Christian Libertarianism, Faith, Freedom, Hedonism, Hope, Nihilism, Salvation, Tool

Jimi vs Jesus.

Thursday 7 June 2012 Tim 7 Comments

“Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” St Paul. (Gal5vs1)

Once upon a time… before I became a Christian , I was a Teenage Nihilistic Atheist who worshipped Jim Morison.
Its dangerous for young men to idolise such lost souls… By the age of 28 Jim was Dead!
I was Lawless, yet not free. I was a slave to ignorance.
Thankfully I was saved by Jesus Christ!
Now that I have the bible as my guide I am wiser, and in a better position to understand all the delusions, all the anger, all the carnality such Dark idols are expressing.
I have been saved from being carried away into oblivion by the Riptide that such pop cultural perspectives exert upon the Lost masses.
Though I now acknowledge Moral reality… I have been set free.

Some people believe Christianity is morally oppressive and hypocritical, and that to become a Christian requires a person to become a fraud…’to pretend to be something they are not …and then they begin to site all the heinous examples of so-called pious Christians whom are found guilty of committing vile crimes…as if these sorts of examples are definitive of Christianity.
I must sympathize with them, not that their definition of Christianity is actually true. Its not. Nonetheless their acusations still hold true for a great majority of hypocrites and bigots whom claim to be Christians.
Still if that was the whole truth, and Christianity really was as these critics describe it…I would never have become a Christian as I despise phony’s, hypocrites, and Bigotry.

^Fake!^ Yet whats a Real Christian supposed to look like?

In reality Christianity is about being honest, both to yourself, and to others…for truths sake, yet to appreciate this one must firstly be of pure heart…ie be able to be objective in your judgments about your self and the world around you.

To investigate the truth, and be able to apprehend Christianity is trustworthy is to overcome the great deception which is at the heart of the mass delusions of our age.
Under Gods grace I can live honestly as myself, not as a phony card board cut out of a fanatic. I can be Libertarian in political outlook. I can admit that I really like the metal band Tool. If ever asked if I think a calendar girl is ‘hot stuff’, I don’t have to pretend otherwise.
This is how I describe the true Christian pilgrimage.
Christianity is about living under grace in honesty and not faking a bogus self righteousness. I can do this because I’m saved by grace, not by my own righteousness or works.
I am secure in Christ whom hath made me free.
I now know who/what I am, and what is really going on in the world, and why.
I now swim against the flow… being guided by my newly awakened Conscience…as a self reliant individual.
Sadly this is not a popular thing to do… but it is the right and wise thing to do.

Tool’s Maynard James Keenan.

My knowledge of the gospel truth hath made me free from enslavement to delusion which those whom don’t know Christ are susceptible. From my Christian vantage point I can appreciate the genius of many Nihilistic artists of our day and understand how they came to perceive the world as they do, yet I do not blindly and trance like Idolize such Masters of carnal reality as Maynard James Keenan, or Jim Morrison as I once was prone to do. I can objectively consider them, I clap at their cunning and performance, yet choose rather to follow the values of Paul (the Apostle of the Gospel of grace), rather than those of these crooner peacock sons of fallen Adam.
Maynard may be a musical genius…yet he is utterly depraved. He revels in depravity, and he intentionally encourages others to join with him in rebellion to Christian values. He does it with such Diabolical art and cunning. Its impossible for me not to appreciate his artistic genius, but beware his hedonistic worldview.

Because of the godless philosophies of our age it is easy to see why so many are beguiled by Him, not having the light of the word of God to keep them from going astray. Fools choose to hide themselves from moral reality.
False gospels that base salvation upon self righteousness, keeping the Law, and Good works, always lead to pretentious hypocrisy. Christians whom have been deluded into thinking Christianity is about legalistic obedience fall into this evil habit to hide their own true selves and keep up the facade of piety. They often cry out in displays of moral indignation…seeking to impose their Moral legalism upon others via the law. This is the sort of religion Maynard and Jim rebelled against. I rebel against that too! I’m keeping it real under Gods grace.

^^^^My rendition of a 21st century Christian.
My Testimony is a refutation of the Stereotypical notion of what Christianity is supposed to represent.
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John8vs32)

tim and jim

Celsius 451

Thursday 7 June 2012 Richard Leave a comment

Will Ray Bradbury be cremated? He died a couple of days ago, aged 91. He was a science fiction author, famous for the dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451. The novel’s name comes from the autoignition temperature of paper.

The typical temperature range of a crematory furnace is 1600 – 1800 °F. I don’t know at what temperature human flesh autoignites. At what temperature does human flesh burn? Yahoo Answers has this Best Answer.

Human flesh requires extended exposure to 1,400 degrees Fahrenheit in order to ignite. The human body, which is 85 percent water, burns outside to inside in a rapid cycle of layer-by-layer dehydration and ignition. The heat dries out the skin; the dry skin ignites. That fire dries out the next layer of muscle and fat, which then ignites. And so on, until the internal organs are consumed. The average body gives off a modest 1,000 Btu per pound of meat (burning wood, by comparison, gives off 6,000 Btu). But an extremely obese person can run up to 17,000 Btu.

Remember that next time you think of John Calvin, the totally depraved Reformation theologian after whom Calvinism is named.

But back to Ray Bradbury and Fahrenheit 451 … The novel presents a future American society where books are outlawed. It’s a book about book burning. Apparently, “the novel is not about censorship, but a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature, which leads to a perception of knowledge as being composed of factoids, partial information devoid of context.”

This post is an excuse to present some Bradbury quotes.

On writing books.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

You fail only if you stop writing.

If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life.

If you can’t read and write you can’t think. Your thoughts are dispersed if you don’t know how to read and write. You’ve got to be able to look at your thoughts on paper and discover what a fool you were.

On reading books.

A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. … Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?

On burning books.

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.

On life, the universe and everything.

We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.

People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better.

Death doesn’t exist. It never did, it never will. But we’ve drawn so many pictures of it, so many years, trying to pin it down, comprehend it, we’ve got to thinking of it as an entity, strangely alive and greedy. All it is, however, is a stopped watch, a loss, an end, a darkness. Nothing.

At the center of religion is love. I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. Everything in our life should be based on love.

Joy is the grace we say to God.

Democracy

Wednesday 6 June 2012 Richard 3 Comments

[Hat tip: David Peterson]

Christian Libertarianism, Faith, Justice, Nihilism, Sheeple, Tyranny

Life’s a Stanley Milgram Experiment. (part1)

Tuesday 5 June 2012 Tim 10 Comments

Stanley Milgram

Shock Generator.

Life is not meaningless and amoral.
It is in fact a ‘Stanley Milgram’ Experiment.
A test of your Moral character and conviction.
The decisions you make throughout your life are all being observed and recorded.
One day you will be asked to give account.
When confronted with your sheepish (yet vicious) conformity to the Ungodly system of Leviathan will you reply “I was only following orders!” ???
Will you expect such an excuse to save you from the Judgement of Almighty God?

Nuremberg defense

The Stanley Milgram Experiment was created to explain some of the concentration camp-horrors of the World War 2, where Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Slavs and other enemies of the state were slaughtered by Nazis.
Read this description of the experiment

How Evil are you?
To what degree will you subordinate your own values to those in power and authority?
Do you have a code of ethics powerful enough to overcome submission to tyranical powers… powerful enough to stop you from tyranizing over the weak?
Or will you obey evil commands?
And where are your charitible deeds?
Where is your compassion? Where is your humility?
Do you practice forgiveness, or do you store up wrath and guile?

“For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” (Mat 7vs2)

These are questions that shine a light into the dark places of the soul, and highlight the essential part a persons faith in the moral nature of Reality plays in determining how we live and behaive when faced with morally weighty circumstances… exposing our ultimate values and ideals (Or lack thereof).

“And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them.
And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.” (Rev20vs11,12)

Here we sit.

The reality is we all fail the Great Moral test of life.
To understand this moral truth is an enlightenment.
We all sin and come short of the glory of God.
Yet God commenteth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinner, Christ died for us.
Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Tim Wikiriwhi

Part 2.

Part 3.

Atheism, Cosmology, Metaphysics, Physics, Science

Tegmark Tuesday

Tuesday 5 June 2012 Richard 2 Comments

Every time I’ve written ten mainstream papers, I allow myself to indulge in writing one wacky one, like my Scientific American article about parallel universes. This is because I have a burning curiosity about the ultimate nature of reality; indeed, this is why I went into physics in the first place. So far, I’ve learned one thing in this quest that I’m really sure of: whatever the ultimate nature of reality may turn out to be, it’s completely different from how it seems. So I feel a bit like the protagonist in the Truman Show, the Matrix or the 13th Floor trying to figure out what’s really going on.

Max Tegmark, The Universes of Max Tegmark

Cultura Tres, Eschatology, Keep it Metal!, Luke, Matthew, Paul, Riddles, Salvation

And then I woke up

Monday 4 June 2012 Richard Leave a comment

Sunday last (27 May) I posted a tongue-in-cheek farewell message.

This is my final post. Why? Because the world ends today.

Come midnight, the world hadn’t ended. But there was still time … New Zealand is 12 hours ahead of GMT! I went to bed … and then I woke up. And the world was still here.

Was I surprised? No. I never thought for more than a moment that the world would end on 27 May 2012. Who would? Well, perhaps some of the visitors to The Prophesied End-Time Revealed. When I wrote my earlier post I thoughtfully kept a copy of the page as it was on 27 May. The opening paragraph read

The year 2008 marked the last of God’s warnings to mankind and the beginning in a countdown of the final three and one-half years of man’s self-rule that will end by May 27, 2012.

The opening paragraph now reads

The year 2008 marked the last of God’s warnings to mankind. The final countdown to the end of man’s self-rule began on May 27, 2012, and will end on Pentecost of 2013.

Now, that’s a bit dodgy. The end of the world isn’t nigh. It’s been indefinitely postponed. Since 2008.

In fact, Jesus says that no one will know at what hour the Son of Man will return (not even he does!), and Paul tells us that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When I looked up chapter and verse, I found that this message is repeated over and over in the New Testament. Really, it is inexcusable for a Christian to claim he knows the specific date of Christ’s Second Coming!

Matthew 24:36, 42-44 (NIV)

“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.

Luke 12:35-40 (NIV)

“Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself to serve, will have them recline at the table and will come and wait on them. It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the middle of the night or toward daybreak. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.”

1 Thessalonians 5:1-2 (NIV)

Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.

2 Peter 3:10 (NIV)

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

Revelation 3:3 (NIV)

Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; hold it fast, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.

Revelation 16:15 (NIV)

“Look, I come like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake and remains clothed, so as not to go naked and be shamefully exposed.”

Matthew 24:3-5 (NIV)

As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many.

2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 (NIV)

Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to him, we ask you, brothers and sisters, not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us—whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter —asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.

Don’t you remember that when I was with you I used to tell you these things? And now you know what is holding him back, so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming. The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

Ayn Rand, Freedom, Nanny State, Regulation, Righteous Rants, Sheeple, Tyranny

Of Bossyboots, Busybodies and Bloombergs

Sunday 3 June 2012 Richard 1 Comment

The following is today’s op-ed by my friend (when I haven’t been doing my level best to sorely piss him off) and political ally, Lindsay Perigo. Perigo is still New Zealand’s #1 libertarian. Partly because the competition is unhealthy, but mostly because … well, the gem of an op-ed below speaks for itself. Cheers, Linz!

Lindsay Perigo Op-Ed: Of Bossyboots, Busybodies and Bloombergs

In the Declaration of Independence, ratified in 1776, America’s Founding Fathers affirmed that the role of government was to secure the inalienable rights of all citizens to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In 2012, the Mayor of New York affirms that the role of government is to forbid the sale of super-sized sodas.

Michael Bloomberg has announced a ban, not yet ratified, on the sale of sugary drinks in containers holding more than 16 ounces.

It is an illuminating snapshot of how far the United States has been dragged from its founding principles by obnoxious wowsers like Bloomberg that he can indulge his odious urges with such impunity.

“Big Brother Bloomberg,” as Fox News’s The Five have dubbed him, has already succeeded in banning the smoking of tobacco in public and the use of trans-fats in restaurants.

Bloomberg is now a one-man obesity nazi, on a mission to force fatties to shrink. He has bought into the latest dietary theology that sugar is the main cause of flab, and thinks it’s government’s job forcibly to limit how much of it citizens may ingest.

The last time a politician took such an invasive interest in his subjects’ health his name was Adolf Hitler. He too campaigned against tobacco, along with white-bread and meat-eating.

If New York’s citizens had any understanding of what the original Tea Party was all about, they’d eject Mayor Bloomberg from his office forthwith, before he bans smoking in their homes, criminalizes caffeine and reintroduces alcohol prohibition.

Instead, many are treating his proposed ban respectfully, as though he indeed has a right to institute such a thing. And disastrously, opponents are not staking out a position based on principle—that government under the American system has no business dictating how much sugar people may consume—but on quibbles as to whether sugar actually is the culprit (tacitly conceding that if it were, the move to restrict it would be valid). They also point out that the ban could be easily circumvented by the sale of two 16-oz sodas instead of one 32-oz one. These “arguments” remind me of the hypothetical group of folk, conjured up by Leonard Peikoff in his lecture on why people don’t think in principles, who idly muse on whether it might be a good idea to rob a bank. “Which bank?” one of them asks.

Many of Bloomberg’s opponents are of the “which bank?” ilk, toying with the proposition that robbing a bank might be OK but fretting over which one has the laxest security, the easiest escape route, etc. They forget what they were raised, rightly, to believe—that it’s flat-out wrong to rob banks, period. Bossyboots Busybody Bloomberg is radically, fundamentally, treasonously out of line with the Declaration of Independence in his relentless Nanny Statism … and this is what his critics should be hanging him in effigy for.

Here in New Zealand, the National Socialist Government has announced that the excise tax on tobacco will be raised 10% a year over the next four years, meaning a pack of 20 cigarettes will end up costing over $20 a pack. It has also set aside $20 million of taxpayer money to facilitate the path to a “smoke-free New Zealand” (no smoking in private homes?) by 2025. A freedom-conscious citizenry, smokers and non-smokers alike, would storm Parliament over intolerable outrages such as this. Alas, we do not have a freedom-conscious citizenry, just a flock of sheeple.

America once had, but no longer has, a freedom-conscious citizenry. “Don’t tread on me” has become “please tread on me.”

“The natural order of things,” lamented Thomas Jefferson, “is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”

In which case, paraphrasing Diderot, liberty will be safe only when the last pathological power-luster has been strangled with the guts of the last congenital control-freak.

And when its champions are able to defend it on principle.

Lindsay Perigo: linz@lindsayperigo.com

[Reproduced with permission! The original is online at http://www.solopassion.com/node/9150.]

Jihad on Drugs™, Live Like It's Legal

Puff The Magic Dragon.

Saturday 2 June 2012 Tim 1 Comment

Atheism, Intelligent Design, Materialism, Monism vs Dualism

You Cant Make A Jimi From A Stone!

Saturday 2 June 2012 Tim Leave a comment

In a purely materialist reality what is music but clatter and din?
How ridiculous it is to assume Jimi’s music is no different from the noise of waves crashing on a beach… merely the necessary outcome of binding physical determinism in a causation enslaved dead/monist reality!

Jihad on Drugs™

Dakta Grower busted by Brian Borland

Saturday 2 June 2012 Richard 3 Comments

Yesterday Brian Borland AKA Dakta Grower handed himself in to the police, admitting to growing, to make a statement about his belief in the cause.

Dakta Grower is a cannabis grower, a founding member of the Daktory, and MaryJane the Cannabus’s refurbishment engineer. And he’s a hero! Here’s some further autobiographical information from Dakta Grower’s Facebook profile.

No story is complete without its history, and mine starts in 1977 with the first time I would be busted for possession. This of course failed to deter my appreciation of the “herb” and consumption continued.

First charge of cultivation in January of “95″. I entered a plea of “guilty of breaking the law, but not guilty of any crime”. Sentence was three months P. D. and I thought it was quite ironic when, about 9 o’clock on the first morning of P.D, one of the boys “sparked up” the first joint of the day. I also found a source of supply. As I staunchly believe, that adults should have the right to grow for their own use if they wish, I had no hesitation in growing again. The second was in May “98”. The cops raided my place while I was out, and even though everything they were after was easy to find, I arrived home to find the place torn apart. This search failed to turn up anything else. Same charges and plea as previously. As I had a business and was working 7 days the judge only fined me $500, which wasn’t to bad considering I had fourteen females some of which were mature.

I moved into an industrial unit half way through ’99 and in November I was busted yet again. This was the most civilized of them all. There were only two officers, who didn’t bother to search much, as they accepted, that all I had was the eleven mature plants and sixteen seedlings. Same charges however. By now I was sick of losing plants and replacing lights, so this time I went not guilty and refused to pay a fine or do P.D. At the time I had $1500 of unpaid fines, including the $500 from the previous conviction. Result was a 9 month suspended jail sentence and the judge wiped the fines. This was a very pleasing result indeed.

Fourth bust. I am usually very security conscious, except, on this occasion I had the roller door raised while I cleaned up. All of a sudden an army of cops descended on me. Turns out there were 10 cops, a dog and a paddy wagon, all for me and my sixteen plants. How’s that for efficient use of police resources? Again the place was torn apart and again the search failed to turn up anything extra. They did however, manage to miss some hash that I had made using the ice water method. So at least I had some smoke to soothe the nerves when I arrived home. Later that day I started more seeds. While I was waiting in line for the remand window at the Henderson court to open, I got talking to a guy that had been busted for possession. This fellow smoker kindly gave me six clones and “blew me out” with a sample.

Every one of these busts was as a result of being “DOBBED IN” as other than this I am a normal, law abiding, tax paying citizen. So now I was really pissed off. and I really didn’t care what they did to me. I would continue to grow my own. To prove this point, I took four small seedlings into the Henderson police station and “dobbed” myself in. The next day I took another one in. I was charged for the first one but they wouldn’t charge me the second time and a third would get me trespassed.

On Monday the 22nd of November about 7:30 pm there was a knock on the door of the industrial unit that I live in (Although this was closed, it…….. Part 2 later

Props to Dakta Grower and kudos to Brian Borland!

Imagine how quickly cannabis prohibition would roll to a grinding halt if every cannabis grower and every cannabis smoker in the country handed themselves in to the police … daily.

[Hat tip: William Rea]

Eternal Vigilance