as many of you know, last year i wrote a science fiction novel.
this past weekend, the fulfillment of a dream i've had for many years came to be a reality.
my novel has been released!
Congradulations.
I'll be sure to purchase a copy. :)
I've been working on a novel myself for some time, a fantasy story heavily influenced by my painful experiences within the borg. Eventually I plan to send it out and find an agent.
Did you have to send it to a lot of agents/publishers before someone accepted your novel?
something i have been wondering about lately.. whether you believe in god or not, are a christian or some other religion or no religion at all, i'd be interested in your opinion.. according to those who believe in the bible including most christians, god condemns the use of 'special' powers/abilities.
for example, esp, tarot, astrology, consulting a medium, spells etc.
however, if god created us, did he not give us the ability to develop and use such powers?
I personally don't pay much attention to people like Sylvia Brown or John Edwards. I have an innate distrust of anyone who makes that much money off of this sort of thing.
something i have been wondering about lately.. whether you believe in god or not, are a christian or some other religion or no religion at all, i'd be interested in your opinion.. according to those who believe in the bible including most christians, god condemns the use of 'special' powers/abilities.
for example, esp, tarot, astrology, consulting a medium, spells etc.
however, if god created us, did he not give us the ability to develop and use such powers?
James Randi and the people from CSICOP will never acknoledge the existance of evidence for the paranormal. Not that you can blame them. It would, after all, mean the end of their careers. If anyone is interested in the other side of the arguement, you should check out The Conscious Universe: by Dean Radin. I'm reading through it right now, and it has a lot of good information. Personally I doubt paranormal phenomena will become mainstream knowledge within our own lifetimes. Orthodox western science and orthodox religion have little to gain and very much to lose in proving claims of the paranormal.
i bought my copy yesterday.
i liked the movie in theater, cant wait till the weekend to pop it into the dvd player.
i like scary movies, missed out on a lot of them while in the borg.
I liked all the scenes between Freddy and Jason, but as is often the case with horror movies, the normal human characters were utterly annoying and served as nothing more than monster fodder. Although then again, that is part of these movies charm as well. Me and my friend had fun guessing which of the stupid teenagers was going to get axed next.
god or no god, why is there something rather than nothing?
why do elements have properties?
why does consciousness exist?
I look at it in terms of infinite probability/chaos. If you cast aside all the ways in which our mind and senses construct reality, even concepts such as something and nothing, you come to a state of emptiness where the potentiality is endless and cannot be comprehended through rational thinking. An interesting fact to consider is that if I were to hold up two hands, and say the space between them was 2 feet, I would be wrong. It I were to say it was "roughly" two feet, if would be correct, but only from the standpoint of a mind that cannot comprehend The All, and must therefore define a finite part of it through mathematics. The space between my hands is actually something like 2.1010194322924857496745967549574957945675957459574948...well, you get the idea. The reason we, and the universe, exist at all, is because a specific part of that infinite chaos crystallizes due to conscious will, becoming aware of only one part of the Infinite. This consciousness seeks to expand itself, ever learning and growing. This is why we feel that there must be a sense of purpose to our lives, that there is love inherent in our existance. One might wonder where consciousness comes from, but since consciousness would be factored into infinite probability, it would eventually arise in some manner. Besides, consciousness is very hard to pin down, as at this point we can only understand it through our limited senses.
I know that this doesn't totally answer the question, since you could very well ask why infinite probability/chaos exists. Well, concepts such as something and nothing are both definitions and limitations in and of themselves, and thus can never grasp the Infinite.
AAF,
A pleasant thought, and I do believe that Will and Wisdom are part of our existance, but ask yourself this question, why does Jehovah exist in the first place?
i always have felt that the following expressions were stupid, why dont they just call it pro abortion, anti abortion.
anyway, knowing our backgrounds as jw's what is your viewpoint on this highly debated issue?
They don't call it pro abortion because many of them aren't actually advocating abortion itself, but rather the freedom of the woman. I'd say that I'm more in the middle on this, although leaning towards the pro choice side. The reason being, is that making abortion illegal would cause far more problems than it would solve. Some people might try to get an abortion in spite of the law, and better they have a qualified doctor perform the operation than some quack in a back alley. It's the sort of thing that is simply going to happen whether we like it or not, and there should be appropriate services in place to handle it. Even back when I was a loyal dub I felt this way.
I do think that killing an unborn child is wrong, especially a fetus far along in the pregnancy. The baby is a life of its own, no matter how you try to deny it, not just a lump of flesh inside the woman's body.
I would prefer that there be very few abortions to no abortions at all, but the world simply isn't ideal. There are instances were aborting the fetus is the better option, such as when the woman has been raped, or if there are serious dangers to the woman's life involved in giving birth. Furthermore, there are cases where having the child would actually be cruel. I hate to say this, but some people simply shouldn't have children. A stupid teenage mother addicted to drugs giving birth will be bringing the child into a world of pain and despair. Or there might be mothers who are in a terrible situation not of their making, who don't want their child to suffer.
It's an very weighty decision, one that should be handled with tearful contemplation before it is made, and one that should be made with a humble understanding of what they're actually doing. I think the reason some people who advocate pro choice anger the other side is because they don't seem to give enough reverance to the life of the child. I.e "It's my body, I can do what I want with it!" Excuse me but its not just your body, its the body of the fetus as well.
However, if the mother has a good reason for getting an abortion, she shouldn't be judged for it.
the traditional christian view of immortality hinges on some form of dualism -- the notion that your consciousness is not dependent on the brain and can survive the dissolution of the body.
modern science has not found any evidence for this whatsoever.
it seems rather likely that our consciousness and mental abilities are bound to our brains and their neuronal firings.
Our souls surviving death does not necessarily make them immortal. Anyway, there is evidence of the afterlife, though no absolute proof. Here's some websites on the subject in case anyone is interested.
boy gets stuck in animal game machine
sheboygan, wis. (jan. 5) - a 7-year-old boy had to be rescued with the help of a locksmith saturday after crawling into a supermarket's stuffed animal game machine while his father talked on the telephone.jeffrey roland debbink.
"he was sitting right in there with the stuffed animals," said shift commander mark zittel of the sheboygan fire department.. he said the boy, whose name was not released because he is a minor, crawled through about an 8-inch-by-10-inch opening to get into the glass enclosure via a chute where the toys come out, but when he tried to get back out his way was blocked.. the stuffed animals are prizes that can be hooked by players with a crane-like device.. "his dad was three feet away at a pay phone," zittel said.
That was actually pretty funny.
http://dbhome.dk/carlo/cat.htm
are cats for true christians?.
is it appropriate for a christian to own a cat, in light of their past pagan religious affiliation and the medical information that is now coming to light?
I can remember reading that when I first came to this site. Almost had a heart attack from laughing so hard.
something recently occurred to me that many people, whether former jws or others who faced hardships in life, often look for meaning to life ... specifically a special meaning to their own lives ... i have done that at times, before i became a jw, while a jw, and more so since i left the religion.. i was having a conversation recently with my oldest son who is now 29 years old.
we discussed the meaning to life and how he sees himself now - in his ex-jw years - given that he was raised a jw.
he made the following comment i thought some here may find insightful.
Life is its own meaning.
