Monday, March 18, 2013

Religion is an Illusion: 3 minute persuasive speech

Before starting off, I would like to inform you that I'm your bro-h with a religious upbringing. It just so happens that a friend of mine needed help on writing a speech about how religion is just a false idea.


Illusion is implied here with the definition of a “false idea.” From the title itself you might get a grasp of the statement’s essence: Religion, as a whole, is merely an idea conceptualized by our forefathers.

Yet here we are, a religious country, might as well say overzealous when it comes to it, who continues to believe even if we do so out of…habit – blind followers. Here, where the Church manages to hold the government to a stand still whenever they find something ‘harmful’ to the Christian belief of the populace – Theocracy.
Having a senate in the Church sounds appealing

So how does one exist without factual proof of his lifetime besides the words passed down from centuries before by his disciples? How do we validate the authenticity of what is written on the pages of the bible’s New Testament when many of the Old Testament’s contents are not only directly contradictory to itself but also contradicts what the latter testament detests?

On the topic of the Bible, since it is what they see as the strongest evidence of Christianity’s history, there are inconsistencies present when describing the events during Jesus’ life between the authors of different books of the New Testament. Written in the Old Testament, what were perceived as scientifically true back then, such as the explanation that the earth is the center of the universe and how the sun revolves around it, are now considered fallacy backed up by factual proof. Every Saint sees polygamy and prostitution heinous whereas their ancestors preached the coming of Christ with their own hands dirtied from the acts they've committed which, during their time, were considered morally correct, although they might have a valid reason: to populate the earth.

Sigmund Freud interprets why people still believe due to three reasons; because our primal ancestors believed, because we have proof that has been handed down through antiquity, and third is we are not allowed to question the authenticity. Emphasizing on the third interpretation, this is how our country is right now. To be conservative to the point of neglecting the desirable growth of the nation is worse than sacrificing some ideals that have been/are likely to be unreal or which it cannot be adopted to the demands of the current society.
Sigmund Freud smoking Tobacco

The only thing that keeps the beliefs of not only Christianity but of all the religion is the faith mustered from each individual, but with the evolving world we live in today I’m unsure of how they will keep up.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Opinion: Gun Control

Gun Control, or Man Control?

How gun control could actually further suppress the rights of the population

Paulo, a friend/bro/co-worker/Proporter*, and I have been filming a documentary on the prevalence of crime within Pasadena, and earlier today we covered a protest over a gun show in Glendale. Although I admire the sentiments of the people who were out under the sun holding their placards for hours, I'm unable to sympathize with their main cause: gun control as a way to diminish crime.

To begin with it, the Second Amendment states that individuals not in service of the military have the right to be gun owners and shall not be infringed. With this in mind the very essence of gun control contradicts the amendment as it is. 

This isn't a collective right but an individual right, and hence once gun control pushes through it would not only suppress the item's distribution and use but also suppress the person to exercise their right of possessing fire-arms as a means of self-defense.

It is not the gun that's doing the killing - an object can't act on its own accord. It is the owner who, as his motives and actions exhibit, has a distorted outlook/comprehension when considering what is seen as "violent."
Fending against a person with an AK-47 with Tae Kwon Do doesn't look promising.
 Albeit I think having guns licensed is a way- or a step - that could minimize the use irresponsible owners of fire-arms for the dissemination of violence since the government authorities will have information on the owner, type of gun, where and when it was bought, etc. As said by one of the protesters, think of it similarly to how your car and pet gets licensed. It legalizes the ownership  take away from them. gun culture.

Another way brought up by someone who was in line for the gun show is having the dealers carry out a thorough background check of the client to see fit his credibility as a prospective owner. Coupled with the suggestion above, manages to regulate without suppressing the individual right of a person.

Regulated malice is better than anarchy (protester)

*Proporter - Professional Reporter; removing "re-" and substituting it with an anomalous prefix "pro-",  which is short for professional. I have a habit of replacing the first syllables of words with it, even if the original word loses all its sense after the modifications...

Friday, February 22, 2013

Human Cloning

Human Cloning - Is it Right?

This was an essay I did for a website dedicated to "helping people with their writer's block", although we all know they're just the 30% of the population who are too lazy to write their own papers. I removed the citations and was limited to 350 words, so I didn't manage to discuss further...aaand I'm just too lazy/uninterested in filling up details - reason for having only discussed the religious aspect. 


Yeah.. and I'm not even that faithful.


No. Not these clones.
Human cloning has been surrounded with controversies and speculations ever since the very idea of it was first thought of, although it garnered attention during the 1960s when geneticist Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel Prize winner, supported the idea as an “evolution of human” It was then strengthened further when Dolly, a sheep, was the first mammal to be successfully cloned from an adult cell.
Even with the scientific breakthrough that cloning has offered, the social, religious, and ethical aspect of such an experiment overshadows, if not equally levels itself with, what it has managed to accomplish within the field. As what Lewis D. Eigen said, human cloning will be seen by the public “as a breakthrough with most fearing the breakthrough is not a step forward for humanity.”  
Note: It's Lenten season
Growing up in a religious household, I have the same stand with the Church when it comes to the issue of human cloning. An excerpt from the bible states “‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’ . . . So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” therefore every human is unique and that with the process of cloning it destroys the essence. According to gotquestions.org, if humanity was created, then there must be a Creator, and humanity is therefore subject and accountable to that Creator Seeing that there is only one Supreme Being and He possess complete dominion over His creations, the process of cloning would defeat the belief. He only gave us the responsibility over all the creatures that he created, not the power to create life avoiding the natural process for conception.
All in all, cloning parts of the body to save someone’s life is acceptable, but when it comes down to the body as a whole it’s morally inadmissible during our present time. I mean, no one virtually wants to have themselves cloned with their copies functioning exactly the same way they did, up to the point that he turns into a fitting replacement for the original copy.
If there were, well, we need another room at the asylum.

Friday, January 25, 2013

Entry about Doomsday

Michel de Nostradamus

Nostradamn

Busting Nostradamus' Famous Prophecy-us


  It's 2013 and seeing that I'm still alive, I can safely assume that the 'end of the world' paranoids are now hiding beneath rocks. As the Latin saying goes, suum cuique!, or "to each his own preference!", but supporting a belief that can be disproved simply by time is foolish. 
  Although considering what could've been reality if their desired Judgement Day happened, obviously I wouldn't be alive to defect to being a believer myself, or writing a parallel blog entry about it.
  Everyone knows where it all started: 2012 (2009). In fact, most of the people-ogist (pardon my lack of knowledge with regards to the specific profession who studies these kinds of thing) who've researched on the Mayans were already aware that their calendar ends on December 21, 2012, however it meant that the calendar went on to the new and current bak'tun' starting on that date.
"A bak'tun is a period of ~400 years, or in actuality 400 times 360 days"
mayainfo.org
  Then intellectuals started linking all these verses from the Bible's book of Revelation, such an example from the said book:
(8:7) And the first sounded, and there followed hail and fire, mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of the earth was burnt up, and the third part of the trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.
  Somehow, the (sic) disciples associated this with a meteor passing the earth on the last day of December, but then within each year there's a feasible number of meteor showers occurring that's close enough to earth for a person to see without the use of telescopes.
  Although hands down, their analysis and breakdown of pieces from the past that has coherence with the aforementioned apocalypse is commendable and would've converted any skeptic to be among themselves.
  Another variable is because I'm new to this and seeing that they might been doing these ramblings longer than I have...well kudos anyway.

  With the year coming to a close, some people noticed that Psy's "Gangnam Style" made it's way past Justin Beiber's music video for Most watched video on Youtube.
  Then it gets creepy from here on out. Someone made a video explaining the odd but valid connection between Michel de Nostradamus' prophecy and the Korean pop sensation's music video. Here's a direct excerpt from the video with Nostradamus' phrase about doomsday and comparison with the latter:
"From the calm morning, the end will come when of the dancing horses the number of circles will be nine."
The calm morning represents the eastern ideology of the Korean mindfulness. In addition to this, Nostradamus also predicted that the yellow race will rule world and we can look at Psy 's popularity as a cultural domination over the Western civilization. In addition, the "calm" term is suggesting that this is a non-violent, unharmful emergence and it will be embraced and adored by people. The evil that is enticing and looks cool will bend people's mind with contagious behavior. We're talking about the simple and catchy dance, the one that resembles the riding-a-horse movements, exactly what Nostradamus is foreseeing in his text.
As you can see, the prophecy is strikingly specific! This cool dance went crazy all over the Internet, as Psy's Gangnam style reached almost ONE BILLION views on the video sharing site YouTube. Now, things get even more interesting: 1 billion it's nine zeros, right? And zero is actually a circle. So those nine circles are referring to the number of views the Gangnam style Youtube video will reach when the prophecy will be done. (UniformediaStudios)
...Okay. That really gave me the chills the first time I watched it. I mean, how close could it possibly get, knowing the text was written in 1555.

  But, granting that I'm still alive, this single fact automatically disproves this block of text, and here's to hoping  I won't worry with speculations about the end of time in my lifetime again.

  Albeit I almost presumed it was true. Almost.