I leave you to make your own conclusion...) - especially as this is not costing me any money in the first place - unless you count my Internet subscription fee - and the making of money would be at the cost of the reader getting annoying sidebar adverts which may not actually be beneficial to the values that I promote on this site.

Therefore, to answer point one, the laws need to be made clearer, and definite - and wishfully, by God - perhaps we ought to study his word to see if there is anything that may relate to this topic, for example, to give us guidance. Save that, Paul said that those who do not have the law are guided by their conscience, and convicted as such - Maybe our lawmakers should take a look back, see the whole picture, and decide what is right.

The second reason why we have a moral grey area is because we do not want to try and justify what we are doing, or for the matter, we are using it to justify something that is wrong. we keep a grey area because we know that if we had to place it in black or white, it would go in the side of black. In other words, we know that we are sinning. if you are in a situation such as this, unable to decide if it is right or wrong, stop trying to justify why it is right, take a step back, and look at the bigger picture. This I speak for from experience:

I am battling an addiction to something that has plagued me for around 6 years. Constantly I would try and justify it, putting it in a morally grey area. 6 months ago I realised this was wrong. a few weeks ago, after using it as a form of self-flagellation because of a period of depression I went through, I started trying to beat it, knowing full well that it was wrong and trying to beat it. That was the best 9 days of my life. I felt so free, so happy, so full of Joy in the Lord that I was on top of the world. Then I took a knock and I went back down, falling down a slippery slope. A week ago I pulled myself out again, and I now know how far I can go before I am on the slippery slope. I know that I am so close to that edge, because the slope leads straight up to my position on this matter of righteousness. There is a black and white. I am now, for the second time in 6 years, standing in the white. But the white square is so small and so close to the edge of the black. If you think you are in morally grey, it is because the black and white is blurring together - with morally grey, there is always a shade of black - you cannot get away from black until you are in a zone of pure white.

A little philosophy

ok, so for those of you who have not done any philosophy, or have no interest in things such as this, this may be a little boring - but I enjoy it...

Anyway, so i was on the train the other day thinging about God and metaphysiscs and all that, and then the following arguments came to me:

The argument against God is that of metaphysics. For those of you who don't understand philosophy-speak, this basically means that which cannot be known. so to say that something is metaphysical, is to say that we don't know anything about it. Since God is (by philosophical standards) unseeable, untouchable, cannot be heard etc, then he must be metaphysical - how can we know anything about him?

However a counter argument would be to say that to define anything as being metaphysical, would surely mean to say that we know something about the object in question - that it cannot be known - we know, that God is a concept about which we can know nothing - therefore, to attatch the definition of "metaphysical" to anything, is surely a fallacy, since we contradict ourselves in attributing "metaphysical" to the object.

Sorry, I went into philosophy speak again. To say that we cannot know anything about God is wrong, because when we say we cannot know anything about God, we say that we know that we cannot know anything about God. At which point, we are saying that we know something about Him! So we contradict oursleves.

The next argument against God is that of language. since we don not know anything about him (as we could just simply ignore labelling him as metaphysical altogether and just refuse to talk about him full stop), we must therefore not talk about him and focus on more pressing matters. But as these arguments have stated, Philosophy is purely about language - an argument is produced in language, and concludes in language, and all we are discussing is how to use words. What we are not discussing is whether or not an object exists. Therefore to say that in language we must not talk about God is wrong since we are perfectly capable talking about God, whether he exists or not, just as we are capable to talk about a fictional character. If the argument is to say that there is nothing to talk about, then again they are mistaken, as we have talked about God for millenia, so clearly we have something to talk about.

This brings me on to my next point, as provided by Prof. Richard Dawkins:

"God probably doesn't exist. So stop worrying and enjoy your life" is a series of poster campaigns in the UK.

I have a few complaints about this. One, I am suprised by Richard Dawkins' lack of faith in his atheistic religion by saying only the word "probably" - so is he not sure? does he think that there is the possibility that God does exist? C'mon Richard, stand up for what you believe in! Does he exist or not? My next point is that this poster campaign sends surely a backwards message - why WOULD we worry if God existed? what on earth do we have to worry about, if we have faith in Jesus' death and resurrection? If God didn't exist then we have a lot to worry about! Death, destruction, pain, suffering - all of which, by faith, can be resolved...

And finally, I would argue that God probably does exist. Now it has been a while since my a-level in philosophy, so here goes my version of the cosmological argument for the existence of God - since I see no flaw in it, other than the earlier issue, now resolved, of trying to prove a "metaphysical" being (which, by the way, is a flawed argument as it claims that God has not revealed himself - which if you look at the eyewitness accounts of God's work written down in what is hailed by historians as a document which contains the most evidence and historical accuracy about the events in question, with the highest degree of reliability - the bible - he quite clearly has shown himself, and all around the world today, he still shows himself through miraculous works and deeds) - and the other flaw that exists in all philosophical argument of a priori logic having an infinite regress until you reach empirical evidence and empirical evidence being unreliable due to our senses being foolable (though since we can know no other until we are proven wrong, we might as well continue as we were anyway, rather than doubt empirical evidence, discard it, and live without knowledge of anything) - here is the argument:

1. We exist at this time, in this place.
2. time is continuous (as far as we can tell)
Conculsion - If time were infinite, we must have travelled an infinite length of time to reach our current position, as per the rules of mathematics
3. To travel through an infinite length of time is impossible, as per the rules of mathematics
Conculsion - Time must therefore be finite
4. To be finite, there must be a start or an end
5. Every effect has a preceding cause
Conclusion - to produce the effect of time, there must be a preceding cause that exists outside of time.

And so to conclude, I would actually say, Professor Dawkins, that there is more evidence to suggest God's existence than not. There is a whole wealth of evidence to put the evolutionary theory into disregard, we have still yet to discover what makes life, how, in fact, the first prehistoric goo became an organism in the first place, what that organism was, and recreate it in a laboratory. The evolutionary timescale of around 6 billion years is laughable, considering we have more than that many species on this planet (that we know of), and we certainly have not seen evolution of 1 per year - in fact, we have not seen evolution, which at the rate evolution would suggest it should occur, we should easily have seen by now, the length of time we have been studying (about 150 years since Darwin)

And finally, another argument I remembered I had today. Mankind is built wrong. We could not possibly have evolved and survived, and there is a very good reason for that. We explore. We want to find the new, the different, no matter how dangerous or life-threatening it may be - we want to see what is over that hill, be it mammoths to kill for food or man-eating leopards - It is hard to find another animal that likes to explore in the same way that we do - we are so different to the animals, so far reached - that we are even able to classify us in a completely different section from "the animals" - since they are so similar in comparison to ourselves.

Freedom and responsibility

The problem with the UK is that everyone wants freedom - I don't know whether or not it is the generation (mine) that grew up using the argument of "it's a free country" to get away with anything on the playground that has led to this uncomfortableness about a lack of "freedom". We do not live in a free country. Ok, granted, we have a lot more freedoms that other places in the world - for example, we are not restricted on who can go to school and who cannot, we are not restricted on healthcare or have our movements restricted by war. We are, therefore, by comparison, a free-er country than other places on the globe. but that does not give us the feedom to do anything - and with freedom, comes responsibility.

The Media, for example, have been granted free speech and freedom of information - they can publish any piece of true information (unless you are the daily star or the daily sport), and nobody is allowed to challenge whether or not they are allowed to say it. Which is good. Or is it? Let me explain. Only a little while ago, a top official in the police was photographed with top secret details of raids that would be taking place across the country with regards to terrorist suspects. What did the media do? Publish the photograph and explain that there would be raids across the country. This is one of a series of examples that show that you need responsibility when you are given freedom - as a result of this abuse of freedom, the police were forced to draw forwards the raids, leaving them unprepared and rushed - which could explain why none of the people who were caught during the raids are still detained - all of them were released.

When you bring up a child, you give him freedoms, but you als need o teach him responsibilites with that freedom - for example, if you let your child go down to the shops to buy some milk fr you, he has also the responsibiity to do as you asked him, to not lose the money or the milk, or to not spend it on sweets instead. The same with the Media - we have given you the freedom to publish what you want, but also the responsibility to pulish only what should be published, in the best interests of the nation. If, like the child, you cannot be responsible with this freedom, we must surely take away your sweets, and limit your freedoms again.

As for the expenses row - I think both the Media and the government have taken their freedoms too far - Yes, government ministers should not claim on their expenses what was not incurred as part of their job - and the media were good for pointing this out and getting this sorted - however now it is gtting petty and ministers are losing their jobs, some for having done nothing wrong - I think we need to nip this in the bud soon, and just have an overhaul of the expenses system and be done with it.

But of course this "freedoms and responsibilites" does not just cover the government and the media - we all need to make sure that with our freedoms of speech, lfe, etc, that we also take responsibility - otherwise, we should remove the freedom altogether.

A Challenge

A friend of mine recently challenged me about why I feel there is a right and wrong to everything, and why I need to tell people that they are "wrong". Allow me to ramble during this post - I need to use this to think it through - I may even conclude that they were right...

I see only black and white - I guess it is because there is only black and white - that i how God would see it, so that is how I ought to see it - at least, that can be done for when it comes to sinning, but the challenge was also about theology - and differences between different christian denominations. I do not affiliate myself to any denomination - simply because I do not wholly agree with the set theology of any church body - I believe in a a literal interpretation of the bible, but where we balance what the culture was like at the time, with the reasons why God has set those rules in place then - and therefore what would God do for the times of today. Take for example, the infamous argument about women in the ministry - based around where Paul says that he would not allow women to preach - the reason being is that back then, women were nowhere near the status in society that they have now - their word could not be trusted, the very thought of a woman having authority over anybody else was ludicrous. this is why the rule was set down, clearly - because to have a woman leading the church would have ridiculed the christian faith, and made the word of God untrustworthy in the eyes of men. Nowadays, we know that such ridiculous stereotyping is wrong - but, it may be the case that in a church you know is populated by masoginists, you do not want to appoint a female minister for the same reasons that Paul would not.

Therefore my argument would be that I suggest that a particular theology may be wrong, simply because it is not biblical - it is nothing like what God intended our church to be - if it is not biblical, it will often have a negative effect, rather than a positive one.

The reason why I stand up and say that something is wrong is because somebody has to. If somebody had killed someone else, justifying that it was justice, out of passion, etc, would you turn around to them and say that what they had done was right? No! if someone stole something, you could not possibly reason that by God's word either, for it is forbidden in the commandments. The thing is, as someone who is also a sinner, I know how easy it is to be able to convince yourself that something is right, that it is okay - it is up to someone else to guide them into a Godly way of thinking. How you go about it is another matter - do you condemn them to hell for doing so? Whilst that would be God's judgemental wrath, that is not going to help them - they will most likely rebel against what you say, and therefore turn further away from God. This, again, I have experience of...

Instead, you show them, in love, like Jesus taught us, that what they are doing is not right and not glorifying to God. you pray with them and work with them such that they will then seek forgiveness and repentance for their wrongdoing. but someone has to point them in the right direction. We are the body of Christ, we bring God's holy spirit, and therefore we cannot leave them alone for God to convict them of their sin on their own - since they have turned away from God. Instead, we need to help shine the light on their path - and show them where they have gone wrong. This is why I tell people they are wrong - but I do not try to be judgemental about it - if I have in the past, that is due to lack of experience and I have learnt how to be more tactful! (and still learning too...)

When it comes down to theology, my friend does make a very good point - and I think we are both working towards the same goal, but by different methods - we share the same frustrations, about Christ divided amongst the church - different denominations not talking to each other because of different theologies that do not seem to matter - although we are all destined for heaven, we are split - the Kingdom of God is divided. My Friends argument was that it does not matter - and I am of the same opinion, that these things do not matter to our faith - if we were to get rid of these arguments by solving them through biblical analysis, we would have something clear.

My argument is that I want to unite the churches all under the bible - strip away all that we have added to Christianity and let us just simply sit on the bible, and Jesus' teachings, as the mainstay of our religion. Having anything extra is like being given a golden, polished statue to put on the mantlepiece, and then making your own things, that are worthless and useless, and putting them in front of the statue, hiding what is of real value. This is what the church has done, and we should unite - what holds us all together, what binds us together, is that statue - or rather, that cross, on which our Saviour laid down His life for us - let us clear everything else away, so that we can see him all the more clearly, and can hold him up as a shining light to all the world - a light we can carry, no longer clouded with the things we have hung on the outside, but a bright, shining beacon to the world.

As for whether or not my interpretation of the bible is correct - that is to be determined by other scholars. Let us let the scholars, who have studied his word carefully and under due consideration to the cultural reasons behind anything that was decided, decide accurately what it is that the bible is saying.

Who/What is your master?

I was on the train the other day and I suddenly had a bit of a revelation. I was thinking about control and servitude - and suddenly realised that we, as humans are born to serve one thing or another. I serve God, and Holiness - I try to keep those as my masters as the thing that guides my life, and those are honourable things to serve. There are others though, that I notice a lot of other people serve. The following descriptions are the extremes - but we have to be careful about how far we step towards them.


The first is Money - this is more commonly known as materialism, and it is the desire to gain as many things as possible - earn as much money as possible to buy the most things for yourself - and it does not matter who or what gets in the way - this is perhaps the most obvious one, and something that we possibly all fall foul of - do you have to have that thing, or is it purely for your own edification, your own status in society. Note that this is not about spending money, and is not even about buying little luxuries for yourself - but it is about buying things for the sake of buying them - for the sake of showing off to your friends how much money you have. This brings about greed, and with greed comes poverty on th flip side - people are pushed down into the mud by you own selfishness.

The second is Power - this is possibly another that is fairly obvious - the desire to be head o everybody else, the desire to have control over other people, to be able to enslave them and get them to do whatever it is you want - and you will walk over people to get there. If you gain power by rightful means, however, and because you have done honourable things to deserve your position, oreven through your own heritage, such as with a monarchy, then you can be happy and take the responsibility that the power gives you. Unless you take on that responsibility, and use it wisely, then everyone below you will fall.

The third is Sex - another fairly obvious one, but one we hope everyone esle will ignore - to be driven and have your life ruled by sex is not holy - not in the least bit - since this is a desire to have your own pleasures fulfilled - true love-making is to make the other person happy as well, not just to fulfill your own sexual desires - this even goes for those in a married relationship - your relationship should never be based on sex, but on love. If you have a relationship based on sex, you are not in a relationship - you do not have love - you love only the sex, and not each other.

The fourth is Comfort - this is a little more subtle, but we should not be ruled by comfort - and this is more difficult as well to explain, as it is one that there seemingly is nothing wrong with - but Life was meant to be lived to the full - I see comfort as where you are happy to sitwhere yu are, and do not want to accept any change that is going on around you - you hould not be interfered with, because you are happy right where you are. You should get out, enjoy life, and do things that are slightly outside your comfort zone - this is real living - sitting in a comfort zone just causes life to ebb away quietly - this is a waste of life, which is a very sad thing indeed.

The fifth is Yourself - this is a very subtle one, and is fairly new as well - and possibly the one for which this post mght get some criticism and reaction - but it is where you stand up and declare that "nobody has rights over me". This is "My Body", or "My Life", and only I have rights over what happens to it. This is a very dangerous position to be in, because you are saying that nobody has the right to tell you what to do - if that is so, then society would descend into anarchy, as the government and policing lose power over you. After all, what rigt to the government have to tell you you shouldn't smoke? you know the risks, you can do it if you want, it is your body and nobody else will be affected. what right does anyone have over your unborn child's life? it is your body, you can do with it what you want. hat right does anyone have to tell you you cannot take heroin? it is your body, it is your life. What right does anyone have to tell you not to kill yourself? it is your body, your life, not theirs. The inconvenient truth is that your life does not belong to you - it was given to you - whether you believe it is by God or by Nature, you have assumed posession over something that you did not acquire by your own means. and secondly, even if you believe that posession has been bestowed upon you, your life andyour body are not solely owned by you - bcause everyone around you is afected in your decisions, and therefore it is not solely your right. you should not be self-serving, and try to claim for yourself what does not solely belong to you, but instead focus on those around you, and be a good part of their lives instead. The former brings us back down to the animals, because they look out only for themselves, or their immediate family/group. Do not get me wrong - people do have rights still, such as the right to have a vote, the right to speak up and have a voice for justice - but seek rights and righteousness for the benefit of others and for equality, not for your own selfishness.

I mentioned before that this is a fairly new one - and I also mentioned that this brings is back to the animals - perhaps the inclusion of an evolutionary hypothesis being taught as fact in our schools, teaches us that we are just simply animals - so we then start mimicking their behaviour - suppose we are, then does that not still say that we should try and rise above the animals, and keep on going how humanity has been? But knowing that a loving God created me above the animals already, in his image, teaches me to seek out his holines, and allow him to be my master.

So what is your master then? what controls and guides your life? I know I am not perfect - I am also tempted by some of the above, and sometimes they rule my life too - but if you serve others, serve God, or serve holiness, and let those be the guidelines to how you live your life, then you will reap the rewards backin their multitudes - as everyone around you will repay the same.

Church, it is time to WAKE UP!

I was back in the UK this last week and went to my Parent's church on Sunday, and became rather annoyed at the prayer that was made - during which the request was made for God to "Feed the Hungry", and I wonder why on earth that prayer was made.

Now before you suddenly think I have gone stark raving mad (though I would fogive you for having that conviction about me already), The fact is is that this is not how God intends for us to work in his church - there is no point sitting around on our backsides very nicly praying for the hungry, the sick, the homeless, and anyone else in poverty, if that is ALL we are going to do! let me take a passage from the Bible, James Chapter 3. This is a passage that is commonly misread, and as a result we tend to ignore it because it seemingly doesn't fit in with our knowledge of salvation. It is the passage in which James tells us that "Faith without Deeds is Dead" - but the misconception from this passage is that this is telling us that we are dead, unless we justify ourself through deeds - hugely theologically inaccurate, mainly because as sinful human beings we hae no hope of justifying ourselves, we are justified only though Christ's death on the cross, and have eernal life through his resurrection from the dead. But I digress slightly from my point. James is stating that there is no point in having faith if we don't do anthing to SHOW that we have faith. He is not talking about being a Pharisee, where we stand an shout our prayers on street corners to show how religious we are, that is not what he is talking about - he is saying tht we are the Church - we are Christ's living body - filled with he power of the Holy spirit, we are left on earth to fulfill God's will, and to show our faith.

When I was at School, I preached the Gospel at (I liked to think that it was to, but in hindsight, I think "at" is a more appropriate word) my friends, and they came back saying that they had done good things in their lives, and there are people who do good deeds and are not christians, does that mean they will be in hell? And I think that perhaps there was some indignation that there are christians who DON'T. My Father refers to these as "Billiard Ball" christians - those who come out of their worlds, out of their pockets every sunday, knock around with a few other christians, and then dissappear back ito their pockets again come monday. It is these Christians that James was speaking about, and quite possibly to, as well. What is the point in faith if we do not use it?

I heard an alarming statistic on the way into church on sunday morning, over the radio, and it was this - we spend more money on Ice Cream in the western world each year, than would be needed to feed everyone in the third world.

We talk about a global food crisis, but it is statistics like this that show that we have plenty enough food, and can produce plenty nough food on the world to feed everybody - but where are we trying to even it out? and this is what gets me with some Christians. Other than for your own salvation, there is no point having faith if you are just going to sit on your behind every sunday, and then go to housegroup on a wednesday, but DO NOT ACTUALLY MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THE REAL WORLD!

God has given every one of us things that we are gifted at - things we can do, not just spiritual gifts, but also skills in finaces, cooking, making music - I am Pleading with the church for everyone - the whole of God's church, over a BILLION of us on God's Earth, about a quarter of the percentage of the population of the planet, Now is the time for us to chane the world - stop being a Billiard ball Christian, get out of your pockets, and start LIVING - be a part of the Body of Christ, and fulfill his work on Earth. PLEASE!

Let us start working together - there are an estimated 34,000 different denominations of Christianity, but WE ALL WORSHIP THE SAME GOD, THE SAME MAN, WE ALL BELIEVE IN THE CHRIST, AND HIS DEATH AND RESURRECTION - so let us work together to bring his glory on this earth. It is time that the Church did what it was born to do.

Word Game

One increasing frustraion of mine is a word game that is being played. Often I am bashed for bein a creationist, because people come back with the response "It's already been proven..." usually followed by some insulting expletive. The problem is that we equivocate on the word evoution, which in today's terms has three differnt meanings.

The first is with regards to Molecules-to-Man evolution. This is the hypothesis that out of some pehistoric goo, life was formed by a lightning bolt, created proteins, which thenstarte interacting, forming cells and then eventually single-celled organisms - through a series of mutations, it is then theorised that from this single celled organisms, RNA evolved into DNA, and DNA kept changing to make different organisms and different species - and eventually coming to Humans. It is this version of the word "Evolution" that I argue against - oddly enough, not from a theological basis but actually a scientific one - I do not believe that it is a scientifically valid theory - and in fact, so does an increasing proportion of the atheistic scientific community. It still doesn't stop this hypothesis being taught as fact in our schools, and so called "proofs" of this hypothesis being taught, despite having already been proven as faked (such as the famous embryonic drawings that show that all animals have similar embryos, and the pictures of spotted moths on trees, that were actually pinned on). But that is another rant altogether.

My rant is about the misuses of the word "evolution" where more valid, and not nearly as confusing, words, can be used. Let us take, for example, the Galapagos tortoises. When Charles Darwin visited the Galapagos islands, he discovered that tortoises on different islands had different shells, to allow the tortoses to reach different plants. This does not demonstrate Evolution, but natural selection. This is a process that has been proved - where by the process of certain genes giving an animal an advantage, means that the gene pool is narrowed as the less advantaged were removed, through starvaion because they were not able to get food, etc - just like the galapagos tortoises - the genes were previously available to have the different types of shell - but as the islands became cut off, different food bearig plants existed on each island, and the tortoises whose shells allowed them to lift their head up and reach the higher fruit survived, having the advantage, and those that didn't died out. This is not evolution, because no new species has been created. However this is where the confusion andequivocation comes in, becaue I then get lambasted for criticising evolution, for criticising a hypothesis that is "proven" - however my critics are talking about natural selection and adaptation, I am talking about evolution - we are arguing two different things.

Evolution is used now even in a worse format - the word "evolutionary" can now equal the word "survival" as i read in an article today about an evolutionary advantage - which just was referring to a survival advantage of the particular race or species - and I hate this word game because it feeds into everyone, subconciously that this word is okay to use because it has been proven - whereas the real hypothesis behind it hasn't.

I also find that on the BBC news, every science article seems to try and find some "evolutionary advantage" - as if they further need to show proof of the evolutionary hypothesis - despite, of course, they are a) talking about a different thing, and b) surely it hasbeen proven already...

I hope that you now realise the difference and why us creationists are so hard on the Real Evolutionary Hypothesis. We don't criticise what has already been proven...

Euthenasia, Selfishness and Greed.

Ooh, what a difficult topic! this is suddenly becoming hotly contested thanks to patricia Hewitt saying that the laws should be changed for the UK - is it right to assist someone to die?

Currently, the decision at the Dignitas Clinic in Zurich, Switzerland, is that they will help someone to die, provided that there is no profit to be gained by their death, and that the patient is Mentally Competent.

I have suffered from depression, and I know what it is like to consider suicide as an option out of feeling so pointless, useless, and being in so much emotional pain. And as a first off, I can quite categorically state that I was NOT in a mentally competent state of mind! I was not thinking clearly, rationally, and considering everything else - to me, I felt like the world was collapsing - that I had no world, and most of all, that if I were to dissappear, there would be no-one to miss me.

My mother once said that suicide is the most selfish thing you can do. And I think she was right, and I think that this debate, that it even exists, shows just how self-centred our world has become! Just look at ourselves! We are debating whether or not someone has the right to take their own life, or ask someone to do it for them if they are physically capable of doing so. We have such a materialistic society - we are judged on what we have and don't have - we have to get the latest clothes (most of which, you will probably find, were made in some sweatshop in india, which is another example of our selfishness), because otherwise we don't look good. We have to have as much money as possible, the latest gadgets, the latest this, that and the other, all for our own pleasure - we delight in pleasure in the western world, but we do it to the exploitation of others. Our own banking system used to be flawed, because our greediness got the better of us, so we borrowed money we could never pay back, and banks were happy to lend it to us, because what did they care, this was only someone else's money that they were lending to us!

And now, back to Euthenasia, we are so hungry, so greedy, for anything to please us, that we are even debating whether or not we can take our own lives, when we can't be bothered to try living anymore, because we think that the quality of life isn't good enough.

And even more incredible is the number of people I saw discussing this on the BBC comment thread, who claimed that it is "my body, my life"

Er, wrong. As a Christian, I believe that our lives belong to God - only God has the right to choose who lives and who dies, because he is the giver and taker of life - and he has a purpose for each of us in his kingdom - whether young, old, crippled, or living in a "lower quality of life"

And even if you are not a Christian, why do you believe that your life belongs to you anyway? who gave you life? This is a gift from nature, at least, that you are even conscious and thinking. And when you kill the body, you kill the mind - so why would you want to end a "lower quality of life" when you still have your mind anyway! The Human brain is the most fantastic thing in your life! With it, man has been able to build the most fantastic machines, developed so much, and created so much - all of which would have been impossible without the mind! And anyone who does not have the right state of mind, cannot even be killed by the dignitas clinic - so either you are mentally unfit, at which point you cannot have euthensia anyway, or you have a fully functional human mind, the most powerful tool in the universe.

Euthenasia is a crime and should stay as one - and to end on a quote from House: "You can live with dignity, but you can't die with it" - Death is possibly the most humbling experience - you become nothing, from the human being that you thought you were - you lose everything at death, so what is all this selfishness worth for anyway?

What!?!

So, the terminally ill Jade Goody is splashing over all of our news stories. Funny how there are other women who die of cervical cancer each year, yet still do not get the same coverage...

but the one thing that really made me want to write something was overhearing what Max Clifford, Ms Goody's publicist, had to say about her recent desire for her and her children to be baptised.

Over the past weeks Jade appears to have turned to God for help - perfectly understandable, and I of course have no problem with someone coming to God, especially in their time of need when they truly need to know his love and grace the most. But this was the quote: "I want to be christened, I want the boys to be christened, hopefully they will get to know Jesus... [not bad so far... just the small error of using the word "Christened" rather than the word "baptised"]... so that we can keep in touch when I've gone somewhere else"

Excuse me? Do you mind not making a mockery of my faith please? Has not one, responsible chaplain, told her that this is not how it works? There is not one single verse in the bible that says that the dead can speak to their children - oddly enough, the only "ghost" in the bible ever mentioned is the Holy Spirit - but I think that the sedation has gone a little to her head. This is not how it works, I am afraid. And I would rather statements like this do not make the news headlines, supposedly proclaiming what one deluded woman thinks christianity has to offer - the ability to converse with the dead.

Of course, Ms Goody and her publicist would certaily be forgiven if she was referring to when her children have grown up and died also, then they will see her in heaven - provided she has truly accepted Christ's sacrifice for her, as have they. I pray that they will all see each other in heaven one day - and that they too may rejoice in the glory of Christ, the saviour of the world...

"Vanilla Toffee Credit Crunch"

I suprised myself when I realised I hadn't said anything about this year's hot topic, the very avoidable recession that is hitting europe. And what gets me is that it was very, very, avoidable - and still is, because Economics relies soley on you, the customer, and whether or not you want to purchase something. As a Business management student, I know a couple of things about economics, and so the basics are this: when consumers want to buy things, prices go up, which means that businesses can afford to pay bigger salaries, which mean that people can buy more, etc. when in a recession, the opposite happens - prices go down, businesses pay their wokers less so their workers cannot buy as much, which means prices have to go down further, etc. Such is the circle of business, becase it is not a case of "us the consumer" and "them the businesses" because most of us work and earn a wage out of those businesses incomes, because we are working for them. Yes, sad though it is, money really does make the world go round - without money we would live in a barter society - money just means we can exchange goods or services now for payment of goods and services at another time and place, exchange and trade will always happen.

But back to the point in hand, the growth or negative growth of the economy can be easily steered by consumers - if everyone decided not to worry about the recession and started spending what they were spending 2 years ago, then the economy would resurrect itself very quickly.

So who is to blame? Three sets of people are to blame - Bankers, Politicians, and Journalists. Or in other words Lehman Brothers, Gordon Brown, and Robert Peston.

Why are the bankers at fault? well they were the ones who lost our confidence in the first place. These were the guys that, once exposed about how they are all lending money to each other and really they didn't have our money, we immediately lost our trust and confidence in them, took out our money, and banks started going bust all over the place as other banks decided they wanted their money back too, to pay off their customers. This is how it all started, and this is where we lost our confidence in the banking system. Because we were unsure about the safety of our money, we decided it would be best to curb our spending to save what we had left of it.

Then I blame the politicians - Gordon Brown had a choice for ways to resurrect the economy, and he chose the wrong one - either the Government spend the money into our economy to start it all working again, with businesses producing more, so consumers spend more, etc, or they put it in the hands of the already worried public. They did the latter, and since the public weren't particularly happy about spending their money at the time, no matter how many tax cuts the government threw at them, the recession was certainly not going to be helped.

And finally I blame Robert Peston. Yes, this man has single-handedly nearly destroyed our economy simply by reporting how badly it is going, how steep the recession is, oh, doom and gloom - If we had had one, even one journalist in the public spotlight as much as peston was, who said that actually it wasn't so bad, we can actually put a positive spin on the recession - look consumers, prices are going down, so we can get more for our money - then the economic downturn would not be as down a turn as it has been.

I'm a blogger who get's only a few hits a week - but at least I can tell those people to go out shopping and bring this avoidable recession out of where it never needed to have gone...

A Niggle

I have a niggle that really annoys me - and thankfully, it is supported by biblical verses, so I can have this grunt even at certain Christians.

This world is in the most darkest and dire situation. We refer to the "Third world", bt in reality it is almost two thirds - that is, out of 6 billion people, 4 billion are considered to be without the basic needs - Food, Water, Shelter, Health, and Education - once these 5 have been established, you are getting somewhere. And we sit at home, we see these advertised - some poor starving child in Ethiopia, whose ribcage is showing, who is so weak that he cannot be othered to bat the flies away from his face. It is saddening, but what is even more saddening is that we have become apathetic about the problem.

As a child, I had a dream - an actual daydream, a fantasy - and I also did some basic maths - there are 2billion people in the developed world - that's 2 billion people that theoretically, have the capability to help out the other 4 billion - that is a 1:2 ratio. say we needed a group of volunteers to build a school for 200 children - to satisfy the ratio, we would need only 100 people to build the school - that is more than enough! and this propogated a ream that I believed possible - right up until the day I became cynical, but sadly, realistic. It wouldn't happen because nobody could be bothered to do it. We simply would not get all 2 billion of us, around the world, getting out of our daily office jobs, out of the daily routine, and giving each other a hand - across race, creed, colour, nation.

My Niggle, however, does not just lie with those who are apathetic enough to not do anything - but it lies also with those who believe that "awareness raising" is a much more worthwhile thing to do than actual raising of money. we see so much of it, there is no point raising awareness of the fact that there are people living without clean water - everybody knows that, it is common fact - you would have to find somebody who is really clueless and out of it who does not know that there are billions of people who do not have access to clean water, or enough food, etc.

My deepest niggle is expressed best by James chapter 3 - A passage saying that faith without deeds is useless.

I believe in prayer - I believe that we can pray for these situations to get better - but Jesus left this earth with no physical presence left - he gave us his Holy Spirit to do his work for him - so whilst as we might pray for something to be done, ultimately it has to be done by us - it will only get done by Human hand - God is not going to simply hop down to Ethiopia and bring about some food - because we have the resources here on earth to be able to do it ourselves. This is what james was getting at - he gave the example of a homeless man begging for food - if a man comes up to you and begs for food, give him some! Do not turn around and say "I pray that you shall not go hungry tonight" and then leave him with nothing! Maybe God will hear your prayer and someone else will give him food - but you could've done it yourself.

God wants to use us! God wants to use our talents, our skills, our expertise, in a place that is perfect for us - in a situation where we can do the most good.

Sir Cliff Richard was onced interviewed by a charity, I think Tearfund, if I remember correctly, and they asked him what was he able to do: Can he build a school? No. Can he dig a well? No. Can he make a lot of money? Yes - fine then Sir Cliff should do what he is best at and give them money, whilst they got on with what they were best at.

I am basically saying that God has given you gifts and talents - and whether you believe in Him or not, it doesn't matter - you have gifts and talents - they are a gift to you - so use them to bring about a better world.

Please be intelligent about what you do with your life - one day, you will be lying on your deathbed and look back - and would you like to look back at a boring office job for 40 years, raising a family, and then having wondered where your life went spend your retirement jetting about all over the place? Or would you rather look back, and think of all the smiling children with new schools, all the women who can have medical care, and can safely give birth, all the rural farmers that now have water to irrigate their fields and produce a good harvest, to feed the whole villiage? Maybe you don't get to see those faces because you are best at an office Job - but maybe you might know the existence of those faces, if you use that job to earn money, because that is what you are best at - and you have helped them out monetarily?

Make a difference, do something with your life that you will be proud of, and please, for God's sake, use your gifts and talents with intelligence, wisdom, and to help bring about a better world.

Niggle over.

A warning message

Dear fellow Christians, but non-Christians, please read as well for your own enlightenment, and especially you anti-theists, please read, as I have something to say to you too.

Beware of false teachers and prophets. They exist, they happen. I was recently shown a video of a guy named Todd Bentley, a man who in Florida is well known for his unusual method of healing. This man is not of God. He apparently cures people with violence and assault. In oe video, he is giving a speech documenting a few of these incidents. He tells of when he is brought a man who is suffering from stage 4 bowel cancer, and Todd "cures" him by kneeing him in the gut. He then describes how he then felt like God's presence was not there. He asks himself why? Why is God not here? (I do not wonder why God had decided to leave that particular meeting) - the answer came back, he claims from heaven, that it is because he has not kicked that old lady in the front row in the face. So he proceeds to do so. He describes that as his boot touched the old lady's nose, she fell down under the power of the Holy Spirit. he then goes on to describe, how the Spirit called him to run down the aisle, and punch someone straight in the gut! He also then described how he then asked how he could help out the Pastor who was leading the service. Apparently, the call came back that he should "leg drop" the pastor (for those of you who don't know, a "leg drop" is a move in WWF wrestling).

At another meeting, he stirs up the crowd into a frenzy by telling them that Jesus would be visiting them, in person, the following evening (he had just gained this knowledge down from Heaven, apparently). This is preaching that he knows about the second coming of Christ, which is directly against what the bible says! He whips the crowd into a further frenzy, yelling for angels to come down from heaven. Personally I'd prefer the Holy spirit, not angels- which to do what he was doing could be classified as worship of angels - another biblical no-no.

My warning is this - beware of false teachings. if something doesn't at first seem right, or biblical, then it probably isn't from God. Test any teaching you hear, and know your bible well. Because these false teachers and false prophets can fool you with their methods - this is how they become big in the first place - by giving you what you want, by telling you what you want to hear - this is how the Devil does his work! We need to be mindful, and think through everything. The Bible teaches us that we must not disobey the laws of the countries we live in (unless they go against the laws of God, such as in some nations where it is illegal to be a Christian). To kick someone in the face is assault, and this goes against the laws of the nation, and therefore the laws of God. Since there is no clause anywhere in the Bible that tells you you should kick people in the face to bring God into the room, then what this man did was to break the laws of God, under the supposed clling of the Holy Spirit. this meant that the Spirit ENCOURAGED HIM TO BREAK THE LAWS OF GOD. Either reject a God who contradicts himself, or accept that this man cannot possibly be of God. Please do not defend him by talking about the people who have come to Christ through him. whilst as they might have, the ends does not justify the means. God judges people on their motives, not on their eventual actions.

My Message to the Atheists is this - People like this misrepresent God. People like this do not represent God. People like this do not represent Religion on any matter - the same goes for other religions, and extremists of those faiths. they do not represent their religion, nor do they represent the beliefs of that religion or belief system. Please do not think that they do. As I said above, by this evidence we could reject God, if we accept that this man is a representative of Him who lives on High. Do not consider misrepresentations of faith, made by man, who is by nature a sinful being, but instead, focus on the Christ. Follow his example, his teaching, and find out for yourself if Jesus of Nazareth was who he said he was.

To the Anti-theists. This man is not an argument against religion. this man is an argument for it. Now let me explain why. Look at the people who Todd Bentley was talking to. They were completely taken in by a madman, a man who is so clearly not of God. Does this not say something about the sad state of the world? That people are so desperate, so longing for God, that they are willing to accept a conman for a prophet? That they were willing to accept someone so violent, abusive, and non-biblical as someone who has a direct conversation with the Almighty? What is this world coming to, that people like this can get anywhere in the Christian circle and gain a following, because they offer hope that is so blatantly false? wake up to the destruction that Atheism is doing to our planet. It leaves people without hope, without love, without purpose. It will only lead to destruction, as people try to cling on to anything that fills that great void in their lives.

I felt that void once too. For a short period of my life I felt like I was without God, I doubted his existence - and my life felt horrible - it felt like there was nothing there, a complete void of nothingness that would swallow me up - I thought I would be free, but i could see that I would just brunning from one thing to another, to distract me. It was a painful few weeks as I found my faith again, and found God. I had to cling on blindly, to something i wasn't even sure was there, because I did not know what I would do without my faith. That great void of nothingness is haunting, so people turn to anthing for acceptance, forgiveness, love, belonging - drugs, sex, violence, gambling, money, materialism. The thing to do is stop running away from a void that can be filled by God and the Holy Spirit, because God's love is exactly what this world needs.

Hmm, two opinions in one. makes up for not posting for a while I suppose...