What Color Are Your Daydreams?

What Color Are Your Innermost Thoughts?

It's not a trick question... ok well it is, kinda.

Atheists would have you believe we have no soul, that our "mind" is a bio electric computer, our "psyche" is a complex software that runs on a main frame and that main frame is purportedly located within our craniums.

Logic Rules

Everything that is not based in logic is deemed superstition

There are problems with countering that argument, those problems are based in linguistics and language and science. The problem of countering the atheistic argument leaves the door open to "Salem Witch Hunts" and the "rule of law" (and am a fan of the rule of law and not a fan of the Salem Witch Hunts), I'll explain:

In 17th century New England "spectral evidence" was enough to convict a person of witchcraft and get them burned at the stake. The story goes that upwards of 60 or 70 people were convicted and condemned to death based on the story of a teenage girl who later recanted and was too embarrassed and/ or ashamed to admit that she made the story up just to get back at a social peer. Once the horsepower behind the witch hunt gained power, it had a life of it's own apparently.

So logic was deemed the only acceptable criteria of deciding law. Logic, objective logic was seen to be superior to (and it many ways it is) to subjective measurement.

How does one measure subjectivity?

How can a computer program or algorithm measure or discern between a Rembrandt or the Mona Lisa and a 3 year old's water color?

Intuition is not a parlor trick, neither are your day dreams.

I offer this food for thought:

What is the specific gravity of your day dreams?

Are they real?

What color are they?

Where are they located? (think carefully before you respond "within my cranium")

Become conscious of a coffee cup, let's say that coffee cup is "located" on a nearby table, are you conscious of that cup? Where is your conscious now located? is it within your cranium?

Could it not be argued that your consciousness expanded to "include" the coffee cup?

So... is your consciousness located on the nearby table or in your head or...

Science Confirms Human Aura on Camera

Although it has been known for many years that all living creatures produce a small amount of light as a result of chemical reactions within their cells, this is the first time light produced by humans has been captured on camera.

Published in respected UK newspaper, the Guardian

Writing in the online journal PLoS ONE, the researchers describe how they imaged volunteers' upper bodies using ultra-sensitive cameras over a period of several days. Their results show that the amount of light emitted follows a 24-hour cycle, at its highest in late afternoon and lowest late at night, and that the brightest light is emitted from the cheeks, forehead and neck.

Strangely, the areas that produced the brightest light did not correspond with the brightest areas on thermal images of the volunteers' bodies.

The light is 1000 times weaker than the human eye can perceive. At such a low level, it is unlikely to serve any evolutionary purpose in humans – though when emitted more strongly by animals such as fireflies, glow-worms and deep-sea fish, it can be used to attract mates and for illumination.

Bioluminescence is a side-effect of metabolic reactions within all creatures, the result of highly reactive free radicals produced through cell respiration interacting with free-floating lipids and proteins. The "excited" molecules that result can react with chemicals called fluorophores to emit photons.

Human bioluminescence has been suspected for years, but until now the cameras required to detect such dim light sources took over an hour to capture a single image and so were unable to measure the constantly fluctuating light from living creatures.

... And now the original version in technical geek speak from the "Peer Reviewed Science" publication PLoS One

Imaging of Ultraweak Spontaneous Photon Emission from Human Body Displaying Diurnal Rhythm

Masaki Kobayashi, Daisuke Kikuch0, Hitoshi Okamura

Department of Electronics and Intelligent Systems, Tohoku Institute of Technology, Sendai, Japan, 2 Department of Systems Biology, Kyoto University Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Kyoto, Japan, 3Department of Brain Science, Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine, Kobe, Japan

he human body literally glimmers. The intensity of the light emitted by the body is 1000 times lower than the sensitivity of our naked eyes. Ultraweak photon emission is known as the energy released as light through the changes in energy metabolism. We successfully imaged the diurnal change of this ultraweak photon emission with an improved highly sensitive imaging system using cryogenic charge-coupled device (CCD) camera. We found that the human body directly and rhythmically emits light. The diurnal changes in photon emission might be linked to changes in energy metabolism.

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The solar storm is coming

There is no Reality, only perception

The apparent calm in the solar surface, the absence of the spots reflecting magnetic activity, could be a mirage. New Scientist published an account of a study funded by NASA which shows the possibility of a technological catastrophe on Earth caused by increased solar activity is expected to be fired in 2012. 

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"We are moving increasingly to the edge of a disaster," said Daniel Barker in charge of the study, conducted by the NAP. New Scientist carries this tone to imagine a likely scenario:

It is midnight on September 22 2012 and the skies of Manhattan are filled with a curtain of light flashing multicolor. Neuyorkinos Few have seen the dawn of a visual spectacle in these latitudes, but their fascination is short. After a few seconds, the flashing lights and electrical pale, then become unusually bright until all the lights turn off in 90 seconds the entire East Coast of the United States remains without electricity. 

One year later: Millions of Americans are dead and the country's infrastructure is shattered. The World Bank United States declares a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, Japan and China are also suffering to recover from the event: a vehement storm started A150 million kilometers on the surface of the sun.


Although it seems an apocalyptic vision of science fiction are charged to remember that scientists are usually quite conservative and the tone of sci-fi because the road is only useful in the transition step from imagination to reality, the metaphor in which can not hide what they think the scandal unleashed college.

It may sound unlikely, but perhaps the greatest threat to civilization is a ball of plasma wave (coronal mass ejection) 1. The fire from heaven. If these balls of plasma entering the atmosphere could quickly affect the configuration of the magnetic field of the earth, which in turn induces currents in the electrical wiring of the quadrant, which was not built to handle this type of direct electric current . The result is that the increased flow creates magnetic fields that saturate the magnetic center of power transformers and melt copper cables. This, in a smaller scale, is what happened in Quebec in March 1989, when six million people were left without electricity for 9 hours.

The only precedent that comes close is what happened in 1859, called the Carrington event, which occurred 9 days of severe space weather, auroras were seen even in equatorial latitudes, the event was described as "the first time in which found that the man was not alone in the universe "and as" the birth of modern astronomy. " Back then it was only a espertáculo transceleste unmatched, a mystical experience or a line of inquiry.

"But today the interdependence of the planet's electrical system and basic services like water, supermarkets and supply systems of products, the financial markets or transport just say some, the consequences can be lethal." By a sort of investment, which some would call homeostasis or planetary karma, the most affected would be the most developed countries with greater technological dependence.

(It is surprising to see mainstream scientists speak in terms that look dejos catastrophic cosmic and fears, a look at the timeline posed New Scientist: water scarcity, the debacle of the gas, the chaos and eventual destruction transport, falls in hospitals, nuclear plants, etc.. A 2 billion cost of millions. Up to ten years to recover and have to practically rebuild the world. Just when I dreamed of going out of the economic crisis a While imaginative exercise, note that this "flight" into a dystopia from the axis of that same establishment in power and conservatism of the world order (and holding classified information). Although it is not clear without the paranoia, but to contrary.)

And although it could be preventing much of the disaster is unlikely to adopt a prevention scheme in advance "The world will most likely yawn to the prospectus of a devastating storm solar ... until it happens."

At this moment the sun is "the most calm that has been in 100 years," according to Mike Hapgod, director of meteorological equipment to European Space Agency, "but we could go to the other end." It is expected that the next solar maximum occurs in 2012. Date where millenarian visions of the end of the world as we know it "at the end of the hypostasis Mayan calendar, 13 baktun.

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Science Proves Parallel Universe with satelite

Science Proves Parallel Universe

Wmap satelite proves there is more than one universe.
The Matrix might not be science fiction, albeit not exactly the way the movie depicts. Not computers running the show but what we 'perceive' is not what "reality" really is like

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I wish I'd have taken the blue pill...

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Dark Matter- there's more here than objectivity would propose

Ultra Compact Dwarf Galaxies once crowded with stars

I'm including this post to further support my thesis that there is more to *reality* than Objective Reason would purport. Empirical Proof, while necessary in a court of law (think Salem Witch Hunt and 'being vexed')  (insert the term for what they called evidence, mystical evidence), empirical methodology is intrinsically flawed:

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Astronomers think they've found a way to explain why Ultra Compact Dwarf Galaxies, oddball creations from the early universe, contain so much more mass than their luminosity would explain.

Pavel Kroupa, an astronomer at the University of Bonn in Germany, led a research team that's proposing the unexplained density may actually be a relic of stars that were once packed together a million times more closely than in the solar neighbourhood. The new paper appears in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

UCDs were discovered in 1999. At about 60 light years across, they are less than 1/1000th the diameter of the Milky Way — but much more dense. Astronomers have proposed they formed billions of years ago from collisions between normal galaxies. Until now, exotic dark matter has been suggested to explain the ‘missing mass.'

The authors of the new study think that at one time, each UCD had an incredibly high density of stars, with perhaps 1 million in each cubic light year of space, compared with the 1 that we see in the region of space around the Sun. These stars would have been close enough to merge from time to time, creating many much more massive stars in their place. The more massive stars would consume hydrogen rapidly, before ending their lives in violent supernova explosions, leaving either superdense neutron stars or black holes as their remains. 

In today’s UCDs, the authors think, the previously unexplained mass comprises these dark remnants, largely invisible to Earth-based telescopes.

“Billions of years ago, UCDs must have been extraordinary," study co-author Joerg Dabringhausen, also of the University of Bonn, said in a press release. "To have such a vast number of stars packed closely together is quite unlike anything we see today. An observer on a (hypothetical) planet inside a UCD would have seen a night sky as bright as day on Earth.”

read more...

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Albert Einstien

Bob Dylan came up with one way to remember Albert Einstein: “Now you would not think to look at him/But he was famous long ago/For playing the electric violin/On Desolation Row.”

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This is the pure distillate of celebrity. Dylan’s folk-rock vision of “Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood” is one in which the original man has disappeared into a symbolic fog where more or less any meaning may be found. Nowadays, such content-less fame has become common, though there aren’t many out there who match Einstein for resonance. But when he first exploded into public view, there were no precedents. No scientist before or since has so completely transcended the role of expert to become a universal emblem of reason.

It is possible to fix almost to the day the moment when Einstein became an icon. On November 6, 1919, he was still a private person. But that night, the Royal Society held a special meeting in London to announce the results of observations that seemed to confirm Einstein’s theory of gravity, the general theory of relativity. As The Times of London reported in a headline the next day, the society concluded that the work amounted to a “Revolution in Science—New Theory of the Universe—Newton’s Ideas Overthrown.” Three days later, The New York Times picked the story up, blaring that there were “Lights All Askew in the Heavens…[the] stars [were] not where they seemed or were calculated to be.” From there the word spread around the globe until, by the turn of the year, Albert Einstein had crossed the point of no return: He was and has remained public property. But that raises questions: Why him, why then, why still?

Partly it was just that Einstein happened to photograph well. He had always been appealing, even seductive, in the photos from his younger days. By 1919 he had become someone whom the camera loved. Einstein joked about it, describing himself for his young cousin, Elizabeth Ney, as a fellow with a “pale face, long hair, and a tiny start of a paunch. In addition an awkward gait, and a cigar in the mouth....But crooked legs and warts he does not have and so is quite handsome....”

Photographers caught that wit as well as the gravitas. It helped that he was astonishingly willing to play along. No one made him ride that bicycle or stick out his tongue straight into the barrel of an oncoming lens. Whatever weariness he felt at the crush of the public gaze, he was almost always willing to pause for the shot. There is a story that he was once asked—by perhaps the only person on earth who did not recognize him—what he did for a living. He replied that he was a photographer’s model.
He was just as open to sharing his ideas. Einstein took seriously questions about his science, up to the point of writing one of the best introductions to relativity for the lay reader. (Called Relativity, it’s still in print.) He handled the ridiculous questions, too, with humor and enormous stamina. He told his interrogators what he thought of Prohibition (against, though he didn’t drink), the death penalty (against, at least some of the time), and abortion (for, up to a certain point in the pregnancy). No scientist before Einstein had been so willing to stand before his public.
None of this would have turned him into a universal figure, however, without the means to carry his words and image to a global audience. By 1919, undersea cables could transmit Einstein’s doings, no matter how trivial, around the world. In 1927, The New York Times judged newsworthy the fact that Einstein had lost his luggage on the train from Paris to Berlin. By 1930 radio broadcasts could carry his voice to millions of strangers. Above all, the immediate postwar period was when film inherited the earth. Newsreels showed what Einstein looked like, how he moved, the angle of his grin. It is no coincidence that he achieved fame greater than that of any previous discoverer at just the time that the first true Hollywood stars (Charlie Chaplin, for example, or Mary Pickford) became legends.

Even so, why such lasting appeal? The answer lies with the historical events preceding his first contact with the public. Einstein completed the general theory of relativity in November 1915 in Berlin, the capital of a nation absorbed in the most destructive war Europe had ever known. How dreadful was that conflict? Here is a telling anecdote: The painter George Grosz, an acquaintance of Einstein’s, was recovering from wounds in Berlin. Told he had to go back to his unit, he tried to drown himself in a latrine: Better dead in a pool of feces than back to the trenches. Worse still, science itself was implicated in the disaster. After Einstein’s friend Fritz Haber pioneered the use of chlorine gas as a weapon, Einstein lamented that “our whole, highly praised technological progress, and civilization in general, can be likened to an ax in the hand of a pathological criminal.”

And then in 1919 came news of Albert Einstein’s wondrous ideas—ideas that were strange, difficult, true, and completely innocent of the disas trous war just past. He had found this truth with only the power of his mind. His theory was woven from numinous words of wisdom: warped space, the fourth dimension, bending time. Here was an alternative to the memory of the killing grounds of the western front.

Fast-forward to Dylan’s electric violinist, and then again to image after image poured into the media stream to this day. A few other scientists—Stephen Hawking, for one—have a similar aura. But Hawking and the others must fight through the relentless noise of the modern publicity machine. Even more, Hawking’s story is personal, the battle of one man against a terrible illness.

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Einstein always represented something more—an aspiration that extended far beyond himself. At the core of the Einstein phenomenon lies his connection to a time when the whole idea of human reason seemed a grim joke in the wake of the so-called Great War. The hold he still has on popular imagination derives from that moment when Albert Einstein—the patron saint of reason, all-knowing, unknowable—smoothed balm on the terrible wounds of the 20th century.

Time is an illusion- 20 things you didn't know

Physics & Math / Cosmology
20 Things You Didn't Know About... Time

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1. “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so,” joked Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Scientists aren’t laughing, though. Some speculative new physics theories suggest that time emerges from a more fundamental—and timeless—reality.
2. Try explaining that when you get to work late. The average U.S. city commuter loses 38 hours a year to traffic delays.
3. Wonder why you have to set your clock ahead in March? Daylight Saving Time began as a joke by Benjamin Franklin, who proposed waking people earlier on bright summer mornings so they might work more during the day and thus save candles. It was introduced in the U.K. in 1917 and then spread
4. Green days. The Department of Energy estimates that electricity demand drops by 0.5 percent during Daylight Saving Time, saving the equivalent of nearly 3 million barrels of oil.
5. By observing how quickly bank tellers made change, pedestrians walked, and postal clerks spoke, psychologists determined that the three fastest-paced U.S. cities are Boston, Buffalo, and New York.
6. The three slowest? Shreveport, Sacramento, and L.A.
7. One second used to be defined as 1/86,400 the length of a day. However, Earth’s rotation isn’t perfectly reliable. Tidal friction from the sun and moon slows our planet and increases the length of a day by 3 milli seconds per century.
8. This means that in the time of the dinosaurs, the day was just 23 hours long.
9. Weather also changes the day. During El Niño events, strong winds can slow Earth’s rotation by a fraction of a milli second every 24 hours.
10. Modern technology can do better. In 1972 a network of atomic clocks in more than 50 countries was made the final authority on time, so accurate that it takes 31.7 million years to lose about one second.
11. To keep this time in sync with Earth’s slowing rotation, a “leap second” must be added every few years, most recently this past New Year’s Eve.
12. The world’s most accurate clock, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Colorado, measures vibrations of a single atom of mercury. In a billion years it will not lose one second.
13. Until the 1800s, every village lived in its own little time zone, with clocks synchronized to the local solar noon.
14. This caused havoc with the advent of trains and timetables. For a while watches were made that could tell both local time and “railway time.”
15. On November 18, 1883, American railway companies forced the national adoption of standardized time zones.
16. Thinking about how railway time required clocks in different places to be synchronized may have inspired Einstein to develop his theory of relativity, which unifies space and time.
17. Einstein showed that gravity makes time run more slowly. Thus airplane passengers, flying where Earth’s pull is weaker, age a few extra nano seconds each flight.
18. According to quantum theory, the shortest moment of time that can exist is known as Planck time, or 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 second.

19. Time has not been around forever. Most scientists believe it was created along with the rest of the universe in the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.

    
    

    There may be an end of time.

    Three Spanish scientists posit that the observed acceleration of the expanding cosmos is an illusion caused by the slowing of time. According to their math, time may eventually stop, at which point everything will come to a standstill.

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Syncretist was a term of disparagement

syn·cre·tism (sngkr-tzm, sn-)

n.

1. Reconciliation or fusion of differing systems of belief, as in philosophy or religion, especially when success is partial or the result is heterogeneous.

2. Linguistics The merging of two or more originally different inflectional forms.

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Syncretist was a term of disparagement used by theologians to describe those who cherry-pick the religions and theological beliefs. Personally, I got really sick of growing up with Catholic dogma and started to look around at other ways of making sense of the world - hence I put my worldview together according to what interests me and what appears to be workable and useful and sometimes inspiring and energising, and not harmful. Hope that makes sense. Your description sounds good also - I like it

Syncretism consists of the attempt to reconcile disparate or contrary beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought.

I guess this makes me a Syncretist!! 

I'm both new age (depak chopra follower) AND Christian (John Bradshaw student)




The term may refer to attempts to merge and analogize several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, and thus assert an underlying unity allowing for an inclusive approach to other faiths.

Syncretism also occurs commonly in literature, music, the representational arts and other expressions of culture. (Compare the concept of eclecticism.) Syncretism may occur in architecture as well. There also exist syncretic politics, although in political classification the term has a somewhat different meaning.

Heterogeneous is an adjective used to describe an object or system consisting of multiple items having a large number of structural variations. It is the opposite of homogeneous, which means that an object or system consists of multiple identical items. Matters of a quantum can exist in homogenous or in heterogeneous or in combined distributions. The term is often used in a scientific (such as a kind of catalyst), mathematical, sociological or statistical context.

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Gastric Problem Options: Passing Gas has to go out somewhere

Link

Sh** happens.... you're better off if it does 

cause it hurts real bad if Sh** DOESN'T happen!!

Calvinistic Belief System

What is Calvinism:

It is a series of theological beliefs first promoted by John Calvin (1509-1564), one of the leaders of the Protestant reformation. They were affirmed by the Synod of Dordt (1618-1619 CE) as being the doctrine of salvation which is contained in the Bible. It laid the foundation for Reformed Theology.

Calvinism is often summarized by The Five Points of Calvinism, which are easy to recall by using the acrostic "TULIP:"

T: This usually stands for "Total depravity:" This is often mistaken to mean that humans are all hopelessly, intensely sinful. Actually, it means something quite different: as a result of Adam and Eve's disobedience to God -- the Fall of Man -- sin has extended to all parts of every person's being: "his thinking, his emotions and his will." 1

Sometimes, this has been called "Total inability." This is the concept that it is impossible for the ordinary "natural" human to understand the Gospel's message. They are spiritually helpless. First, God must first decide to intervene in the form of the third personality within the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Otherwise, the person is lost forever.

See:
Romans 5:12: "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." (KJV)
Mark 4:11: "And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables."
U: This stands for "Unconditional Election." This is the concept of predestination: that God has divided humanity into two groups. One group is "the elected." It includes all those whom God has chosen to make knowledgeable about himself. The rest will remain ignorant of God, and the Gospel. They are damned and will spend eternity in Hell without any hope of mercy or cessation of the extreme tortures. God made this selection before the universe was created, and thus before any humans existed. The ground or grounds that God uses to select the lucky few is unknown. What is known is that it is not through any good works on the part of the individual. It is not that he extends knowledge to some in order to find out who will accept salvation and who will not.

There is a degree of tension within the Bible concerning precise division of responsibility between God and humans on this matter. The Bible does not resolve this issue.
Hyper-Calvinists believe that a person has zero responsibility for their own salvation; it is all up to God.
Arminians teach that humans have free will and thus can accept or resist the call of God.
See:
Romans 9:15: "For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion."
Romans 9:21: "Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?"
L: This stands for "Limited atonement" or "Particular Redemption." This is the belief that Jesus did not die to save all humans. He only died for the sake of specific sins of those sinners who are saved.
See:
Matthew 26:28: "For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins."
Ephesians 5:25: "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it."
I: This stands for "Irresistible Grace:" This is the belief that every human whom God has elected will inevitably come to a knowledge of God. The elect cannot resist the call.
See:
John 6:44: "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day."
Romans 8:14: "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God."
1 Peter 5:10: "But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you."
P: This stands for "Perseverance of the saints:" This is the "Once saved, always saved" belief -- that everyone who has been saved will remain in that state. God will begin and continue a process of sanctification which will continue until they reach heaven. None are lost; it is impossible for them to lose their salvation.
See:
Philippians 1:6: "That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ."
Romans 8:28-39: "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified....Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
John 6:39: "And this is the Father's will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day."

==========

==========

Objections to Calvinism:

There are many conflicting belief systems within Christianity which are opposed to Calvinism:

Universalism: This term has many meanings. Today's most common meaning is that all individuals will eventually attain Heaven. None will be lost forever in Hell. Whether or not they have been saved during their lifetime is unimportant; the number and degree of sins that they have committed is also of no consequence.
Arminiansm: This is comprised of a series of beliefs which were first advocated by a break-away group of Dutch Calvinists. They teach beliefs that deviate significantly from each of The Five Points of Calvinism:
That each person is not spiritually helpless. She/he has free will and can choose to be saved
God selected the Elect on the basis of his foreknowledge of who would respond and be saved.
Jesus died so that everyone had a chance to be saved. But first, the person must choose to accept salvation.
Man has free will and thus can resist the call of God.
Arminians differ on whether a person can lose their salvation or not. 2
Some religious liberals There is little unanimity of belief among this group, Many conservative Christians would call them non-Christians or pseudo-Christians. Liberals place little emphasis on the doctrines of salvation and Hell. Some believe:
It would be irrational for God to create the universe, the Earth and humans, and have predestined almost all of people to spend eternity being tortured in Hell.
The concept that, because of a single act performed by Adam and Eve, some 240 generations (6,000 years) ago, every human is now intrinsically sinful, is irrational.
Supporters of Calvinism believe that individuals are sent to Hell because of their beliefs: i.e. they have not trusted Jesus as Lord and Savior who died for their sins. There are countries of this world who incarcerate and even torture people for their beliefs. But they are considered pariah nations. The best of humanity considers it immoral to imprison or punish people because of thought crimes.
They believe that people have free will. We are quite capable of resisting a call by God.
Calvinism asserts that God does not select some people to be the elect on the basis of any virtuous quality or positive act. Rather it is outside of one's power to become a part of the elect.

If a person chose to reward individuals on the basis of race, then we would call that person a racist. If they chose on the basis of gender, we would call him/her sexist. If the choice was made on the basis of sexual orientation, she/he would be called homophobic. Modern ethics condemn sexism and racism; many liberals consider homophobia equally unethical. We don't know the criteria that God chooses. But it would appear to be immoral by today's religious and secular ethical standards.
Some religious conservatives who are not Calvinists also object to Calvinism. Feelings run high on this topic. Reviewing a book by Dave Hunt: 3
Well known Christian author Tim Lahaye said that "...Calvinism is perilously close to blasphemy."
Joseph Chambers, a pastor, author and radio host wrote: "Calvinism makes our Heavenly Father look like the worst of despots"
Elmer Towns, Dean of the School of Religious Liberty, said "Hunts' book exposes traditional Calvinism for portraying God in a totally unscriptural manner."
Michael T calls, a book reviewer for Amazon.com refers to Calvinism as "A God-dishonoring scheme." He quotes A. M. Hills: "...Such is Calvinism, the most unreasonable, incongruous, self-contradictory, man-belittling and God-dishonoring scheme of theology that ever appeared in Christian thought. No one can accept its contradictory, mutually exclusive propositions without intellectual self-debasement.... It holds up a self-centered selfish, heartless, remorseless tyrant for God, and bids us worship Him."
Some of the other reviews of Dave Hunt's book are also quite vitriolic. 3


References:

"Calvinism" Center for Reformed Theology and Apologetics," at: http://www.reformed.org/calvinism/
"Arminianism and Calvinism," a comparison at: http://home.earthlink.net/~andrepar/compare.htm
Dave Hunt, "What love is this: Calvinism's misrepresentation of God," Loyal, (2002). Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store
Dave Hunt, James White, "Debating Calvinism: Five points; two views," Multnomah, (2004). Read reviews or order this book safely from Amazon.com online book store

Perceptions and Reality

Did you know the sky isn't blue?

If it was really blue, then why isn't it blue at night?

Our atmosphere doesn't have a color, not an intrinsic color. The only reason we perceive it as blue is due to our sun's radiation, the sun heats up the molecules of air and they turn a blueish hue... but only as viewed from down here.

Our perception fools us into thinking that reality is real. Our perceptions about addiction are just as skewed as the concept of the sky being blue.

Followers of the 12 step model of addiction remediation all adhere to the precept of us being powerless over addictions. There is a point to be made but that point covers up the fact incorporated in this notion carries a presupposition:

Who is "WE"?

Our perception is that "WE" as defined in the "we are powerless" statement is that "we" are the voice in our minds ear. The voice we hear when we talk to ourselves.

that isn't US

it's our EGO... and our ego is a tiny, minuscule part of us.

Want to see how childish the notion that our ego is who we are?

Up till now you thought planets orbited around larger heavenly bodies, correct?

NOPE

that is an illusion.

Bodies in orbit are, in reality, falling in a straight line. Just as if you dropped a rock off of the leaning tower of pizza like Galileo did.

Orbits appear to be circular because space is curved. What we're seeing is curved space spiraling down somewhere just like watching water spiral down a toilet.

More coming...