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    <title>Earthling - 6604mill&apos;s Blog - Bakersfield.com</title>
    <link>http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/6604mill</link>
    <description>Current Events</description>
    <language>en-us</language>
        
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        <title>As mentioned in an earlier blog...</title>
        <link>http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/6604mill/52080</link>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;An Agnostic is a person who does not know if there is God or not.&lt;br /&gt;
No one can prove there is a God AND no one can prove there isn&#039;t a God.&lt;br /&gt;
Trust me, if either side could be proven it would be all over the news&lt;br /&gt;
worldwide!&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Logically speaking we should all be agnostic.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Belief in God really all boils down to FAITH. When ALL the arguments &lt;br /&gt;
are layed on the table, all that is left is faith. On the other hand there&lt;br /&gt;
is a ton of science against. But that doesn&#039;t matter. Still no hard proof.&lt;br /&gt;
AND there never will be proof. No matter what science may come up with&lt;br /&gt;
the faithful will always fall back on FAITH. As the &amp;quot;Church Lady&amp;quot;, Dana &lt;br /&gt;
Carvey (SNL), used to say... &amp;quot;How conveeeenient&amp;quot;!!&lt;br /&gt;
In spite of my blog, &amp;quot;Where gods came from&amp;quot;, I am agnostic. I just lean&lt;br /&gt;
very heavily toward the atheistic side... Say, 99.9% vs .1%.&lt;br /&gt;
I have spent a lifetime researching, reading, discussing this subject.&lt;br /&gt;
The faithful bring up faith and the atheists bring up science and logic.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
I wish I had the answer. No one does.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Peace&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;</description>  

              
        <pubDate>Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:33:55 PST</pubDate>
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        <title>Is God omnipotent?</title>
        <link>http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/6604mill/52072</link>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;Can God make a rock so big He can&#039;t throw it?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;This is an age-old enigma. I don&#039;t know who first posed this question.&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;If He cannot throw it then he is not omnipotent. If He can throw it He&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;cannot make a big enough rock and He is not omnipotent. My oh my! LOL&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;Any answers out there Blog-o-field?&lt;/p&gt;</description>  

              
        <pubDate>Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:51:45 PST</pubDate>
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        <title>Why there is no hell</title>
        <link>http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/6604mill/52030</link>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;Why there is no hell...&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;First we need to define what &amp;quot;hell&amp;quot; is. Different people and religions&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;define hell in many different ways. To some it is fire and devils and&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;pitchforks. Some say it&#039;s simply our soul not being in God&#039;s presence. &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;That may not sound as bad as fire, but, if your soul longs for God it &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;is indeed hell. Regardless of how we define hell, all agree it is a &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;terrible place or state of being. And, it is FOREVER, and that is a &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;pretty long time! So we have terror and weeping and anguish eternally.&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;That is some very harsh punishment. That would be extreme punishment&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;even for a Hitler or a Stalin.&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; I&#039;m a father, I love my children, I created them (my wife played a&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;huge part also). They are not perfect people. As a loving father there&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;is no way I could ever punish a child FOREVER. What could ANY human&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;being ever do to deserve eternal hell. You call that a loving father? &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;A loving God? Eternal hell for how someone lived in a short lifetime!&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;An involuntary lifetime at that. How could any entity be that cruel. &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;Oh, I hear some of you saying, &amp;quot;God does not put us in hell, we do it&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;to ourselves&amp;quot;. What!&amp;nbsp; Well, God created everything. He created you, me &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;and he created hell. No thanks for the &amp;quot;opportunity&amp;quot; for eternal hell!&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;If there is a God, then he is a loving God, and a loving father (or&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;mother). Such a being would not put their child in hell, eternally.&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;So I do not believe in hell.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;As you may know from reading my &amp;quot;Where gods came from&amp;quot; blog, I do not&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;believe in God. But, I am not an Atheist! I&#039;ll explain in my next blog&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;and I&#039;ll also write about the three levels or versions of Atheism.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;Peace&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;P.S.&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; We will never all agree on religion, but we can strive to agree on &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; morals. If the strength of your belief in those morals is limited &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; to your fear of judgment in this life or whatever comes after, then &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; your actions are meaningless.&lt;/p&gt;</description>  

              
        <pubDate>Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:07:44 PST</pubDate>
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        <title>Recent letter to Editor: &quot;End is near&quot;</title>
        <link>http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/6604mill/51983</link>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;In light of a recent letter to the Editor about the &amp;quot;end is near&amp;quot;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; I submit the following...&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I was in a car-pool in Washington D.C. with a gentleman who was always&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;talking about the &amp;quot;the end&amp;quot; being soon. One day he announced that he&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;would not be in our car-pool any longer. He was packing up his wife and&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;kids, quitting his high paying government job, and moving to Kansas to&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;await &amp;quot;the end&amp;quot;. That was in 1980, almost 30 years ago. I wonder where&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;that guy is today - and his kids. Poor misguided fool.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Peace&lt;/p&gt;</description>  

              
        <pubDate>Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:20:19 PST</pubDate>
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        <title>Where gods came from.</title>
        <link>http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/6604mill/51967</link>
        <description>&lt;p&gt;This should stir up ole Backwardsfield...&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;I wrote this to a cousin a couple years ago. He was upset that federal &lt;br /&gt;
judges ruled that a monument with the ten commandments had to be removed from a political&lt;br /&gt;
venue in a southern state. Separation of church and state.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Dear Earl,&lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; I&#039;m probably wasting my time sending this to you, but I thought maybe&lt;br /&gt;
you could open your mind to other viewpoints...&amp;nbsp; Also, I find it very interesting that &lt;br /&gt;
the same people (Southern Christians) that are so hell-bent about the Ten commandments &lt;br /&gt;
monument are some of the same people that tried to deny basic human rights &lt;br /&gt;
(voting, education, jobs, dignity, etc...) to black Americans just a couple decades ago.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;They have a name for this -- Hypocrisy...&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Where gods came from:&lt;br /&gt;
Gods came from the human imagination.&lt;br /&gt;
Gods came for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;1) Mankind&amp;rsquo;s inability to explain or understand the universe and the world around them.&lt;br /&gt;
2) Mankind&amp;rsquo;s inability to accept mortality.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Early man could not understand stars, or the moon or the sun, or wind,&lt;br /&gt;
or many other simple facts of science in our universe.&lt;br /&gt;
His tiny mind needed an explanation, and gods fit the bill quite nicely.&lt;br /&gt;
Later on, these gods came in useful for powerful people to control common&lt;br /&gt;
people and to get the common people to do incredible tasks that they&lt;br /&gt;
probably would not have done otherwise - including killing and dying.&lt;br /&gt;
Eventually man would begin to understand his universe but the need for gods increased as &lt;br /&gt;
man began to understand the finality of death... And it is so final...&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Psychiatrists and sociologists understand that if society desires something,&lt;br /&gt;
such as immortality, we can and will find ways to explain or justify anything. &lt;br /&gt;
Thus religions were born and miracles occurred (either more unknown science or an &lt;br /&gt;
exaggeration of events, over time).&lt;br /&gt;
Books were written (bible, Koran, etc.) and more exaggeration came about.&lt;br /&gt;
After all, the ENDS justify the MEANS. Finally, as science and intellect&lt;br /&gt;
began to develop, intelligent people began to see the light.&lt;br /&gt;
But they also saw the great importance that belief in gods fulfilled.&lt;br /&gt;
In fact, several benefits. One benefit: As crazy as the world is now,&lt;br /&gt;
can you imagine the chaos that would occur if we didn&#039;t have belief in&lt;br /&gt;
immortality through religion! Second and most important, it gives people&lt;br /&gt;
hope and peace. Believers can go to the grave with smiles on their faces.&lt;br /&gt;
Beats having to deal with the real finality. I wish there was a god.&lt;br /&gt;
I want to live forever. Who wouldn&#039;t! The good news is that, at the pace&lt;br /&gt;
we are going, in a couple hundred years (which is nothing compared to millenniums) &lt;br /&gt;
we will understand many more of the mysteries of biological science and we won&#039;t need &lt;br /&gt;
make-believe gods anymore. We will be gods in a way. We will have immortality. &lt;br /&gt;
I only regret that I was born a couple hundred years too soon. I guess ALL those people &lt;br /&gt;
will create a whole new set of problems, but we will have made giant leaps in the other &lt;br /&gt;
sciences also. I suppose some people will think I am possessed by the devil.&lt;br /&gt;
Good thing he is also made up.&lt;br /&gt;
I used to be quieter about my views... But, since 9/11 I feel it is necessary&lt;br /&gt;
to speak up because there are many people who believe in KILLING for GOD!!! &lt;br /&gt;
Incredible concept isn&#039;t it...&lt;br /&gt;
Good thing some judges are intelligent...&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Watch for more insightful blogs coming soon... Next - why there is no Hell.&lt;/p&gt;</description>  

              
        <pubDate>Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:33:43 PST</pubDate>
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