5 Hours

I have spent a little more than the last five hours talking to my pastor friend. My brain hurts. Well not quite, more like I am focused and finding it difficult to think beyond the task my mind is on.

Friday

It is Friday, glorious Friday. A friend just got a job and so I had him come over so we could celebrate. Went out and had a nice dinner and will probably chat and listen to music. A musical interlude if you will.

I will therefore not really post much tonight. Be well.

An Answer

How do I get myself into such situations? A pastor friend of mine asked me a question, he wanted to reach out to those who were the last to hear of God's love, the last ones who nobody else is reaching out to and now I know the answer. It is really quite simple, those who have been thrown out of their churches, those who the bible says are to be thrown our of church. He is going to hate this answer and know that he is convicted at the same time. This is really funny.

Who preaches to the excommunicated, especially if they agree that they should have been thrown out? What makes this even more ironic is that he has thrown people out of churches and there is another reason; but, how ironic. Also how beautiful to have been thrown out and still believe. To still want to know God believing that he no longer wants you in his church. There is a church for everyone, the sheep get one, the predators get one, the Shepherds get one and even the sheepdogs get one, they are just different churches, not different truths. When he reads this, he will understand exactly of what I say, we just discussed it in regards to a separate matter, same logic.

To my readers, if you want consistency, go to Fox news, I can tell you what they will say in advance of any news story. My blog is random and this is what hit my head as I was writing. I myself am convicted of my own words, I wanted my ex to keep going to church even as an adulterer, I don't want anyone to feel that God cannot forgive them, he can forgive anyone, we choose to be separate from him. Be well.

I Am Too Busy

Drat, I neglect my blog. I am working on too many things and too much at stake for others. That is just the business side, the family side is as confusing. LOL.

On a spiritual level, I have been asked to assist a pastor. I told him that I did not qualify to preach and really don't have any interest in such a thing. I enjoy speaking before groups and am not in anyway intimidated by such a thing, I also do have firm beliefs in God and spirituality. Kinda hard to hide that from my long time readers.

I do not feel that I am capable of telling people what the truth is, I have no such authority and have never claimed such a thing. I think I have some good questions and some novel answers. I admire people who dedicate their lives to helping others think about spiritual things. I am not one of them, I am a practitioner, I live it, I live my life by what I believe and my beliefs are constantly under question by me. I have that right, the right to question my beliefs.

God tells prophets answers, they accept them and repeat them. I don't fit that model, I have questions and don't believe that I am capable of being all knowing. If we saw all the answers, we could only handle so much, we are limited and need time to decide what we agree with and disagree with.

I have a relative who I spoke to tonight and he really pressed me on some spiritual and philosophical beliefs. I give the answers as how I understand them at the moment in time when are talking and tell him that I am good with going deeper. That in and of itself means that I don't have answers only theories, suppositions and my understanding which keeps evolving.

I am unsure of how I should work with this pastor. Some people would tell me to pray to God for the answer and I will not do such a thing. I believe in free will and want as much as I can so that I can be me, how can I deny others the same by giving answers rather than asking questions.

We are done with that. I gave an Auditor and document today that I had written about ten years ago and never published. When his audit is over I have told him that I will give him the address of my blog. LMAO. He may tell others that do not like your little Pimpernel and they may attempt to use it against me, this is a choice he will make months from now after his work is done. Is this not amusing, I am writing to him from his past to his now. You read this knowing that I am speaking to him and that he will not know what I am saying until later. He will know my thoughts; but, long after I have had them and moved on in my thinking.

I do hope my readers enjoy this little experiment. It is right out of the "Matrix". Remember the old lady and the first time she meets Neo, he knocks over a vase. She says to him, something akin to, the thing that will really burn you later was that I said, "don't worry about the vase". No worries, just evolution. Another obtuse and strange rambling on my blog. Take it as you will, it is not about me, it is about you. Be well.

So Late

Just got home, late night, had to have an evening meeting. It happens that way sometimes, just a thing. I am behind on the news and everything else.

I had some people lie to me tonight and they hid their true agenda. Not the first time and not the last time, I however don't bother wish such things. Problem is, I lost my day and have nothing to say, so, be well.

The Singularity

I had a meeting today and afterwards me and my business associates (doesn't that sound all professional and formal) went out and had a late lunch. Lunches are usually pretty leisurely when we get together and I had not seen one of the two for a few months so we had some catching up to do.

We chatted about life, my move, what we saw coming in the business world and about cloud computing. Both me and one of the two people I was with manage systems groups. My friends and I (business associates can be friends) all have our own circles and insight into other arenas. Well one of the two had a friend from Silicon valley who he saw recently that was telling him where Silicon Valley saw the next wave coming. It is called the Singularity. I think he was a bit surprised that I knew about it already.

He told me that he had now heard the word used twice in the last ten days, once by his Silicon Valley friend and once by me. I sort of gave him a quick rundown on what it means and why it was disturbing. The purpose of this post is to expound upon it for him and give him some links so that he can get a good starting point.

I will start with a Wikipedia page on the Technological Singularity.

I will attempt to explain the concept in it's most basic terms. The idea is that technology is increasing at an ever increasing rate. This is called Moore's Law. They then extrapolate that artificial intelligence (computer generated questions and answers) are also subject to Moore's law. They believe that life, like technology, is driven by an increase in evolution.

Again the idea is that computers could one day improve upon their own design on their own and thereby someday surpass the intelligence of humans. A super-intelligence. For those who read my prior post on crowd sourcing it should be apparent that I am not in agreement. A Wikipedia article on Crowd Sourcing.

The human rather than giving up control, it is believed, would need to harness this super-intelligence. It is believed that in order to do this humans would need to accept transhumanism. Transhumanism is the modification of human beings using either technology or gene modification so that we could compete with the machines. The term sometimes thrown around is intelligence amplification.

Here is an article written this month by someone who sort of thinks we are already there.

This may all be news to most people; but, I have been writing and talking about these things for quite awhile. Somebody who also wrote about this, though clearly not a pacifist, was Ted Kazynski (The Unabomber). He wrote a "Manifesto" that has ever been quoted by some in the Technology field. He was against where he thought things were going. Apparently the man who committed the recent killings in Norway made his own Manifesto and stole from The Unabomber's Manifesto.

All that I have written and linked to is discussed quite openly by people in the tech businesses. At least the one's at the forefront of it. The problem, as I see it, is that the average person does not even know that this is being discussed, the future of humanity, where we go from here. My friend is a pretty smart guy and does manage a systems group and he had never heard about this till ten days ago. I would bet that 90% plus of the population don't know anything about it and certainly the people in most of the world don't know about it.

I don't believe in the singularity. You see there is something that technology cannot surpass, the autistic, intellectual outliers. They destroy the algorithms. All computer programs make assumptions and the most basic assumptions determine where the logic can lead to. As all paths can lead to an dead end, there is no way of a limited human determining in advance the basic assumptions that the path should have that will lead to the ultimate perfect answer. It is a God joke and he does love jokes.

Now, here is why artificial intelligence cannot duplicate human intelligence, the autistic. People who are autistic have been pre-wired to see things that nobody else in the world can see, not even other autistic people. A little boy that can look at rows and rows of numbers and immediately tell you what they add up to has the gift of Asperger's. No computer can do that as fast as one kid who has the gift in that area. The answers are not calculated, they are known, it is in the DNA.

The idea by Transhumanists is that we can give everyone the mental abilities of those who have Aspergers. It doesn't work that way. In order for the singularity to occur either all outliers would need to be eliminated or all humans would need to have the abilities of those with Aspergers. Here is the problem, people with Aspergers don't work well together and cannot understand each others gift. You see the gene that creates it is never in the same place for any two individuals.

This is one of my longer and more boring posts; but, I do hope everyone of my readers reflects on the whole thing because people are determining your future for you and these things are being worked on. Jail does not imprison a man, that is in your mind. Free will and free thought are what make us human. People with Aspergers have a little less free will because they are born knowing a thing. Having said that, the vast majority of their lives are spent trying to deal with that knowledge and how it effects their personal lives. They also trade understanding social cues because their minds are always calculating.

This then is where the whole singularity thing gets hilarious (God has a sense of humor). When I was born the odds of being born autistic was 1 in 10,000, it is now less than 1 in 100. I do hope you see the humor in it all. Human innate knowledge is evolving faster than computers and cannot be competed with. Rather than face a world of autistic people. Lets talk about that for a second. Intelligence is measured on a curve. There are retarded people (sorry for the language, I don't know what other word to use; but, am open to suggestions and willing to edit) and geniuses. It is no different with people who are autistic, there are really smart ones and less intelligent ones). Right now in the world there are attempts to eliminate them all. I meant "cure".

Wisdom comes by learning and that requires effort and pain. It requires growth. Humans are still evolving and that is all that matters. We grow as a species and rely on past learning and the ability to continue knowing and learning what was previously learned, that is a dead man's switch for nature. No species can too quickly evolve and you can have too many outliers, they do not cooperate well unless all parts are moving forward and have agreement.

Gay Marriage, Heck State Control of Marriage

New York legalized "Gay" marriage and I don't care. I am a Christian and I still don't care. Why is the state involved in marriage in the first place, that is my question. Why is the state in the business of regulating personal relationships? Why do they care what people do in bed?

There are a couple of issues going on. Lets get sex out of the way. Clearly you don't have to be married to have sex. So, marriage is not about sex (although it can be a nice little diversion). So what is marriage about? Well the bible says it is when two become one flesh. Still, it is not about sex. The bible also says that "For a man is actually loving himself when he loves his wife. No one hates his own body but lovingly cares for it, just as Christ cares for his body, which is the church. And we are his body."

Basically the two unite to form a new being, a joint being. That is spiritual marriage. Then we have "legal" marriage. State sanctioned marriage. So I ask, why is government involved in "marriage" at all? I don't need government approval to have sex or be married, it is not relevant. So why have state sponsored marriage at all?

There are two sides to state sponsored marriage, the couple and the state. The couple usually have a state sponsored marriage because they get cookies, they get tax write offs, insurance benefits and other perks. The state on the other hand gets to make decisions for you if you divorce. The state gets to force one party to provide for the other. We can discuss regulating what happens to the children; but, the state can do that even if people were not legally married.

So state sponsored marriage is not about marriage, it is about divorce. Married people are given a slight break on their taxes in exchange for giving the government the right to make sure that if they divorce the state can force one to pay for the other rather than go on Welfare.

More and more we are seeing heterosexuals not asking the state for permission to live together. At the same time we are seeing "gays" wanting to get married. I cannot understand why some gays want to have state sanctioned marriage. Take my advice, it is not to their advantage. Government regulations have not been friends to gay people over the years.

Some states used to have laws regarding how people could have sex. How is that their business? Many states used to have anti-sodomy laws. Personally, I have never wanted to have that type of sex with a man or a woman; but, how is it anyone's business if it is consensual? Society should protect children and those who cannot protect themselves, I believe that. Society does not need to be involved in consenting adults personal relationships (to have consent one must be of sound mind).

Somewhere in the bible it says that in the end times government will outlaw marriage. Government cannot outlaw spiritual marriage, that would impossible. How can the government outlaw souls combining and becoming one? All government can do is prevent people from having state sanctioned marriage. We have lived to see that, some states have outlawed (it won't last long) "gay" marriage. All that really does is prevent the state from making one party pay for the other if they divorce.

Prior to these times it wasn't illegal for gays to marry, the state simply didn't get involved, would not make it a legal contract. Over the past few years, some states have actually made it illegal for gays to marry. That is foolishness, as I said, people do not need the state to make them a couple.

There are a lot of Christians that will think that what I am saying is sacrilege, sorry, it isn't. Our job as Christians is to be faithful and have an answer for the hope that is within us. It is not our job to tell others how to live their lives. We are told to follow the laws and to be good slaves (I love saying that because it really upsets some "Christians" who don't know their bible).

Oh, and for "Christians" who get a government sanctioned divorce, it doesn't make you divorced in the eyes of God unless you meet the standards of Corinthians. Matthew 5:32 says, "But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery."

After my wife left me for another it was important to me to know what it was biblical for me to do. As I attempted to reconcile and my then wife did commit adultery, I am free to remarry and hopefully one day I will; but, I am not convinced that I will seek a state sanctioned marriage.

By the way, I should also state that I do not think a believer can be married to a non-believer in Christ (legally of course they can). This is found a couple of places in the bible; but, I want to discuss why. Spiritually you cannot become one because you do are not of the same spirit. The New Testament doesn't say it quite as nicely; but, the message is the same.

This post should have something to offend just about everyone. Lets see, I don't care if gays want state acceptance of their relationship. I don't want state involvement in marriage. If two believers make a commitment to God to be married then the states opinion is meaningless and the state acceptance of the divorce is equally meaningless and if you don't meet the requirements under God's law the people who remarry become adulterers. I guess I think that governments involvement in marriage has done more to harm the institution than help it. Be well.