The Blog of Lon

Losing My Religion asks if there is a stand a Christian should take on politics:

We have this huge political race down in America and it seems to me most Christians want to vote Republican - again. Meanwhile we take a look at either sides platforms and I have to admit - you take the good with the bad on both sides - but neither of them are reflective of the gospel message and honestly, at the end of the day, they are the same one’s when in power whom we will also oppose on many an issue.

This post triggered several thoughts in my mind: We allow our politicians to lie to us, our politicians increasingly act in ways that are antithetical to the definitions of the conservative/liberal labels applied to them, politics and religion shouldn’t be mixed at all, and that Christians very rarely display any competence whatsoever at selecting leaders. Read the rest of this entry »

In a previous post, I mentioned my 5 year-old son’s experience with a nurse taking a blood sample, and it got me thinking about one of the concepts I’ve been applying in the raising of my boy that I’ve found to be quite effective. The general concept is to be honest and complete in explanations of things and events and not withholding information due to either it being bad news, uncomfortable to talk about, or something I know that his limited intellect can’t comprehend. Read the rest of this entry »

From a semi-recent posting on Very Important Stuff, I see that a Republican strategist, Christine O’Donnell, made a claim on The O’Reilly Factor that scientists were “cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains”.

The scary part isn’t that some random talking head on a political show misunderstands current scientific research (especially that particular political show), although it should be noted that Christine is a product of the same educational system as millions of the people who heard her speak. A system that quite obviously doesn’t instill any level of critical thought to be applied to things you hear. One doesn’t have to be the sharpest tack in the box to realize that even if one could put human brains in animals, there’s a little space issue going on with the human→mouse thing. But this isn’t a rant about education in the USA.

The scary part isn’t that someone involved in career politics is this clueless about science, although there’s plenty there to be afraid of. The sins against science under this administration are Legion, and we absolutely cannot stand for this demon to continue to possess our government. But this isn’t a rant about politicians’ ignorance of science.

The scary—and exciting—thing is that given time, this isn’t as laughable as it sounds, and humanity as a whole is preparing for a long period of moral issues that makes things like the death penalty and abortion seem quaint. Read the rest of this entry »

Once again, I have a miscellaneous collection of various things I’ve found on the net which are interesting, but I either don’t have time to write an entire post about or think that they warrant their own post. Read the rest of this entry »

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a great Christmas (and if you don’t celebrate Christmas, feel free to replace that word with the recent holiday of your choice) and New Year’s.

I’ve been slack in posting, as you all well know. I mentioned in a previous post that I had been briefly hospitalized with pneumonia. Not only did the infection cause me to feel like total crap, the fact that this was happening at the same time as my son’s 5th birthday didn’t help my mood. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Christmastime again, as if anyone who has been in a store since Halloween doesn’t realize it. Due to my recent rant about Advent, all my readers know that I’m prone to object loudly to things that are prone to disrupt my celebration of the birth of Jesus. You might think that if I work myself into a froth over the mere mention of the “blood of Christ” during a Christmas service, I’d certainly go full-metal-jacket crazy when considering the commercialization of Christmas. But you might be surprised. Read the rest of this entry »

Steve Sensenig over at Theological Musings has written a neat little list of things that indicate if one is possibly misrepresenting God. Here’s a few of my favorites:

• If you think that sickness, financial problems, hurricanes, broken bones, auto accidents, and terrorist attacks are all tools of God “to teach you something”, you might be misrepresenting God.
• If you believe that only “properly authorized leaders” are capable of serving communion or baptizing others, you might be misrepresenting God.
• If you think that the Father doesn’t speak to his children in various ways, you might be misrepresenting God.
• If you think that the only legitimate way to articulate one’s belief in God is found in a 4th-century statement, you might be misrepresenting God.
• If you believe that one’s beliefs about baptism, bible translation, rapture timing, tongues, or a particular interpretation of Genesis 1-2 are absolute essentials to salvation and/or fellowship, you might be misrepresenting God.

I’m not as diplomatic as Steve. I want to take that entire list and perform a ‘s/you might be/you are/g‘ operation on it (Give yourself a cookie if you understood that. For the non-computer-geeks, that means “substitute the words ‘you might be’ with the word ‘you are’ in the entire text). Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the new readers and commentators who have arrived here recently. My apologies for not being around much to address all the various comments (even if I could) or post over the last few days; shortly after my immensely popular last post, I came down with a high fever and thus barely mustered the energy necessary to approve comments to it. After realizing that the fever wasn’t going away and indeed was venturing into dangerous territory, I went to the hospital where I was admitted with severe pneumonia.

So I’ve been a bit indisposed of late. I just got back home, and hopefully will be back in the saddle again RealSoonNow™.

Take a moment to review this painting (click for slightly larger version):

How does it strike you? Do you see it as an expression of Truth, or do you feel the artist was sorely mistaken? If you’re Christian, are you offended? In my opinion, one’s opinion of this painting is a good litmus test of how well one understands Jesus’ message, and the story of this painting is proof that many who claim to be followers of Jesus don’t. Read the rest of this entry »

So much to blog about, so little time to blog. Here’s a roundup of interesting links that I’d considered writing about, but they’re beginning to back up (I’ve currently got 21 firefox instances running on my computer, each one having 4-8 tabs open). So here’s the latest roundup of stuff to frustrate, annoy, enrage, and enjoy:

• First, here’s a very cool list of frequently confused words. Wish the schools taught this stuff.
• Google’s Blogger has a neat little thingy called Blogger Play that will threaten to consume too much of your time; it’s basically a website which presents random photos from the blogs they host. Very addictive.
• Which way do you see the dancer spinning? I see her spinning clockwise, and can’t for the life of me see it in any other way…even after utilizing the spinning dancer hack site, which includes helpful lines drawn for perspective. A fun experiment, even if Scienceline.org discredits it.
• While poking around for good Christmas/Advent messages on the net, I encountered a piece by Marcus Borg on beliefnet.com, entitled Christmas in the Present Tense.
• The government is at it again, looking to avoid the need for pesky search warrants, and pressing civil servants, in this case firemen, to report people who express discontent with the government. Remember kiddies, thoughtcrime is bad.
• The putrid debate over teaching creationism in the schools reached a new low as the Texas state director for science curriculum is forced to resign simply because she forwarded an article thought to be critical of creationism.
• A new report arrives saying that Iran suspended the nuclear weapons program four years ago. A dismayed GW Bush says it doesn’t matter.
• Christopher Hitchens continues to prove he’s atheism’s smartest evangelical prophet a rhetorically skilled idiot by assuming there’s only one meaning to Hanukkah and using his dimwitted interpretation to bash the entire concept. Fortunately, in stark contrast to my last post on this blog, he gets called on it.
• What is it with Texans? My theory is that since some of the prettiest girls in the USA are grown in Texas, it makes everybody turn into blubbering fools. Anyway, an Austin police officer, in accordance with his departmental policy, refuses to taser an elderly man. His reward was to get fired.