All people are not created equal

Take me for instance, I prefer working late afternoon, evenings and nights over mornings. I don't like making decisions without having time to review the facts and numbers so I can make an informed decision. I don't like not having control, and I strongly dislike minute to minute changes to my schedule.

I tend to prefer redheads or brunettes over blondes, and black lingerie over red or white. While I do like breasts, I do think I'm more of an "ass-man" and a cute/pretty face is a must. I like blue or green eyes over brown, and tend to look for women with a sense of humor, who challenge me intellectually but are not "ballbusters".

I prefer to watch documentaries, comedies or crime shows, not always in that order. I enjoy reading philosophy, sociology, psychology, but also sleezy crime novels, and the works of Stephen King. I do also enjoy some of the classics, mostly Hemingway, Solzhenitsyn and various adventure based novels like "Treasure Island".

I'm not a huge fan of "rave" music, with a few exceptions naturally, mostly because I believe you can find something you like in every genre.

I don't like organized religion, both because I believe faith is a highly personal thing, and also because I believe faith is easy to corrupt. I also don't like people basing their choices on what they think an invisible man in the sky likes, especially not on something as outdated as bronze/iron age texts.

I don't like that the terms "liberal" and "progressive" are considered negative words in politics these days, because in my mind humanity moving forward should be our goal as a species shouldn't it?

I don't like the term "conservative" either, mostly because I think "backwoods moron" is more suitable. Conservative literally means "disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change."

If you just look at that definition it hardly seems like a good thing does it? So one wishes to preserve the status quo which means no healthcare for all citizens, no plumbing, no dismantling of institutions or programs that do not work. No changes to social freedoms and so on.

I prefer beef or pork to chicken or fish, and some form of starchy carbohydrate accompanying it, and I would prefer a heavy sauce to go with it. Oh and an ice cold beer.

I'm for the right to choose abortion, I'm for the death penalty, euthanasia. Abortion because I believe its a mothers choice if she wants to carry something within her for 9 months, now it shouldn't be used as a means of contraception but how to accomplish that is a different debate.

I like the death penalty, not in its current extreme expensive form, but only in cases where the question of guilt is absolute. I also would prefer just shooting the fuckers in public to be honest, right on the courthouse steps after the final appeal runs out.

Euthanasia is something I support because I think that in cases where patients are terminally ill, keeping them alive is torture and a waste of resources. If a person who is going to die anyway wants to die a little sooner to spare him/herself some pain I don't see a problem with that.

On the same note I don't believe that living a long life should be the absolute goal. Sometimes its worth giving up a year or two to enjoy life. Sure you may live to be a 100 if you eat well, keep yourself in shape and so on, and even if you do get hit by a bus while out jogging at least those years living completely healthy felt a lot longer.

These are just a few of the many opinions I have, just because we are the same species doesn't mean we all think alike, want the same things or even remotely understand each other, like the guy at work who can't believe I only want late shifts. We may be created from the same matter, but still when we don't think and feel alike, assuming we are all equal just creates a world where everyone who doesn't share certain values are pushed down.

Religious people do not have much faith in God do they?

See the premise of the Christian faith is that God is all powerful, all seeing, all knowing, knows when you're sleeping knows when you're awake. So why do Christians feel the need to protest and create so much noise about certain things when an all powerful, all knowing, all seeing God would already be dealing with it in rather mysterious ways I might add.
There are some things that seem a bit "off" to me though. Let's take pro-life Christians bombing abortion clinics and killing people. Now I'm not going into how ironic a pro-lifer killing people is, but just thinking about this;

I am not a religious person, I don't subscribe to any specific faith, I simply state that I do not know, yet I would never dream of killing someone for simply having a different point of view than me. So a person subscribing to the 10 commandments definitely should not kill someone, unless they want to end up in Hell that is. Not that I believe in hell just making a point.

A Norwegian Islamic fundamentalist said "I put my faith in Allah, he will take care of me and he is the best planner that exists" as much as I hate religious fundamentalism I respect where he's coming from. He has faith in his God to take care of him, and not only him but the world.

If I was a religious person, I might disagree with stem-cell research, abortion, drug use, promiscuity, pornography, prostitution, or as I call it "Tuesday" but I would trust in God to deal with it, and judge everyone at the time of the apocalypse. Doesn't God say in his word "The Bible" that he is the one to judge, not anyone else? In that case how can any Christian defend being judgmental of others? According to the son of God, Jesus,  one should be tolerant of sinners, somehow the behavior of most of Christian interaction I see is far from tolerant.

Black and white?

Black and white thinking is a dangerous path to go down. Not because there is necessarily something wrong with thinking in absolutes, well there is but that's besides the point. I put people who are prone to black and white thinking on a low level on a scale of empathy. Why? Because it shows a distinct lack of the ability to put yourself in other peoples shoes.

The question "If you could go back in time and kill Hitler, would you?" has been used by many people as a way to force people who believe murder is always wrong to admit that maybe in rare cases its justified or for the betterment of the world. However they fail to take everything else into consideration. If Hitler had been killed in 1918 or something before he rose to power in the Nazi party and before he took control of Germany, the course of history would have been radically different.
The Cold war came as a direct result of WW2, the growth of the Soviet Union came as a result of WW2. The Hippies, the greasers, even 1980's hairbands came as a result of WW2. Great developments in computer technology, rockets, man on the moon all comes as a result of WW2.

So answering yes and no is making the question way to easy, since every choice has secondary effects. People also underestimate cultural influence, there is little doubt in my mind that if your average Christian had been born in Yemen or Saudi-Arabia they would be a Muslim, just like if a few hardcore Muslims were born in the US they would most likely be Christians.

One needs to be open minded but at the same time look at things in perspective. In the Nuremberg trial following WW2 the former heads of state of Germany were convicted on conspiracy to wage offensive war, take the land, the valuables and people of other nations, in addition to the extermination of the Jews.

Now isn't this roughly what America did with the invasion of Iraq? I mean with Afghanistan there was a reason to enter the country, it was and still is a breeding ground for extremists. In Iraq there really was no justifiable reason to attack the country, and there was no declaration of war, just an invasion.
That strikes me as being very similar to what the German high command were convicted of following WW2, waging war and invading sovereign nations without a declaration of war.
I was for going into Iraq when it was believed they had weapons of mass destruction but they didn't did they?

In addition atrocities like abu-graib comes to light, the behavior of Blackwater towards civilians, the clear exploitation of the situation by Hallie-Burton and countless other American companies, the complicity of Dick Cheney in the exploitation of Iraqi resources and the way the war was waged and I think a Nuremburg trial would have no choice but to convict the republicans in charge of this war.

Religion

A friend linked me this Eddie Izzard clip the other day and it started me thinking. Isn't religion a case of cake or death as well? Think about the Bible for instance, the vengeful wrathful God of the old testament, and his hippie of a son Jesus. Now I say hippie in that he promoted tolerance and love over clear threats of a horrible death like his "father", then there is the Holy spirit but I haven't figured out if he's a messenger/servant for the 2 others or just a weaker distinct personality.

Now before people jump me, I'm not sure if there is a God or not, I'm not sure if I'm a manifestation of a mind within its own consciousness and that everyone else is another manifestation. I don't have all the answers, to be quite honest I have more questions than answers. I'm not arrogant enough to pretend or delude myself into thinking the Bible is the literal word of God or that I have the mental capacity to "understand" a being of such magnitude.
You are aware that if Creation is a reality, then we are talking about a being so powerful and knowledgeable its beyond any human imagination right? We are talking of a being capable of creating something out of nothing, of creating a "biosphere" capable of sustaining life, renew itself, balance itself through what means needed in order to keep the closed system of "Earth" alive.
We are talking about a being that created countless sources of energy for us to tap, countless technologies for us to explore. A being created the human brain, far more advanced than any computer we can currently make.

Of course this being also put the "home" of 3 major religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) in the same place and then put a large amount of oil beneath it. A being that created a sun that will eventually destroy us all, jealously, hatred, anger, fear, and every negative emotion that exists. So I guess even God has a case of "The Mondays"

Well back to the original intent of this rant. Currently major religion is not really a choice, either paradise or eternal torment, heaven or hell, for good days or for bad days, and its for eternity. I have no doubt in my mind after reading The Bible and Qur'an that God and Allah are both fully capable of this type of organized torture. So if you believe in your heart that there is a God by all means worship him, I would too just to be on the safe side. I'd rather be chilling in heaven with a tumbler of nice single malt and a cuban cigar, than spend eternity nailed to a wall in hell being tortured.

Would you like this piece of cake, or should I stab you in the jugular with this fork?

We are all evil, we are all good. What side we end up walking on is a result of so many things that listing them would be exhausting. We are all victims or beneficiaries of our nature, our surroundings, our dna and our own minds.
Some people are born with urges that makes them do evil acts, some are trained to be evil, some are so evil that they desperately fight to do good regardless of what it costs them. We have laws to protect, to deter, to punish, but our laws are tainted by the people who wrote them.

We allow murders in certain situations, self defense and war comes to mind first, we allow a whole host of evil acts in the name of protecting our communities way of life. Just because we no longer live in little tribes consisting of a few families, doesn't mean that we are not just larger versions of what was.

We have prison's to punish the guilty, yet what does prison do, what does locking criminals up with other criminals accomplish? How many prisoners come out of prison rehabilitated as valued members of society and how many end up right back in prison after a time?

One of the more interesting statements I've heard was that "Your normal soldier will not aim to kill an enemy unless ordered to do so by a superior officer, a sociopath will aim to kill." This means that sociopaths do make better soldiers in wartime purely because of their ability to kill other human beings without facing any psychological or physical backlash from their actions.

This made me take a look back at history, at men and women who are deemed great by history and take a look at their actions. Olaf Haraldson, also known as "Olaf the holy" after his sainthood, the patron saint of Norway was a massmurderer who made Norway a Christian country by force.

"Olaf, a rather stubborn and rash ruler, prone to rough treatment of his enemies, ironically became Norway's patron saint. His canonization was performed only a year after his death by the bishop of Nidaros. The cult of Olaf not only unified the country, it also fulfilled the conversion of the nation, something for which the king had fought so hard." From Wikipedia.

More to follow