Okay, so it’s time for a few definitions about what some of us have been discussing. Feel free to join in. Socrates once said, “Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” The more people involved, the easier it is to pass the fire.

SO: Let’s start with easy ones.

Deism: John Hick says that deism is “the idea of an ‘absentee’ god who long ago set the universe in motion and has thereafter left it alone.” Leaving aside the usual political discussions that occur on the question of a deistic view of God, this God is clearly not at all troubled by the event surrounding human life. Thus, evil is not an issue. A deistic God has long since forgotten about humanity (if this God were ever aware of something as insignificant as humans in the first place).

Think of it this way: Your little girl wants to plant some apple seeds to see what happens. So like the good parent you are, you go outside with her, find a place where the dirt doesn’t look baked to a crisp, dig a little hole and drop in some seeds. If you’re really thoughtful, you might water the seeds before going back in from the heat. You go inside to have a nice, cold one before you have to go to work in the morning.

When you wake up in the morning, not only have you forgotten about the seeds you planted the night before, but you’ve also forgotten the dream of having a little girl altogether. Thus, those seeds you planted might have actually been planted or they might have only been Bobby in the shower at the end of that stupid season of Dallas you watched as a kid.

A deistic God is at best unconcerned and probably completely unaware of his/her actions (supposing that “actions” even approaches being an accurate description of something such a god would do).

As strange as it may sound for a Christian (and yes, I do claim that title despite what some on FaceBook may think) to say, there is something appealing to me about this view of God. It certainly solves the issue of why bad things happen (God’s not around to fix stuff). It allows for there to have been a creator. It allows for there to be still be something greater than ourselves (which as a Christian, I believe to be important).

On the other hand, deism really leaves me hanging. After all, if there is no there there, why bother? It seems that the notion of chance would serve the same purpose. This is the quintessential deus ex machina or as Sting might say, Ghost in the Machine. If it’s laughable in fiction, “real” life (and yeah, we’re going to have to have a discussion about that someday) should be no different. (Except that it is. Truth is stranger than fiction, after all.)

And so we begin. Suggestions?

The water takes on the same flavor. I never knew that plain water could taste sweet until I moved out of the Southeast. This is why all the tea is sweetened, and everyone drinks coke. Join the community for a short while and your taste buds forget what good water tastes like. The images of sulfur and eternal heat that street preachers invoke come alive to those living near a Southern paper mill. Only there, it’s a dry heat.

Thankfully, I’m driving into the wind on my way East. Once I’ve reached the bridge onto Tybee Island, nothing but dampness comes through the windows and sunroof. It’s strange having to run the wipers when it’s not raining: The humidity never drops below ninety percent, even in the driest summer. Tybee means salt in the Native American Euchee language. Salt can purify and preserve, but it can also burn. I once heard that even people who cannot swim can float in the Dead Sea because of the high concentration of salt and minerals. The air on the island feels that way except, instead of supporting you, it crushes you. The saltiness of the wet air surrounds, envelops, encloses the night around you. During the day, the sun burns off some of the moisture; at night, it folds in on you.

Blue sky reaches out to the horizon and touches blue-green water. Moonlight washes away the vivid color of the day. White sand becomes light gray. Sky and water meld into pitch.  I learn what it is to be color-blind like dad. At night the beach isn’t about seeing and being seen. No seeing; no touching; no talking; no hearing other than the rush of the wind past your ears. Only smell and taste remain; even they fade in repetition.

Turning into the public parking lot a little too sharply, I flash back to driving lessons with dad as I hear his dreaded command, “Easy. EASY!” echo in my head. Officially, the beach closes at midnight, but the police never enforce this rule. I watch for the watchers anyway; at three hours after mid-night, it’s better to go unnoticed. I need to be alone.

I park as far away from the streetlight as possible. “Night Swimming” by R.E.M. is fading into the background: “you I thought I knew you / you I cannot judge / you I thought you knew me / this one laughing quietly underneath my breath / night swimming / deserves a quiet night.”[i] Knowing, judging, being known, needing escape I close the door and step into the wind. It’s always strong, especially at night; but tonight, it seems as if it has somewhere to go, and it’s insistent on getting there early. Dad’s shouting, “Hurry up, you’re making us late!” is blown away. I hope the wind continues to do this work.

Alone.

I leave my shoes, wallet, shirt, and all but the door key in the trunk. No sense in tempting anyone to steal my last ten until the end of the month. If it weren’t for the gas card, I couldn’t be here and I’d likely starve. Dad shakes his head, “You need to learn to manage your money better, boy.”

The asphalt is still warm, but the sand is cool. It’s even cooler than the air—drier anyway. It’s like someone left the air conditioning on with the door open. Somewhere, dad is shouting, “Close the door!” I realize the wind is letting me down. Thoughts keep intruding.  I pick up the pace to get to the wet sand so the wind will stop sandblasting my ankles, but it’s difficult running on a surface that gives way under every step. I turn south so the wind’s at my back. My hair streams out in front of me, pointing the way, forming blinders to everything around me. “Get a hair cut!” I head into the darkest part of the beach on its southern edge. This must be what a sensory deprivation chamber feels like. I can hear only the gentle breaking of the waves on the rocks. I can see only a few stars through the clouds. I can feel only the warm water splashing against my shins. I can smell only the brine in the air. I can taste only the salt on my lips.

I climb over the break, take off my shorts, and wade into the Atlantic. Isolated. Separated. Alone. Silent. Safe.

An hour and a half up I-16, the cancer is spreading. Three years ago it invaded his colon. They tried to isolate it. To separate it. To convince it to leave him alone and safe. It didn’t work.

Within a year he was back at the hospital with a shortness of breath, silencing him. As if he were trapped under water, his lungs couldn’t hold enough oxygen. The x-rays showed some spots: Little dark spots that seemed to be joining together in places. Forming communities. Staking claim to their territory. Climbing on up. They try again to isolate it and separate it.

A few weeks ago the left side of his body felt numb, and he had trouble walking. Stumbling into the neurologist’s office, he sees an MRI of his brain. The communities have taken up residence there now. Overcrowding will soon be a problem. The population control techniques have failed, and there’s no place left to be alone. There’s no room left.

One month from now, during a night much like tonight, the growth would finally stop. Dad would simply stop breathing: merciful separation. Tonight though, breathing is still important to me; and as I float on my back underneath the clouds, I add a few extra ounces of saline to the sea.

I swim back to the breakers, pull on my shorts, and walk north toward the lot. I feel cold as the wind dries me. The wind and the surf drown out most sound, but then I notice a gull calling out the morning. The brine leaves my lips chapped and my tongue feeling swollen. My nose clears, and I smell the dry morning air blowing in from the west. My hair, no longer providing the blinders, flails about behind me. Color returns, and I can see the light of a red morning ahead. Mourning ahead.

Before I get into the car, I try and knock off as much of the white sand as possible, but my efforts are futile. I carry the beach back home with me: little communities, refusing to let go.

Today, twelve years later, I never go to the beach alone, and I haven’t been to Tybee since that night. The night swimming is past, “replaced by everyday.”[ii] Laurel and I often go out at night for a walk on the beach, together. She never knew dad, but she was there for the funeral: drove down from Louisville just to be with me. That was when I knew.

Leaving the babies with her mom, we walk east on Orange Beach before midnight. I stop and look at the horizon where water and sky meet and merge into one. Laurel reaches out, takes my hand, and we merge as well. Laughing quietly underneath my breath, I whisper, “Good night.” My community has found me, known me, and I am not alone. We walk back to the condo to check on the kids. The night air swirls around and between us. Safe.

[ii] Ibid.

THE BIBLE!

Cooper, Burton Z. Why, God? Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988.

Davis, Stephen T. Encountering Evil: Live Options in Theodicy. Atlanta: John Knox, 1981.

Dillard, Anne. Holy the Firm. New York: Harper and Row, 1977.

Faludi, Susan. The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America. New York: Metropolitan, 2007.

Foer, Jonathan Safran. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. New York: Mariner, 2005.

McCarthy, Cormac. No Country for Old Men. New York: Vintage, 2005.

McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. New York: Vintage, 2006.

Russell, Bertrand Why I Am Not a Christian: and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957.

Sider, Ronald J. Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. Dallas: Word, 1990.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Cat’s Cradle. New York: Dell, 1963.

Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006.

I read Elie Wiesel’s Night for the first time quite late in life. I believe I picked it up for some light summer reading between college and seminary. Maybe I thought it would be a good Beach book . . .

Of course I knew it was a holocaust book, and I think I had avoided it for that very reason. The extermination of a entire race of humans while the world watched was not really something that my “recently freed from reading lists” mind was ready to grapple with. I was, after all, still going to live forever. Extermination wasn’t possible, and so dealing with it in literature just wasn’t necessary.

Much of that changed for me in 1991, but that’s a story for a later time.

So, I picked up this tiny book and began to work my way through the evil that humans are remarkable skilled at inflicting on others.

And in its opening sentence, I met a man who would forever change the course of a young life: Moishe the Beadle. If I may be forgiven for being a young geek, he was Obi Wan, Yoda, Gandalf, and perhaps most of all, Mr. Spock, rolled into one. His is the wisdom of the ages in a small package.

Elie writes of Moishe in Night:

He had watched me one day as I prayed at dusk.

“Why do you cry when you pray?” he asked, as though he knew me well.

“I don’t know,” I answered, troubled.

I had never asked myself that question. I cried because . . . because something inside me felt the need to cry. That was all I knew.

“Why do you pray?” he asked after a moment.

Why do I pray? Strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe?

“I don’t know,” I told him, even more troubled and ill at ease. “I don’t know.”

From that day on, I saw him often. He explained to me, with great emphasis, that every question possessed a power that was lost in the answer . . . (Wiesel, Elie. Night. 4-5.)

As Socrates taught us, questions open up dialog. They are the tiniest package of wisdom that I know of. They are troubling. They put us ill at ease. They wake us up at night. The frighten us in the brightest day. The chill us as we suffer through the hottest summer in history. They are the first realization that there is someone/something outside of ourselves. They are our attempts to bring order to the chaos that surrounds us. And so in the voice of a scary smart little girl, we look to the sky and ask in a quiet, child-like voice, “Why?”

That is the smallest package I’m capable of creating, and it’s wisdom is always elusive. Questions possess a power and a wisdom that are lost in the answer. Perhaps, in other words, some questions aren’t meant to be answered.

The problem of evil may be one such question. I think it’s important to acknowledge that I don’t know everything. I think it’s also important to keep asking questions. Question inspire dialog. Dialog leads to connection. With connection comes the possibility of wisdom. And so we ask together in child-like voices, “Why?”

Anyway, if there’s still anyone listening, it’s my intention to do better. Of course, I hear that intentions are good paving material.

So much to talk about, so little time. My thoughts of late have been on the problem of evil, so I think we’ll talk about that for a while.

So, Evil and it’s problems. A quick overview might help.

This is a uniquely theistic problem, in other words, we Muslims, Jews, and Christians all face the issue (if we allow ourselves, anyway.) It’s that question that wakes me up at night. Along with other things, of course, but it’s the one issue that I keep coming back to. It’s like that missing tooth that your tongue keeps reaching for. What are we to do with the presence of bad things that happen in our lives?

The philosophical rendition of the issue goes something like this:

God is all loving, and

God is all powerful, but

Evil Exists.

This is the conundrum, for if God were all loving, God would want to eradicate evil. Furthermore, if God were all powerful, God would be able to eradicate evil from our world. And yet, evil continues to exist. Thus, either God isn’t all powerful and cannot eradicate evil, or God isn’t all loving and won’t eradicate evil.

This is the problem.

I’ve struggled with this problem since college, and it became real shortly thereafter. Over the past 20 years, it’s never left me, but I think it’s time to expose it to the light of day.

So, I’ll post it here. I’ll think about it out loud. I’ll write about it. I’ll read about it. I’ll hopefully discuss it with you (supposing of course that you’re still out there to discuss stuff with after a half a year break).

More to come soon.

The “code” is that the verse actually doesn’t appear on the rifle site.  The code for their high in special ops sight is JN8:12.   That’s all the sight says… at the end of the serial number.  In the example shown on ABC news, the whole inscription is AC064X32JN8:12.

Now ABC News, and others that have latched onto this growing controversy, want to claim that this biblical message violates the anti-proselytization law.  To avoid the appearance of a crusade, US Troops are barred from attempting to spread their own religious views in theater.

What I’d really like someone to explain to me is how that serial number, which for point one is so small that they had to magnify it significantly to show it on TV, is spreading anything?  Prior to this news story, the US Army was unaware that the ending codes on the serial number meant anything other than the model number.  Not to mention you have to have some understanding of what the “code” is to know what bible verse the serial number even refers to.

Putting aside the obvious ethical issues of putting bible verses on sights designed to help people kill people, saying that the sights are designed to convert our enemies to Christianity is a bit silly.  It is hardly the first time “secret” messages have been hidden in plain sight.  One other example that leaps to mind is Apple Computer’s first alert “tone” on the Macintosh.  After Apple settled with Apple Music over the use of the name by agreeing to not let the computer play music (and in 1975, who thought a computer would ever play music?) Apple changed its mind in 1984 with the Macintosh.  The alert tone, one of several available, was quite musical and was called “sosumi.”  Years later it was revealed it was a open taunt to Apple Music (which held the rights to the music of The Beatles) to sue Apple Computer over the change.  (sosumi= So, Sue Me.)

There have even been less veiled religious icons used in the military for far longer than the Trijion sights.  Anyone know what the symbol worn by every doctor in the Military is?  Oh yea, the symbol of a Greek God.

I’m sorry, but ABCNews and the anti-war crowd have created a controversy with this one.  This should be a non-issue.  The army bought the JN8:12 sight because it is the best.  Not to let the person on the receiving end of the bullet know that God loves them.

On the way there, he saw a sign for the Aquarium that advertised their penguin exhibit.  Very cool, and he got excited.  He asked me if they had “Macaroni Penguins.”  I tried not to laugh, I mean really… Macaroni?  But told him we’d have to see.

We get there, and our tour guide takes us first to see the Penguins.  Now this is an overnight trip where we slept at the Aquarium and got to see all sorts of stuff behind the scenes.  So the boy asks again…  ”Will we see Macaroni Penguins?”

Since the tour guide would be dealing with kids all night long, I figured this is a good chance to see how she handles silly questions.  So I told the boy to ask the guide.  Which he did.

Imagine my surprise when she said “We sure do.  We have 11 adults and a baby.”

Wait.  There really are Macaroni Penguins?

So I ask the boy where he heard about them.  ”Diego.”

Score one for Nick Jr.

Yes, I’m going for a massive amount of hits for this one.

Full disclosure: I am a newbie to Macs. I bought my first iMac in 2007 right after they switched to Intel. I went in to get a Mac Mini thinking it would be fun to play with, but when I looked at the cost of adding a monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc., I decided that a 19″ iMac might be a better deal (especially since they were on sale at the time).

We took it with us on vacation, and I fell in love the moment I took it out of the box. Apple knows what they’re doing with the purchasing experience. I had never (I’ve owned approximately 30 computers dating back to the Commodore PET! that loaded programs from a tape deck, and could only play Space Invaders.) opened a box, plugged in the power cord, mouse, keyboard and had a fully usable computer within 20 minutes. The first thing most PCs require at setup is a clean install to clear off the crapware in order to make the system usable. (This is, of course, not true of the systems I’ve built myself, but those systems take days to purchase, build, and setup.)

The iMac was a thing of beauty coming out of the box, but it wasn’t enough to convince me to switch. That occurred when I bought my first iPhone, but that’s a different posting. This is about windows.

Even though I switched to Mac during the Vista era, I am not a Vista hater. I was an early adopter. As soon as it was available preinstalled on the Lenovo ThinkPad (T61), I ordered Ultimate and was quite happy. Yes, I had trouble with drivers for printers (All-in-Ones from HP were notoriously slow being released), but I was quite happy with the laptop, and with Vista as a whole.

Here’s the problem. I’m setting up a desktop that’s been sitting in the corner collecting dust for my brother-in-law. (Yes, I’m that guy, but then the “Geek” in the title of the blog really should have been a giveaway.) This is a machine that I built, so I’m not blaming any manufacturer other than myself. As I said, this machine has been sitting in a corner, so it needed to be updated. There were approximately 60 critical updates that needed to be applied, including Vista SP1.

Everything was going along slowly but surely until I finally got to SP1. Then, I got the dreaded Windows Update Error message stating that the SP1 patch could not be applied.

It seems that there are many people who have had problems with this very same issue. It also seems that the only way to fix this issue is to disable everything that can be disabled in Windows, and reinstall them from the Setup disk. In short, to install a service pack to make Vista secure and stable, I need to reinstall Vista again.

As ridiculous as this is, it by itself isn’t why Windows sucks. Windows sucks not because it breaks sometimes. It sucks because one of the richest companies in the world, which is owned by one of the richest men in the world, decided that it needed to be just a little bit richer and require that costumers who had paid for the software jump though hoops of “Authentication” when trying to fix problems that Microsoft itself should have fixed long ago. SP1 was released nearly 2 years ago. (Authentication only affects honest customers. The dishonest ones have long since circumvented this problem.)

Why should I have to go through this trouble of proving to Microsoft that the software I bought, and authenticated three years ago, needs to be shown to be authentic again? Especially just to update the software to the latest version?

This is why I switched to Macs: Microsoft is a monopoly that has no reason to be concerned about the User experience. If they lose one, so what! We have millions of others who are willing to put up with being hassled for no reason whatsoever.