Wir sind bettler. Hoc est verum.

There are many stories in the world. Stories on all types of topics ranging from your sappy romance between two saplings in love to the most violently scarey attack of the rabid bunny horror films. The truth of the matter is, between all these stories, only the good ones have happy endings. Now of course how good a story is ultimately depends on many factors such as: originality, depth, tone, twists, understandability, meaning, and of course its conclusion. My purposes here is not to discuss all the aspects of story, except for one: the conclusion. No matter how good all aspects of a story are, its ending holds the final trump card which dictates how good the story really is. I would also argue that for the ending of the story to be anything but happy, it isn’t a good story.

Let us first start out by defining the word Story. A story is simply the telling of a particular sequence of events, fiction or not, that communicates a certain message (known or unknown). Every story communicates something (even if not intended by the author). If a sequence of events can be communicated in a way that no meaning can be derived from it, then it isn’t a story. Likewise if one just blathers incoherent and meaningless words, it isn’t a story. All stories have structure. They all have a beginning, middle, and end. They all have a subject and, like I said before, a meaning.

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Many people believe in Santa, most of them are under the age of 10. They believe in Santa because their parents told them Santa is real. This cycle has continued for generations, the parent teaches the child, the child their children and so on. So, why would I dare tread on such holy ground? The reason I dare is because I believe the issue, although small, when compounded becomes quite large.

As I see it the issue resolves around a few different planets of thought. Is it ok to lie to someone to increase their happiness? Everyone is doing it and turning out ok, why can’t I? What is the Christian parent’s number one job towards their children? And is culture neutral and its traditions harmless?

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As many of you know the New Atheists (as they are called) not only believe that God doesn’t exist, they believe that religion is evil and ought to be extinguished. They love to especially attack Christianity, because it is so bold as to blatantly tell its opponents that they are wrong. There are many things I can say on the subject, but I would like to address just one small flaw in their thinking.

Many of them, such as Sam Harris, have a distorted logic in how they argue against the existence of God. I will simplify their arguments here for times sake and just point out one of the huge flaws of it. See if you can spot the flaw before I demonstrate it. Remember they are assuming God exists for the sake of their arguments.

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To understand the destructive, dreary, and dismal side of Government jobs we must first condescend to the origins of Government. Why do we have Government in the first place and why does this Government have jobs? The answer is extremely complex; allow me to state it simply. Government is nothing more than the people working together for the common good, and it is nothing less than the common good working for the people. It is the will of the people, created by the people, to rule the people by people. Laws define it and it defines the laws. It is circular, it is organic, and it is a machine.

We the people create the Government and in return the Government creates us. After we gifted some of our freedom, our humanity, our responsibility, and our creativity to it, it thanked us by redefining humanity and the boundaries in which we can act it out.  It is necessary and it is tyrannical. It saves lives while destroying them, and it abolishes freedom to protect freedom. It is the giving of lesser things, to protect the greater things. It is a necessary evil, to control and protect humans, but it was not always so.

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I am going to deviate from my typical topics to address a more political, cultural topic, so bear with me.

As many of you know, in California the people voted to keep the definition of marriage (what it has always been) as between only a man and a woman; the courts (one judge in particular) has overturned it.

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I have been thinking about marriage, and while talking with some people I have decided to put down a few things I think we all should look for in a spouse, but let look at it from the other direction: ourselves.

One of the more important things in life is the ability to introspect your own self. I think we all spend too much time thinking about and talking about how everyone else should improve themselves, and not ourselves. So allow me here to challenge us all to better think about and work on ourselves, so that we can be the better spouse, and if we can be better, we will be in a better position to know and look for the right qualities in the other person.

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Have you ever thought about beauty? I mean really sat down and thought about what it is, where it comes from, and why it matters? I never really did until recently, so you are let of the hook, but now let us reason together.

You most likely have heard it said: “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, a sentiment that I ultimately reject. Now I do not rule out people’s preferences, but what it ultimately boils down to is, the intrinsic beauty of something, is not dependent on what people feel or think about it.

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This reminds me of the story of the two Bakers.

There were two Bakers in a town whose shops were across the street from each other. The first baker was an older man named Tom, and the other was a younger man named Bill. Tom had been baking in that city for many, many years, so many so that Bill wasn’t even born when Tom started Baking. Bill grew up in that town, eating Tom’s baked goods and quickly fell in love with baking himself. When he was 12 he promised himself that he would open a bakery right next to Tom’s and would bake just like Tom, and everyone would love him and his goods as much as they loved Tom and his.

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I was recently challenged in regards to my beliefs as a Christian. Now I think those challenges are worthy of a response, which I will get to in another blog. However, it should be noted that Christianity isn’t the only worldview out there making claims. The Atheists cannot just sit back and sling arrows at Christianity and think they are immune from challenges themselves. In fact for Atheism to be true, it must not only show Christianity to be false (every religion as well), but it must also then put up its own evidence for its philosophy of reality. Both Atheism and Religion make claims on reality, and they both cannot be right, perhaps wrong, but not both right at the same time in the same way.

It seems that Christianity is usually the blunt of jokes, criticisms, questions, and attacks, so that the Christian is usually just on the defensive. However, like I said before this shouldn’t be the case. The Evolutionist / Atheists believes some things about reality, and must be able to defend his or her view. It is not enough to say Christianity is wrong thus I am right, there must actually be evidence put forth on the Atheists side to explain the difficult questions in life. So I will start out with some of my own challenges to Atheism / Evolution which require their response, and then later I will respond to the challenges that were made to me. Please note that there are issues in life that must be explained and the view that explains it the best and simplest is probably the most accurate view of reality.

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What if you gained the whole world and lost your soul? Would it be worth it? Proverbs 22:1 “A good name is to be more desired than great wealth, Favor is better than silver and gold.” Is this you? Do you desire a good name (good reputation) over riches? Are you willing to sacrifice a little of your name to “make it”? What is your buy out?

I was reading an Article on Perez Hilton in Entertainment Magazine. Sorry I do not have it in front of me so I will not “Quote” from it. While reading it a couple things came to mind. First it seems no one really likes Perez Hilton, yet he doesn’t seem to care. He said something about not caring if people liked him, only if people went to his blog. Then the article said he took home $70K something a week or month (I forget) from just advertising on his blog. I guess to Mr. Hilton $70k a month is better than a good name.

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