Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin

"Love the sinner & hate the sin" - I saw this discussion on a Facebook Friend's news feed this morning. I didn't get involved as the discussion assumed a Christian, or at least biblical, premise and orientation and I didn't want to disrupt the flow.

The saying can apply to many things, but it often refers to homosexuality, although it can also refer to many other things, including practicing a religion other than Christianity (or no religion at all). The one making the statement usually means that while hating the "sin" (behavior prohibited or proscribed in one's holy book) they hold out hope that the person will cease and desist from practicing their "sin" and come around to "The God Side". So how long do we give the "sinners"  to change their ways? Do they continue to be loved for the rest of their lives regardless of their behavior? What if they refuse to even consider changing their behavior and reject the premise that their behavior is sinful? My contention is that this alleged "love" is 100% contingent on the perceived possibility of change.

To be fair, if someone holds an opinion, rightly or wrongly, that a behavior is harmful, it is perfectly consistent that they attempt to discourage those who engage in that behavior from continuing in it. In fact in is reasonable, rational and logical to try to influence a person to change in these circumstances.

But just because an action is logical or consistent does not make the action right. An action or an opinion is logical when it flows naturally from a premise. The premise in this case is that the bible states that homosexuality is a sin; that premise is further based on an earlier premise that "God" wrote or inspired the bible and that said "God" is infallible, perfect, omniscient and all-powerful. The opinion that there is an infallible, perfect, omniscient and all-powerful being is far from universal or and certainly not objectively demonstrable; even assuming such a being exists, it is far from universally accepted that this being wrote or commissioned the bible or that the bible accurately describes this being's attributes - and even among people who believe the first of these two premises, there is much honest disagreement over what this book means.

So, now to the practical application:

For those of us who do not share the opinions held by those who base their ethics and morality upon a certain interpretation of the bible, the whole "love the sinner, hate the sin" thing is judgmental, short-sighted and yes - hateful. While what you may mean is that you love us so much that you want us to enjoy the great bliss that comes from following the rules set down by those claiming to speak for your god, what we hear is that you think that our choices in life, our opinions, our selves are inferior to yours in any meaningful way, that the only way that we can truly live is to completely change who we are and that while you look down your noses at us, we should give you credit for good intentions.

"Love the Christian, hate Christianity" - doesn't sound so good, does it?

Freakin' Politics

In some ways, politics is important. Once in a while there is a specific issue that divides the two sides and makes choices very clear. More often than not, however, it makes little difference to how we all live our everyday lives. Hell, zoning decisions by a local planning board whose names we can seldom can remember have more effect on our day-to-day existence than decisions made by Congress and the President. naturally there are exceptions. We went to war under our last President under a dubious rationale, but considering that most of Congress was on board with the decision, it's difficult to claim that a President from the other party wouldn't have led us into these senseless conflicts too.

Our current contest for the office of President is full of urgent calls to defeat the other guy, portraying one as an America-hating Communist and the other as a heartless bottom-liner who hates Americans. Both are painted as being out of touch with regular Americans. I hear and read horror stories every day about how President Obama is going to take away our guns, kill the railroads by outlawing coal, and institute Shariah law. Just as often I hear about how Romney is going to ship all our jobs overseas and make us all wear Mormon underpants. In three and a half years, Obama hasn't even tried to do many of the "socialist" things that he supposedly wants to do, let alone succeed due to Republican obstructionism. Why should I believe that following a second Obama inauguration he will suddenly reveal  his true colors and turn us into a Communist-Muslim state? Conversely, why would I think that Romney would be able to implement all the horrible things that he is accused of?

That all being said, I plan on voting for Obama in November. I think that overall, the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act is good for the country and good for me and my family specifically. I like how he has gradually extricated us from Iraq and how he is getting us out of Afghanistan. I support his recent action to help young undocumented immigrants. I don't think that he was aggressive enough battling the effects of the recession (even while acknowledging that he inherited a mess) and that he severely underestimated how tough the job of President is and the extent of right-wing Republican opposition. His opponents mobilized much of the country against him with appeals to emotion, in particular fear.

Romney on the other hand seems to say whatever he needs to say to get elected. In the early days of the primaries I thought he was relatively sane; a middle-of-the-road, moderate Republican who would be somewhat harmless as President. And probably if elected he will be. I doubt all of the evil attributed to him would in reality come to pass. But honestly, I just can't bring myself to vote for a Republican after four years of hatred, four years of misinformation, four years of obstructionism. Even if Romney isn't as right-wing as his campaign rhetoric suggests, he is willing to pander to that segment of the population. And that's just not the kind of man that I can vote for.

Dissent

It's kind of funny how dissent works. I recall that during the George W. Bush years, questioning the President was tantamount to treason - why, you're giving aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime. Now that we have a Democratic president, it's okay to criticize, it fact it's our patriotic duty to criticize! Part of patriotism as I see it, part of being someone who loves his or her country is being able to see what parts of it can be improved, what parts are dysfunctional, what parts are just plain wrong and make suggestions about how to fix them. The answer is not to stick our heads in the sand and pretend that our country is perfect and above criticism, but to make dissent commonplace. Saying like "America - love it or leave it" or what I saw on Facebook this morning about how if anyone was "offended by the flag" the poster would help them pack. Other than being a strawman proposition (who are all these people in the United States who are offended at the U.S. flag?) - it suggests that criticism of what the flag stands for - the United States - is grounds for deportation. And of course there's the originator or the photo in question, a U.S. Marine; somehow there's that assumption that if one of the "troops" say something, it is beyond question. So, unlike the Marine who would help the imaginary people who are offended at the flag pack their bags in preparation for residence elsewhere - if you are offended at dissent - I will not help you pack your bags, because the First Amendment is still in force.

Tribal Wars Withdrawal

About three years ago I started playing the online game called Tribal Wars. Tribal Wars is one of a number of online strategy games by German based Innogames. The basic premise is that you sign on to a "world" (they recently opened their 64th world), a self-contained grid where the various players join together into "tribes" with the goal of taking over the world.

The play begins with each player being assigned a village randomly placed somewhere in the world. Players who sign up early are placed in the center of a 10x10 grid - 100 squares, each one called a "continent", or a "K". As new players are added they are assigned places farther and farther from the center (the "core") - this area becomes known as "the rim".

Your initial goals in your new village are twofold: recruit troops and improve your buildings. Let's look at the buildings first.

• Village Headquarters: building or improving the other village structures takes place here. The Village HQ can be improved from a Level 1 to a Level 30. the higher the level, the quicker the construction of other buildings takes place. 
• Farm: the level of the farm determines how extensive your building improvement can be, as well as how many troops. Each level has an increasing amount of "farm space". This is important because each type of building and each type of troop takes up a different amount of "farm space". A Level 30 Farm gives you the room for maximum building levels and maximum troop strength
• Resources; Clay, Timber and Iron are all harvested in mines just outside the village walls. These three resources are the raw materials which you use to improve your buildings and equip your troops. 
• Wall: The wall helps protect the village from attacking troops. The higher the level of the wall, the more efficient your troops will be.
• Recruiting Centers: A barracks, stable and workshop are where you recruit, train and equip your troops. The higher the level, the quicker your troops are ready.
• Smithy: types of weapons are "researched" in the Smithy before you can equip your troops
• Academy: Where you educate your nobles (more on them later)

Troops are extremely important in order to defend from attacks or attack in return. All troops take a set amount of resources to equip. The more effective troops tend to be the most expensive in terms of resources. Many new players tend to neglect troops in favor of buildings. Each building level adds points to a players total, troops do not, so many "noobs" (newbies) are "point whores", racking up points at the expense of troops. 

• Offensive Troops; Axemen, Light Cavalry, Rams, Catapults. All have varying levels of effectiveness. A chart is included in the game outlining their comparative offensive and defensive strengths. A "nuke" is a collection of troops designed to either "clear" a village (kill all defending troops), knock down the walls, or conquer it. A nuke might consist of 9000 axes, 2000 light cavalry.
• Defensive Troops: Spearmen, Swordsmen, Heavy Cavalry. Spears are most effective against cavalry, swords against axes, heavy cavalry are heavy duty quick support. 
• Nobles; Once certain building requirements are met a player can educate nobles. A noble is used to conquer another player's village by lowering what is called "loyalty". Each village starts with a loyalty level of 100. Each successful attack that includes a noble will lower a villages loyalty level by 15-35 points, or an average of 25. Typically four nobles are sufficient to conquer a rival village. 

A quick note on "farming". In addition to your resource mines, a way to garner resources is to send your troops off to plunder other villages, typically unoccupied villages. Each type of troop can carry a specified number of resources back with him. The best players use automated algorithms to constantly farm, allowing them to build quickly. 

So, to recap, your early goal is to improve your buildings, which enables you to equip more troops and educate nobles, this in turn allows you to conquer other villages. This then becomes the cycle that you repeat over and over as you play Tribal Wars. Your sources for other villages to conquer include other players and what is call Barbarian Villages. A barbarian village, or "barb" is a village generated by the game that is not owned by any player. It may be one that was never player-owned, or it may have been occupied by a player who quit, leaving a village full of troops with nothing to do but kill your attackers if you fail to send a large enough force. As the game progresses, most player disdain the barbs. There are two reasons for this: one is that it is cooler and more challenging to take a village from an enemy player, or a rival in your area than an undefended village. Second, barbs generally only grow to a certain low level before plateauing - taking over a small village means that a lot of resources will immediately be required to build everything up. taking over an enemy village that has its buildings maximized means that you have a fully functioning village right away. An exception to this is "large barbs", fully built-up villages that had belonged to a player who quit.

As a player grows, it is typical to try to establish a "cluster", a group of villages close together. This facilitates self support and makes it more difficult for an enemy to isolate you. 

Real success in Tribal Wars comes from banding together into tribes. The advantages of being in a tribe is basically safety in numbers. You can send some of your defensive troops to other players to help support them when they are under attack, you can coordinate attacks on other players and tribes, and experienced players can educate newer players. Since the goal is for a tribe (or in some worlds an alliance of tribes) to take over the world, the "history" of a world is generally one war after another. In the early stages it's kind of a melee, with everybody attacking everybody else, alliances shifting weekly or sometimes daily in an effort to establish dominance. Early one tribes work toward gaining control of one or two continents. The stronger tribes begin to become regional powers. About mid game 2-3 larger tribes dominate in each quadrant, with a swarm of smaller tribes flourishing along the rim or in between the larger tribes' areas of control. As tribes battle each other, sometimes the winner absorbs the better players from the losing tribe and kills off the rest, not only increasing the average skill level of the tribe, but expanding their geographic reach. In the world that I play on, about a year ago there was one major power in each quadrant, although the northwest had three big tribes. In about six months time the biggest tribe had defeated or absorbed all major tribes and started working on eliminating the remaining resistance along the rim. 

Just this morning I deleted my accounts on Tribal Wars. I have been playing on this world, world 51 (W51) for almost two years and on a variety of other worlds for a year before that. When I first started on W51 I was conquered twice just as I was getting a second village, I joined tribes that disbanded at critical moments until I finally joined up with a functioning tribe that worked well together. I slowly but steadily grew, increasing the number of villages that I controlled to 61. It seemed like every couple of months that the end was near; I'd be under serious attack and then my attacker would disappear for a while. At one point I got greedy and conquered a few villages of a player who I thought was inactive. He beat me down to 20 villages. I was holding my own at about 20-25 villages About six months ago a larger player was quitting and I took over his account of 130 villages. I increased it to 161 villages until this past May when a concentrated attack by 10 players in the world's biggest tribe brought me down to only 30 villages. 

The leading tribal alliance holds over 85% of W51's villages, the #2 tribal alliance, which I am a part of has been just trying to stay alive and delay the inevitable for the last few months, making the big tribe work for their world victory. It was even fun until recently when an ally was unable to access his internet for a week and one of my tribe members started attacking him. My tribe mate refused to return to "stolen" villages, so this former ally began attacking smaller members of my tribe, including me, in retaliation. I've been losing villages at the rate of about one a day, trying to stay ahead by conquering barbs and villages of tribe mates who have quit. The last straw was this morning when several tribe mates started bickering among themselves and dragged me into it. I looked at the situation and thought that it had long ago stopped being fun and I was just holding on just to say that I had stuck it out 'til the end. Well I almost did! 

I can still go back, I still have some "premium points" stored up that I can use, but  took Tribal Wars off my "favorites" and I'm going to stay away...at least for now!

God Exists

Of course he does, how could I think otherwise? After all it's been proved right? http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm
 While no one can prove the existence of this being, no can disprove his existence either - people claim all the time that they talk to him and that he talks back (kinda, sorta) - who am I to doubt their experience? I know, those of you who have dealt with me in the past are just waiting for me to say that those who believe in his existence are stupid, or deluded, or...something else nebulously negative. No my friends, I believe that there are such things as spirits and gods, deities and geists of all kinds, and if I believe thus, how could I deny that the god of the bible also exists? Well, I don't. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that there's any kind of proof, or that I actually do anything about it, just that I concede the possible or even probable existence of the god who English-speaking Western Civilization refer to with a capital "G".

(pause while those who really know me wonder if I've gone off the deep end and like Agrippa have almost been persuaded...)


Belief in the simple existence of an entity does not guarantee that I believe everything that is said or written about said entity. For a lot of people, what they believe about the biblical god is naturally derived from the bible. But what is the bible but, at best, a collection of books, letters, essays and myths setting down what many individuals believed, experienced or speculated about their deity? Parts of the Old Testament are very similar to the creation myths and tribal origin stories of others peoples. Some are heroic legends of the great men (and occasionally women) of a certain people. Still other sections are wise sayings or songs and poems praising the god. the New Testament starts with four oft contradictory accounts of Jesus' life, followed by letters from early leaders, also frequently contradictory. Looked at objectively, the parts of the New Testament can resemble tracts by competing factions attempting to win over the populace to their view and refuting their opponents. In fact, the very early history of Christianity is replete with competing versions of the faith, all with their own literature. One justification for apostolic succession and the Catholic doctrine of papal infallibility was that there were so many writings representing different ideas about Jesus and God that some doctrine had to be promulgated to blunt the influence of circulating gospels and epistles, all which claimed authorship by people who knew Jesus in the flesh.

Other believers in the biblical god set their own parameters for who their god is and what he does, completely outside those set by the bible and by established Christianity. These people often express distaste for organized religion and formulate their own picture of the deity that they share with the churches, but he is often described as completely different than how biblical literalists describe him.

My point (or one of them anyway) is that declining to worship a certain deity or to believe all his press does not mean that I deny the possibility of his existence or the validity of the worship or belief of those who do.

Tarot Class

After a long (several years) absence from the practice of tarot I was re-immersed (that’s right, I made that word up; just now) in the ancient and venerable practice on Wednesday night. My wife, Susie Joyce, teaches, or mentors people in, tarot reading at the JOY Center on the second floor of the strip mall at S. 48^th and Briarhurst. Since I’m on vacation and have a lot of time on my hands I decided to participate in a class.

Susie conducted the class by soliciting each of our own interpretations of the cards that we were studying that night. This proved to be interesting, since each of us was using a different deck. I was using what many consider to be a “traditional” tarot deck, the Rider-Waite, although even a cursory study of the history of tarot will belie this assumption. Let’s say instead that in 20^th century America, this deck enjoys widespread familiarity and its symbolism influences other decks. Susie used a Hanson-Roberts deck, very similar in its symbols, but with richer, more colorful illustrations. One other student used a dragon-themed deck, while our third student brought two decks – one a vampire tarot and the other a zombie-themed deck. The humor in the zombie deck kept things interesting.

The cards that we studied were the 22 cards called the major arcana, or greater secrets. The remaining 56 cards are divided into four suits and are called the minor arcana or lesser secrets. Through our own examination of the cards along with Susie’s explanation of areas of influence of each of the cards, we received a basic grounding in the cards’ meaning.

During the final part of the class we got the opportunity to practice giving each other readings. I remember when I first began to learn about the tarot – I wanted to refer to my notes and reference books every time I drew a card, but I was urged to let the cards be a guide to my own intuition and inspiration, rather than rely on a textbook description and meaning. I was asked to demonstrate the way that I do readings, which is without a spread. A spread is a particular arrangement of cards where each card position represents something. One position might stand for the past or the future; a position might refer to a specific person, but in each spread every position refers to something predetermined. The way that I set my cards down is by putting down one card and then surrounding it with four others, laying them down in no particular order. The central card outlines the main issue, while the other four amplify or give more detail on it. Each of those details can be expanded upon or further examined by laying down more cards.

After demonstrating how it worked I had the opportunity to do a “real” reading for a fellow student. I had forgotten what a rush I got from doing a reading that was flowing well. When I’m doing a reading, the cards help, but don’t determine what I am intuiting. They’re like a magnifying glass and a bright light that assist the physical eye – magnifying, illuminating and clarifying what the inner eye is seeing.

I’ll be participating in a class again next Wednesday, again at the JOY Center. 

Shit Happens

The phrase "shit happens" could, on certain days, describe my philosophy of life. "Shit happens" in many ways is the polar opposite of "everything happens for a reason". If you really look at it objectively, i.e. without any preconceived theology or philosophy, finding a pattern of cause for the many things that happen to us all each day is futile. Those of us who attribute everything to an omnipotent god or to "the universe" or even to karma are looking for patterns that aren't really there. People pray, but are not dissuaded from their belief in prayer when it doesn't produce the expected results; people look to karma, but as often as not, karma doesn't seem to provide the balance that we might expect, everything supposedly happens for a reason, but what is that reason and who is doing the reasoning?

Genetics, determined not only by Mendel's Law, but random mutations and unexpected combinations, as well as  natural and man-made  influences, makes the "decision" whether or not a child will be afflicted by a disease or disability, or die young, not any "sin" by the parents and certainly not some unknown plan by a deity or cosmic law of balance. We get sick not because some spirit is trying us, but because our bodies wear out and because we do not have immunity to every organism or malady out there. Folks get run over by cars or caught in natural disasters through any number of random factors, not because of some design.

Bad things happen, not because some god is mad at you, or because that god has some unknown purpose that you are unaware of, but because...of nothing. So if you lose your arm in a freak snowplow accident, don't blame your god and don't rationalize that your one-arm-ed-ness is the result of a greater, but just that shit happens.