Is Christianity Dead?

Most of us are aware that Jesus preached a message of peace, tolerance, love, and compassion. Jesus taught not to judge people. Some of us forget that Jesus was a Jew. As a Jew he was bound to a myriad of laws that he was required to follow. To simplify things Jesus summed up the law with Love your neighbor as yourself, do to others as you would have them do to you. Jesus said if you do this you will be following the ten commandments.

Jesus also taught love your enemy and turn other cheek. We have seen the result of Jesus’ teachings as he single handedly took down the Roman Empire with a mere idea without firing a shot. After Jesus’ death the bulk of the region began turing to his teachings for spiritual guidance. Over time various religions were formed. Eventually the Roman Empire itself in order to maintain power was forced to convert to Christianity. What remains today is the Roman Catholic Church.

Christians were supposed to live their lives as Jesus did: Love your neighbor as yourself, do unto others as you would have them do to you, judge not lest ye be judged, turn the other cheek, love your enemy, and help the less fortunate around us. Of course these are hard things to do but as Christians one is supposed to strive to be Christ-Like.

In spite of Jesus’ teachings a curious thing has happened over the past couple of weeks. Christians have been advocating, defending, and calling for murder. One would think after Dr. George Tiller was assassinated through an act of terror that Christians would take pause and realize this was not part of what Jesus taught. Many so-called Christians have gone on to defend the killing of Dr. George Tiller and have called for acts of violence against many more people.

So I have to ask if these people who do not follow the teachings of Christ are they Christians? Their primary objective in life is not following the teachings of Christ but instead to punish those involved in the abortion process.

This is nothing new as over the decades many prominent so-called Christian leaders have expressed views that are harsh, judgmental, and violent in nature ranging from calling for the destruction of entire nations to condemning certain groups of people to hell.

At what point do we finally say Christianity as taught by Jesus is dead and what remains today is some form of religion that has very little to do with Jesus’ teachings?

Cross posted at Pissed On Politics

Conventional Wisdom Resists Change

Conventional Wisdom Resists Change

I am a firm believe in rapid change through paradigm shifting. However conventional wisdom as put forth by the eggheads and robber barons that run our country states change must be slow and gradual. The rational is that rapid change destabilizes society and leads to violence.

This has been one of the excuses we use to slow the transition off of oil. We have known for a long time that oil sources are getting scarce and remote. We knew in the 1990’s that we had to start to transition off of oil. GM glimpsing the future made the electric car, the EV-1. But something funny happened.

In short the massive oil companies fear leaving any money on the table. There are still trillions of dollars of oil in the ground to be drilled. If we transition off oil too fast all that money would be lost. So, enter the SUV and the high times of gas guzzling we enjoyed in the 90’s and 2000’s up until gas hit $4.50 a gallon.

We could all right now be driving more fuel efficient and alternative energy powered vehicles if we started this process in the 1990’s. But it was seen as too soon by many. It would be too disruptive to the economy and all that oil money would be lost.

I got news for everyone. If we continue to listen to these self-interested oil barons and the politicians they buy off we will never transition off of oil. We may eventually have cars that get 300 miles to the gallon but that gallon of gas will cost $30. They are a parasite; a cancerous growth on our society that will never go away on its own. It will have to be carved out with a scalpel.

The other cries by the eggheads are for example if we decide to build solar panels and wind turbines across the country then what about all the coal miners? What about all the poor people who run the coal power plants?

I have never understood that argument. How hard would it be to put the coal miners to work building wind turbines? How hard would it be to transition coal fired power plant operators to being operators of solar plants? Is it such an impossible task that we must just throw up our hands and wait for the oil barons to slowly transition us off of fossil fuel?

The same argument is made when it comes to alternatives of the combustion engine. Why, if we get rid of the combustion engine then everyone from the top to bottom will be out of work. From the gas attendant and spare parts manufacturer to the repair shops and auto execs, everyone will be out of work.

First, why the fuck can’t these same people get trained to work on the alternatives? Second, it’s already happened. GM has bankrupt itself chasing the SUV Hummer Dragon. They could be the world’s leader in electric cars right now but they chose to not go that route. The end result is jobs are being lost from top to bottom anyway.

Sooner or later we will have to get over our fear of change. That fear is put in us by people who profit off the status quo who have no interest in seeing things change. The reality is when we have periods of rapid change is when we have periods of rapid economic growth. From 1995 to 2000 the internet exploded. Further back in the 1950’s the interstate highway projects fueled our economy for decades. Of course the war effort during WW2 created rapid change and innovation. Even further back we can look and see what happened during the building of the transcontinental railroad.

I guess I am just a bit frustrated because I figured by now, closing in on June 2009 that we would be seeing the ground breaking on various infrastructure projects across the country. Maybe it’s happening and I am just not hearing about it. But I have yet to hear about any ambitious plans such as building wind turbines on such a level that we could power every home in America. I have yet to hear about building out our internet infrastructure or upgrading our power grid.

Are these things happening and we just won’t hear about it for a few years?

I fear we are stuck in the status quo of Washington DC as Republicans take dollars from oil companies to continue their denial of global warming as they try to figure out how to suck every last dollar out of oil they can.

Will we wait 5 years for another oil and gas crisis before we get serious? Even worse, will we be having this same debate in 2020? We had this debate in the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s. In the late 90’s through 2007 we took a break from the argument and went back to an era of big oil. This was only natural having oil men for President and Vice-President. Now we’re back having the debate again.

When will we finally see some action?

Cross Posted at Pissed On Politics

Oil From Green Algae Moves Forward

Algae oil developer OriginOil signs pact with U.S. DOE

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Algae-to-energy developer OriginOil has signed an agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy to cooperate in research, the company said on Tuesday.

Los Angeles-based OriginOil and the DOE's Idaho National Laboratory will work to validate the company's technology of growing algae for fuel in a "photobioreactor."

Idaho National Lab advisory scientist Thomas H. Ulrich said, "Our primary challenge is cost-effective and scalable industrial processes and our partnership with OriginOil will help us find solutions to this challenge in the promising area of algae-to-oil technology."

OriginOil was founded in 2007. Its bioreactor attempts to speed the growth of algae in a tank by blending light emitted from a rotating shaft with nutrients. The tank can be scaled to the size needed and if developed fully, can be manufactured by outside companies.

(Reporting by Bernie Woodall)

Limitless Energy

Scientists plan to ignite tiny man-made star

It is science’s star experiment: an attempt to create an artificial sun on earth — and provide an answer to the world’s impending energy shortage.

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent

While it has seemed an impossible goal for nearly 100 years, scientists now believe that they are on brink of cracking one of the biggest problems in physics by harnessing the power of nuclear fusion, the reaction that burns at the heart of the sun.

In the spring, a team will begin attempts to ignite a tiny man-made star inside a laboratory and trigger a thermonuclear reaction.

Its goal is to generate temperatures of more than 100 million degrees Celsius and pressures billions of times higher than those found anywhere else on earth, from a speck of fuel little bigger than a pinhead. If successful, the experiment will mark the first step towards building a practical nuclear fusion power station and a source of almost limitless energy.

At a time when fossil fuel supplies are dwindling and fears about global warming are forcing governments to seek clean energy sources, fusion could provide the answer. Hydrogen, the fuel needed for fusion reactions, is among the most abundant in the universe. Building work on the £1.2 billion nuclear fusion experiment is due to be completed in spring.

Scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in Livermore, nestled among the wine-producing vineyards of central California, will use a laser that concentrates 1,000 times the electric generating power of the United States into a billionth of a second.

The result should be an explosion in the 32ft-wide reaction chamber which will produce at least 10 times the amount of energy used to create it.

"We are creating the conditions that exist inside the sun," said Ed Moses, director of the facility. "It is like tapping into the real solar energy as fusion is the source of all energy in the world. It is really exciting physics, but beyond that there are huge social, economic and global problems that it can help to solve."

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