I guess I’m kinda feeling like the first time I rode a bicycle.  My dad had been behind me steadying me and pushing me, but I knew sooner or later he had to let go so I could ride on my own. And I knew I could do it, I just hoped that the many crashes on the ride by myself wouldn’t be too painful.

I’m also worried a bit about like.. social stuff. I’m gonna be in a fraternity, which means I’ll have a bit of fun figuring out how to live with a bunch of guys. I’m a little worried about making sure I fit in with everyone. Or hoping that, at least, when I come home in a few months from now I’m not a totally different person. Or if I am, it’s for the better.

Anyway, I’m mostly just stressing out about stupid things. I’ll be fine, right?

Tim

Now, this may go against Catholic doctrine, I’m not sure, but I think I have an answer. And it’s- they’re right. God cannot be both. Now, let me explain.

So, God, being all loving, therefore is good. Now, an all loving God does not desire evil for His creation, right? He desires only good. But an all powerful God should be able to do evil. Now, you might say, well, then God just chooses to do good, even though he can do evil. But does God have a choice? If he were to do evil, he would immediately loose the “all loving” title, which would throw off the entire definition of God. Which means that, while he technically could choose to, since he is all loving, he really has no choice but to show love. Which.. means he doesn’t have the power to do evil. Both cannot exist at the same time on equal levels. One must trump the other.

Now this was really causing a stir for me. I was considering asking a priest about it I was so confused how this could be. Was the religion I so loved crumbling beneath my feet?

But, finally, I found an answer. Humans are fallible. Humans create words that are fallible. God is not fallible. Which means that the words we use to describe Him are as close as we can get to actually describing God. God gives us his description- albeit muddled in the language of man- perhaps the clearest (and most vague) definition of God we have- “I am who am” (Exodus 3:14). God doesn’t say “I am all loving” or “I am all powerful”. Those are human creations to try and personify a being we cannot fully understand or know. Giving God those definitions doesn’t work because our language, created by flawed man, is with flaws. It’s putting a limit on God’s power- it’s defining a being which cannot truly be defined.

Maybe there is a simpler Catholic solution to this problem. I don’t know. This is what I came up with, and I think it totally renewed my faith. Let me know what you think.

-Tim

If I consider marriage to be only valid between a man and a woman, why should I not vote to preserve the dignity of marriage? I mean, my logic was going along with the idea of separation of church and state. But really, voting without morals is not really what our founding fathers had in mind when they added that into the Declaration of Independence. They didn’t want an official religion of the state or a country run by a particular religious sect. But that doesn’t mean that voting without morals is acceptable- in fact, I think that they would agree with me.

If you know something is right, you should take it and run with it. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t question our ideals and always make sure we have the correct stance on an issue. Though, as the great Obi Wan Kenobi said, “Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view.” So sometimes our surroundings can affect our judgment or justifications of an issue, but we should always seek to know the Truth.  But if it’s something we firmly believe in, it’s our job- government by the people- to stand up for what we believe in.

-Tim

So I was thinking today, which is a bad idea. Anyway, I was trying to come up with a blog post idea, and somehow or another I got onto the idea of homosexuality. And it got me thinking.

I thought homosexuality should be legalized. I mean, this is America. The whole reason why we had a beef with Britian is because they were all in our face telling us what we can and cannot do because of religion. And now while I firmly believe homosexual marriages shouldn’t be in Christianity or Catholicism (another day, another dollar), I was totally convinced that I would be wrong for voting against any civil union proposal.

However, now I’m not so sure.

I kind of want to ban civil marriages altogether. And here’s why.

I say that any two people can get married. But then.. why two? Why does a marriage say that only two people can get married? Two gay people love each other, yes, but what about three people? Obviously that’s a homosexual marriage in some fashion, but why should it be limited to two?

But then, if you can’t be limited by the number of spouses you have, what’s to say I’m limited by my species? Can I marry my cat if I love it? Can I marry a rock? What about Mars?

Sure, this idea is rather absurd, but if you have any common sense at all, you know that there will be some people out there that will fight for this ‘right’. People aren’t really sensible. We want all these rights and ‘freedoms’. But we’ve got to realize sometime that the government is actually there to protect us. Sure, we’re still smoothing out the rough patches, but we need our government. But giving everyone unlimited freedoms creates anarchy and social disorder; we need rules in order to survive.

So I’m now in favor of “we can’t limit it, so we have to get rid of it” method of dealing with this. Sure, perhaps this example went a little bit out of the way to be rediculous, but one could see where the crazies out there would actually insist on undermining our freedoms until they require being taken away.

I mean, what’s the point of a civil marriage anyway? To protect assets and family? To change last names? It used to mean a family, kids, sex, and all that shenanigans, but now many of those things are culturally acceptable outside of marriage. A civil marriage is almost becoming an obsolete term. Wills and simple legal documents and a freewill culture have given us everything we need without marriage- I don’t see what the point is in redefining it.

Anway, to end on a light not, at least we’re not marrying Uranus yet. Okay, that’s a terrible attempt at lame humor. To see the no-so-clean fun between myself and a friend, check out this link: http://textbin.com/55c52

-Goose

I mean, I’m an avid youtuber, and if you read those annoying comments (they’re so addicting as much as I hate them) one of the most common arguments is the whole “Does God exist?” question (another day, another dollar, and half a million words to explain my views). And sure, I mean, people have been debating this question for years and years and there’s no way either side can definitively prove to the other that God [or gods] does or does not exist. There is really no “actual” physical evidence to either side.

Now, I’m not saying debating and questioning and discussing the possibility or existence of God or gods is a bad thing- I love doing it and it’s totally a really good thing to understand and be able to explain the reasons you have for what you believe. Blind faith or blind disbelief is uneducated and worse that not knowing what you believe in or being on the “other side” of the argument. But you have to argue properly. Just because I believe in God and you don’t, or you’re Wiccan and I’m Christian, or whatever the case is, I don’t have the right to disrespect you for that. I have never encountered a single religion- Islam included, as much as the Western countries might seem to think otherwise- that does not teach love of self and others. If you’re really trying to make a good impression on me and show me that your way of life is best, please do not call me names or site references that are opinionated. I just loose respect for you and your way of life, confirming why mine is, in fact, better.

I do have a bone to pick especially with Christians, since their representing the same beliefs as myself. If you’re going to cite reasons why God exists, citing the Bible is probably not the best idea- most Atheists either don’t understand everything the Bible is in our faith, or they claim that it’s a generally fictitious. Or don’t call that atheists who happened to have a question you didn’t have an answer for names. Like I said, it goes against our religion (WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?!) and then gives us a bad name. It gives me a bad name! I know lots of people who’ve left Christianity because of Christians.

“Oh, I don’t reject your Christ. I love your Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike your Christ.” – Ghandi

Now onto other faiths. I’m definitely conservative here. I’ll try to lay out my arguments and points in the most respectful manner possible. I’d love to see responses to my arguments, but calling me an asshole isn’t going to elicit a response from me. Even if you’re against religion, it’s just common courtesy to respect others and their opinions. The whole foundation of America was for many people with different views and ways of life to coexist in one place. I don’t think it’d be hard to ask for at least a little respect?

Thanks
-Goose

I kind of forgot to mention I’m a bit of a geek in the ‘welcome’ post. I got asked to explain how to use RSS feeds and that what not.

First of all, what is an RSS feed?

Wikipedia has a good example RSS (most commonly translated as “Really Simple Syndication”) is a family of web feedblog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.

Basically what that means is a bunch of nerdy people got together somewhere- like the Geneva Convention, except nerdier- and decided that if everyone did things the same way, we’d have a much easier time interpreting information. RSS Feeds are typically things like, as wikipedia says, news headlines or blog posts. It’s an easy way for people to know when there are updates to stories or when a new blog post has been published.

Now, how to use them is the tricky part. Luckily for you, unless you’re really nerdy, you’ll probably never have to worry about creating one. Now there are many ways to “read” an rss feed. One way is to actually read the plain XML – for me, go to http://philosophicalgoose.wordpress.com/feed/ and you’ll see a plain ol’ site with some weird looking text. And while this way to view a feed works… it’s, well it sucks.

Chances are, you want to utilize some sort of a feed reader. Most later browsers- IE7&8, Firefox, Chrome, Opera- all have feed readers built into them- usually they function like bookmarks that get automatically updated based on browser settings. For firefox, if you see something like this: Click that icon and it’ll pop up some choices. Play around with those- live bookmarks does what I said before, putting a folder in your bookmarks that updates automagically whenever the feed is updated.

There’s also programs that display feeds in nice and pretty formats- just search Google for “RSS software” and you’ll probably find a whole charade of information. Or if you have the new Yahoo! mail system, they have a whole page dedicated to aggregating (gathering) RSS formats, and it’s relatively easy to figure out as well.

Oh- twitter is an example of a popular website besides blogs that heavily relies on RSS. The reason why my twitter feed displays right over there ==> is because it gets its information from an RSS feed.

Hope this was useful. Maybe some philosophical stuff in a bit.

-Goose

Edit: Turns out, Chrome might not have an RSS feature yet. But Google has a very nice page for RSS reading – http://www.google.com/reader. Somehow they’re not integrated.. Weird..

I’m 18 years old. Which means I’m pretty relatively inexperienced in this ‘life’ thing. Maybe that means I have a new view? Or that my view is naive? Who knows, that’s really for you to decide.

I’m also a Catholic. Now, before you leave, I’m not one of those “shove my religion down your throat” kind of people. I’m pretty relaxed when it comes to other people have different viewpoints besides my own. The world would be boring if we’re all the same. Now that usually means that I do think I’m right, but I respect your opinion and the best part is that you can quit reading if I get too preachy. Chances are I will. If I do, yell at me or something.

Back to the Catholic thing. I’m sure a few posts here will be like.. “Catholicism 101″ or something, teaching why I believe what I believe and what it is I actually believe. And some things- like when I get to the topic of abortion or the death penalty or the war in Iraq- will probably have a rather Christian take on them. But really, I think I’m unique. Of course, everyone does, so I’m probably not as unique as I think I am. Either way, just.. read anyway? And then tell me you hate it.

Thanks to my friend Mere who rather unknowningly convinced me to start  this blog.

And if your comments have enough meat to them, I might address them in a post. So do work on the comments, okay?

Enough about me. I’m dragging on and on and I haven’t even started this stupid blog. I’ll figure out somethings to post about and have some stuff posted soon. Stay tooned.

-Goose