Monday, March 23, 2015

Random Thoughts Part 5

Like many others of this age, I am still capable of thinking in short sprints. Unfortunately, like others of this age, I have too many distractions to actually think for any extended duration. By the way, have you noticed that we live in an age of distractions and that distractions are never good? Nobody is ever in the middle of playing a video game only to get distracted by War And Peace or The Symposium,  are they? At any rate, here are some thoughts, if you have time for such things:


It is foolish to argue with God if you believe in him, more so if you do not.

I do not listen so much to whether or not you invoke God or science so much as if you have a degree of humility in your voice.

Intelligence is merely a tolerance for ambiguity and a reticence for judgment. Both of these can be acquired through practice.

If you want to make a person feel helpless, convince him he is a victim. If you want to make him dangerous, tell him he belongs to a group that is victimized.

There is no such thing as a good law, only a necessary one. Laws are the tombstones of ethics.

Over-tolerance has at its roots the same causes as intolerance: the unwillingness to make complex moral decisions. One provides a simple answer which says everything is permitted. The other establishes a black and white view of the world that does not allow for intricacies.

To the creationist, the extinction of a species must be the gravest of crimes.

Can one have pride without accomplishments? Faith without acts? Confidence without hard work?

A starving man will eat rice intermixed with dirt rather than trying to sort out each little grain. The hungry man will work a little way towards purifying his intake. The gourmand will insist upon purity. Such it is with art.

Never mistake democracy for America, liberty for a flag. Do not confuse abstract ideas with reality.

It is naïve to think big government can solve all our problems, foolish to believe the free market can.

I don’t care about your political persuasion so much as your commitment to facts.

Society needs a moral authority, be it the church, the government, etc. Today, the moral authority is the market, which preaches that whatever is profitable is good.

When I was growing up in the 70's we didn't have things like Facebook and Texting. If you wanted to send a message back then you had to knock on ceilings or pipes or tie ribbons to trees.

I find it absolutely disgusting that they're finding plastics in our great lakes' water. From now on I'm drinking only bottled water.

We smugly act like we are superior to kids today, but guess what? This is the world our generation has created. We were too busy pursuing material goods to share our time with them, instead giving them electronic devices to amuse them so that we wouldn't be distracted from the game or soap opera we were watching on TV.

Isn't blaming government for the abuses it sometimes enables kind of the same thing as blaming guns for the uses criminals put them to?

Our Founding Fathers established a government that was very limited in its reach and its ability to tax. It was called The Articles Of Confederation and it didn't work.

Speaking the truth means being hated and misunderstood by both sides of the issue.

Creationists: living proof that the theory of evolution is wrong.


It’s perfectly acceptable to mock the past for its absurdities so long as it does not permit you to turn a blind eye to the foolishness of the present.
  
The difference between Western hillbilly hatemongers and Islamic extremists is actually pretty thin. Both like to marry girls before they are old enough to make decisions of their own, both like to feel morally superior despite being intellectually inferior, and both justify violence in the name of God.
  
Certainty is an illusion, but it is a pleasant one. And illusions that work are more practical than realism that doesn’t Cherish your illusions, for they are the efficacious agents of their own achievement.

The present is the balance between yesterday and tomorrow. He who is not on equal footing, cannot live adequately in the present.


There are only two things one need be concerned with: the real and the possible.

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