I’ve run this idea past different people on the Internet about having a new kind of church. I expected to see a problem. Internet forums that discuss Deism are full of asocial intellectuals (geeks), so I expected the feedback I received to have a geeky skew.

After receiving feedback, I don’t know that a Deist type of church is possible. There are really two main kinds of churches that I see. The largest kind uses mind control to bring people into conformance. I’m not condemning that. When people are out of control they sometimes need a strong outside force to bring them under control. Strong churches can help with that. The other kind of church is based on rebellion against the strong churches. The Unitarian Universalists are a good example of this. The kind of church I would attend is not the strong controlling kind or the rebelling kind. I see no example of my kind of centered church, even though the members of the strong churches and the rebellious churches would claim that they are the centered kind.

When I asked people in Internet forums about starting a church, I only got asocial intelletualisms. I do not see the Internet as being a good tool for creating my kind of church because it only seems to attract people who are caught up in their own ideas: Ivory tower types. A church based on the feedback I’ve received would attract too many kooks.

Why can’t there be a simple church of simple faith that doesn’t force myths onto people? Why can’t such a church attract people who aren’t kooks? Where are the people who want just a simple place to meet and talk and to promote and develop healthy family values?

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.—Sonya Sotomayor

It has long been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression (although I do not choose to put it into a newspaper, nor like a Priam in armor to offer myself as its champion), that the germ of dissolution of our Federal Government is in the constitution of the Federal Judiciary; an irresponsible body (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow), working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little to-day and a little to-morrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one. To this I am opposed; because, when all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated. It will be, as in Europe, where every man must be either pike or gudgeon, hammer or anvil. Our functionaries and theirs are wares from the same workshop; made of the same materials and by the same hand. If the States look with apathy on this silent descent of their government into the gulf which is to swallow all, we have only to weep over the human character formed uncontrollable but by a rod of iron, and the blasphemers of man, as incapable of self-government, become his true historians.—Thomas Jefferson, From a letter to C. Hammond

Jefferson was warning about two different things.  One was the danger of a strong centralized government, like we have now.  The other was the primary role that the judiciary would have in creating a strong centralized government through ongoing judicial activism.   The phrase “the checks provided of one government on another” means the checks that one US state provides on the others.   In other words, having a decentralized government is essential to freedom.

Supreme Court judges are not selected because they are socially neutral.  They are selected for political and social engineering purposes.

Be vigilant.

I made an update to my Super Simple Random Quote Generator.  These changes are courtesy of Scott Hampton of www.creed3.net.  The random quote generator is available in the Wordpress plugins.

Love’s strength can be measured by the severity of the feeling of loss we feel when lose our loved one. 

The better we love someone, the greater the loss we feel when we love them.  Love is the emotional bond between people.

Caring is one of the differences between healthy and unhealthy love.  The feeling of caring isn’t enough.  We must also know how to care for others, and we must act on that knowing.

Caring is what religion is about.  All the great human religious leaders are human examples of great caring.  The natural church is those components of a society that teach us to care for ourselves and others, and how to better care for ourselves and others. 

Spirituality is necessary in natural religion because we are spiritual by nature.  Spirituality addresses the mysteries of living.  The natural church addresses spirituality because it is important to our emotional well being, so it is a part of caring.  All religions in a society are a part of the natural church when they address caring and spirituality.

Whose cubes these are I think I know,
His mansion’s in the West Hills though.
He will not see me sitting here,
Making his software business grow.

My new cubemate bathes once a year,
He’ll stop without a lunch break near.
Stale corn nuts he will intake,
And rant six inches from my ear.

The top execs?  They’re on the take.
Each ex-wife owns a private lake.
They up the profits they will keep
Each time they meet and budget make.

My backlog’s ugly, dark and deep,
But I have deadlines hard to keep,
To satisfy the corporate veep,
To satisfy the corporate veep.