This is a very interesting article on Relativism, Duh!
The problem I have with the philosophy of Relativism is that it denies any universal truths, except that is, the universal truth they believe... that everything is relative. I know it's simplistic but I can't get past the logical error that they make. They try to prove there is no universal truth by declaring a universal truth.
This happened about three months ago...
I created the blog post but I never posted it. Awesome Chick and I were talking to some friends and they said I should post it. So here it is......
I love all kinds of hats, even hats that I'm too much of a stiff to actually wear. I recently bought myself an Australian Outback brand Wax Cloth hat that sort of looks like the one Indiana Jones wears. The only problem was that it was a bit too tight. The large was tight but the extra large was way to big. I came up with this idea to really soak it with water and wear it around and see if it would stretch.
So I'm wearing this hat around the house that I'm keeping so wet water is dripping down my face. I don't know why but I decided to go outside. After a while, I'm not sure how long, the strokes took my sense of time, I start to get a headache. It starts to get really bad like my head is in a vice, so bad I'm getting nauseous. I'm thinking "this is the worst ice cream headache I've ever had".
I literally stumbled into the house, feeling like I was going to throw up. I reached up to grab my hat off my head and the darn thing was not only frozen almost solid it was frozen to my head! As awesome Chick and I jokingly say now I had turned my head into an Australian Outback popcycle. I had to lay on the floor with my head in the sun wondering if I had killed more of what brain I have left.
Well just like when you eat ice cream to fast my head thawed out and I went to our computer and logged onto the 9 News web site to check the temperature. It was only 20 friggin degrees outside!
I usually have these "stroke moments" when I'm alone. I can tell Awesome Chick is a bit concerned about the time when the weather warms up and I trade my indoor trainer in for riding outside.
I noticed today that the spell checker on my email and blogging clients, both Microsoft products, do not recognize the words:
prolife and Magisterium
However it does recognize prochoice and protestant. Dictionary.com recognizes all these words.
My preparation for my ride is going average at best I have to say. I was supposed to start riding 5 days per week this week but I had to hold it at 4. My legs have felt like lead! I did have a good ride today though. I also learned something. Never follow a rider you don't know; expecting them to get you where you want to go.
I got a bit disoriented on today's ride so I started to follow a rider who seemed to be going in the direction I wanted to. When this happens, and it happens often, the rule is that I'm supposed to call my wife. The problem with me and rules though is remembering them. Well I lost my guide and I ended up in the projects', the hood, the barrio around downtown Denver!
As I rode through a group of 6 very large African American men (did I say VERY LARGE!) standing in the middle of the street, wearing blue 'doo rags' I realized that I didn't really blend in. Nobody else was riding a fancy, red Spanish racing bike, wearing a Helmet, gloves and goofy, skin tight, Lycra shorts. Let's please try to forget the image of the milk white legs sticking out of them. (A little honesty here is in order; even on Lance Armstrong cycling shorts look GOOFY! The more high tech they are the goofier they look.)
My wife, who is full blooded Mexican, lived part of her childhood in that neighborhood. Her Dad lived in that neighborhood. My older sister lived there for several years with her children. My Dad was brought up not in that neighborhood but just blocks to the north. Sometimes I have gone there with my wife and her family or my family. But only StrokeBoy would end up there alone, on a bike, wearing those damn skin tight Lycra cycling shorts and not having a clue how he got there or how to get home. Thank the Good Lord my shorts are black and not some silly color like pink that you see in the Tour De France. The only way I could have made this worse is if I had done it in the middle of the night. Stay tuned because I very quickly unlearn the lessons I learn.
Anyway it all ended fine because I ended up home and I'm writing this. The part that amuses me is that I almost never remember how I get home, I just end up here. I'm sure my wife Awesome Chick is just thrilled about that. I remember a few details of my ride, like today's visit the turf of the Crips, but very little else. Geese if a cop had seen me I would have probably been arrested for simply being clueless and out of my mind. No doubt I would have been guilty on all counts and sentenced to life I'm sure.
Michelle Malkin: "Danny belongs to the nation"
Danny Dietz Memorial Coverage
“The secret of happiness is freedom and the secret of freedom is courage." ~ Pericles
Thank you Danny Dietz and thank you to your family and thank you to all those who have gone before you!
I live blocks from where the memorial will stand. I will be there when the monument is dedicated. I'll visit it often. If I could I would have it in my front yard. Danny personifies what Pericles reasoned almost 2,500 years ago. Courage, backed by action, not in-action, gives all of us a chance at the happiness and the freedom we desire.
Dietz has helped to ensure that in our great country; people who have ideas or agendas are not required to also have great courage; something Pericles could only dream of. He ensures that people are not required to be heroes simply because they have an idea. Indeed having an idea and getting it heard requires little more courage than to be a bit countercultural. Simple people with no outstanding courage, just ideas, can be heard and make a difference. Danny Dietz helped ensure that.
Don’t the people who would use a monument to Danny's efforts for their own agenda, see any irony in the fact that they perform their act on the shoulders of Danny Dietz? What they do is almost by virtue of the ‘permission’ granted to them by Danny and all the others that have gone before him. If this is about eliminating gun violence, which is a truly noble cause, don’t desecrate or attempt to whitewash from history the people who have given you the opportunity to speak out.
Thank you Danny; that for us to have an idea heard, we don’t have to fear the hail of bullets you endured. Thank you Danny that for us to have an idea heard, we don’t have to endure the bombs going off that you endured. Thank you Danny that to have an idea heard, we don’t have to endure crouching in the dirt in a far off wasteland. Thank you Danny that to have an idea heard, we don’t have to witness our friends bloodied and dying around us. Thank you Danny that in order to have an idea heard we don’t have to decide between our own lives and the lives of our friends and comrades. Thank you Danny that in order to have an idea heard we don’t have to have the courage that you had.
I guess, simply, what I’m trying to say to Danny Dietz and those that have gone before him; I offer you my simple, heartfelt, tear filled Thanks, well done and Gods speed.
I don't think I will ever accept that I had a stroke. In fact I make an effort to not accept it. I know some people say they only look forward and that they don't look back. I won’t do that. Just like when I was tired of being a butcher I didn’t accept that. I did something about it and got through school and became a Software Engineer. In life acceptance to often is an excuse for stagnation, for doing nothing.
I wasn't the only one there before the thief in the night, my first stroke, slithered into my life. So, so, so many people had helped me get to where I was in my life and helped me make my life what it had become. Everybody from my wife, my kids, and all the rest of my family and friends to teachers, counselors and even those people I I disliked or didn’t have a lot in common with. All were partly responsible for who I was.
For me to say, 'I accept what happened, the past is past and I'm only looking forward, never back' is a slap in the face to each and every one of those people that helped me become who I was before the thief came. It is like saying, 'thanks for the effort everybody, but oh well. Any future is equally as good as the last or the next’.
Hey I'm doing great. I have ups and downs. Sometimes I don’t think I can take another day and sometimes everything goes smooth as silk. I'm carving out a life for myself. I'm growing and continuing my life but my past is there. Without a past there is no present, no future. To simply look forward and try to build a future, disregarding your past, is like trying to grow a fruit tree for food that has not roots. You will quickly go hungry.
My strokes are there and they stole a lot from me and everybody around me. I will search for the reason like a hungry dog searching for a scrap of food. During that search; my life will continue to grow. It will become what I and the people who are once again here for me, make of it. But no, I will never stop asking why and sit back in a Zen like or contemplative ‘false peace’. I won’t get philosophical and giggly about “I don’t look back, always forward”. To be honest I don’t think a human person is really even capable of doing that. I think it is a lie for someone to claim it. The reason I stroked is out there and it is going to be pursued. Along the way my new life will rise out of my past by not denying my past.
It would be wise for Speaker Pelosi to not push the issue of the lack of women in politics in Saudi Arabia. In the U.S. all the rage to think all peoples, belief systems, forms of government, religions, whatever are all the same and have equal merit. However, in Islamic countries in general and those under Sharia Law in particular that clearly cannot the case.
According to the the teaching of the Prophet Muhammad, as found in the Koran and Sharia Law which is enshrined in the Saudi Arabian Constitution, Speaker Pelosi has only half the worth of a man in society and since she is Catholic and a Kufar she should be killed. I have no doubt most of the Saudi men around her were thinking should keep her eyes down and mind her own business. (Qur'an 24:31)
"Asked if she raised the issue [of the lack no women in government] at Thursday's meeting with the council members, she said: ``The issue has been brought up in our discussions with the Saudis on
this trip.'' "
Pelosi Visits Saudi Arabia's Council World Latest Guardian Unlimited
Technorati tags: Nancy Pelosi
I just have to know. What degree of incestuary is Mailer? It sounds like third or fourth at least.
I and many others often employ comparisons between the way the media and pop culture treat Islamic terrorists versus the way they treated the Nazis. I frequently write something like this:
Can you imagine them doing that with Hitler/the Nazis?Well, now leftist novelist Norman Mailer has made that imagination a reality. Yes, the ultra-ludicrous continues to be realized--in this case with the publication of his "The Castle in the Forest," out next week.
Norman Mailer & His New "Novel":
One Toy Short of a Happy Meal (Sorry, McDs)
In this absurdity on paper, Mailer writes a fiction book about how Hitler was abused as a child, molested, and was the son of an incestuous relationship. And it's not even true. Mailer made it up. But he uses this phony account to get us to understand the reason why Hitler turned out the way he is--to excuse it all.
And this is the novel Mailer says he's wanted to write for 50 years. Not sure if he's currently in a mental state to really remember the last 50 years accurately. But one thing's for certain: At age 84, he ain't all there. Clearly, dementia or Alzheimer's or some other sort of mental disability has set in.
As I previously wrote, during the Zacarias Moussaoui death penalty trial jurors were given a book by Moussaoui's brother, claiming that Moussaoui had an abusive childhood. Nine jurors said it influenced their decision to spare Moussaoui's life. I believe that book was a carefully crafted fiction written just for that purpose by his loving brother.
Now, Mailer is acting as Hitler's modern day Frere Zacarias Moussaoui, trying to absolve Hitler. And it's all made up--even though Mailer is now trying to claim there's some truth in it. Pop psychobabble absolves the Holocaust?! OY.
Here are some ridiculous excerpts from today's USA Today French kiss to Mailer and his absurd book:
In the novel, incest runs strong in Hitler's family. His mother is his father's daughter. "Adi" is beaten by his father, adored by his mother, treated cruelly by an older stepbrother. He doesn't do well in school. He excels only at playing war in the forest with other boys. He has no girlfriends and masturbates frequently.The novel has a seven-page bibliography listing books that, as Mailer writes, "enriched many a fictional possibility."
Whatever that means.
He spent two years reading about Hitler because "you should know how someone turns out if you're writing about him as a child." . . .What's true in Castle and what's made up? Mailer circles the question like a veteran prizefighter sizing up a younger opponent: "Look at it like this: I'm a novelist. I can take three facts and write a story. Is that story factual? No. But it's based on facts. It can get at the truth."
As for the incest in Hitler's family, Mailer says "that can't be proven, but the facts of his life suggest it. There's a great likelihood that Hitler was a 'first- or second-degree incestuary,' " a word Mailer made up for the novel. "It sounds good. It sounds German."
All of the novel's major characters actually existed, with one exception (a beekeeper with a passion for honey and young boys). Mailer says he finds it easier to "make up something about a person than to conceive the person." . . .
Mailer also may have contemporary political leaders in his sights.
In the novel, DT discusses wartime leaders "who have installed in themselves an ability not to suffer sleepless nights because of casualties on the other side. They now possess the mightiest of all social engines of psychic numbification - patriotism! That is still the most dependable instrument for guiding the masses, although it may yet be replaced by revealed religion. We love fundamentalists. Their faith offers us every promise of developing into the final weapon of mass destruction."
Is that a slap at President Bush, who Mailer has said has surpassed Ronald Reagan as "the most ignorant president we ever had"?
"To ask the question," he replies, "is to answer it."
Just one thing to say to all of this. PUH-LEEZE.
Remember, this guy is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for non-fiction. Which tells us all we need to know about Pulitzer Prize-winning "non-fiction."
Unfortunately, Mailer says he is already writing a sequel. USA Today calls him the "Devil's Advocate," but I say they can drop the "advocate" part.
Source: Absurd Ad Absurdum: Norman Mailer's New Hitler "Abusive Childhood" Apologist Book; Compares Bush to Hitler
Originally published on 1/15/2007 11:28 AM by Debbie
What happens when a religion that was started and given to us by a God who is love and infinitely selfless gets turned inward to focus on the selfish needs of the person practicing it? Abominations like what this article describes is what happens.
A New Catholic Community
October 2006"My name is Victoria Rue. And I am a Roman Catholic womanpriest."
So began Sunday Mass on April 2, 2006, at the Spartan Memorial Chapel at San Jose State University in California. Concelebrating with Victoria Rue was Don Cordero, a married former Jesuit priest. For those present, this was a momentous occasion: It was the inaugural Mass of a "New Catholic Community" that, says Rue, reverences people who "seek authenticity and inclusion in the worship ceremony, who have experienced divorce and remarriage, who are diverse in sexual orientation, who seek progressive exploration of ideas, who want imagination and daring, who are concerned deeply about God's creation and how to preserve it and who seek personal and spiritual integrity." According to the San Jose State campus newspaper, the Spartan Daily (April 4), this "first official gathering" drew "about 30 participants," of whom "most were elderly."
The high point of this Mass, during which God was referred to as "She," was the vibrant music, Rue told the Spartan Daily, and "when we each turned to face one another, looked one another in the eyes, and then hugged each other [and] said, ‘this is my body, this is my blood'…."
Momentous indeed. To those 30 or so souls present, this was the dawning of a new day: A real Roman Catholic Mass presided over by an actual female priest!
If the name Victoria Rue rings a bell to some readers it is because she was named by Theresa Marie Moreau in her January 2006 NOR article, "A Mockery of Catholicism," as one of nine women who were "ordained" on July 25, 2005, in a ceremony presided over by three women "bishops" aboard the Thousand Islander III tour boat in the St. Lawrence Seaway off the Canadian coast. Rue was described as a 58-year-old "feminist theologian, a writer/director/teacher of theater who teaches Comparative Religions and Women's Studies at San Jose State University."
Rue's "ordination" was part of an ongoing series of women's "ordinations" put on by the Roman Catholic Womenpriests organization. According to the group's website, "Dr. Rue's ministries include teaching, writing and directing theatre. She convenes two weekly Eucharists at San Jose State University (for students and the larger community). She lives with her beloved Kathryn, her partner of sixteen years." So there's more to Rue than we previously knew: In a piece about her just after her 2005 ordination, the Spartan Daily (Sept. 19, 2005) called her "openly lesbian," and related how she "entered a convent once in the late '60s to be a nun," but later dropped out.
Being a lesbian is no small part of what Rue intends to do and represent: "Our Roman Catholic Womanpriest Movement wants to show that priests can be married, can be celibate, can be with a committed partner, can be heterosexual, can be homosexual, that all of the sexualities that are given to us by God are blessed sexualities." All sexualities? Most certainly. "Sexuality," Rue claims, "is a gift from God, not just some sexualities, all sexualities." That would include pedophilia, man-boy sex, bestiality, rape, and who knows what else.
The subtitle of Theresa Moreau's NOR article was "Absolutely Null and Utterly Void." The Vatican has repeatedly affirmed that it has no authority to ordain women. John Paul II, in his 1994 apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, slammed the door (once again) on women's ordination and pre-empted further discussion on the matter.
Rue's "New Catholic Community" is but a feeble bastardization of the real thing -- a "mockery" as Theresa Moreau's article put it. But Rue will have none of that: "The Masses that Don Cordero and I preside at…and the Mass that I preside at [alone]…are Roman Catholic Masses that are in union with the Roman Catholic Church. I am a validly ordained Roman Catholic priest" (Spartan Daily, May 10, 2006).
Not so fast, said the Bishop of San Jose, Patrick McGrath, who is not generally known for vigorous defenses of Church teachings. Bishop McGrath released this statement in The Valley Catholic, the official newspaper of the Diocese of San Jose: "Victoria Rue is not a validly ordained priest of the Roman Catholic Church. Members of the Roman Catholic Church should not participate in celebrations of the sacraments that are conducted by Victoria Rue, as those celebrations are not in union with the local or universal church." Bam!
But is it enough?
Beyond issuing his terse statement, Bishop McGrath has no plans to reprimand or excommunicate or in any other way acknowledge Victoria Rue. And the silence, Rue admits, dismays her. "The bishop did not try to communicate with me before making his statement that was published in all parish bulletins of San Jose. I want the bishop to hear my story of how I have been called to be a priest and how I was ordained a priest." (He could do that by simply reading Theresa Moreau's Jan. 2006 NOR article.) Reacting to Rue's request for dialogue, diocesan director of media relations Roberta Ward told the Spartan Daily, "Quite frankly, it would be a short conversation because she is simply not a validly ordained priest."
But Rue refuses to go quietly into that dark night. Being ordained a Roman Catholic priest "felt like something I had been called to all my life," she told the Philadelphia Inquirer (April 12, 2006), and was something "I was now able to live out loud about." For someone determined to "live out loud," the silent treatment must be particularly frustrating. Nevertheless, recalcitrant she remains: "If anything, [Bishop McGrath's] statement has only helped to clarify why people are there [at her Masses]. And these Masses will continue" (Spartan Daily, May 10, 2006).
With "anywhere three to 30 people" attending Rue's "Masses" (San Jose Mercury News, May 28), Roberta Ward maintains that there is no point in drawing more attention to them. But the attention of the secular media -- both local and national -- has already been drawn, as well as that of the San Jose State campus community. And as diminutive as Rue's "New Catholic Community" is, it is not a singular aberration. We question the wisdom of employing an ignore-it-and-hope-it-goes-away tactic. Souls are at stake here, that of Rue and those snared in her web.
Note to Bishop McGrath: Admonishing the sinner is one of the seven Spiritual Works of Mercy. But silence in the face of sin -- public and repeated sin -- where is the mercy in that?
Technorati tags: Catholic Teaching, Women Priests
Source: New Oxford Review
