Existential Questions

As I get older, I am more and more able and willing to explore some of the thorny questions about our existence.  My examination of the arguments concerning evolution has left me utterly convinced that life was transplanted here on earth and did not magically germinate in the primordial ooze.  Everyone grapples with existential questions.  I want to make a list of some of the ones that baffle me.  I trust that after this telestial phase of life is complete, I might have the opportunity to get more answers to questions like - "You can lead a horse to water, but why can you not make him float?" - OR - if Planned Parenthood receives a half a billion dollars in U.S. taxpayer money every year, what part of that money is NOT used for doing abortions?
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My cat has horrible, disgusting breath - it is somewhere between dead fish and dirty socks.  He licks all of his fur almost every day.  Why does his fur not smell bad?

The human anatomy is incredibly complex.  To most people it can also be extremely appealing.  A friend of mine once commented that she could not imagine any type of improvement that could be made on this already perfect design.  When was this anthropomorphic configuration first conceived?  Were there gods around beforehand, and did they do the original design?  Did they have earlier prototypes that did not work so well and needed to be scrapped? Is there any truth to doctors' assertions that organs like the appendix and tonsils are merely vestigial artifacts of the evolutionary process and that they are pointless and useless?

When the human form was being developed, how did the Creators program in the visual/physical attraction component? Why do different people feel attracted to different sorts of humans?  Do these visual stimuli ("cute butt", "sexy abs") persist in the hereafter?  If our Heavenly Father increases His posterity through sexual reproduction, then surely erotic arousal must be part of the equation, right?

If our Heavenly Father has a significant number of eternal wives, does He have to play tricks with time so that each one doesn't feel like He is always gone from her with someone else?  Is there even such a concept as "time" for the Gods?

If all of the souls on this earth are the spirit children of our Heavenly Father (and His various wives), why did some of them turn out to be such DIRTBAGS !!!!!?  I guess I can only assume that He didn't have control over what He was given to work with.  Is wickedness just an inherent attribute of many of the intelligences in this universe?

If there are other planets like ours (occupied by humans), why were they placed so darn' far away from us?  Would it be bad for us to intermarry?

Why is the universe constantly expanding?  Will this make my daily commute take longer?

If there are more dimensions to our existence than the TIME and SPACE we are all so familiar with, then how can we access those dimensions?  Is the empty, vacuous space between the stars and planets actually a different type of matter?  Is there even such a thing as matter when the atoms are nothing but clusters of energy orbits?

We are taught that all creatures were made spiritually first, so, after this life will I once again meet my pet cocker spaniel and my smelly-breath cat?  Will they be able to talk to me, or will it just be the same "meow" and "woof-woof"?

Do my "guardian angels" watch me when I am in the bathroom?

If Cain and John the Revelator and the Three Nephites are still walking the earth today, where do they live, and why won't they come and visit me?

Do Terrestrial (translated) beings eat farm produce?  Will we need lungs when we are no longer burning oxygen?

Is it more difficult to resurrect people who have been cremated?

If the universe is a finite size, is there a brick wall at the periphery, and, if so, what then is on the other side of that brick wall?

If the universe is unbounded and infinite, how can our God be confident that there aren't some pretty malevolent aliens (Klingons, Romulans, Cardashians etc.) stalking the as-yet-undiscovered galaxies out there (and lying in wait to attack us)?

What the heck is consciousness, and why does it persist beyond death?  Why is my consciousness mine and mine alone (I have tried to get into other people's thoughts but it only made me nauseated)?

Do the Gods have a means of transportation which allows them to travel great distances in very little time? 

Is it possible to say or do anything that is NOT a product of self-interest?

If some people do not become Gods, what do they do, and where do they live for the rest of eternity with their resurrected bodies?

If God knows "all things which are to come" (Words of Mormon v. 9), then does He already know all of the dirty tricks Satan is going to pull?  Does Satan have knowledge of my thoughts and plans?

Is it cruel that God allows His children of only the 20th and 21st centuries to have cool stuff like cars, cell-phones, computers and Thai food restaurants?  How did our ancestors get by without them, I wonder?

There were two permutational possibilities for existence: either - 1.) That there would always have simply ever been nothing; or - 2.) That there has always been stuff, something, mattter, energy, existence, a universe.  Now that you know that you exist, can you even wrap your mind around the hypothetical concept of permanent nothingness?

When an atheist dies, and his consciousness is utterly extinguished, does he wake up unwittingly with the consciousness of a newborn baby somewhere else?

Migraines

I have a very big pet peeve.  As a teenager, I would occasionally get migraines - BIG migraines - go-to-the-emergency-room migraines.  The visual disturbances (gaps in vision and squiggly, flashing shapes) would start and last a half hour.  Then the headache would start.  The headache was always unbearable.  After a couple of hours of blinding, unrelenting headache, then came the vomiting.  Generally, this was a 10-hour ordeal, followed by two days of sensitivity to light and noise, and a very sore cranium.  I would DREAD the next migraine, but they would typically not recur until five or six weeks had passed.  I never put two-and-two together that the cause may have been the large amounts of chicken bouillon my mother incorporated into the Sunday dinner gravy.  Thankfully, after I moved out, the migraines stopped.

When I had my first big migraine again at 30, a friend asked me if I ever ate Monosodium Glutamate (MSG).  I didn't know what that was, but I soon learned.  I had been unwittingly adding it to my scrambled eggs occasionally (it is sold under the brand name "Accent").  This discovery was a huge blessing.  MSG is added to a large number of food products - Ranch Dressing, Bouillon, Schilling gravy mixes, Cream of Chicken/Mushroom soups, Doritos, flavored potato chips, many types of Asian food, etc.  It is a synthetic chemical manufactured by a Japanese company and sold in the U.S. by the ton.  Some people are fooled into thinking it is a "preservative".  HARDLY !!!  MSG is a "flavor enhancer" (which is also a deception).  In truth, MSG does not enhance a food's flavor, it simply flares the little taste buds on your tongue - which causes the experience of tasting food to be intensified.  It also flares the blood vessels in your head.  MSG does not really have a flavor of its own, but it adds a certain spark or tang to the food.  What's more, I think it sends a message to the brain that the affected food is REALLY YUMMY!  That can serve as an inducement to buy it again and often.

Clearly, a certain percentage of the population is bothered by MSG.  The rest seems not to care.  Those whom MSG irritates must go to great lengths to avoid it.  So what is the connection between MSG and headaches?  I am no biochemist, so you can take the following information with a grain of salt.  MSG is poisonous.  If you put poisons in your body, eventually your liver will have to process them.  The liver has a certain capacity to get rid of toxic garbage.  If you overload it, it will eventually stop cooperating.  The process involves what are called "conjugate molecules".  Whether it is alcohol, gasoline or paint fumes, or artificial flavor enhancers, the body does a miraculous job of creating conjugate molecules - molecules whose sole purpose is to "wrap" around a poison molecule and transport it to the liver, where it can be dismantled and broken into smaller components which can be turned into fuel or excreted as waste.  The body cannot, however, produce an unlimited supply of conjugate molecules.

When the liver reaches its maximum ability to dispose of the accumulation of these contaminants, it basically gives out and "refluxes" the poisons back into the bloodstream.  This is when the crisis starts.  When the blood is now carrying a higher poison load, it must also circulate through the brain.  Since the brain does not want to die from pollution, its first response is to dilate certain blood vessels around the eyes and temples (this causes the weird vision symptoms).  After about 30 minutes, and after this has resolved nothing, the brain decides then to constrict those blood vessels - thus triggering a MASSIVE headache.  If this is followed by vomiting, it is the body making a frantic effort to rid itself of those poison chemicals in the most efficient way it can find.  This may not be the mechanism in EVERY migraine, but I believe that MOST migraines can be prevented if we simply refrain from consuming MSG.  I can NEVER eat even a few Doritos chips without getting a 12-hour headache.

The food producers have found a clever dodge - they know that MANY people have figured out the MSG scam - a way to make people think otherwise bland food is worth eating.  So now they have developed some alternatives.  If you read the labels on the packages, you may notice some products (e.g. Campbell's soups) that boast: "All natural", "Reduced Sodium", "No MSG".  You will probably  find the following two ingredients: Disodium Inosinate and Disodium Guanylate.  Both of these chemicals are "flavor enhancers" which act just like MSG.  Clever, huh?  Both of them give me the same sick headaches, so now I have to read the labels even more carefully.  I must give praise to LAY'S brand potato chips - they recently introduced several new chips flavors with no flavor enhancers - Garden Tomato and Basil, Tangy Carolina Barbeque, Sour Cream and Cheddar, and more.

When eating at Chinese restaurants, I always ask if they use MSG.  Problem is - many Asian waiters have no idea what MSG is.  I learned that Chinese for MSG is "WAY-JIN".  They will tell you they don't use WAY-JIN, but they often don't realize that the bulk chicken broth crystals they use when making soups and sauces have MSG as the #1 ingredient.  Diner beware !!!!

I was at an all-you-can-eat restaurant recently and ran into a friendly heart surgeon who was as disgusted as I was at the "sugar-free" vanilla pudding.  He commented that the two biggest causes of all the cardiovascular problems he sees are MSG and the chlorine in our tap water.

Sadly, all of the people who feel unaffected by MSG are still just as poisoned by it as I am - they just consume it blithely and obliviously, unaware of the toxicity it inflicts on their bodies.

Spread the word, you may save someone a lot of suffering.
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All is not lost, however.  A few years ago, I decided to try a homeopathic product made by Natra-Bio. here is a photo of the package: 

You can purchase it here (very inexpensive).  The little tablets are flavorless, and you just melt two or three of them under your tongue when the migraine starts.  If you do this immediately, the visual symptoms do their usual thing for 30 minutes, but then you don't get the ferocious headache.  My guess is that the product provides extra conjugate molecules to the bloodstream and helps the liver do its job.  I have tried this product on several other people, and all of them swear by it.  Another important key is to drink at least a quart of water also, so that the poisons can rinse out of your system faster.

Sanctorum

Rick Santorum appears to be at least momentarily impacting the political landscape.  Santorum virtually tied Mitt Romney in the Iowa Republican primary.  Santorum had crisscrossed the state, courting evangelical Christian conservatives who resonated with his "social conservatism".  Social conservatism generally involves a pro-life and anti-gay-marriage stance.

Today, Santorum gave a speech at a New England college.  He was heckled by students who disagreed with his position on gay marriage.  He repeated his usual argument that people should be allowed to "do" whatever they want, but that the government should not be required to grant marriage licenses to gay couples.  He asked a student if states should grant a marriage license to "three guys".  Clearly, legalized polygamy would cause the complete destruction of the United States . . . . . . . .

Santorum's position (on gay marriage) is utterly indefensible.  The resistance to gay marriage is rooted in public revulsion over homosexuality, and religious reluctance to accord it official sanction.  The problem is once again the confusion over the difference between marriage and marriage.  There is the church-dispensed sacrament of holy matrimony, and there is the state-issued marriage license.  Are we so stupid that we cannot tell the difference between the two?

Churches have every right to decide whom to wed and whom not to wed.  Since America became a corporation (in the 1860's), religion has been accorded no place in the political process.  God has been expelled from government.  This was not what the Framers had in mind, but it is simply the way it is, folks.  If religion has no place in our government, you cannot use religious and doctrinal precepts to manage the state licensing process.  States issue licenses to pairs of people who want a government-run marriage contract.  Some government benefits and privileges go along with that contract.  None of those benefits has anything to do with religion.  Telling gay people that they cannot get a state marriage license is as ridiculous as telling a black man that he cannot get a firearms license.  You might harbor resentment towards black people for theological or cultural reasons, but that is no basis for denying them access to a secular government benefit.

Sanctorum is charging towards a philosophical buzz-saw.  The argument is 'un-winnable'.  He is almost saying, "No, gay couples, you cannot get legally married, because these religious evangelical supporters of mine simply don't want to allow it."  If we cannot place a religious emblem on public property, we certainly cannot hope to impose ecclesiastical rules on government policies regarding civil marriage contracts.  Even dimwit Canada has figured that out.

Sanctorum is hoping to carry his "socially conservative" message now to New Hampshire where nobody will listen.  Good luck!

Right of Right

I got a call the other day from a polling organization.  The caller asked me if I am a Democrat or a Republican.  I told her I am a Libertarian.  That felt a little silly because I don't vote.  Voting nowadays is an admission of servitude.  I guess I have made several of those admissions (certificates of live birth, certificates of title, social security card, etc.) but I have a special aversion to the modern political farce.

I read a little of Ron Paul's writings the other day.  He insists that our usual oscillation between a Democratic president and a Republican president every few years is a pointless and fruitless dance.  Congressmen argue over budget issues worth billions of dollars while utterly ignoring the trillions wasted annually.  I would LOVE to see someone like Ron Paul in the White House - I might even break my voting boycott!  Trouble is - I am even more right-wing Libertarian than the Paul family is.  I am probably to the right of Alex Jones and Eustace Mullins.  People cringe over Ron Paul's ideas because he thinks we shouldn't have soldiers in 130 countries, and that we should stop being the primary source of Israel's funding.

We have to go back to the understanding that the nation we live in is a CORPORATION.  It quit being a republic with the fraudulent adoption of the 13th Amendment in 1865.  The incorporation of the UNITED STATES was necessary to facilitate the borrowing - the indebtedness.   At the end of the war of independence, the British did not surrender.  They kept the title to the land of America.  The creation of a Constitution for the 13 states was partly a bankruptcy filing (hence "Chapter 13").  The states owed 17 million Lire in war debt to the French banks.  There have been two more bankruptcies since then - one in 1933 (along with that of the other Western nations), and one in 1989.  The politicians MUST do the bidding of the creditors who print our phony money.  Ron Paul is not wrong - we must audit, then dissolve the Federal Reserve.  The media are not wrong when they say that Ron Paul cannot win the Republican nomination, and that he cannot win the presidency.  God has other plans.

Stop looking to the modern American electoral process to remedy the problem.  This land has been plundered and confiscated by the Venetian Nobility since its inception.  The banking apparatus will make ABSOLUTELY sure that Ron Paul will not become president.

Whom should we blame?  Should we blame the Idumeans?  Should we blame our Shemitic selves?  Should we blame Satan, or God?  Truth is - this is a Telestial world.  Wicked, devilish people were not placed on this earth by accident.  The wheat must co-exist with the tares for a while.  Can you get your head around the notion that in every world the pattern will be the same?  Our Heavenly Father must be a real stud to have the grit and courage to send 12 billion of His spirit children down on this planet to vex each other with usury and terror for 6,000 years.  The question is - will some of them figure out the truth and the hard realities?  Will someone figure out who the tares are?

The real remedy comes by way of the Savior's 1,000-year Millennial reign (coming soon).  Everybody gets to get his body back (at some point).  Everybody gets to learn the truth.  The bad guys will be restrained for almost the entire time, and the right will be proved right.  We are given such immense freedom to create and improvise that we forget that the nature of the universe is static and absolute.  A mere glance at our cosmic surroundings reveals that our existence is the result or evidence of immutable laws.  Atheism, Darwinism and Relativism are merely the vain rebellion of people who don't like the rules and who don't care enough about earning the big rewards.

Right is still right (as Nehor and Korihor both learned).
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Brown

Am I the only one who noticed this?

The Fall of Reynolds

I thought it would be interesting to Google the name of my blog.  When I did so today, I happened upon the following page in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:John_Reynolds_death_2.jpg

It includes the following image:

No relation . . . .

Apocalips

A stream of consummate insanity continues to flow from Warren Apocalips Jeffs.  Faithful FLDS congregants are being admonished to refrain from sex and to swear complete allegiance to Jeffs by the end of 2011, lest they suffer divine wrath and destruction.

For many years I have pondered on the nature of the relationship between the FLDS people and their leaders.  Some say that the critical "fork in the road" occurred in the early 1980's.  There was a dispute at that time over whether or not each member of the council of the the twelve held the same authority as the president, such that at the passing of the president, the senior member automatically assumed the position of president.  Apparently, some leaders abandoned this formula and dismissed the pivotal revelation given to Wilford Woodruff in 1880 on this very topic.  This caused the ideological split.  This was the genesis of the "One Man Rule" leadership model - the seedbed for a hierarchy utterly controlled by a monolithic dictator -  a Jeffs.

I have struggled at length with other caring observers to figure out where to point the finger of blame for the current crazed state of affairs.  Is Warren Jeffs truly to blame?  Jeffs is culpable for his own integrity lapses.  He is guilty of a litany of abuses.  He is the epitome of a terrorist.  He takes wicked delight in toying with his victims.  He is a true psychopath.  He is like some of the hater-harpies - he is blithely complacent about destroying families.  More importantly, however, he would not be able to get away with any of his perverse manipulations if it were not for several thousand people who think that simply by virtue of the fact that he occupies the station of church president, he is somehow imbued with divine investiture - the steward of God on earth - the "PROPHET".

Brigham Young spoke often and adamantly about the importance of not abdicating one's free agency to some corruptible mortal church leader person.  This was one of the fundamental tenets of Mormonism.  I shudder to think that modern adherents, mainstream and FLDS alike, have undergone such an ideological metamorphosis that their religion is no longer akin to the gospels restored through Joseph Smith.  In one short generation, thousands of honorable saints have turned into lemmings, merely as a result of a doctrinal diversion.

Warren Jeffs is doomed to suffer long and greatly.  He has caused untold pain to many honest, decent people.  What, however, is the fate of the obsequious sycophants who have been trained from birth to do whatever they are told to do by their megalomaniac, lunatic leader?  I hearken back to the idea that God Himself is partly complicit.  He knew perfectly well before He put those pre-mortal spirits into those Short Creek FLDS embryos that they would be raised in a unique and ultimately bizarre environment.  This was part of the plan - the moral test.  These good, honorable souls are faced with a crucial choice - choose true principle or a false doctrine and its false prophet.  As the lunacy crescendos, each one must weigh the options and measure the pressures against the promptings of the Spirit and the bedrock teachings in revealed scriptures.  Like it or not, the inevitable train-wreck of this community is just around the corner.  One can only hope that the latest in Jeffs' wacky antics will trigger an awakening - a personal epiphany for many.  Surely many, many of the people are scratching their heads and wondering why things are getting so strange - why they have to part with their pets and tricycles and now their children.  Even now, people are vanishing.  Maybe, when the Apocalypse fails to occur a half an hour from now (midnight 12/31/2011), some will wonder if the prophet is false after all.

I'm sure cult experts have written volumes on how difficult it is to break free from the tyrannical psychological clutches of a religious dictator.  To my way of thinking, the hardest part would be facing up to the realization that virtually your whole life has been based on a religious distortion, and that you let yourself get slowly sucked in because your were afraid to lose your job or your home or your wives and kids.  This was the wizardry of the Jeffs incumbency - he kept you in the dark - people were told only the bare minimum of what they needed to know.  Jeffs controls access to information.  He threatens you with the forfeiture of your salvation (not even doctrinally feasible).  He even controls the local police.  He conspires with his brothers to execute his dictates.  His control is political, financial and religious - a dangerous combination.

No matter where you ascribe the culpability, many of these townsfolk are innocent.  They are just trying to survive and please God.  When this sick house of cards comes crashing down, there will be an immense humanitarian crisis.  Tonia Tool (Holding Out Hostages) is all over the news, clamoring for the castaways to come into her lairs.  The crisis will not so much be one of food and lodging, moreso a crisis of faith - one that the hater-hags cannot remedy.

The gospel dispensed to Joseph Smith was pure at its source.  Despite his immense significance in the history of this planet, he was a mortal man.  All of the gospel dispensations (except Enoch's) were doomed to crash and burn.  Attributing perfection to a mortal is foolhardy.  The restored fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the gospel of the Father are perfect in principle - they are the "baby" that must not be "thrown out with the" Jeffs "bathwater".  That is the essence of the humanitarian crisis.

Are you in a position to offer the right kind of assistance?
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Why Bother?

The Amicus (friend of the Court) George Macintosh was the attorney appointed by the provincial government of British Columbia to argue against Canada's (S.293) ridiculous anti-polygamy law.  I received word today that Macintosh is declining to appeal the recent decision from Chief Justice Robert Bauman which upheld the law.

I guess I would be more upset if I thought there was good reason to appeal the stupid decision.  Chances are that, if this case got to the B.C. Court of Appeals or to the Canadian Supreme Court, either would reverse Bauman and decriminalize Canada's polygamists.  Truth is - Canada's polygamists are already decriminalized - appeal or no appeal.  What would you like to bet me that no BC polygamist will be arrested?

Canada is playing the same game as the idiots in Utah.  Last week, Utah's Attorney General deputy Jerrold Jenson told a Federal judge that the Utah County attorney, Jeff Buhman has not yet decided whether to arrest the Browns (and have them extradited from Vegas).  I believe he has decided, but that he doesn't want to admit it.  If he says he won't prosecute, the Browns have good cause to ask that the bigamy statute be stricken.  If he says that he will prosecute, the Browns have good cause to complain that they are threatened by the law and thus have harm and standing with which to challenge it.

The politicians just want to preserve the status quo - one in which polygamists can be painted as outlaws and felons, and can be demonized by society as legal lepers.

Massacre

Yesterday and today saw the Syrian government massacre over 200 of its own people - defectors from the army, and residents of a village near the Turkish border.  I am horrified at the brutality of the Assad regime - its willingness to murder its citizens in order to preserve dictatorial control.  It does not appear that the U.S. has any interest in military intervention.  I guess I'm okay with that.  We had no business going into Iraq - other than to control its oil output.  In Afghanistan, opium production has skyrocketed since our intervention began.

Some people may be sighing a sigh of relief that such massacres do not take place in our own country - except for the one in Waco in 1993 - - -  oh, and the one where they deliberately demolished the Twin Towers to trigger a Middle East war.  Good, white Christian folk just don't do that stuff, do they?  Well, yes, the good, white folk of Hitler's third Reich did it.  I guess it doesn't matter whether your skin is black, brown, red, yellow, olive or white, you are not immune from the tendency to massacre.  Obama's FCC is trying to control cable stations, radio broadcasts - even the Internet.  Massacres are just the last link in the chain of tyrannies required for curbing dissent and silencing protesters.  In 1900, the Russian "Russ" made up the largest group of Christians (100 million) in the world.  Stalin annihilated a significant portion of them.

Boy, a Telestial world can be a cruel place sometimes - and yet our universe is filled with them.  I like to watch those Science channel shows that show the fabric of the universe.  Our own galaxy has over 200 billion stars in it, and astronomers have detected at least 200 billion galaxies.  Do the math!

I guess I can take solace only in the fact that this mortal probation is but a brief moment in our eternal journey - that those poor Syrian villagers passed on relatively swiftly, and that they are in a more rewarding place now.  As a wise man recently noted, there is a set of scales in the divine control room, and when the oppression manifested by mankind surpasses the oppression required of God in the form of divine discipline, God can intervene.  It remains to be seen whether the atrocities of the 21st century are greater than those of earlier times.  I suspect they are.  I look at Europe - a place from whence the best blood of Israel was to come.  Europeans are under-reproducing.  More than half the households are a single person.  Russia is considering legalizing polygamy and banning abortion (the average Russian bride has had three abortions). Christianity in Europe is virtually dead.  Religion is seen as a joke.  The Mormon Church is shrinking in the British Isles - closing wards and chapels.  The love of men is "waxing cold".

I look at some of our politicians - Anthony Wiener, Rahm Emmanuel, Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Dick Cheney, Maxine Waters - the list goes on - and I think - "What would it take for them to call for a massacre, if it served their craven purposes enough?"

Are we really shielded from future holocausts?  With only three days worth of food in the grocery stores, and the whole Western world on the brink of insolvency, are we really secure?

I have said it many times, but when the fat hits the shin, there will be only two types of people in this world:

1.  The ones who would rather starve than kill a fellow human.
2.  The ones who would rather kill a fellow human than starve.

Which one are you?