Gun Control

I want to address gun control; this issue concerns the soul of America.  I may not have anything new to add to what has been said, but I want to add my voice to the call for reform.  To begin, consider the definition of control: ‘the power to influence or direct behavior’.  The issue here is not to eliminate American’s right to own guns; at issue is specifically action to control mass killing by weapons of war.

I begin with some statistics on gun ownership in America:

            --on average people killed by guns, 96 per day; 1300/year

            --America is #1 per capita for gun ownership

            --US gun homicide rate: 25X the average of high income countries

            --America has more mass shootings than any other country

There are various ways to define ‘mass shootings’ but whatever definition is used America leads.  Studies indicate mass shootings since 2011 in US have tripled, the deadliest have occurred in the 21^st Century with assault weapons.

            1)  2017   Los Vegas                 #59 killed    semi-automatic weapon

            2)  2016   Orlando Night Club    50  "          semi-automatic weapon

            3)  2007   Virginia Tech              33   “         semi-automatic weapon

            4)  2012   Sandy Hook                28   “         semi-automatic weapon

            5)  2017   Southerland Springs   27   “         semi-automatic weapon

                                                    Church

The most recent, February 15, 2018, at Parkland Florida High School, was one of the deadliest in  high schools, 17 students were killed with semi-automatic weapon.

Assault weapons have no business in private hands, they are intended as weapons of war; their only purpose is to kill humans—as many as possible in the shortest time.  Their very existence is a moral issue.

Gun ownership is defended by quoting the 2^nd Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”  That can be interpreted more than one way—I’m not qualified to formally argue the point but I can use common sense.  ‘Militia’ . . . seems to suggest self-defense in lawless areas—there are no longer ‘lawless areas’ in the US.  But more importantly I believe we should consider the times in which the amendment became law, it was in 1791; at the time ‘bearing arms’ meant pistols and rifles/muskets; they were the objects of guaranteed protection.  The writers of the Constructional Amendments could not foresee the lethal nature of the 21^st Century weapons and therefore were not included in the intent.  It is morally abhorrent to see the NRA and congress continuing to protect uncontrolled private ownership of assault weapons.

I recommend going to YouTube and request ‘gun violence spoken word poem’.
or:      https://t.co/LxdSAI2kvf      (may need to unmute in lower right corner)

God is Consciousness

I’ve said: ‘because I am, and the world is, I believe in God’.  I now want to expand on that thought. 

It’s truly amazing to think about the chain of coincidences that must occur for any individual to be the person they are.  Suppose your grandparents lived in different cities and never met—you wouldn’t be, because your parents would not have been born. (Trace that back through multi-generations).  OK, lets accept that both sets of grandparents were in the right place at the right time, met and married so your parents came to be.  Next, think of all the circumstances that got them to be in the right place at the right time for you to be conceived and born.  I checked my sources to learn that a man produces 180 million to 250 million sperm per each ejaculation and only one sperm succeeds in carrying what is to be half of your DNA.  A woman normally ovulates one egg every 28 days—so for 28 days the egg that became half of you was pre-determined, but the sperm half is pitted against 250 million sperm in competition . . . and if it was a different night they got together, there’d be perhaps a whole different sperm crop. 

So I say, ‘because I am who I am’ I want to believe there’s a bit more to it than one chance in 250 million to be me.  I don’t know how God works the numbers, but I do believe God intended for each of us to be who we are . . . but then God leaves what we do with that self up to us.  

That analysis seems a bit flippant, but just think about the facts of it.  I for one believe that in life there is meaning, purpose and direction; I can’t know what it is, but faith enables me to believe it. 

Now the world part (‘because the world is, I believe in God’) seems a bit easier to make a case for.  Unlike other planets we know about, this planet appears to be made to support life, which it can and does do.  There are uncountable elements that must be in proper proportion for that to be so; the absence of one, or a different proportion would make life impossible.  There must be balance in the atmosphere, the surface gravity, the distance from the sun, the ozone layer, the hydrosphere, the thickness of the earth’s crust, the solar radiation and earth’s energy . . . and that is only a few of the millions of intricate interrelated balances that are necessary for the support of life.  *

There are those who say it all came about by chance.  I find that a ridiculous assumption.  In support of that position I’ve heard it said, ‘sit a million monkeys in front of a million typewriters for a million years and they’ll type the front page of the NY Times’, suggesting impossible things can happen by chance.  That cute folksy quip has a fatal flaw.  I will concede that that many monkeys over that much time could possibly produce enough real words to comprise the front page of the N.Y. Times, but it wouldn’t happen by itself—some conscious source would be needed to gather all the random words and assemble them in coherent order.

We have no evidence of spontaneous generation of order happening by chance.  There is pattern and order to our world’s structure.  Why would anyone believe that something as marvelously intricate as earth with all its complex balances could simply come together on its own?

- Order is the product of consciousness -

I don’t know who or what God is, but I believe God is Love, Mercy, Truth, Justice and God is consciousness . . .

- Order is the product of consciousness -

                                                                                           * see Google for balance of earth’s systems