Scattered thoughts

I usually have a lot of thoughts floating around in my head, many of them gestate for days, weeks, or even months before I get around to writing an entire blog entry on them. Here's what I've got floating around. Some of these might get revisited and developed into a full entry:

1. There are a lot of Christians out there (not all of them, I know - please save your "not me!" comments) who make the claim that as far as God is concerned, no sin is greater than another. In other words, telling a lie is just as bad as committing murder. I want to say one thing about that - that's stupid. If God is real, and he doesn't distinguish a difference between "sins", then he is either incredibly cruel or amazingly moronic. After all, God is supposed to be smarter than us, right? What good is he if he has less of a sense of nuance than Sean Hannity?

2. Speaking of God, I really wonder what the average person means when they say that they believe in God. I get the feeling that many of them aren't even necessarily referring to the Christian God; instead, they're just referring to some sort of nebulous force out there, not even realizing that the term "God" is merely a noun that describes a particular kind of entity. After all, when Sophocles had his Chorus in Oedipus Rex refer to "God", he wasn't referring to DA JEEBUS, now was he? My wife tells me that people really just don't spend time thinking about that sort of a thing, which is strange to me.

3. One last religious thought - it's hard to explain to believers exactly the process that many of us atheists go when we lose our faith. For me, it was relatively easy, as I wasn't a church-goer and I didn't have a network of friends and family that were entrenched in the religious community. Others have a harder time with this. However, there definitely was a struggle. I round it off to about five years where I probably was an atheist before I finally admitted to myself that I was one. I remember telling myself things like how I probably just wasn't understanding things correctly, or that maybe when I got older I'd finally find the answers to my seemingly unanswered questions. It's tough to let go of religious faith - many of us didn't want to even do it, but eventually we had to stop lying to ourselves.

4. There's a part of me (not the best part of me) that wants to laugh at homophobic men who are secretly living gay lifestyles (like Larry Craig, etcetera). However, my better nature has me feeling more sorry for them. If only we had a society that was accepting of homosexuals, there wouldn't be so many people who were living a lie. I consider myself lucky that I'm attracted to women, as that's one less thing I've had to worry aobut in my life. Others aren't so lucky, but at least some of them are lucky enough to have families and friends who love and accept them for who they are.

5. My dog, Argos, seems to be getting winded a little bit quicker than he used to. I noticed that he looks a bit on the chunky side, so I've been cutting his meal portion a bit. Still, while he's not old, he's no longer a puppy. He really is my best friend though, so I tend to worry about him sometimes. No slight to my other dog, Willy, or my cat, Oliver, it's just that Argos is the only one who had shown a demonstratably different behavior when I was in pain. When I had a problem with my sciatica in the middle of a walk with him, he suddenly knew that it was time to slow down, and he'd stop, turn around, and look at me whenever I stopped moving.

6. I'm finding myself at the same point with those who would defend torture as I became with those who supported Proposition 8. I find their point of view so evil that I don't think that I can discuss the issue rationally with them.

7. I just read all 11 issues of Echo in a row, and I think that Terry Moore may be topping Strangers in Paradise. I was skeptical to see him trying his hand at something sci-fi and more "comic booky", but it still has the rich characterizations (through both the writing and the artwork) of his former work. Also, I'm glad that he's still doing it in black and white.

8. I'm going to bottle my second shot at a lager in a couple of weeks. It's my Oktoberfest - here's hoping it's good.

9. I can't think of anybody who's interesting enough for me to want to subscribe to their Twitter tweats, or whatever the hell you call them.

10. My writing goal for this summer is to finally write the Eagle-Man origin story. I got started on it last summer, and I think that I finally have something good to go with here. The second part of my goal is to start looking into getting it published. I also hope to do a second-draft of the big novel that I wrote last summer, as I'm pretty proud of it - at least the general plot, character arc and resolution.

11. Okay, one more religious thing. The video's kinda long, but it's brilliant: