The ComPost Files : What Time Is It?

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

What Time Is It?

[note: There is more I need to add to this post, and I hopefully will this weekend.]

Everything happens for a reason.

I don't care if you believe that or not. You can move on to the next blog or whatever. I've got decades of experience that has cemented that concept in my soul.

I had a good friend that I knew from High School. Where he is now I have no idea. He visited me once in the 90's when he was a high ranking member on the team of the United States Air Force Thunderbirds. That's all I will disclose.

He asked me lots of questions about God and the Bible. He was searching something fierce. He'd ask questions that I'd heard and answered before and he actually had many books in his library by well known Christian apologists. But it didn't matter.

He would ask me a question. Having experienced the question and having done the research before, I would proceed to deal with the question behind the question. I would work to the heart of what was bothering him.

He didn't like that.

He once told me that I was like the character in a story where a man asks what time it is and instead of just saying what time it is, I explain how to make a clock.

For years I have let that bother me. Now that I am older and I see where our society and world are going due to ignorance and stupidity, I will never feel a shred of shame again. I'm not the one who is trying to be ignorant.

If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.

The more I questioned my friend about what he believed or "knew" the more I began to understand that he had been conditioned to just accept the pronouncements of "experts." Don't question. Just rely on credentials that "everyone" accepts.

I did my best to not just tell my friend why he should believe the things I had come to believe. I tried to tell my friend all the facts and how I came to believe what I believed. I wanted my friend to come to his own conclusions based on the truth.

I approached my friend as if I was the defense attorney, dealing with all of his claims.

What say you?

1 comment:

KevinOctober 4, 2014 at 7:10:00 PM EDT
"If you give a man a fish...."

On the other hand, if you build a man a fire, you will keep him warm for one night. If you SET a man on fire, he'll be warm the rest of his life." ;-)
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Please don't make me disable comments because you couldn't maintain decorum and civil discourse. You can disagree all you want to, just don't get nasty.

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Quotes

"The most glaring example of the cognitive dissonance on the left is the concept that human beings are inherently good, yet at the same time cannot be trusted with any kind of weapon, unless the magic fairy dust of government authority gets sprinkled upon them."
-- Moshe Ben-David

"We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality." -- Ayn Rand

"On every occasion [of Constitutional interpretation] let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying [to force] what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, [instead let us] conform to the probable one in which it was passed."
- Thomas Jefferson

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and passed on ... or we will spend our sunset years telling our children's children what it was like in the United States when men were free."
– Ronald Reagan

"There's no question that weapons in the hands of the public have prevented acts of terror or stopped them." - Israeli Police Inspector General Shlomo Aharonisky

"A woman who demands further gun control legislation is like a chicken who roots for Colonel Sanders." - Larry Elder

Make them . . .

“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against – then you’ll know that this is not the age for beautiful gestures. We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now, that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
—Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged.

Federal Reserve

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered...I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -- Thomas Jefferson

Who said that?

“[F]reedom isn't free. It shouldn't be a bragging point that "Oh, I don't get involved in politics," as if that makes you somehow cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn't insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable.” ― Bill Maher

It is almost unbelievable that I could ever agree with Bill Maher on anything, but what is right is right. Wise men do not cater to ad hominem arguments. -- Moshe Ben David

Make no mistake . . .

"The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once."

-- Judge Alex Kozinski, U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals

The REAL danger

“The danger to America is not Barack Obama, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America . Blaming the prince of fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools, such as those who made him their President.”
-- Premier Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, c 2009.