Hero

I'm reprinting some entries that were on the old Urban Mystic that got taken down. This one is from 21 February 2007.



A few days ago I finished reading a book, The Empty Land by Louis L'Amour. This book is amazing because it presents something that so few books today (or movies or television programs or anything else for that matter) even consider a possibility: a real hero. The main character, Matt Coburn, is a real hero. He's not some grey area, he's not out for revenge, he's not looking for some boon or reward. Matt Coburn fights for what's right because it's the right thing to do. He is an altruistic hero who seeks to help others and get nothing in return; in fact he knows in return he'll be asked to leave town after he helps free it from crime! Now that's a hero. There are people like Matt Coburn on earth. You hear about them in the news when that labourer pushed the man out of the way of a train or on 9/11 when people went back into the burning buildings to save others when they could have gotten themselves to safety. But books these days don't care about the real honest hero. They want "anti-heroes" or vigalantees seeking revenge. I for one enjoy reading about heroes, actual or fictional. Everyone should go out and read this book; it's good spiritual detox from the materialistic culture that bombards us every day.



-Dee

Life of Lincoln

William, a regular commenter at Michael Prescott's Blog provided three links for similarities between JFK and Abe Lincoln. By the end of reading the first link I was stunned off my gord. Some nay sayers will say that it is all coincidence, but when you have that many parallels there can be no denying that something other than coincidence is at work here. I'm not putting out any positive hypotheses, just stating that coincidence can't be behind the similarities between the two presidents lives, deaths, families, policies, and friends. Take for example:

• Both presidents were elected to the House of Representatives in ‘46.
• Both were runners-up for the party’s nomination for vice-president in ‘56.
• Both were elected to the presidency in ‘60.

Both had friends Adlai E. Stevenson, both were succeeded by Southern Democrats named Johnson who were former senators who choose not to run for reelection who had urethreal stones, both were born second children, were named after their grandfathers, married women age 24 while they themselves were in their mid-30s, both were boat captains, had served in the military, fought for the rights of blacks, studied law, were over six feet tall, etc., etc.



Here is another link.



-Dee

The Great Wall of Solomon

Remember from an earlier post that biblical verses were discovered on tenth century pottery, casting sharp doubt on the documentary hypothesis? Well this just in from AP, a section of wall was found running 70 meters just outside of Jerusalem's Old City along with a gate house. Dating from the tenth century as well, providing good evidence that there existed a strong, centralized government in Jerusalem at the time capable of such monumental construction. There are some nay-sayers who say this is no evidence at all, mostly because they either don't want the Bible to be true or because they don't want the Jewish presence in the holy land to be true to perpetuate the myth of a single ethnic group known as the Palestinians who lived in the area always. Both sides present their case in the AP article, which is very short and does not use any big words like hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. Is this a remnant of the city built by Solomon? I'm excited to find out.



-Dee

War and Religion

I was asked to comment on the notion that war causes religion. Such a task is too great for any ordinary mortal and possibly even Evel Knievel, and so I decided to look at the first crusade and the war on terror, thinking that if I could show they were not caused by religion than the strongest case for the argument that religion causes war would be defeated. Here is ten minutes of musings on the relation of religion and warfare (cut down from twenty minutes).



-Dee

The Mullet Militia

I should use this as my profile picture because this guy looks sexier than I do.

Celebrating Freedom

Dr. King might not have made it to the promised land, but we're moving toward his dream. A time when we all love one another and treat eachother with respect regardless of any petty differences in these physical bodies is approaching. I can't say when, but we are getting there. Here is his "I Have A Dream" speech.

The Age of The Bible

Yahoo News has put up an article about a piece of pottery discovered last year that includes parts of biblical verses. This finding, which took a year to discipher, indicateds that the Bible dates back to at least the tenth century BC, 400 years earlier than previously thought. It also indicates that the kingdom of Israel existed at least since the tenth century, and is the first clear use of the Hebrew language yet discovered. The text resembles portions of the books of Exodus, Psalms, and Isaiah, which, if they existed at the same time helps to discredit the documentary hypothesis, that say different people wrote the Torah (the five books of Moses which he is supposed to have recieved from God directly on Mt. Sinai) and some priest later put the differend books together and edited them to create a religion (Judaism) to basically make people fall in line.





-Dee