Comments for Stumbling Toward God?

Comment on Playing Games by goodbyetonto

goodbyetonto — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:39:11 +0000

I feel ya. I prayed for the first time in a year the other night just to impress my fiancés mother. Had I said, “I do not pray…”, I would be causing a wealth of drama for her and myself and ultimately my fiancé. I empathize with your reaction. I do not feel you had malicious intentions by choosing the lesser of two unattractive options. Being honest for the sake of honesty is not always a wise choice.

Comment on Heart by timoth

timoth — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 23:55:26 +0000

One thing I forgot to mention, was that it once occurred to me that it is a good thing that I am not married, because I am sure that I would have gotten divorced over the way I have handled this bathroom issue. I had that thought sometime after I went over a month without hot water. That was nine or ten months ago and the bathroom still is not fixed.

So I completely agree with everything that you say, however, I am clearly not making the attempt to better my situation. I am having a bit of a cart before the horse problem motivating myself in that regard. I also hope that you appreciate that your good fortune is not necessarily typical.

Incidentally, when writing this post, I thought I had talked about some of this before, but I could not find it at the time. Here is something: http://blog.timoth.net/2007/09/marriage.html

Comment on Heart by goodbyetonto

goodbyetonto — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:09:13 +0000

Timoth, when I met my lady, I had a basket full of oddities, dysfunctions, abnormal behaviors, religious confusions and other personality shortcomings. Obviously, this did not stop her. It might have been a shock initially, but I know for a fact, one thing that kept us together was the forward motion I maintained. I actually received the motivation that I needed from her. I wanted to change for myself as well, but really had no catalyst at the time. She created the spark that I needed. I would also like to say that part of being in a committed and long term relationship, that is aimed towards marriage comes with a level of grace that dating does not offer. My lady offers me grace more than I am deserving of it. I am an optimist now in this area and believe that even for you, if you meet the right person, at the right time, she will strengthen you and look past these circumstances she finds you in. As long as you are making an attempt to better your situation, the right one will give you the space and time you need to get things ironed out.

Comment on Movie Reviews Sans Title #1 by timoth

timoth — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 22:04:52 +0000

I forgot to mention my concern that this movie’s overall message of “Blond hair = magic; brunette = mundane” might have been just a little too *subtle* for the four year olds in the target audience.

I double posted this entry here and on FB, which I do feel a little silly about. I needed something to fill my weekly blog quota and I happened to have this sitting around, but I also wanted feedback which I thought I was more likely to get over there. (Although no one did.)

I already have a #2, which I actually wrote before this one, but I called this “#1″ because I had the initial idea after seeing this movie. I never wrote it out until I eventually rented another movie many months later. Since no one seems interested, I am not sure what to do with the second one. (As if “what interests other people” has ever been a consideration for my posts.)

In short, it was all a desperate ploy for attention. Yet it was not a total loss, because I actually consider the knowledge that no one will to respond to my desperate ploys for attention to be valuable information.

Comment on Follow-Up by goodbyetonto

goodbyetonto — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 00:33:16 +0000

Thanks for this post, I checked on it and actually bought the entire study. If you are interested in looking at it, let me know.

Comment on The Other Shoe by goodbyetonto

goodbyetonto — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 09:04:34 +0000

I think had the authors of the Bible actually possessed the collection of books in their entirety ( Bible) and had the sort of context to work with that you and I do, (ie philisophical and scientific arguments for the non existence of anything supernatural, historical perspective, etc) these great thinkers would very possibly reject their belief in their God. I think you underestimate your own intelligence as I think the authors of the Bible were delusional at best. You are not delusional and are clearly much more intelligent than someone who claims (according to Jewish tradition) to have been swallowed by a large fish and live to tell about it. Jonah is just one example. Should I list other Biblical authors of who I feel are less intelligent than many of us?

Comment on Political Racism by timoth

timoth — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 21:41:54 +0000

I suppose you are looking for a better answer than: You don't have to be racist to hate poor people! From time to time I listen to conservative talk radio and it seems like, I can not say *every time*, but frequently when the host is criticizing the president for some policy or decision on ideological grounds, someone will call in with the racism accusation. In these circumstances, that is simply untrue and not at all helpful to the discussion. It is a little like saying that conservatives love country music. That happens to be true in many cases, but I also know a number of conservatives who can not stand country music. So some conservatives happen to like country music and some happen to be racist. While I can not honestly say that it is entirely irrelevant, I do not think it is fair to claim that the preference of some controls the ideology of the entire group. I probably overstated the "respected conservatives" bit when what I really meant was conservatives that I personally respect, which I admit does not include many (or any) members of Congress. So we were not quite on the same page there. However, I do know a lot of conservatives who do not support Obama, yet as far as I know, none of them ever seriously questioned his citizenship. As far as wanting Obama to succeed or fail, that is trickier than I made it seem. Yes, the number one priority for Republicans is to get Obama out of office. So in that sense they want him to fail to get reelected. That is because they believe he has already failed as a president by not being a conservative. They also want his policies, past and present, to fail because again, they are not conservative enough. What I should have said was that upon taking office, conservatives wanted Obama to succeed in doing what was right for the country. However, since their definition of "right for the country" is itself flawed, there is no way he could win that game. I have obviously been avoiding a description of what conservative ideology actually is. I spent a number of years among conservatives and was astounded to discover that a lot of their ideas actually do make sense from a certain perspective. However, (perhaps unfortunately) I stopped spending so much time with them a few years ago, and I feel that the crazy train has truly left the station since then and I no longer understand what is the heck is going on over there. I did find this article which explains a lot of things that I was thinking (and some that I was not) much more eloquently than I ever could.

Comment on Finite by goodbyetonto

goodbyetonto — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 19:47:50 +0000

Yes, you did hang me out to dry. I do not blame you for not being interested in engaging in pointless debate though. That conversation was initiated on my behalf mostly because I was buzzed and did not know what to do in that awkward situation. I let my guard down. Typically, if I do not want to be around you, I would just tell you. I appreciate this entry, and yes your comment at the end there does deserve some further exploration. I just seem to want to prove Christians wrong. I get so heated all the time just being around them. I am sorry that you had to waste your afternoon listening to me bitch about those issues. No hard feelings on my end.

Comment on Flawed (feat. MF-ing GUITAR SHOW!) by timoth

timoth — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:08:08 +0000

I imagine that most readers came to this blog looking for a skeptic’s thoughts on God and church and so forth, and, I guess, stayed for the angst? The title of this post is an admission that I do not think that anyone reading this cares about guitars as much as I do, and there is a slight possibility that I only do it to annoy you.

It did not fit into the main post, but there were a number of luthiers displaying their own work at the show. I must say, there were some absolutely HIDEOUS neck joints on some of those things. They had glue squeeze-out and possibly even wood putty and then just finish over it and hope no one notices. And they are trying to sell these for thousands of dollars? Come on guys, I did better than that on my first try.

Anyway, as I said, I did not want to go into details about the guitars because who would care? But I realized that I actually missed some of the essence of the post by not describing my find.

It was labeled as a “1978 Epiphone Casino.” Now, I have very little respect for Epiphone, but if they have one model with any street cred, it would be the Casino, since, you know, The Beatles played them. This particular one had a bolt-on neck (as opposed to glued), which is unusual for hollow body guitars and as far as I knew, unheard of on a Casino. It also had humbuckers, not P90 pickups like every other Casino that I had ever seen. These two facts led me to wonder if it was even properly labeled. (Spoiler: it was.) It was also made in Japan. Japanese guitars have a bit of a cult following, but I do not personally have any experience with them and was curious to find out what the hype was about. The neck seemed quite narrow, and the strings buzzed like mad acoustically, but when plugged in it actually played and sounded great.

Cosmetically, it had a lovely walnut stain finish, however, the pickguard was missing, leaving noticeable screw holes. The plastic bindings had started to disintegrate, and though it had gold hardware, the plating had worn off in a number of places.

Flawed.

Comment on Political Racism by anil

anil — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 07:29:53 +0000

Don’t you think this is the sort of thing that should rise and fall on the evidence, not just on some theoretical argument? As you admit, *some* Obama-haters out there are clearly racist. And why should it be possible for people to be a little extra proud of voting for a black person, but not for another person to be a little extra disgusted at the idea of voting for a black person? The arguments are completely symmetrical, yet you assume the only reason anyone has to cry *racism* is because they themselves are seeing through a false prism of race. Its an old trick – the people talking about racism are the *real* racists. But you haven’t ruled out the possibility that the people being called racist are in fact racist. In fact, you concede that some of them are. So how much is there? How much of the criticism Obama gets is irrational? Why is it ok to make a blanket statement that “Republicans want Obama to succeed” when its not to say “Republicans are racist”? How do you know? (I could point you to evidence from a number of active Republican Congressman who’ve made it very clear their *number one* priority is for Obama *not to succeed*). (And, no, I don’t recall *any* Republican Congresspeople actually trying to distance themselves from the birther “issue”)(http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/08/this_is_not_an_onion_parody_of.html)

All this is by the by, because I think we both agree that some, but not all, criticisms of Obama are grounded in racism. The problem I have with today’s Republican party is that I have no idea what the legitimate arguments are supposed to be. What are these conservative policies and principles under which Obama is a failure? Can I have them explained to me in advance? Because it sure seems like every time Obama proposes what used to be a moderate or Conservative idea, that idea becomes anathema to Conservatives. In those conditions, its not odd to wonder if Obama is “certain to fail” because of who he is, and not because of what he does.

On another topic – you should come visit!