“What I see in front of me might contradict everything he [Jesus] has said, but I believe in the end he’ll be born out to be true.”

This type of attitude is very disturbing, and in essence says, “Look, you can show me all the evidence you want to, and it can be the most solid evidence ever, and I’m still not going to accept it.” There are few things to be pitied more than a person who says their mind cannot be changed no matter what evidence is provided. Such a person is a prisoner in their own mind, who when handed the key to set themselves free, gouges out their eyes with it lest they find the lock.

They had posted this initially: “people would be seriously stirred up if the same attacks were coming from the government toward free religion or free speech or voting or any of our other pre-existing, fundamental, God-given rights.”

Building off that statement – I made my case:

Well, let’s look at a potential bad reason…

You seem to indicate with your statement that gun ownership – like freedom of religion, speech, or the right to vote – is a “God-given right.” Firearms of course aren’t listed anywhere in the Bible, and the example in the character of Jesus – who reportedly said, “turn the other cheek,” did so, and then died at the hands of the ruling authorities rather than retaliate – is lifted up as the model a Christian should live their life after. 

Following up after Jesus you have Paul, who is reported as saying, “Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves” (Romans 13:1-2). He is also reported as saying, “Follow my example as I follow Christ’s,” and Christian tradition holds that he did so by dying at the hand of the ruling authorities rather than retaliating just as his example had done. 

So, as a Christian, looking at Jesus and Paul – how does one declare that guns are a “God-given right,” and that guns should be kept if the need to overthrow a tyrannical government should arise – when overthrowing the tyrannical government amounts to “rebelling against what God has instituted” and supposedly brings judgement upon oneself? How does one get to the place of gun ownership being a God-given right? Unless we’re talking about a God other than the one in the Bible. 

For me the gun argument stands as a completely secular issue. People on the political left are correct – if we had a complete ban on all guns like the UK, Japan, and other western developed nations – we would have fewer gun deaths in the United States. The data is clear on that. However, to do the same in the US would violate individual freedom and liberty. We already put certain restrictions on the 2nd amendment, which in all honesty has outlived the purpose of why it was created. [Name withheld] is right that it was put in so the people could revolt against a tyrannical government, and when the government was fighting with muskets and bayonets it made a lot of sense, but we’re well beyond that now. We kill people in the Middle-East with the push of a button on a remote controlled flying device, and they never see death coming. If we’re really talking about a tyrannical government, there’s nothing that would stop that same thing happening to a bunch of hunkered down hillbillies in the foothills of Alabama. An AR-15 would be more useful as toilet paper than an instrument of rebellion against an armored, air-powered, bunker-busting, smart-bombing, industrialized death steam roller. So, yeah – “the 2nd Amendment isn’t for hunting,” but it might as well be for fishing as effective as it would be in both practice for a Coup d’état, and as an argument for the rights of gun owners. 

The only argument for gun ownership, with reasonable checks and balances – is for home and self-defense. Police response time is not adequate to protect yourself from and armed intruder, and a lawful weapon is what provides you the potential added protection until officers can respond.

It’s been over 10 days since I posted that, and I’ve yet to hear a response. I doubt I will.

In a couple of weeks my 24″x36″ poster will be delivered from http://shortrunposters.com for the affordable price of $26.86. That’s the cheapest I’ve found for printing up a single poster, and if you’d like to have a copy of your own printed up you can feel free to use this PDF (my gift to you – 24.6mb), which has been prepared for those dimensions. Enjoy!

Original Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

Note: I am not affiliated with ShortRunPosters.com in any way. They are just the cheapest that I’ve found, and they do a good job. If you find a cheaper place to have the poster done up, please leave a comment. Thanks!

A little over a week ago, Billy Graham appeared in this full page ad in the Wall Street Journal and USA today…

Do you hear that America? Billy Graham says that you need to vote for leaders that will stand on Biblical principles, and presumably they will ensure that the legislation they enact forces your fellow Americans to live by those same standards. It might be worth noting that if the issues the Rev. Graham issued were done so in order of importance, then according to him the most important issue America needs to deal with is gays and lesbians. This would especially be the case in the state of Washington where approval of Referendum 74 would legalize gay marriage in the state.

Many Christians seem to think that voting for candidates and proposals that ensure biblical values are forced upon the populace as a whole is a good thing, but they do themselves more harm than they realize. When Christians try to use the power of government to force others to live according to biblical standards – it is a public admission that their Gospel, their Holy Spirit, and their Christ – is impotent and powerless. First Corinthians 2:4 says that lives are transformed by a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, but many Christians today seem content to attempt to transform lives by checking a box on a ballot. Of course, when you don’t really have the power of a supernatural being residing inside you, forcing others to live the way you want them to is probably easier than convincing them of the validity of your message and the way you live your life.

As Long As There Are Still Questions

Everyone says they want to live forever – at least most people do. Entire religions are built around the idea that you can live forever if you just adhere to their teachings. Of course, you have to die before you get the opportunity to experience immortality, and there really isn’t any way to cash in on that whole “eternal life in a perfect body” thing until your dead. This, of course, is a huge buzzkill to a lot of people who would like to experience living forever in the here-and-now, instead of in a hereafter that nobody is sure even exists. However, what if science could deliver eternal life in a young body – now? Would I want it? Would I want to live forever in a young body? The short answer is a tentative, “Yes – as long as there are still questions that need to be answered.”

Who gets a golden ticket?

One issue that needs to be addressed before the tentative answer can become firmer is whether or not this deal is available to everyone, or only to me. I don’t think I could take advantage of such an offer if I was the only person who got to have it. Having perpetual youth while my loved ones succumbed slowly to the ravages of time, and eventually death, would be a very difficult thing to witness, and I don’t think I could do it. If, however, it was available to all of us, and not just my family but everyone else as well, then I think I would most definitely take advantage of the offer.

Everyone having the capability of being forever young wouldn’t be without problems that would need to be addressed. For example, the global birth rate would need to be slowed drastically, if not halted altogether. What good would it be to live forever in a young body if it was a literal “hell on earth” where a limitation of resources and living space made life miserable? Something akin to voluntary sterilization might be a good requirement for anyone electing to accept the procedure. This would probably be a huge sticking point with a lot of people, particularly those who believe they have been commanded to “be fruitful and multiply,” but without some sort of enforced sterilization, global population would rage out of control, and war over scarcity of resources and living space would be a likely consequence. Assuming everyone would be on board with sterilization, however, it would firm up my “yes” just a little bit more.

Pitfalls and Planetary Disasters

Forever is a pretty long time, and if one is to make it that long, there are certain problems that could arise to make things difficult. Some problems are planetary, some go out a bit further into the solar system, and other problems become universal in magnitude.

The most immediate problem facing a race of humans that have the potential to live forever is the issue of finite resources on Earth. We are floating on a speck of dust in a vast cosmic ocean, and there is only so much “stuff” on that speck that we have access to. Providing food, clean water, and abundant energy to an ageless population would be a logistical nightmare, but let’s assume that the brightest minds came up with solutions to those problems. Even with those immediate necessities taken care of, eventually we’d be faced with the reality that even though we could live forever, the Sun could not.

In about 5 billion years, the Sun is set to enter the red giant phase of its lifecycle. It will expand in size until it encompasses Mercury, Venus, and Earth. Needless to say, that’s not great news for people living on Earth. Therefore, unless we can find some way to get our civilization off of Earth, and out of our solar system – we only have about 5 billion years until the end of forever.

I know I sound like a complete pessimist by pointing out these problems (I’m not going to even bother tackling the heat-death of the Universe), but I’m actually very optimistic about the creativity and ingenuity of humans to utilize the tools of science to overcome these difficulties. So, let’s assume for the remainder of the paper that none of these problems I have mentioned are an issue, because humans are zooming through space with warp drives, food replicators, and transporters. If I’m going to live forever, or close to it, that’s the way I want to roll.

A Quest of Questions

Ultimately, I’m not sure if I’d really want to live forever, even if I was in perfect health and in a young body. However, I could see myself getting at least close to the edge of forever, and maybe once I was on the journey long enough – I would be having so much fun that I would lose track of time and go the whole way without even knowing it. As long as there were still questions to be answered, and discoveries to be made, you can believe I’d be living life to the fullest.

One reason I think I could end up going all the way to forever, particularly in my “Star Trek Universe”, is because there are so many questions that need answering and so many discoveries waiting to be found in the Universe. Astronomer and author, Carl Sagan, is credited with saying, “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known,” and in this Universe that we find ourselves in, there is plenty of somewhere and a near endless supply of something that is just waiting to be known. Millions of lifetimes could be spent discovering secrets and unlocking the mysteries of the cosmos. Given enough time, one might even find a way to breach the fabric of space-time to explore what is outside of our Universe.

The possibility of a Multiverse aside for a moment, it’s hard to imagine even being able to make it out of our own Milky Way Galaxy without re-discovering things that I had previously learned about and then forgotten through the course of time. In addition, things that I had discovered centuries or a millennia earlier, would no doubt have changed and become new again in their own unique ways. In addition to planets and far off locations, people themselves would change through the course of time, and I would find myself rediscovering family and friends whose own experiences through the ages would bring about new discoveries in my interpersonal relationships. Having questions and gaining answers, which then birth new questions, would seem to be an ever-repeating cycle with an existence of perpetual youth.

To Infinity and Beyond

It seems highly unlikely that in my perfect scenario that I would ever run out of questions, and to that end, it seems that I would continue on forever. However, assuming that I could escape the heat-death of the Universe, and that I could truly live forever as an immortal if I were to choose to do so – it seems that after the passage of many epochs (and maybe even not so many), I might have a question that would trouble me greatly, and it could eventually drive me to extreme measures to discover the answer… “What would it be like to experience death?”

My own personal view is that death is likely no different than before life, and that our conscious experience of life merely arises out the physical biology of our brains. To die – to shut down the brain – would simply translate into a state of nonexistence, just like before “self” came into being. Still, the only way to really know for sure would be to experience it for myself. Unfortunately, I’ll likely never have to experience the anguish of deciding whether to go on living forever asking questions, or to end it all by getting an answer to one of the biggest questions that humans face. The good news is – I can ask as many questions and get as many answers as I can before I’m forced to make that final discovery, and that’s what makes life worth living – whether it’s forever, or just for a moment.