“Is any man afraid of change? Why, what can take place without change? What then is more pleasing or more suitable to the universal nature? And canst thou take a bath unless the wood undergoes a change? and canst thou be nourished, unless the food undergoes a change? And can anything else that is useful be accomplished without change? Dost thou not see then that for thyself also to change is just the same, and equally necessary for the universal nature?” -Marcus Aurelius
Monthly Archives: February 2014
Thirst for Knowledge
“The essence of Christianity is told to us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the Tree of Knowledge. The subtext is, All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on.”
-Frank Zappa, musician, May 2, 1993
Destruction’s Part in Construction
“…as fire lays hold of what falls into it, by which a small light would have been extinguished: but when the fire is strong, it soon appropriates to itself the matter which is heaped on it, and consumes it, and rises higher by means of this very material.” -Marcus Aurelius
Seeking The Truth Is Not Optional
“fight for what you believe in,
for if you don’t you will be forever fighting against yourself.”
― Keisha Keenleyside
“Truth is an acquired taste.”
― Orrin Woodward
“Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch
“I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.”
―Harry S. Truman
Tolerance and Intolerance
After being scolded with the following message (name withheld), “Wish we would have known the Real Ed about 25 years ago. You put on a good show I will give you that.”I responded with these words: “Though you may not like where I am on my personal journey, it is patently unfair to insinuate that what I preached and believed was a fake. That is untrue. During most of my life I was convinced that the Evangelical way of looking at things was correct. I don’t believe that anymore. My views have always leaned to the liberal side. If I had been, as you say, “the Real Ed” (I take that to be as I present my thinking today) then what difference would that have made? Only because one believes the same as you do is/was the criteria for gaining access to family and friends who are Christian? If so, I am offended.” (Some of the above was edited from the original message due to a few minor grammatical and syntax errors.)
Truth is hard to come by. There seem to be those who believe the truth they espouse is the only truth and that attempting to understand one’s faith from a different perspective is somehow worth insulting with little understanding. Though the above is mild by comparison to several others I have received from “friends”, I find it interesting that one would be inclined to distance themselves from my perspective without asking why or attempting to understand. I can only conclude there is little or no interest in exploring faith’s foundations, except as taught within the system. “It must be so because I have been told it was so”, and if one has always been told one thing there cannot be another.
On Being a Humanist and Liberal
This just about sums it up for me…
“ . . . I decided (after listening to a ‘talk radio’ commentator who abused, vilified, and scorned every noble cause to which I had devoted my entire life that) I was both a Humanist and a liberal, each of the most dangerous and vilified type. I am a Humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create a reasonably decent society. I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril. I do not believe that pure reason can solve the perceptual problems unless it is modified by poetry and art and social vision. So I am a Humanist. And if you want to charge me with being the most virulent kind—a secular humanist—I accept the accusation.”
—James Michener, Interview, Parade Magazine (Nov. 24, 1991), cited in Who’s Who in Hell edited by Warren Allen Smith. (A similar passage is found in The World Is My Home by Robert Michener, 1991.)
Thoughts on Thoughts 