How Annoying Is This?

That's One Big Arachnid!

Canada's Parliament Buildings between the fifth and sixth legs!

Yen

After hiking for about three years on this one trail in Japan, my nephew Chris was rewarded by seeing a mountain in the distance from the exact vantage point of whoever painted the same image as it appears on a certain denomination of Japanese currency.
I think it's so neat!
Visit --> MY BLOG. The hike is not near as far!
******

This is Poutine...

The Chicken Peppercorn© Poutine, to be exact, pretty much guaranteed to make you walk way slower after eating it -- even though apparently Lance Armstrong starts his mornings with this also!
[CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO RETURN TO ORIGINAL BLOG-POSTING]
*****

Lexi's Opinion

A Gaggle of Quails

I Kissed a Bear And I Liked It

Is This Just Wrong?

Your Answer....

Saturday Snapshot

Scruffy is tired out after a demanding Christmas!
*******

ZOOM! ZOOM!

Does This Make Cents?

The Right Answer

Not McKidding....

Gotta Euthanize ol' Big Blue...

Desktop Wallpaper

The Big Answer

Why is it that we so seldom hear solid philosophical wisdom in sermons?
That was the question.
I think that I can answer it by employing only one word, found in Volume M of any 26-volume dictionary.
Money.
Sounds simplistic or over-stated? It is a bit of both perhaps, and yet, not. Depends on how long you think it through.
Religious homiletical discourse, [in a word, sermonizing], for such activity to be subsidized by the hearer's wallet opening up at the end of things, it has to involve moral obligation. Commands and stuff like that. Even guilt. A toss of guilt has to be in there. Preferably a “god” watching over the proceedings, etc. Were it not for this perception [which must be perpetuated by the beneficiaries] the church’s funds would dry up in a few weeks time.

And all of the above-stated presuppositions rely upon a devotion to irrationality, for their existence!
I am convinced that if preachers really and TRULY annunciated what they know to be true in experience and intellectual honesty, church doors would close with a resounding boom across all of North America and, indeed, the world over.
Religious leaders, pastors, etc., are not nearly as dumb as we happily believe them to be.
Of all people, these on the front lines KNOW that prayer does not at all "work". They are the very ones present at the most bedsides where people are invariably croaking, with not a single one healed.
You would have to be an absolute moron or technically brain dead I think, to keep seeing such a plethora of unanswered prayer and to sit in your office listening to the mountains of personal problems that Christian people have in their relationships to not conclude that there is really no difference between believers and non-believers when it comes to practically lived “life and death” issues.
In other words, no discernible “god” out there working on behalf [or not] of either side of the “faith” spectrum.
Robert Schuller knows this.
They all know it – but they must keep shoving the pablum into the dribbling baby faces. Why? Well, because babies need to be fed, and even more importantly, the ministers need to be remunerated.
If they said on Sunday what they really know to be true, ministers would be out of a job. No different than I myself would be immediately fired if I told my General Manager that I harbor thoughts of burning our main warehouse down to the ground first thing Tuesday.
So – let us recap – [Wow! Maybe I am Anthony Trollope…..!]….

To bring it home…. to make it even more real to myself, I had to think of a corollary scenario. I had to think of a situation in which I think I would be in the presence of real honest, even disinteresed, philosophical discourse.
I thought of Christopher Hitchens.
SCENE: A group of people are listening to Hitchens for one hour. There’s me [faded jeans, hair disheveled] in the midst. All of us mesmerized by the philosophical wisdom and just the overall SENSE of what he is saying. Reveling in the glorious debunction!
Then, at the end, when the applause subsides -- a bit or organ music comes up and Mr. Hitchens says he is going to pass around an empty KFC bucket and he would like it if everyone put 10% of their gross earnings into the thing, thank you very much. As a sort of fee for what they just heard.
[P.S. There is an ATM machine in the foyer!]
THE ENTIRE PLACE WOULD RISE UP AND TELL HIM TO GO HAMMER HIS FRIGGING HAT!
Am I right?
Well, if so, I am rightfully right!
Go write a book, buddy. [He did].
Make a DVD. [Done].
But don’t tell me to give you serious amounts of money just because you can stand there and talk for a few minutes!
And yet -- this is exactly the process in church....... with the added insult of the upshot that what we’ve all just heard is utter rubbish!
From any rational, intelligent perspective, this is the case.
How do they get away with it?
Well, friends, there is only ONE way.
By REMAINING in the absurd. By dumbing down. By providing NOT wisdom -- but "emotional therapy sessions" [to quote Schuller].
By playing the game of belief in what is essentially unbelievable...... namely, that there is a GOD that deperately needs our money, and that our particular religious institution is the executor of that transaction.
Think about it.
No other place on earth would get away with this. Admittedly, the government comes close with their fiscal idea of “give us your money and we’ll distribute it wisely”, but they do not hold a candle to the church.
Money is the reason that Schuller was able to interupt my breakfast today with his absurdities. His presence in my apartment has absolutely nothing to do with the “blessings of God” on his ministry. It has everything to do with the myriads of fools writing cheques, while I scrape away at a grapefruit.

I’ll let Emily say the rest:

Some keep the Sabbath in surplice;
I just wear my wings,
And instead of tolling the bell for church,
Our little sexton sings.

God preaches, -- a noted clergyman --
And the sermon is never long;
So instead of getting to heaven at last,
I’m going all along.

*******

Emma

The Falls

Books of 2009

Snow by Orhan Pamuk
The Varieties of Scientific Experience by Carl Sagan
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
Libra by Don DeLillo
Until I Find You by John Irving
Garbo Laughs by Elizabeth Hay
Consolation by Michael Redhill
Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels
Mothers and Sons by Colm Toibin
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
The Time in Between by David Bergen
The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud
The Romantic Movement by Alain de Botton
House of Meetings by Martin Amis
Afterlands by Steven Heighton
The Shadow Boxer by Steven Heighton
Always Looking Up by Michael J. Fox
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
The Ecstasy of Skeptics by Steven Heighton
Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
Hello To The Cannibals by Richard Bausch
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain De Botton
The Innocent by Ian McEwan
The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan
The Spire by William Golding
The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
Herzog by Saul Bellow
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Keep by Jennifer Egan
Eternal Life: A New Vision by John Shelby Spong
The Angel’s Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
Nine Parts of Desire by Geraldine Brooks
Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving
The Story of B by Daniel Quinn
The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
His Illegal Self by Peter Carey
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
*********