Friday, April 4, 2008

My views on God

I'm definately an agnostic. But it should be noted that doesn't mean I don't believe in God. I do - I pray to Him every day. But I believe that the true nature of God is unknowable. Not unknown, unknowable.

I like to use the "cell in the body" analogy. Imagine that each human being is a cell in the larger body of God. We eat, we breathe, we reproduce, we create waste (some more than others :), we grow old, we die. Of course, unlike real cells in the human body, we are self-aware, so we also wonder and worry and question. But we are limited in our perspective - we know only what surrounds us and what we learn through our life experiences. We may be able to understand what it is to be a cell, or what it is to be a blood cell versus a bone cell versus a nerve cell, but we don't understand what the body is for or the context in which God "lives".

To truely understand God, at least in terms of this analogy, we'd not only have to understand how cells work together to enable the body of God, but what God is really up to. Not just the physical reality, but what is he doing every day - and why. However, we as cells in the body of God can no more understand what God is doing than a bone cell in our skull can understand why we worry about our jobs or love our children or debate politics. God exists on a much higher plane - one that is unknowable to humans.

So does that make our lives irrelevant? Of course not - no more that the bone cell is irrelevant to the human body. We live and die and contribute to the health of the body of God. And although we cannot understand the purpose of that body, we can contribute to it - we can be the best, healthiest, strongest cells we can be.

God is, in my opinion, a Spiritual Body. So to complete the analogy, the way we become healthy cells in the body of God is that we become healthy spirits. We create the positive things that make life full and happy like love and compassion and we avoid spiritually destructive things like hatred and jealousy. And spirituality is very much a shared process, so unlike the isolated cells in the human body, we must reach out to one another and share our experiences and our hopes and dreams. In short, we become healthy cells by becoming moral people and sharing our humanity with other humans.

And I believe that when we die, we are transformed. Not that I believe in "life" after death (although I don't deny that's a possibility), but rather "existence" after death. We go on, but we go on in some different form and at some point we join God (whatever that means) and God becomes knowable.

So even though I'm technically an Agnostic, in practice I'm very much like a Christian. And those are my views on God.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

The "L" Word

In my previous post, I used the "L" word ("liberal") to describe myself. Conservatives, starting with the "Reagan Revolution", have done an incredible job in making "liberal" a dirty word - so much so that even hard-core liberals like Barak Obama are reluctant to use the word.

If you check out OnTheIssues.org, there is a very predictable pattern in the categorization of Democrat and Republican candidates. Democrats are almost entirely Left Liberals (Clinton being the more moderate) and Republicans are almost entirely Right Conservatives (with the notable exception of Ron Paul, who falls squarely in the Libertarian quadrant). And given that Repbulicans have won the Presidential Election 7 of the last 10 times, you'd think the country was 70% conservative (a myth the Republicans like to proliferate).

But using the Vote Match quiz as a guide on the issues and another site - pollingreport.com - as a source of where Americans stand on numerous issues, you'll discover that Americans are Left Liberal much more so than Right Conservative.

According to OnTheIssues.org, there are 20 defining issues for determining where a candidate is on a matrix of Left Liberal, Moderate, Right Conservative, Libertarian or Populist. These issues are:

  1. Abortion is a woman's right
  2. Require hiring more women & minorities
  3. Same-sex domestic partnership benefits
  4. Teacher-led prayer in public schools
  5. Death Penalty
  6. Mandatory Three Strikes sentencing laws
  7. Absolute right to gun ownership
  8. More federal funding for health coverage
  9. Privatize Social Security
  10. Parents choose schools via vouchers
  11. Replace coal & oil with alternatives
  12. Drug use is immoral: enforce laws against it
  13. Allow churches to provide welfare services
  14. Repeal tax cuts on wealthy
  15. Illegal immigrants earn citizenship
  16. Support & expand free trade
  17. Expand the armed forces
  18. Stricter limits on political campaign funds
  19. The Patriot Act harms civil liberties
  20. US out of Iraq

(There are explanations of what it means to "favor" or "oppose" each of these issues at the site)

I used the polls recorded at pollingreport.com to get a sense of where the majority of Americans are on each of the above issues. Basically, if the polls do not show a pattern of at least 8 points in favor or opposed, I counted the issue as "no opinion". The results were as follows:


  1. Abortion is a woman's right - favor (Liberal)
  2. Require hiring more women & minorities - no opinion
  3. Same-sex domestic partnership benefits - favor (Liberal)
  4. Teacher-led prayer in public schools - favor (Conservative)
  5. Death Penalty - favor (Conservative)
  6. Mandatory Three Strikes sentencing laws - no opinion
  7. Absolute right to gun ownership - oppose (Liberal)
  8. More federal funding for health coverage - favor (Liberal)
  9. Privatize Social Security - oppose (Liberal)
  10. Parents choose schools via vouchers - favor (Conservative)
  11. Replace coal & oil with alternatives - favor (Liberal)
  12. Drug use is immoral: enforce laws against it - no opnion
  13. Allow churches to provide welfare services - no opinion
  14. Repeal tax cuts on wealthy - no opinion (note: polls indicate support for the tax cuts, but sense that they favor the wealthy, so this is a wash)
  15. Illegal immigrants earn citizenship - favor (Liberal)
  16. Support & expand free trade - no opinion
  17. Expand the armed forces - oppose (Liberal)
  18. Stricter limits on political campaign funds - oppose (Conservative)
  19. The Patriot Act harms civil liberties - favor (Liberal)
  20. US out of Iraq - favor (Liberal)
That's 10 Liberals, 4 Conservatives and 6 "no opinions'. So if the country leans that strongly left (or centrist, no opinion) - then why is the word "liberal" such a political no-no?


Blogging on politics

Okay, so it's Presidential Election season and I'm just finding a great need to express myself.

I consider myself a "slightly left of center" moderate, but in reality I'm a liberal. If I had any doubts, I cleared them by taking the "Vote Match Quiz" at OnTheIssues.org - it puts me smack in the middle of the Left Liberal quadrant, but that's okay - that's where most of America is (more on that later).

My "moderate" views are that I'm pro-military, pro Death Penalty, pro free-market and, although I'm generally pro-choice, I do not believe in "abortion on demand".

For those of you confused about where you stand politically, I encourage you to check out OnTheIssues.org and take the Vote Match quiz - it is very telling.