Fairly short weekend. Spent friday evening with my mom till about 9:30 or so. We ate spaggetti, and I met the people living nearby that they spend time with. She gave me skittles for Valentines day, and I hugged her, and we talked about the Bible. I told her that I wasn't sure what to believe about whether or not heaven and hell existed, and that I didn't feel that the bible was clear on it, and that, if anything, it simply isn't mentioned in any place in the bible that cannot quite simply be considered to be metaphorical to the results of how you live your life. And most references to heaven are talking about the sky.

After that, I told her that I didn't think God meant for there to be peace on earth, and she really disagreed with that. She said, certainly not earthly peace. I pointed out that Jesus said he was going to turn brother against brother, and if he hasn't done anything else, history shows that the life of Jesus has most certainly been among the single greatest reasons that people have gone to war over. Moreover, I also pointed out, that people who don't struggle grow fat, people who don't ever go hungry know not what a joy it is to eat, and all life thrives when it's faced with adversity, whereas it stagnates and grows worthless and withers when it's not. Being confronted with challenges are as necessary to us and our souls as food and water to our bodies.

I also told her that even if I believed in Jesus, I didn't think that people had to know about him to be Godly people. Jesus said he was the way the truth and the light, but can't someone know Jesus in a metaphorical sense? I mean, Jesus says that he's an idea, and ideas aren't tied to physical objects, someone can understand what it means to be Jesus without ever knowing about Jesus, but when confronted by Jesus and his ideals, that person can immediately recognize a sympathy between the two concepts is to such a degree that he might as well have known about Jesus all along, for all along he was obeying Jesus' teachings without ever having heard them. Each and every person knows right from wrong in their hearts. You don't need the bible to tell you that murder is bad, or that it's not good to want things that you don't have.

God made us in his own image, and is inside every one of us. We can't escape that, regardless, and so, do we really need the bible? The bible helps, but I don't believe that it's the only way, especially considering that it's an incomplete collection of stories that lacks the compilation and addition of all other writings about that time period. It's a selective point of view writen by a relatively small number of philosophers.

I believe in the Jewish Torah, it is unabridged, and it is complete. And, I do believe in Jesus. The things that he says resonate with me as true, and I just don't see in his words the same things that everyone else says he says. I don't think God feels love. It's not that I think God can't, as I think God doesn't. John says "for God so loved the world", but that's JOHN... it's not Jesus, it's not God, it's a human interpretation. I think John may very well be wrong about that. God is unlimited. That's a statement that doesn't really mean much from a limited point of view.

I cannot make any definitive statements about God, because any limited statements are limiting, and as such, are wrong. Can God make a burito that's so hot that even he can't eat it? A rock so heavy that he can't lift it?

Such a question is meaningless from the point of view of an unlimited figure, it's a paradoxical statement, and unfortunately, the flaw is in the question, not in the lack of a correct answer. The questions fail to take into account WHAT God is, and HOW God works, and it begs concepts that work in relative measurements.


Anyway, after that I spent the rest of the evening cooking beer chili with Jake. When we were buying the ingredients for the chili I told Jake, "You're going to have to cut this, cause I wear contacts and you can't touch your eyes after you've been cutting habanero, so fair warning, after you cut the habanero, DONT touch your eyes, your nose, or even take a piss, it burns. " Jake looked at me and laughed and he said, "I'm not afraid. " I dropped it, I'm a jackass, I gave him his warning and that was that. So, Jake cut up the habanero for the chili and then halfway through the cooking and simering Jake reaches up and rubs his eye with his right hand, which only had secondary habanero that rubbed off his left hand.

Mind you, now, I warned him. He yanks his hand away from his eye and starts to groan in pain, "My eye! My EYE!" And I look at him and tell him, "I warned you. " Then, Jake does something brilliant, he reaches up with his LEFT hand to try to rub the habanero out of his eye... I guess that was the logic, I don't really know, but I guess I don't have to tell you, it didn't work. So I look at him and I said, "What did I tell you? " Oh, and believe me, he remembered it word for word and recited it through tear stained eyes, " DON'T touchn your eyes, your nose, or even take a piss, because that stuff BURNS. " And, being the jackass that I am, I had forgotten what he had actually said in response at the store, I remember things in paraphrases, I remembered he said something stupid, but exactly what it was escaped me, and so I asked, "And what did YOU say? "

Again, through tear blinded eyes, he cried, "I'm not afraid. " To which I replied, "uuuuh huh. "

Poor bastard. Anyway, so after that I told him not to wash his eyes, it would only spread the heat around, and that eye drops wouldnt work, and that the pain would go away soon enough if he just didn't mess with it. It may have felt like an eternity, but after awhile his eyes were all better, and good as new, and we were enjoying the chili. And so Jake learned his lesson.

On saturday I finished reading the Phantom toll booth and hung out with Mike, Jackson, Marcia, and Kayla at IHOP early in the evening, and then I went to Half Priced Books with Mike at nine. I bought a copy of a GURPS supplement, Undead, which should go really well with my Horror source book. Half Price Books has a whole BUNCH of GURPS sourcebooks and theyre all like 5- 10 dollars a piece instead of 20 or 30 that they are retail, it was really hard just buying one. After that, George met us at my house, and we hung out and discussed projects and operating systems until about 2 am, though mike went home around 12:30 or so.

On Sunday, Mike came over and we worked some on our project, and I finished my alien's hands and started working on giving him feet, and after Mike left, I started reading more Hamlet for class, I have to be through Act IV by tomorrow morning, and I think it's possible, only 40 more pages to go. I just finished Act II before I started writing this at 2:30, and that Act only took me an hour, and the next 2 are shorter.

After I finish with that I'm going to work on writing a letter to mail to Chris, who's letter I got last friday, and who is probably eagerly waiting for me to write back to him, and I do need to. I have an aweful lot to say, and it's tempting to do some cutting and pasting from here.