My Birthday Present

My birthday was on the 19th of this month, but it was on the 20th that I got my real present. On the 20th of this month, a new president was inaugurated into the highest office of this country. Barack Obama, our first black president. And yes, I said black not African-American - I am not a creature of political correctness. At last, for the first time in 8 years, we again have a president that was voted into office. But that isn't the greatest part of why I consider this man's ascension to the presidency as a personal birthday present.

A year ago at Xmas time I posted this. And in the spirit of that post I returned to a nest of vipers that I had left (along with others) in order to give them another chance to show me that there was a way to avoid the cultural war mentioned in that post from turning ugly. I'll be frank - I was of the opinion that, given time, this country would face another civil war, with the lines being drawn mainly by religious affiliation this time. A silly idea? Perhaps. But I doubt many can honestly look at the heat of the rhetoric on both sides and honestly tell me that such a thing is completely out of the realm of possibility. Likewise, I defy any of my (non-existent) readers to tell me that concentration, err re-education camps are totally outside the realm of possibility in the long term if the likes of Palin were to take the presidency and continue Bush's methodical demolition of the Constitution.

So, with hope of finding a way to co-exist or reason with the other side of the cultural war, I went back to the web of deceit and arrogance known as ExWitch.com. In case you're wondering gentle reader, I was not looking to save the world here - I am well aware that one website and my meaningless babble have precisely zero real effect on the world. No, this was more of a social experiment, to see if that two larger groups could indeed avoid the outcome I foresaw by examining the matter on a smaller scale. Regardless, I didn't have high hopes, having clashed with most of the moderators in the past and knowing their methods (self-righteous censorship, arbitary bannings, and good old fashion lying, not to mention gaslighting and other amatuer attempts to "persuade" their audience). However, I wanted to give them a chance to prove me wrong. The experiment lasted til May. To be fair, yes I was banned (temporarily at first I think, but permemantly due to pressing the matter) for "bad behavior". I guess demanding justice - ie that others are not banned arbitrarily for no good reason - and calling out the moderators on their hypocrasy and lies if bad behavior in such circles. In any case, they failed, and proved me right.

I did learn an important leason from the Jesus Nazis there however - one cannot reason with a fanatic, especially in groups, especially when they are in power. One need not be a genius to see what this lesson means on a larger scale.

BUT...as it often does, reality surprised me. On November 5th, a clear majority of this country's population joined together in rejecting the dogmatism, intolerance, greed, and insanity of the Religous Right (in their unholy union with the Republican party), and instead chose tolerance, compassion, diversity, and pragmatism by electing this man, Barack Obama, to the presidency. And so, two days ago, I received one of the greatest birthday presents anyone could have ever given me.

Hope.

A Much Needed Vacation

So, for the first time in a couple of years I'm on vacation. This time, like many before, that means heading West. To clarify, I live in Wisconsin of all places, so west means (generally speaking) South Dakota, Wyoming, and the like. In fact, I'm setting in a motel in Mitchel SD as I type this. It's rather nice, not a pricey or fancy place, but I like it. The Thunderbird Lodge in case you're wondering (if you know the area). Intending to try for Yellowstone, if things work out right.

Anyway, I've been largely silent for the past few months, with only a few half-snide allusions to spending too much time on World of Warcraft as explanation. While that is partly the truth, and I meant no offense to anyone with said allusions, the other half of the truth is that I'm burned out. I'm sick of discussing, debating, and arguing about religion and related matters. In some senses it's all become way too personal, and in many many others it has simply become far to frustrating. After all, it's not like there is any real, objective answers or evidence involved in religion and spirituality to begin with, and as a result it's rather difficult to debate a point to begin with but ultimately determining and discussing the truth of any religious or spiritual matter is essentially as fruitful and meaningful as discussing the flavors of ice cream available on Mars.

This doesn't mean that one cannot disprove things of a religious/spiritual nature - if an idea is internally inconsistent or simply logically untenable it's a pretty fair bet that concept is false. However, while proving this in debate/discussion is rather easy, convincing people to accept that such common sense is actually true can be a matter of Herculean proportions. Discussion only works as a means of learning if both parties are willing to learn and grow.

Anyway, enough babble. West has always been sort of a spiritual thing for me, and in addition to mundane fun I'm sort of looking forward to actually experiencing again rather than merely talking. But someone else wants to use the computer here, so off I go.

Ex-Witch Dot Done

Well true believers, it's finally happened - after all this time, the fanatics at ExWitch.com finally done banned this old dog :D Not that it was unexpected of course - my recent shift in style to "in your face truth, screw the niceties"combined with their even more recent descent further down into the dark depths of Jesus Nazism was simply a recipe for such an event. Truthfully, I'm amazed that they put up with me for this long actually, but it doesn't matter in the end. My job and the lessons I needed to learn there have been done there for a while, and it's past time I moved on to another trench in this war of ideas. But first, a break for a while - gots to make me some more WoW money y'all :D.

To my friends on EW - those few that remain as I see the exodus I predicted has begun - I'll see you around in the funny papers, nothin but love for ya :D This includes CountryGal/Shadowvoices, Anita, Catfantastic, Azlan'sTraveler, LadyGarnetRose, Nuisereset, PrayerPower, Butterfly, and Ithril (though I have the feeling I'm forgetting someone).

And to the unnamed management of EW, thank you for once again showing your true faces. Keep it up, you're an excellent argument against your own religion HA!

The Passing Of An Era....

Tromping around the internet this morning, I stopped by Dumpshock, what I consider the premire Shadowrun fansite. Upon looking around I was dismayed to find that, while they had fixed many of the errant links on the site, they also seem to no longer be hosting two sites that for me are a rather large portion of Shadowrun history - the Shadowrun Archive and Blackjack's Shadowrun Page. Neither of these pages has been actually updated since 2000, so it's understandable to stop hosting them, but...

Blackjack - one Branson Hagerty - is a personality that is likely little known to the wider populace, or to newer Shadowrun players for that matter. A notoriously...grumpy...individual who mainly GMed rather than played the game - something he constantly complained about - Blackjack apparently switched to 3rd edition Shadowrun when it came out, but his site never reflected it. Indeed, said site - and his Blackjack's Corner column on the Shadowrun Archives - was full of his uniquely crusty humor and NERPS as well as a good deal of his philosophy and opinion on how to play and GM the game. His writing was quirky, sarcastic, vaguely nostalgic, and downright bitchy......and I loved every bit of it. His philosophy of gaming had a large effect on mine, even though I never interacted with him directly. These two sites were two of the first Shadowrun sites I ran unto when I first got access to the internet back in the fall of '94, and they were "places" I loved.

And now they are well and truly gone. Yet another sign that I'm getting old.

For those interested, portions of these sites can be viewed via the Wayback Machine here:
Blackjack's Shadowrun Page
The Shadowrun Archive - Blackjack's Corner

Confessions Of A Gamer Geek

I admit it, I'm guilty. I'm a gamer, a total geek and damn proud of it. I'm into video games, mainly PC based at the moment and I'm just getting into World of Warcraft since my girlfriend got it for me for my birthday. I've always disliked MMORPGs due to the fact that you have to pay to play a game you already bought, but then I didn't buy this so I guess it's ok ;) Anyway, I've loved the Warcraft series of games ever since I played the first one back in college.

My true passion in gaming though is pulp (aka table top, pen & paper, etc) gaming - particularly Shadowrun. Having played SR for something like 15 years starting at 1st edition and now on 4th, that pretty much says where my preference lies. That said, I also like D&D 3.5 (specifically the Eberron setting), Star Wars (d20 and the new Saga edition), and have some appreciation for White Wolf's games (even though I find them kind of pretentious).

D&D (the old, old red box) and Dragonlance were actually my first gaming experiences, and while I have a hate-hate relationship with the game's magic system I keep coming back to it every once and a while. That might change with the advent of 4th edition though. Frankly, neither I nor anyone I know is happy about it. Especially after spending a good chunk of change on the 3rd and then 3.5 edition books. All I can say at the moment is that WotC had best do a damn good job on 4th edition, like miraculous, if they still want my group's patronage.

"You Never Were A Christian"

"There is no such thing as an ex-Christian."

"You never really believed."

"If you truly knew or loved the Lord you would have never walked away."

I hear this stuff all the time from Christians (mainly the evangelical sort), and it truly does get tiresome, what with all the constantly having to explain that yes, I was once just as they are now. It gets old, really. Now, I'm not starting this thread to rag on or complain about anyone, but rather to address the issue, which is in fact two separate issues.

The first issue is semantics - what is the definition of a Christian? The original definition of the term (coined by the Romans) was "a follower of Christ". Functionally, the only proper definition of the term can be "one who believes in the tenants of Christianity". Ironically, I agree with CS Lewis on this matter as the following link shows:

CS Lewis from Mere Christianity

Now, given that my opinion of CS Lewis is rather low (the man advocated the execution of witches - see the end of Mere Christianity, Chapter 3) it should seem ironic that this agreement is the case.

The second issue is more important (from a Christian perspective) - that of whether being a Christian equals being born again/saved (the same concept really). I contend that, according to the bible, this must be the case. Why?

According to the vast majority of Christian doctrine, the bare bones minimum requirements for salvation are as follows:

1) Belief in fundamental Christian doctrines, mainly that there is one god, Jesus was his son/him, everyone is a sinner, and that Jesus died on the cross to pay the price for the sin of mankind

2) Conscious and freely given submission to Jesus as lord

If I am missing anything, please correct me. Now, if any individual who meets those two requirements is saved it is plain then that anyone who meets the definitional requirements of the term Christian (above) is indeed born again/saved by definition especially since requirement 2 above is a tenant of Christian belief.

Now, it should to plain to anyone that a person can believe in Christianity and meet those two requirements (thus being saved/born again) and then later change his or her mind/beliefs/willingness to submit. Thus, it is therefore obvious that a person can indeed have been a truly born again Christian and leave the faith, thus becoming an ex-Christian.

As an aside, in regards to the last quote above, it should be obvious to anyone that an individual can fall out of love with a person just as well as they can fall into love with them, even if they know the individual well. People change, especially when they learn new information or let their blinders fall away in regards to information they knew but glossed over before for the sake of love.

Now, with such understanding rather easily reached, one is forced to ask why many Christians insist so doggedly on maintaining that we (yes, there are many ex-Christians) are in effect lying when we say we were once Christians. The only reasons I can think of, based on experience and conjecture, are as follows:

1) Dogma - The individual heard it from some preacher or other authority figure somewhere, so that's it. Period. This type of individual is obviously ignorant, stubborn, and closed minded in the extreme, unwilling to deal with new information simply because it contradicts what they already "know".

2) Arrogance or Need To Be Right - An individual of this sort may believe that since they "know God" and "God" (really some authority figure) said that there's no such thing as an ex-Christian that that is the end all and be all of the "discussion". Alternatively, such an individual, having dogmatically picked up this erroneous idea, simply be so horrendously insecure that he has a pathological need to be Right, regardless of anything else, and thusly cannot admit to being wrong especially in such a sensitive issue. This second permutation is especially common in Christian men in my experience.

3) Fear - The individual is afraid to admit that another person could find perfectly valid reasons to leave behind the faith that the individual still embraces. Perhaps they are afraid that to admit such would allow fatal cracks to appear in their own faith, and, as they are afraid of the consequences that their religion gives to unbelief or perhaps fear the identity crisis that deconversion can bring, they would rather deny contradictory information than allow this to happen. It is plain to see though that this betrays a crippling insecurity in their own faith, a fear that it could stand up to such contradictory evidence.

4) Compassion - This would seem to be the rarest motivation for such insult (indeed, is it not insulting to tell another person that their true accounting of their own life is a lie?), such an individual is generally - but not always - aware of Hebrews 6:4-6 and other such biblical verses (there is one I can think of, but can't find at the moment) which essentially state that any who fall away from the faith is eternally damned and can never return to it. In either case, the motivation for such individuals would seem to be that them want to maintain the hope that an ex-Christian can still return to the fold and be saved from damnation. This can be due either to general charity or specific like of the individual ex-Christian in question. While this is admirable, it owns up to neither the facts of the situation nor to the harshness inherent in their chosen religion.

Obviously, the any given individual evidencing such a belief can have more than one reason behind it. Further, the reasons for such belief may not even be consciously known to the individual, which is where it gets tricky.

So This Is Christmas

The first year of World War One, the British and German troops in some places on the Western Front made their own peace - a bit of truce, a bit of humanity amidst the war. It started by singing songs, and (at least in one place) by one brave German risking his life to bring a Xmas tree to the British in the opposite trench.

Why am I talking about this on Christmas Eve? Because I wanna be that German. Any other time, I am, as you can tell gentle reader, something of an amateur culture warrior. I oppose both Christianity and Islam, and the expansion of either, and I am very much a liberal (generally speaking). All this culture war crap is necessary - vitally so in my opinion - because by debating such matters on the internet (and elsewhere) endlessly to the point of nausea we as a culture can hopefully keep the conflict on an intellectual level, and keep it from becoming something worse. Hopefully. But this is Christmas. Peace on Earth, goodwill to men, and all that. Regardless of our beliefs, for tonight and tomorrow let us have peace, let us make our own private truces. We can go back to the trenches in due time.

Peace, everyone. Please.

Merry Christmas & A Happy New Year to all!