On Marriage Equality

Because of the recent excitement on same sex marriage, I thought I should weigh in with my understanding. Many people seem to be saying the recent supreme court ruling is good because equality, or that it is bad because Bible. While such statements speak to the hearts of the masses, I prefer a logical and empirical approach.

What is the purpose of marriage? I assert that its primary purpose is to raise the next generation of society. Thus, in my opinion, the grounds on which a heterosexual and a homosexual marriage should be compared is on their ability to raise children. In this we have two cases to consider: adopted and blood children.

In the case of adopted children, there is no appreciable difference between the types of parents as far as I am aware. Either type of marriage can provide a loving and stable environment in which the child can grow. Even if you believe that one marriage is objectively better than the other in this respect, consider this: Is it better for a child to grow to adulthood as an orphan, or for that child to be raised in a non-ideal family?

In the case of blood children, there are some serious logistical and legal issues that prevent a homosexual couple from raising children with the ease that a typical heterosexual couple can. The traditional case has put tab A into slot B simplicity. No other party has any need to get involved. Things are a bit trickier for a same-sex pairing. You either need donated sperm or a womb that is outside the marriage. This has been the center of high profile custody battles in the past, and likely will be in the future until a good precedent is set, (ruling out possible medical advances). Such an unstable environment is not good for children. Thus in this case we see that heterosexual parents have the advantage over homosexual parents.

In the final analysis, it seems to me that same-sex marriages are a net gain to society, though not quite as useful as traditional marriages. The future may hold more insights, but this is how I see it for now.

Misc. One Liners

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; so if someone finds you unattractive, that's their problem, not yours.

If you really want to be a sophist, then you need to put all the world's problems into one of two categories: your problem and not a problem.

Scientific theories are only any good if they make a testable prediction.

Neither collectors nor sculptures make good friends, but gardeners do.

I'll elaborate on that last one later.

Honesty

Every time you lie, you make the truth as a whole harder to find and understand.

Every time you cheat, you make the world more complicated and less trusting.

Every time you steal, you make the world less valuable and less willing to give.

Honesty isn't about making the world a better place. It's about keeping the world as good as it should be.

The Concept of God

I was reading a forum thread when I came upon a post that got me thinking. It was about the danger of anthropomorphizing God. My thought was this: If we aren't supposed to think of God as a human, how far out do we have to go in our quest to be objective?

We can start at the most obvious trait attributed to God: Power. Anything we choose to call God must fulfill some lower bound of power. The generally accepted lower limit is more power than everything else in the universe put together. Well, the simplest way to fulfill that is to just define God as the universe itself, that way there is nothing else to consider at all as a competitor. However, as the universe appears to have subsets that fight amongst themselves, and there is no immediately obvious purpose that the universe as a whole fulfills, it is conceivable that there are subsets of the universe with greater power than the entire universe as a whole. Of course, why limit ourselves to something in the universe? If the universe is best thought of as a simulation within a larger cosmic whole, then it would be the caretaker of the simulation that could be best identified as God. However, then we lose the original idea that God is more powerful than everything else combined, for if the universe is just a simulation, what's stopping there from being a much larger simulation next door, or our simulation being in another simulation, and so on ad infinitum. Then we are left right where we started with a big universe with difficult to identify power. Now who says we can even identify what God would be? If it is solely by power, what's to say that God would even be something identifiable to humans? What if the most powerful thing in the universe wouldn't even pass for a thing by human standards?

The only way to end this is by saying that God is such an ill defined concept that you might as well believe what you want, as we will probably just argue about it anyway.

Live Laugh Love

I don't claim to know a lot about happiness, but it seems to me that these three things greatly increase happiness.

Live

Life is nothing if you don't live it. Action is required for happiness and you can only expect sorrow if you refuse to act.

Laugh

Life is meant to be enjoyed. Whatever you do with your life make sure it is something you can enjoy.

Love

Life is about more than you. Reach out and bring more goodness into the world through your actions.

On Stating the Obvious

There is an odd trend for me having to do with obvious statements. It seems that the more obvious a statement is for me, the more profound that other people will find it. I suppose that it is to be expected, as statements that I consider to be obvious are the ones that make the most sense, and the ones that make the most sense have their grounding in either logic, experience, or inspiration.

In a similar vein, my funniest jokes tend to be observations of mundane things. Although, by pointing out the obvious, people notice the strange things we take for granted, and I get a laugh.

This seems to point to the fact that we are far less aware of our reality than we would like to think. The fact that the obvious is profound and the mundane is unexpected seems to say that we are putting our focus in the wrong places, or at the very least, the world is much bigger than we normally realize. Either interpretation is acceptable, as both encourage us to branch out and try new things, and the knowledge gained from such an adventure is invaluable.

Problem of Evil

There is a common fallacy among the worldly related to the problem of evil. Because the peoples currently considered wicked by today's spiritual leaders still exist, it is assumed that God isn't actually displeased with them or worse, that God does not exist. The first conclusion is what this post focuses on.

Presumably, the people who contend that God is not displeased with them believe that God instantly punishes those who disobey his laws. This is a naive and unfounded premise. Very rarely is a people punished for their sins in the moment that they commit them. We members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints understand this concept as a time of probation. "This life is the time for men to prepare to meet God," and we are not expected to live a perfect life in the process. In light of this fact, the observation that evil societies exist is no more surprising than receiving scripture from a God who wants to lead us.

The difference this time around is that society is changing at such a fast pace, that what would formerly happen in generations is now taking place in weeks. In light of this, it is not unexpected to assume that God would pick up the pace and smite those who turn away from him with increasing swiftness. However, as the length of a human life is about constant as is the time-scale of human reflection , I contend that the time-scale of God's punishment will remain about the same, and that those who violate His laws will receive their just deserts in the due time of the Lord. 

Do not misunderstand me. This is not to say that calamities will not accelerate as we approach the end times. The time-scale of God may be constant, but the punishments themselves tend to be clustered. Furthermore, I only contend that the rewards for our actions will follow at the same speed relatively independent of how fast we fall, but not necessarily independent of how high we fall from, "for of him unto whom much is given much is required; and he who sins against the greater light shall receive the greater condemnation."

The heart of this error in judgement is a fundamental misunderstanding with regards to the nature of God. Somehow, despite all scriptural witness to the contrary, God is often viewed as a spiteful and vindictive judge, who loves nothing more than to torture those who step out of line for even the slightest moment, but nothing could be further from the truth. The predominant attribute of God is love, and it is because of His love that we are given a chance to turn away from our wickedness and be cleansed by the atoning power of the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ. As a God of justice and order, God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance, but as our Father, He has prepared a way for us to return to Him