MY LIFE

I’m sorry, but some people are just fucking stupid.  Seriously. Fucking. Stupid.

I found this posted on Facebook:

The last five words are the only true and correct words in the entire clip: “No religion desired or required.”

The rest of it is a deliberate lie, even though many people actually continue to believe it to be true.   Bottom line is that without evidence that would stand up in a court of law, it is just bullshit.

“Nothing exists apart from Christ”, it says.   But because Christ does not exist beyond the realm of someone’s imagination, and is not a person, place, or thing, now or ever,  it is impossible to say nothing exists apart from that imagination or idea.  The entire physical universe clearly exists, but Christ does not.  But if someone believes “nothing exists apart from Christ”, then in reality that person believes that nothing exists, period.

The claims of Christianity have been soundly refuted, amply denied, and thoroughly debated for millennia.  It is logically impossible to declare something as “absolute scientific and historic truth” when there is nothing scientific or historical about those it.  Science has proven the claims of the Bible false.  History has likewise shown the claims of the Bible are merely fiction.

So what are we to do with such people?   If they would keep it to themselves, like the good schizophrenics they are, nobody would have reason to hold them in suspicion.   But when they open their mouths, or turn on the keyboard, and let the world know how messed up they are, they deserve every ounce of scorn and ridicule they receive.

Thank you for those who are concerned for my safety and called or messaged me.   I’m not *actually* going to DO anything.  My frustration level with current situations is aggravating the heck outta me because I don’t know what to do to change the circumstances and I get behinder and behinder every month.

Doesn’t much matter “how” things go this bad — a combination of economic factors, both personal and national.  And I know that my own situation is not all that much worse than many other people.    Fortunately I don’t have anyone depending on me for their welfare and survival, but at the same time I don’t have anyone to turn to for my own welfare and survival, either.

I honestly don’t know what to do but keep selling what’s in-house and available, but it’s pennies when I need dollars.   I have to keep paying the bills, AND I need to restock the inventory.  With yarn in-house and ready to dye, there are people who want to buy it.  But I don’t have a way to buy the yarn when I’m only selling a few here and there and having to cover my bills with very little leftover to buy more yarn.   It’s a vicious cycle.

So, I”m not *actually* going to do anything, it’s just always in the back of my mind, and always has been for many, many years.  Even so, I appreciate that people have checked up on me.

———-

As noted several times previously, the blog database got messed up, so the comments function is simply not working any more, and I turned it off to avoid getting blank comments and nothing gets posted.  I haven’t deliberately turned it off just to avoid people’s comments; even when people do comment on the older posts, all I get is blank submissions.

And, if I don’t come up with back payments on the hosting service by May 1, this whole website will go offline for a while until I can pay up and $77.00 they are asking for.  Once paid up I can switch to a cheaper package with lower cost and larger storage space.  That will reduce future bills, but not pay pending/overdue bills.

But if you really really need to comment, you can do so by sending a message to
ray
(at)
raywhiting
(dot)
com

I am really REALLY at the end of my rope.  Apparently the universe has conspired to insist I end my life or something.  There is no way in hell I can keep things going without some MAJOR financial input.  I don’t have it and don’t know anywhere I can get it. I can’t borrow anything becuase I have no way to pay anything back, and I’m up to my eyeballs in debts I already cannot meet.  So my life will be ending during the next few days.  I can’t pay everything that must be paid, so fuck it.  I’m outta here.   Unless something better comes along.   Whatever.

I don’t care how you couch it, racism is racism, and it is WRONG!.

I saw this tidbit on my Facebook feed recently:

It is a thinly-veiled accusation against African-Americans, as a group, as if all blacks (or even a major portion of them) think this way.  It is racist.

It’s also quite irrational, as if the slavery of Africans in this country, is comparable to the slavery of Jews in Egypt.  It is irrational because it is false. The Jews were not enslaved in Egypt.  It’s a MYTH. The Bible is a story book, not a history book, not a science book, not factually true.  And it is definitely not the word of God.

The reality is that blacks in America have consistently been put down and shunted to the side.  There is a reason black culture is as it is, and that reason starts and ends with White Privilege.  Even today, as evidenced by the screen-capture above, blacks are viewed with suspicion.  Whatever anger or hatred they hold, it was not created in a vacuum — it was created by white people insisting blacks are “less-than”.   In fact, the screen-cap above is an example of making blacks “less-than”.  Blacks don’t blame slavery for their problems; they rightly blame White Privilege, and they develop their own culture to stay away from the whites who hate them so much.

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My comment utility is broken, so comments cannot be posted here until I can figure it out and get it fixed.  If you have a REASONABLE, RATIONAL response, you can email it to me.

The “working parts” are down below in a subdirectory, so I hope I’m doing this right.  I want visitors to check in at the top (www.raywhiting.com) instead of www.raywhiting.com/MyLife, but I’m not sure how to go about making that happen.

Okay, so now everything is cobbled all sorts of backwards.  :-(

I may end up just deleting ALL of everything and starting entirely over.   Phooey.

Well… somehow the Comments section of this was utterly deleted, and EVERYbody’s comments from all posts were deleted.  I don’t know how or why or by whom.   So I”m taking the opportunity start the whole damn thing over, from the front page.

I know a lot of people who have wonderful relationships with their mothers.

I know a lot of people who miss their mothers who have already died.

I know a lot of people who are working to improve their relationships with their mothers.

Truly, I get it.   I understand how some people would absolutely adore their mother.   I have a mental grasp of how good relationships work.

I understand the concept, but I don’t feel it    I have no emotional connection to what it feels like to like my own mother, to care about her, to miss her.    I don’t.

My mother physically died November 3, 1993.   As far as I was concerned, though, “Mom” died to me back in 1968-69, the year she and I spent in Denver.  The “Mom” I grew up with until I was 13 became a totally different person to me, and toward me.   “Mother” was just a function of a biological relationship,  not a heart-to-heart relationship.

I won’t say all the things that were said or done (most of it I’ve written before), but the end result was sealed when I came home from school and discovered my mother had moved out.   She’d gone to the bar, met someone, came back and took some of her stuff, and she was gone.   I was 14, without a clue.   She came back many days later and told me where she was living, and invited me to come meet the guy.  Actually she invited me to come have dinner.

WTF??

You don’t invite your kid to dinner - you put your kid first and make sure he eats.  And goes to school (that year I had to register myself for school, and only made it to class a couple days a week).  They were in a one-room rental (toilet down the hall, shared by everyone on the floor).   Mother said I could come live with them, or stay where I was.  Fuck that.  You don’t tell a 14-year old kid he has to decide for himself what to do or when or where or how.   Not back then, and definitely not now.  (Eventually the hotel owners where I was staying let me stay with them, they called the welfare people, they made me go to school in the daytime, and made me eat in the night, and then the welfare people sent me back to California to live with my dad and other siblings — which was another whole story, since my dad didn’t really want me either and wanted to send me to Boys Town instead of letting me come back home.)

One time when I was going to a conference with some co-workers there was chit-chat about family, and one of them asked about my parents.  I said, “Mother died in 93 … best thing she ever did for her kids.”     I thought Dr. Thomas was going to climb over the seat and beat me for saying such a thing.  I can’t help it, I have nothing particularly nice to say about my mother.  I just said, “You’d have to know her to understand why I said that.”  and the topic changed to something else.

So, really…. I do understand that some people have great fondness for their mothers, and I envy that because I do not have that.  I’ve been essentially without genuine parents or parenting since I was 14.  It doesn’t make me a bad person.  It makes me a survivor.

Or maybe stewed apples?

I started with

• 1 Braeburn apple
• 2 Tablespoons brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 tablespoons butter

I cut the apple into eighths, then removed the seed core and skin:

I put the brown sugar and cinnamon into a plastic bag, and then cut the apples into smaller bite-sized pieces (each of the 8 slices yielded 5 or 6 pieces), and put the pieces into the bag and shook it around until all the pieces were coated in the brown sugar/cinnamon mix.

and then put it all into a microwave safe container (I used 1 Pyrex 1-cup container, which actually holds about 1-3/4 cups, including whatever sugar-cinnamon remained in the bag.  You can see how full it was.   I first put a small bit of butter on the bottom and the rest of the butter on top:

I microwaved it at full power for 3 minutes, let it rest for a few minutes, then microwaved at 50% power for 5 minutes.

I didn’t eat any out of it, so you can see how much it was reduced in the microwaving.

And now I just tasted it.    OOOOOHhhhh yummmmmmm….

Next time I do this, I will use the large-holed grater and make a finer apple meal to start with.   If I had let it microwave longer the apples would have come out mushier, which would have been more of a real applesauce, but this time they have some comfortable texture — not crisp as a raw apple, and not mushy like a rotten apple, but just right where you can hear and feel the crunch.   There’s still something there to chew, if you know what I mean.

Oh yes, this is a keeper idea!     You’re welcome!

Contrary to what many might think, most atheists would accept that the Bible is real.   We have even read it.  Of course the Bible is “real”.   It’s been the most published, most translated, most distributed book in Western history, if not all history — and that includes both print and audio versions.  Yes, the Holy Bible, the sacred text of Christianity, is real.

What is it NOT, however, is scientific, factual, divine, or true.   It is a work of fiction, full of legend, myth, and fantasy.  It has been debunked for history, geology, astronomy, and other fields of science.

Those who believe the Bible is the “infallible, inerrant Word of God” have to eventually admit they are mistaken.  Usually they are just repeating the mantra passed down from the pulpit.   For the claim of inerrancy to stand there cannot be one factual error on any point that can be tested and proven or disproven.  This has been done repeatedly and not worth itemizing here.

The New Testament Jesus never did exist; nobody ever heard of him until the gospels were written several decades AFTER the writings of Paul (or someone writing in his name).  Paul never writes about the itinerant preacher man Jesus; he only discusses a crucified and resurrected “Christ”.   It wasn’t until after this metaphysical Christ was written about that there came the writings about a human Jesus.  Previous mythic hero figures were also “human-gods”, so for this new  Christian religion to be palatable to the pagans of the day, their hero had to have appeared as a human.

And all the writings of the Bible were not uniquely written to be compiled into a single volume.  There were actually HUNDREDS of assorted writings, many contradictory, by the second century, and various doctrines were popular in different areas.   It wasn’t until the third century that church leaders got together and VOTED on which writings were “orthodox” (i.e., which teachings fit our view of what was right).  There was no divine involvement in any of it.  The early church fathers already knew what they believed, or what they wanted to believe, and they approved the writings that supported their beliefs, while rejecting (and pretty much permanently destroying) all the writings that did not support their beliefs.

So, yes, the Bible is very much a real book, but it is not factual and should not be taken literally on any count.  Those who live their lives according to the Bible are wasting their time and missing out on a lot of what this life has to offer.  What a shame, what a waste, to live this human life entirely banking on the expectation that a better life is to be coming later.   There is no such eternity.  When we die, we are dead, all the way.

All that matters is what we do in this life, not what we believe.   There is no reason to think there is something else after this life is done.  There might be, of course, but nobody knows. For all we know, maybe the Hindus have it right and we’ll come back again and again!  But even that would only be useful if we are conscious of it each time around, in order to actually learn something useful for the next time around.

This image was being passed around on Facebook this morning.

BULLSHIT!

You aren’t going through hard times because some fictional deity is “testing” you.  You’re going through hard times because the economy is crappy, people are losing their jobs, prices are going up, lovers cheat on you, children disappoint you, hurricanes happen, and maybe sometimes the universe does not revolve around you and your whiny-ass petty problems.  You aren’t being “tested”; you are simply having one of those times when you can choose to grow up and find a way to solve the problem, or find a way to live with something you can’t solve, or walk away from things you can’t solve.

There’s no big cosmic test going on here.  Either solve a problem, live with it, or leave it.

And this bullshit about “the teacher is always quiet during a test” as a response for “where the fuck is god when I need him?” — you DON’T need him.  He doesn’t exist.  God is a creation of your own mind.  No two people actually believe in the same god anyway.  The god you believe in is the composite of everything you have ever read or heard about the hero-god, after stripping away the stuff you don’t accept from others.

And, in case you haven’t been keeping track, “god” is quiet ALL the time, but you don’t notice it when times are good and you aren’t experiencing problems and wanting to be rescued from reality.  Every time you think ‘god’ has given you an answer, think harder and recognize that YOU answered yourself.  YOU are the one inventing problems and creating solutions.   It is an insult to your human dignity and intelligence to give credit to an imaginary deity (or cast blame on an imaginary devil).

I came across this post on someone’s Facebook wall:

This woman’s page is FULL of idiotic rants and lunatic nonsense, but this one is “special”.

She seems to be suffering under the delusion that witnessing a public display of affection between two strangers simply minding their own business is somehow an act of oppression on her.

The reality is that if she actually called the police or filed a complaint if she saw a gay or lesbian couple kissing or holding hands, she would be immediately laughed out of the squad room.

Leaving people alone, when they are similarly leaving you alone, is NOT an act of oppression.  And NObody has a constitutional right to never be passively offended in this lifetime, or even an immunity to be actively offended.

I feel very sorry for people like this woman.  Her other writings are nothing more than the psychotic rantings of a seriously troubled individual.

In my everyday life, I don’t go out of my way to offend people.   But when people go out of their way to BE offended, I consider it my civil duty to help them find what they are looking for.

If someone is upset if i give my boyfriend a kiss goodbye when I drop him off to work, it is THEIR problem, not mine.  And if they are so upset at witnessing two people expressing affection in the exact same way straight couples do, then I am more than happy to give them something to piss them off.

In the first letter posted on this collection, a good point is made about the Church’s position on “holy matrimony”.   The middle three paragraphs of the letter are sufficient:

For now that he has finally informed us that marriage is a Holy Sacrament instituted by and entirely within the remit of the Church for the sole purpose of sanctifying the union of couples of opposite gender, then surely by the same token, likewise neither should heterosexuals who have their relationships rubber-stamped by the State, have ever been allowed by the Church to be considered “married” couples, but rather parties to civil partnership along with their homosexual brethren.

On this basis, therefore, and conceding that the Archbishop is correct and has a point superbly validated by the Holy Bible, the Church would have done much better to exclude heterosexual civil partners from marital status, and clarified its position on the matter then, instead of waiting for homosexuals to claim such status in Church before starting to predicate about what the Holy Sacrament of marriage is supposed to be about.

Had it done so, homosexuals would now be receiving the equal treatment and respect that they deserve, and a hullabaloo that has nothing to do with the message of Christ whatsoever need never have arisen.

That is, if the Church is so adamant that marriage is a CHURCH-controlled institution, and ONLY Church-sanctioned marriages are accepted, then the Church should have set the standard long ago by refusing to acknowledge the marriages and partnerships that were established by civil law without the Church’s blessing.  If the Church had long-ago distinguished between church-married and civil-married, then same-sex couples now accepted as civil-married would not be facing so many problems today.

Granted, the church might still dismissed same-sex couples as being “in sin”, but no more so than hetero couples legally married but not church-sanctified.  By winking at civil-married heteros, they botched themselves, and, as the letter-writer points out: “The Church lost its monopoly on marriage long ago, and did so without batting an eye.”

HA!

Okay, this one pisses me off.

A 7th-grade student is suspended from school because she said “I love you” to another student in her native language, Menominee.  She attends Sacred Heart Catholic Academy in Shawano, Wisconsin, where the student body is over 60 percent American Indian, and the school is about six miles from the Menominee Indian Tribe Reservation.

The girl was benched from playing with her basketball team, allegedly for a “bad attitude”.

She was teaching the phrase to another student.  This pissed off the teacher…

Miranda and a fellow classmate were talking to each other when Miranda told her how to say “Hello” and “I love you” in Menominee.

“The teacher went back to where the two were sitting and literally slammed her hand down on the desk and said, “How do I know you are not saying something bad?”

Ummm… Hello..??   You teach in a school with a 60% American Indian population in an area close to the Reservation.  Learn the language, you ignorant TEACHER!   You don’t have to become fluent, but it doesn’t take much to learn basic common phrases… like, oh, I don’t know… how about “I love you”???   That’s a pretty basic phrase in any language.

Stupid teacher.

This blog will be moving up a level and the WordPress set up will be my CMS in the future for the whole Web site.

I spent a lot of time in the last year commenting and generally rousing rabble on other forums.   Better for me to link articles and put my opinions here.

So, if you are on an RSS feed or other subscriber service, be watching for the announcement to re-set your subscriptions to point to the main page at raywhiting.com instead of here.

The amazing thing is that every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way they could get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today.

“A Universe From Nothing” by Lawrence Krauss,

“Why do you atheists keep coming to a Christian website, anyway? You aren’t wanted here.”

Well…   why do you Christians keep sending missionaries to places all around the world where you aren’t wanted, and where you often deliberately lie about your reasons in order to gain access?

Atheists visit Christian websites because such places are often filled with deliberate misinformation and even some accidental ignorance.  We provide alternative viewpoints, scientific data, rational reasoning for our positions, and the opportunity for others to expand their thinking a bit.  Even if the dialogue participants never change their minds, other readers are able to read the dialog and sift through the material offered.  And, as an added bonus, they can also see the reasoned and calm demeanor of non-believers compared with the hysterical rantings of their fellow Christians.

“From ignorance to wisdom; from darkness to light.”    Nice, eh?

there’s just been an awful lot going on and I’ve been too distracted to be commenting on news bits here.

things are settling down somewhat, and I will be changing the blog…. might even delete the current version entirely and start all over clean.   I get several HUNDRED spam commentings here each day, even when I don’t post anything, so I might as well re-focus and get a clean start here…..

right?

Over on a Christian forum, the gay debate continues.  And it is clear that some people don’t actually understand what sexual orientation means.   This one comment summarizes what many have tried to claim (it comes from a Christian, and is quoted verbatim, but I don’t identify individuals when addressing the topic is sufficient):

Orientation (sexual or otherwise) is another way of saying that someone is inclined to certain behaviors. The Bible defines certain behaviors as sinful, same-gender sex is one of them.

However, “being gay” is not sinful, but giving in to the urge of having sex with a person of the same gender is sinful. We all have sins that we’re inclined to, have an orientation, as it were. But if I were to have an inclination to cheat on my wife, the Bible tells me to resist those feelings. If someone has a similar inclination to engage in sex with the same gender, they are also commanded by God to resist those feelings. This is called temptation and Jesus was tempted but that isn’t sin.

Let me also be clear that same sex marriage would also be sinful. I understand that this is difficult for many gay people to accept. If I could not express myself In any way my heterosexual desires, that would be a difficult life to live. If I could never express my feelings for a woman that I was attracted to, it would be painful to me.

Yet God always offers a way out for us. He has promised us that. And just because a verse in the Bible is difficult doesn’t negate our responsibility to be obedient to it. God also promises His blessings to those who are obedient.

There is a HUGE difference between sexual orientation and a propensity toward various “behaviors”.  Sexual orientation is NOT a behavior.  It is part of one’s very being, who they are attracted to for companionship, romance, and all the rest of what intimate relationships are made of.

Even in his example, talking about an “inclination” to cheat on his wife — his sexual orientation remains heterosexual.  Whether gay or straight, the ability to remain faithful or the tendency to wander, that has to do with conduct and behaviors and this IS a matter of choice and character.   But the attraction to one or another gender remains fairly constant.  It is an innate trait within a person.

Promoting fidelity and responsible sexual behaviors is a good thing, in my opinion. Expecting a gay person to never express his sexuality is unreasonably cruel.   Until Christians get a solid grasp of what science has covered in the realm of human sexuality, they will continue to suffer this unfortunate disconnect between religion and reality.