UnderAgeThinker

I have placed links to an online Bible, Qur’an, and the Standard Works of Mormonism on my sidebar.  I’m sure some of you are a bit surprised.  Why would a Christian want to place links to these non-Christian scriptures on his blog?  Honesty is why.  It keeps me honest and it demonstrates that I am being honest.  In the future when I quote from whatever scripture and you think I am taking it out of context, misinterpreting it, or making it up completely then, just click on the link and read it for your self. 

Furthermore, I am confident that if everyone studied all the various religions honestly then, we would have more people coming to faith in Jesus.  I encourage everyone to read the Bible, read the Book of Mormon, read the Qur’an and the Hadith (if you can get through it, it is loooong).  They cannot all be true and the truth cannot be stamped out. 

A proper post is coming soon and it will be on Mit Romney and Mormonism, so hold on to your hat.  For now I have to get some Christmas shopping done.  Merry Christmas, y’all.

I am constantly amazed at how often people cherry pick the facts to suit their own arguments.  I expect this from advertisements and unfortunately I have grown accustomed to spin in the news, but I am seeing it more and more from people who I would expect better from.  Many of these people are even arguing for positions I agree with, but do it through bad reasoning.  When you argue from poor reasoning you open yourself up to criticism and discredit the position you were arguing in favor of.  You better serve your position by keeping quiet than by deceptive and poor arguing tactics. 

The blogs are the worst about this.  The more I get into blogging, the more blogs I read and it seems that these otherwise intelligent and ethical people believe that they can misconstrue, misrepresent, misquote, and omit anything that is not supportive of their point.  The most common things to cherry pick from seem to be the Bible, the Constitution, the Quran, and now Me!  Oh well, I suppose that comes with the territory.  I honestly cannot understand how someone gets satisfaction from winning an argument or making a profound point when it is based on faulty reasoning.  It is beyond me.  I am behooved.   One of the most common places to find this fake arguing is under the philosophy tag.  I would like to point out that philosopher means lover of wisdom.  You cannot love wisdom if you do not first love truth. 

Another dishonest tactic that is getting more popular, is to make a statement and then cite some fact as support when the fact in reality has little or nothing to do with the statement made.  I am forced to conclude that many people are so blinded by their convictions that they cannot even defend them properly, so blinded that they can no longer see any logic in contrary positions and thus they, cannot make a logical argument against them.  When people get to this point, facts of little relevance become sound and insurmountable arguments to bolster their own position. 

If you truly believed in whatever position you were arguing for then you should be more than happy to bring all the facts to light as they should reveal the truth in your position.  When you feel that you must filter information then you must have very little faith  in your position.  If that is the case then the best that can be said of you is that you don’t know what you believe and the worst is that you are pushing a position which you believe to be false. 

The purpose of engaging in an argument should be to discover the truth, not to bolster your own ego and not to “win” at all costs.  This is especially true when the argument is one sided, as in a blog post (unless you get comments).

“People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on what they find attractive.” -Pascal

“For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions” 2 Timothy 4:3 ESV

I am not a Ron Paul hater.  I am pretty close to him on some issues.  He speaks his mind and knows what he believes.  That is more than I can say for most politicians and I respect him for that.  Yesterday however, during the YouTube/CNN dabate he sealed his fate.  When asked about his plan for Iraq, Ron Paul’s answer not only sounded anti-military and anti-American but showed that he doesn’t understand the enemy we face in this war on Islamic terror. 

He said that we should pull our troops out of Iraq.  This alone is not surprising, but then he said that one of the primary reasons for the attacks of September 11th was the U.S. military presence in Saudi Arabia and that we should pull out of there as well.  This is where he displayed his ignorance. 

The Islamofascists are waging a holy war.  Ron Paul doesn’t seem to get this.  They truly have faith that what they are doing is the will of Allah and is therefore not only justified but obligatory.  When they say that they are waging jihad it is not just rhetoric, they mean it.  It is not difficult to see why they are fighting, it is not because we have a base in Saudi Arabia, it is because their religion tells them to.

“And fight them until persecution is no more, and religion is all for Allah. But if they cease, then lo! Allah is Seer of what they do.”  Surrah (Quran) 8:39 Pickthall*

It is not hard to find, the Quran is in public domain!  If Ron Paul doesn’t understand that they attacked us because we are infidels then he would endanger the nation and the world as president.  I withdraw my support for his candidacy.

*Note: I changed the translation of Quran quotation due to complaints about the accuracy of the previous translation.  Pickthall is the most respected English translation of the Quran to my knowledge.

This is an issue I’ve put quite a bit of thought into and the more I think about it, the more I think it is a good idea.  Oil exporting countries have formed a cartel that can set the price of oil with essentially no opposition, it only makes sense to form a cartel of oil importing countries that would be powerful enough to negotiate with OPEC and lower the price of oil.  It seems like a no-brainer.  There is so much to this that I should be writing a book instead of a blog post but this will have to do for now. 

If the major oil importers bound themselves together and were willing the bare the initial and inevitable embargo from OPEC, the rewards that they would reap would be enormous.  Today oil is at nearly $100 a barrel, in 1999 it was around $10 a barrel.  Don’t believe me?  Just imagine what it would do for our economy if oil suddenly dropped to, say $20 a barrel.  That is not an unreasonable figure provided someone like OPIC was negotiating the price for us. 

Here is one example of how something like OPIC could work.  Representatives from the U.S., China, Canada, the E.U., Japan, Australia, and other Oil importing countries meet in Geneva and decide that they will pay $40 a barrel for oil.  The various countries refuse to buy any oil for any more than that.  At this point OPEC is almost certain to react by refusing to sell any oil at all.  Then the game of chicken begins.  It would all depend on who blinks first.  If OPIC could stomach gasoline rations and high prices long enough then OPEC would give in.  If OPEC would not agree to OPIC’s price then at least they might open up to negotiations on the price.  Another possibility is that the OPEC cartel would break.  Saudi Arabia, replete with cash, might be willing to hold out longer than some of the other OPEC members but, as soon as one OPEC country broke and started to sell two things would happen, the price of oil would start to drop thereby giving relief to the OPIC countries and the other OPEC members would begin to follow suit.  The former OPEC countries would have to compete to sell oil on the open market.  OPIC might even be able to shutter the windows.  One thing that makes me think a strategy like this could work is that OPEC does not control all the world’s oil.  This means that during the stand off the OPIC nations would not run completely out of oil. 

One objection that might arise to the idea of OPIC is that it isn’t very capitalistic.  This however, is not the case.  What is more capitalistic than leveraging all the power you have to negotiate a better price for a product?  OPIC would be a great expression of capitalism.  Labor unions and monopolies are both capitalistic in the same way.  The problem with them both is that they could potentially hurt the economy as a whole.  However OPIC would be working to help the economy. 

It is at least food for thought.  We can’t go on like this, especially with so much of the Islamic terrorism being funded by petro-dollars.  If the price of oil does in the next 9 years what it did in the previous 9 years then in 2017 we will be paying close to $1,000 a barrel.  That would be $30 or $40 a gallon at the pump!  Organisation of Petroleum Importing Countries, it has a nice ring to it doesn’t it? 

Pakistan’s President, Pervez Musharraf has in recent weeks started to look more and more like a dictator.  He postponed elections (he wasn’t elected to start with), sacked the Supreme Court and padded it with supporters, placed former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto under house arrest, and rounded up hundreds of political opponents.  He is also a close ally of the United States and the Bush administration.  In 2005 Pakistan was given a three-billion dollar arms deal.  That’s a three-billion dollar gift, not exchange.  Pakistan could not afford to spend three-billion on anything.  I do not know the total amount in military aid the United States has given to Pakistan and Musharraf since September 11th but it is surely a staggering number.  So the solution seems clear in light of Musharraf’s recent shenanigans, turn off the money pipeline.  Without U.S. support Musharraf’s government will fold, or at very least the U.S. will have sent a strong signal and he just might shape up.  There are just two problems with this. 

First and most obvious is the reason Pakistan has been getting the money in the first place, September 11th.  Before 9/11 the U.S. would not sell arms to Pakistan or India because of their nuclear saber rattling.  After September 11th we needed Pakistan’s help in routing out the Taliban on the border with Afghanistan and Musharraf was happy to oblige.  It is worth noting that India has since started to receive U.S. arms as well, in an effort to maintain the balance of power in south Asia.  The Taliban has regrouped since their initial butt-whooping in the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.  They are gaining ground in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Pakistani troops with U.S. dollars are the only thing keeping them from taking over Pakistan or at least a major section of it.  This would give them a base of operations to launch attacks into Afghanistan on U.S. and NATO troops.  It would also give a safe haven to Islamic terrorist with broader goals in mind. 

The second and perhaps even more important issue is the bomb.  Pakistan is a nuclear power.  Pakistan has nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles.  This is not like North Korea, who detonated (or rather, fizzled) a nuclear fire cracker and now claims to be a nuclear power.  Pakistan is armed to the nuclear teeth.  The U.S. (and the rest of the sane world) would much rather have Musharraf, with all his faults in control of those nukes than the Taliban or total anarchy. 

If the Taliban got its hands on those nukes they would almost certainly pass a few off to their Al Qaeda allies.  Another possibility is that they would use them against Pakistan’s mortal enemy and fellow nuclear club member, India.  This presumably would provoke India to respond in kind and the Earth would have her first nuclear war. 

The U.S can not afford not to continue to prop up Musharraf and unfortunately, he knows it.  This is one of the stickiest diplomatic situations since the end of the cold war.  I imagine the diplomatic back channels are replete with offers for Musharraf to retire to mansions in Miami in exchange for  some how securing the nukes and handing power to an elected president.  It should be interesting.

Much has been made of the identity of the god of Christianity and the god of Islam and whether they are the same being.  Many people want to claim that they are the same in hopes that this will foster brotherly feelings, tolerance, and in time peace.  Those who deny the same-god theory tend to be fundamentalist on either side who have little or no desire to associate one faith with the other.  I however contend that the whole controversy is one of semantics and largely meaningless and I intend to demonstrate it below. 

Muslim’s do not worship Jesus.  Christians worship Jesus.  Therefore Christians and Muslims do not worship the same god. 

Christians claim to worship the god of Abraham.  Muslims claim to worship the god of Abraham.  Therefore Christians and Muslims do worship the same god. 

The law of non-contradiction says that a thing can not, be and not be at the same time.  In the above two arguments all the premises are true and the logic is sound; they are both true and valid statements.  Yet they contradict one another.

The reason for this is that the English word god is being used to mean two different things.  Like I said before, it’s semantics.  From an anthropological perspective Christianity and Islam are both monotheistic Abrahamic religions and the god is the same.  From a theological perspective Jehovah shares very few characteristics with Allah.  Additionally, the two faiths are not even remotely compatible to any but the most extreme liberals of either faith.  They are mutually exclusionary.  So they do not worship the same god.  That is the semantical difference in the anthropological definition of god and the theological definition of god. 

Those outside these faiths and liberals within them will continue to claim that Christians and Muslims worship the same god.  However, liberals and outsiders are not the driving force in any religion or belief system, the fundamentalists are.  Outsiders are by definition outside the faith.  Liberals are by definition far from the heart of the faith.  If it were not so, then they would be fundamentalists.  And no informed fundamentalist Muslim or Christian would claim that they worship theologically the same god.  Muslims do not worship Jesus Christ and Christians do not worship an unknowable god, as Allah is described in the Qur’an.