Jesus told us we should love our Lord, our God, (our Creator) with all our heart, mind, soul and strength; and that we should love our neighbors as ourselves. His disciples, rather puzzled by this teaching, immediately asked him to give them better definition as to who was their neighbor. Was it someone of a… Continue Reading
Free and Equal
What glorious words these are. How grateful we should be for living in a country where we have freedom of expression and where all of us are to be treated as equals. How thankful we should be to the founders of this nation, who made sure that the premises and constitution of our new country… Continue Reading
The Rules of War
Since biblical times, humans have attempted to form regulations which control the conduct of those humans who are fighting with each other. Sections of Deuteronomy admonish warriors who are besieging a city to not kill women, children and aged men, to not kill animals or cut down trees, as much for their own preservation as… Continue Reading
Speaking with the Dead
During my second marriage, I became quite fond of father-in-law Jack. He was a farmer all of this life, a kind man, hard working man, an honest man, and a gentle-man. I saw him suffer immensely with the death of his wife due to biliary cancer. I saw him, after her death, struggle to keep… Continue Reading
Killing
For the Romans, Mars was the God of war and killing. He did not really start out to be such a bad guy. The Romans were mostly farmers, who had all kinds of threats to their crops, including insects, critters, large animals, and storms. In order to keep their crops from harm, and insure a… Continue Reading
Pagans, Christianity, and Easter
Easter was celebrated long before the birth of Jesus. It was a springtime riotous party, named after the Saxon fertility goddess, Oestre. Her sacred month was Eastremonath. Oestre was most fertile during the first full moon after the spring equinox, the moon of Oestre. That was the time when new crops were fertilized, and pregnancy… Continue Reading
The Prowess of Protagoras
No, no, not Pythagoras. He was the guy who lived from 580 to 500 BC, and who figured out that the sum of the squares of the other two sides was equal to the square root of the hypotenuse of a right triangle. He also figured out that, by listening to the sounds made when… Continue Reading
The Socrates Scam
The degree to which any one of us affects the lives of those who follow us certainly seems to follow a bell shaped curve. The great majority of us muddle through our lives, somehow managing to get along until the time of our demise. We make it through our marriages with a reasonable amount of… Continue Reading
Which Came First
To those millions of you who are wedded to your religions, this is an insoluble question. It is probably to you, akin to that same venerable question, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” There is probably no doubt in your mind that your morals and your religion are inseparable companions. In your thinking,… Continue Reading
The Copycat Religion
Without using specific names, the following is an accurate brief description of one of the world’s major religions. This accounting contains the major features of this religion, in relation to the time in which it flourished. Let’s see if you can name that religion by this description. The hero of this religion was born on… Continue Reading