Out Of Control

There are numerous minor tasks in life that need to be preformed and choices that need to be made that the general public is not handling well or not handling at all.

According to the Washington Post, healthy food choices are available to all, even those in the inner cities, and we each have control over our bodies as to how much and what we put into them, yet two-thirds of the population is overweight or obese.

Most people have fairly simple incomes yet are willing to pay to have someone else prepare their tax returns. Step by step instructions provided by the IRS are just too much of a bother apparently.

Banks are adapting monthly charges for debit cards and over 95% of the people are content to merely grumble. (NY Times) The task of moving scheduled payments to a credit card or checking account is just too bothersome.

Reconcile a checking account? That takes a grammar school education in arithmetic. No can do.

A large percentage of the population never mastered the ability to set their clocks in their VCRs. Manuals remain unread.

Few do basic maintenance on their personal computers never having looked on the web or novice computer magazines for help. Ever heard of Google?

Are we to conclude that Americans, now that they are fat, are both fat and stupid? It would seem so.

I’ll offer a different opinion. It is self discipline that is lacking. Take the easy way out often enough and you will be out of control of your life. That’s not to say that there aren’t a lot of external pressures on us all today but, even so, part of it is still of our own making.

Some illnesses can be attributed to unnecessary strains that we put o n ourselves. Some accidents can be attributed to unnecessary risk taking. Some house and car repairs can be attributed to inadequate maintenance. Some of it is our own fault.

In short, people are in charge of themselves but dereliction of duty is rampant. People need to grow up and take responsibility for their lives.

The applicability of logic to addressing the question of the existence of a Creator God

The relative universe that has come into existence since the Big Bang consists of four elements - matter, energy, space and time. You could even say there are but two elements -- matter-energy and space-time. The human being, as a part of that creation, has developed an intellect to guide him through it and, consequently, that intellect is limited to addressing what is within the creation. It can not even conceive of anything that is not some combination of matter, energy, space and time. Try it.

It has been speculated that, beyond the universe or the creation, there is a base field of energy. If this was true, then that field would have had to have created a universe that it was but a part of. The same can be said of space and time. That the source of creation is but a component of its own creation is not a logical premise. We can only conclude that the source of creation is something entirely different than what it has created.

When we think about the notion of the source of creation as a deity and then go on to give that deity qualities such as a man-like form or human emotions such as love or hate, we are defining that deity. By defining him, we are placing limits on him. If he looks like this, he doesn't look like that. If he loves, he doesn't hate. But what has limits is some combination of matter and energy space and time and is therefore within the creation. If God was within the creation, he would have had to have created himself. This defies logic. Conversely, a deity God that is outside of the creation could not have characteristics of the creation. Defining the source of creation in terms of the creation is also illogical.

The human intellect is so unaware of its own limit to function only within the creation in which it evolved that the counter argument to this is commonly that either what is outside of the creation can look like what is inside of the creation or that God can chose to look and act as he desires. The first argument reflects the intellect's inability to conceive of anything beyond the creation and therefore fails to distinguish between creation and non-creation. The second argument fails to recognize that action is limited to the creation as, fundamentally, it applies to rearrangements of the constituents of creation -- matter, energy, space and time.

All of this is not to say that there is not a transcendent reality. It is simply a synopsis disproving a personification of that reality.