Was 9/11 A Prophesy?

I don't know.  I often wonder if events like 9/11 are not prophetic in nature.  But of course I'm not sure.  Perhaps it simply serves as a metaphor.

But with this in mind I find myself intrigued by the thinking that might have occurred in the minds of the passengers who sat docilely by as a few men armed with nothing more than box-cutters killed them.  Perhaps they'd not really paid attention to the new military phenomenon of suicide murderers; a new news item that had become common fare from the other side of the world.  Perhaps they had simply been lured into a false security.  Those sorts of things, after all, happened over there... somewhere... where was it...?  Afghanistan?

However, there was an event that provided a more compelling warning as to what lay in store for America.  Two years earlier on October 31st, 1999, an Egyptian Air Boeing 767 carrying 217 passengers and crew, on a flight from New York to Cairo, inexplicably plummeted into the ocean near Nantucket.  Although the explanation for this crash became political for obvious reasons, the "black box" clearly revealed that it was the result of actions taken by a pilot. Left alone in the cockpit as the Captain excused himself to the lavatory he simply nosed the airliner over and took himself and the 200 other some odd souls on board to their deaths; calmly repeating to himself the words "“Tawakkalt Ala Allah”" (I rely on God) along the way.   Here is the NTSB report.

The idea of a Muslim taking a large airliner full of people to their deaths through a suicide mission was not therefore new at the time of  9/11.  I wonder if this story ever crossed the minds of any of the passengers or crew members on board the flights.  I wonder how many even knew about it.

For sure, a thought that didn't cross the minds of the passengers, but surely filled the minds of the crews, was the training they had received for just such an event. This training had been developed about three decades earlier during the days of "take-me-to-Cooba", and had all but congealed there as high profile hijackings had tapered off.  Apparently, innovation kindled by a Muslim flying his airliner full of people into the ocean simply wasn't part and parcel to the humans in the bowls of the bureaucracy that oversaw such things. The crew had been trained to verbally resist, but ultimately comply with demands if harm was threatened.  It didn't take long, I'm sure, before hijackers were allowed through the flimsy doors of the cockpit and out of the passengers' sight.

There is a common theme that probably weaved its way through every thought those people may have had that I think is worth noting.  It was trust.  They trusted the voices over the P.A. that ensured them if they complied all would be OK.  They trusted that they were simply by-standers in events much larger than themselves.  They trusted the system that had trained the crews and the webbed network of action that was, at that very moment, being thrown into action by the authorities on the ground. While the thought that their captors would kill themselves in the process of killing everyone on board probably never occurred to them, this lack of scope revealed a trust that proved ultimately fatal.  They trusted the image of their own Western worldviews that they had projected onto their captors. In the final analyses one thing is clear, whatever they trusted, they didn't trust themselves.  They didn't trust their own judgments, discernments and abilities to meet the situation.  They were indeed trained to not.  The "authorities" would handle everything.  So they sat idly by, their numbers much larger than their captors, trusting in all they knew, as their captors flew them gently to their deaths.

There was, however, one glimmer that shone forth that day.  Armed with information gained by an illegal cell-phone call placed by Todd Beamer, the trusting, ignorance-induced stupor that had had them sedated, shattered.  Those passengers heroically rose to the occasion.  Though they were not able to save their own lives, they managed to save the lives of those at the intended target.  Their acts gave many hope beyond that day, for they broke ranks, trusted in their own God-given abilities, and acted.  They went down fighting.

So how is this a prophecy or metaphor?  We are now, as a nation, like the passengers on those airliners, comforted by the trust we have in a system that is being mocked and ignored by those who have been charged with protecting and enforcing it.  There is a group at the helm of our nation that is currently hurtling us toward destruction.  Concealed in the "cockpit", so to speak, with their mouthpieces in the media insuring us that we will be OK if we simply trust and comply with their wishes, they guide us ever closer to our fate with ever-increasing speed.

I look at the simple math. No nation can spend a trillion dollars more each year than it takes in, not even America; and not even if it confiscates the wealth of the rich. No nation can do this while pretending that it has an unlimited amount more to borrow and spend.  It really is simple math for anyone willing to have their sedated stupor shattered.  Yet those currently at the helm are doing it.

I look at the morality.  You can't institutionalize sin and expect all to go well.  Those at the helm see themselves as the final arbiters of good and evil and we are trained to trust what they say by their institutions of education.  This will not stand.  It is taking us to our destruction with increasing speed while we trust that somehow everything will turn out OK.  If you think this let me attempt to shatter your stupor.  It won't.  It's not going to be OK. You can trust me on that.  It's simple math and history.

I see a nation being skillfully guided toward its end, and a people sitting docilely by, trusting the images of our past and heritage that are being projected onto reality.  Like the hijack victims, we sit trusting that nothing really bad can happen here... no matter what we do.  Things get fixed.  They just do.  They always have.  It's always been that way.  And it always will be.  We... trust...

The Death Of Dan Rohrbough At Columbine High School

Brian Rohrbough, the father of Dan Rohrbough, gives an account of April 20th 1990, the day of the Columbine Massacre.  This is an excerpt from "INDOCTRINATION, public schools and the decline of Christianity in America". (click here for link) I highly X 100  recommend that you beg, borrow or steal a copy of this documentary if you are a Christian with children in the public school system.   

_____________________________
Transcript of Brian Rohrbough and "Indoctrination" producer, Collin Gunn

Rohrbough:

On the morning of April 20th, before noon, I received a phone call.  And in a panic stricken voice, Dan's mom said to me "Brian, have you heard from Dan, do you know what's going on?".
And I said "no".

And she told me that two gunmen had entered Columbine High School with machine guns and hand-grenades and they were killing kids.  And so me and my co-worker dropped what we were doing and we headed toward the school, and we got to where we could look across the park and we could see the school.  And there were two police cars parked there blocking our way and we couldn't go any further.  And we stood there, watching, and a lady burst out a front door and she was screaming and crying, and she said to the police "save that boy, do something, save that boy!" and that's really where I realized how bad things were.
We heard they were going to start bringing school buses, and the first bus came and I watched as the kids got off and they would run to their parents and they would cry and they would hug.  And all to often I heard this hollow promise that you'll never set foot in that school again.  When the last bus came...when the last bus came, it was empty.



When the next morning came, we opened the newspaper, and there was a picture... of a young man... wearing green... a green shirt, and bluejeans..., (chocking) lying dead on the sidewalk, was my son
That was... our only notification.
I knew how bad the public schools were, and I knew that because I was in the public schools.  And as parents I think that we want to believe that things have gotten better, when in fact they have gotten much worse.  It was my responsibility to make sure that my son was safe, that he was educated properly, but I failed that.  I put him in a pagan school where they teach there is no God, there is no creation.  There's evolution based on a cosmic accident.  And evolution breaks down to one simple belief, and that is that the strong kill the weak as a form of survival and that there's nothing wrong with that.
________________________
Gunn:

"Both of the killers Klebold and Harris had received good grades from their Columbine High teachers for their graphically violent writings.  They showed their violent videos in the classroom with approval. One of them wore a tee shirt brazened with the words 'Natural Selection', the other with the word 'wrath'."
Ideas do have consequences."
________________________-

Rohrbough:

They had taken evolution much further than most people do, but if you stop and think through it, their logic was correct, if evolution is true, and yet it is taught in the school... and I put my son there.  Even though I'm a Christian... so, when we talk about my son's murder, yes it's right to condemn these two murderers, it's right to condemn this school system that taught these wicked things, but you must remember, I am the one who put him there, and I am the one who is responsible for his death.

So?

I saw this ad from "Vote Our Future" dot com.  It's a good ad I think.  It tells the truth about what is being done to young people today... in short that they are the ones who will be paying for all the free lunches.  What I find odd however is that the ad doesn't lead anywhere, other than to encourage young people to vote.  It acknowledges that if young people vote that they can thwart what is being done to them, but it doesn't give any direction or reasoning as to who or why to vote one way or another.

Part of this I think is the thought forms of the demographic that the ad is attempting to reach.  The minute anyone mentions a political party, or a candidate, this age group is inclined to dismiss it.  After all, everyone is angling for something in life, except, of course, the person who says that everyone is angling for something.  So nothing is mentioned... only the favorite whipping boy: "the faceless, party-less "politician".

Still, I find myself watching this ad and thinking So?  Voting is what got us here.  Young people are not being stuck with the bill for our folly because of a lack of votes but a lack of a coherent worldview.  I'm not sure how much good telling young people that they are getting screwed by older people is going to do.  But it does cause me to realize the fears I've had all along.  Older people now, by handing their healthcare over to the government, are in essence handing it over to the up and coming generation, a generation that has been taught by the same older people that there are no absolutes, not even that everyone should absolutely get taken care of when they're sick or broken.

Fees To Thugs

The old story goes like this.  A young couple living in the city of Chicago decide to start a little family business.  Shortly after opening their doors a shady looking character walks in asking for the proprietor.  He then offers the couple “protection” in their business.  The couple look a little confused so the stranger clarifies.  “What I’m offering you, for a fee you see, is protection… from us”.  Now they get the picture.

These are thugs and that’s how they operate.  This tactic has been around for years and has now been  perfected to the point that people seem to accept it as good and normal.  Consider the union shop.  The person who goes to work in this shop has his “fees for protection” taken out of his paycheck every month; and it's tax deductible to boot.  If the poor worker doesn’t like what his union stands for and decides to stop paying his “fees”, then the union, backed by the power of the federal government, has him fired. Thugs you see.

On a larger scale we witnessed this year the attempt by these same sorts of thugs to oust the Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker.  All the stops were removed it seemed because Walker was actually keeping a campaign promise to stop the fiscal bleeding in his state brought about by promised fees.  The thugs in the press slandered him.  The thugs in the legislature tied the hands of their law-making colleagues by denying a quorum by fleeing the state.  The thug workers filled the capital with rebellion, hatred and spite. In the end however the people of Wisconsin won this little battle.  We will see how that goes yet.

But there seems to be another strand of thuggery on the horizon.  We have all heard the story of Chick-fil-A’s run-in with Chicago’s mayor, the thug Rahm Emanuel.  It seems that the president of Chick-fil-A has announced that his company is not paying the fee for protection...  in so many words.  So, in typical thug fashion, the mayor has informed Chick-fil-A that it will not be receiving protection in Chicago… from Chicago.

The Arizona republic, a thug rag in its own right, ran a story Saturday, the 27th of July, informing the reader of the sort of fees that are expected for this sort of protection.  It's article begins: “Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos waded into a developing corporate culture war over gay marriage Friday with a $2.5 million donation to keep same-sex union legal in Washington… Bezos joins Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates and companies like Starbucks Inc. and Nike Inc. with support to the campaign to uphold Washington’s law.“    Strangely missing in the story, for those who notice such things, is the typical 1-versus-99%-esque drivel we are accustomed to seeing when it concerns the uber-rich like Bezos and Gates, or how the low paid employees at these companies might have received raises instead, or the fact that these are very large corporations which are the nemesis of the modern day thugs--so we are led to believe anyway.  We didn’t hear any of this because they paid the fee… you see.  They are saints.

This all makes sense to us because we are tuned to it.  We are in fact living it out in the spiritual realm.  In this same fashion God offers us protection from himself.  But God is no thug.  For one, we rightly and justly deserve what God is offering us protection from… which is Himself.  Because we are the thugs in this story.  But more than this, he is offering to pay the “fee”, because it is a very expensive fee you see.  Not even Bill Gates could pay this fee.  His worldly wealth is much better squandered on worldliness.  But there again is the beauty of this fee.  Those who are oppressed by the likes of these sorts of thugs can still afford the fee, for it is paid by God Himself, and is free to all who realize their need for it and so ask for it.

An Old Post I Finally Decided To Publish

Like German tanks rolling into Poland it appears that the Government’s invasion of the health insurance industry will continue unabated. But as we, like the Poles losing their homeland, morn the closing of an era of freedom, we ought to realize that this happened as the result of a ramification of problems we refused to see, and not as a result of problems that were just too difficult to overcome. Let me explain one of them here.

One problem in particular, if one were to dig past the rocky crust of entitlement thinking and emotions, is a faulty premise concerning healthcare. Consider the following syllogism:

• Premise 1: No one ought to be allowed to die as a result of his own foolish health insurance decisions.
• Secondary premise: It is not fair that some must pay for the foolishness of others.
• Conclusion: Government must take away all people’s rights when it comes to health insurance. 

This syllogism was undergirded recently by Nancy Pelosi. On a particular day recently she blamed those horrible free-loaders (those who can afford insurance but don’t bother) for the problems with health insurance. Don’t worry about Pelosi’s change of heart though. As a democrat she can easily  forget that she ever said such a thing about her constituents so those “free-loaders” will be morphing back into victims on her lips quicker than you can say greedy, racist Republican. But on this day Pelosi actually swerved a little closer to the truth than usual in her drunken-esque ramblings. Even If only by one premise she did however avoid bashing through the rail that usually keeps her well clear of the road of reality and common-sense.

The premise of which I speak is number 1. Like the Blazing Saddles’ sheriff who gained control of a deteriorating situation by holding his gun to his own head, this premise allows that no matter how irresponsible a person may be, society must step in before that person pays the ultimate price for his stupidity. Never mind for the moment that this directly contradicts our society’s religious source for morality: evolution, the effect is that an entire society is held captive, according to Nancy Pelosi and myself, by those who think buying a Harley more important than providing for one’s own healthcare. So when they are hauled into ER shortly after they found their Harley and helmetless head bouncing down the highway, premise 1 kicks in. Since premise 1 is already accepted law, and as such constitutes de facto free healthcare, Obamacare can’t really be seen as the beginning of socialized medicine but rather only a stage in its implementation.

There have always been other options beyond letting the man die that don’t involve the coercion of those who choose wisdom over foolishness. For one he could be cared for then charged for the service. The resources could be extracted somehow.  The IRS could be consulted on this. They are masters at extracting the fruit of other people’s labor from their greedy little hands. But for the same reasons that we accept premise 1 as a given, we, as a people, will never allow for any options that might make a mom feel bad.

For those who see the 2700 pages of bureaucratic-micro-managing-tentacle law bound up inside Obamacare as an actual effort to solve health insurance issues there’s probably no hope; likewise for those who blindly see it as compassion or others yet who see it as just another means to pick their “rich” neighbor’s pocket. But for many it is a travesty. For just as throwing expensive drugs, as opposed to searching out root issues, at a sick person’s symptoms is expensive in terms of that person’s health and dollar-bills; it’s also expensive in terms of liberty and dollar-bills when higher taxes and less freedom are seen as the only acceptable medicine for maintaining the health of a free republic.

When a people enjoy the luxury, for a time, of abandoning reality; choosing instead to drink deep the wine of make-believe worlds of personal peace, affluence, and resources that magically appear at their benevolent leader’s beckon and call, they become too drunk to think. But reality has a way of catching up. It always does. And given the bar tab, and the drunken stupor that the majority of Americans appear to have drank themselves into, when it catches up this time it’s going to run us all down.

Ozzie And Harriet, Not Real Life?

How many times have I heard the criticism that the show "Ozzie and Harriet", or “Leave It To Beaver” were not real life? In answer to this criticism the networks gave us “Married With Children”. Now there’s a show that should keep the I’m-failing-as-a-parent blues at bay. But what happens when a show actually reflects real life?

 Well apparently the makers of the movie “God Bless America” don’t want to live up to this standard. Judging from the trailer, it appears that this movie allows its makers, and viewers, to fantasize about how they wish they could respond to the trials of human relations.  One of those trials is some misbehavior in a theater.  So the characters respond the way they respond to all the other things that they don't like about their fellow humans.  They shoot them… right there in the theater.

But now, since such has become real life, they are going to remove that part.  Go figure. Don’t worry though. Since no one has gone on a shooting rampage in the park, or at a protest, lately there’s plenty of opportunity elsewhere in the film to vicariously live out the fantasies of simply blowing away those wedon’t like.

Posting At Winging It

I occasionally post at Winging It.  Today is one of those occasions.  You can find it linked below if you like.

Which Judge To Choose?

This video is worth watching.  That there are no Muslim songs that sing of being put to death by Christians for preaching the name of Muhammad speaks volumes... I think.

God...? Or Science Of The Gaps?

The phrase “God of the gaps” is based on the premise that scientific discovery is slowly eroding away any basis by which our lives and existence can be explained through an intelligent designer. These gaps in scientific understanding, so it is implied, are the only remaining vestiges of man’s ignorance in which notions like superstition and supernatural beliefs can find refuge, and from that refuge exert influences on culture. Noteworthy however is the confidence found in the perspective that sees the idea of god and gods as simply “gaps” in real knowledge. The confidence is placed in the belief that science can and will eventually leave no refuge for religion and man can finally rest, assured that the days of interpreting life’s meaning and events according to a subjective template of make believe gods and goblins is fading into man’s collective memory. This, of course, is short sighted of the modern day scientist turned pontificator for such a mindset is oblivious of the inability of the scientist to remain objective in his own pursuits of knowledge.

The reality will ever be that it will be impossible to explain away religion. Science has answered difficult questions and in so doing has afforded man a more comfortable life as well as the ability to control certain aspects of his existence. While such advancements do create an allure to those who dream of science’s eventual ability to dispel notions of a “higher power”, these leaps have in reality only succeeded in misleading those who have placed their hopes in science for such ends.

One way of explaining this is by perspective. While it’s true that the number 10 is ten times the number 1, this is not the only truth about ten that should be considered. There are other perspectives. If these numbers represent knowledge and scientific advancement, then given the amount of ignorance that a tenfold increase in knowledge would have displaced, some may be apt to become haughty. But others with not so narrow a gaze will still see 10 as a hundred times smaller than a thousand, which is also true. Moreover, this will always be the case because each advancement in knowledge still succeeds also in creating an exponential increase in questions. Conclusions drawn from these advancements, whether they be, “look at what we now know”, or “look at how much we now realize we don’t know”, will depend largely on a naturalistic verses theistic perspective. One begets confidence in Man, the other an awe of the Creator.

The naturalistic viewpoint that sees only a material world is really narrow and small, no matter how large the naturalists interprets his little cocoon to be. This leads to an unfounded confidence by man in man’s ability to answer all questions, even questions that science will never be able to answer. In the end his discoveries becomes a runway of sorts for an ill-fated flight into a different realm. Science simply cannot slip the surly bonds of materialism. Once the science that gave us electricity, the automobile and cell phones begins to venture into the realm of morality it immediately runs out of runway and crashes into the chasm of subjective preference. It does not fly, indeed it cannot, for if we are constructed of something so amoral as “chance and molecules” we are by nature only machines made of material; and material is amoral. The reality of this reality, of course, is nothing new. It was pointed out quite well millions of scientific discoveries ago. It goes like this:

“The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.”

Simply put, the person who sees the world solely through a materialistic lens is half blind. He can see gods as gap fillers, but he can’t see science as a gap maker. He can chide those with much wider horizons as narrow minded, but he can’t see the constrictions naturalism has put on his own views. Because of his unsubstantiated conclusions based on theories that morphed, more religiously than scientifically, into fact, his own gaps are not only larger than he realizes, he doesn’t seem capable of noticing them gaping before him. Like his “religious” counterpart, his view, though he vehemently denies it, is based more on hopes than science; the chief of these being that there is no eternal being to which he is accountable, and if there is, it is silent… and benevolent.

To peek past the thin veil of so called “science” is to apprehend the root issues that bellies the religious like credulity prevalent in this age. That root issue is good old-fashioned political power. The truth is that ultimate liberty is at stake when it comes to determining what is right and wrong, what is and is not acceptable behavior and what will and won’t be the ultimate reference point from which morality is measured. An open minded perspective therefore will reveal that the existence of a creator, to which all men are ultimately accountable, is simply unacceptable on a personal self-centered level; and there’s simply nothing scientific about that. Such an entity simply puts too much of a damper on chasing after the lusts of the flesh and so it therefore must be rejected on the best grounds available. It just so happens that right now, in this technologically advanced era, those grounds are in the realm of science; even if it has to be make-it-up-and-change-it-as-necessary-to-accommodate-real-discoveries-and-the-policial-template science.

With this in mind it might surprise many that some of the political shenanigans, like those taking place right now in response to an academic freedom law recently passed in Tennessee, that pass as science actually find more in common with the religions they malign and reject than they do science. Worse, like some of the beliefs held in some religions, many scientific theories believed to be true based on political necessity, have grown hard over time themselves. They, in a politically charged and institutionalized environment like the current American education system, become therefore unassailable in the minds of those who have put their faith in them. Their faith has then blinded them to the fact that their theories draw nourishment, not as much from empirical science as plain old political bullying.

It cannot be overcome that answers based on anything that cannot be proven or disproven by science is not science. It is religion. Such a religion, under the guise of science, begins its argument based on assumptions, one of which is that its belief in the nonexistence of a creator is rock solid. Or, on the flip side, it believes that the world as we interpret it with our five senses is all that is and so is all that can be known. Since there is no way of knowing ultimate truths in ways that satisfy both empirical science and the atheistic scientists, it therefore stands to reason that when these scientist accuse religions of filling gaps with the very thing they themselves are filling them, these scientist are simply projecting onto others their own methods and beliefs: the belief that others are filling gaps with nonsense. The accusation can just as easily be made that some of what passes for science today is nothing more than “science of the gaps”. A more opened minded approach might foster a more humble assessment of the limits of man’s knowledge by concluding that man can never know if he can know all that can be known. Perhaps then he can then realize that not only at some point, like it or not, he is operating on faith, but also that the transition has occured.

One of the more blatant examples of “science of the gaps” can be seen in the so called multiverse theory. This is a theory that basically suggests that the exquisite design of our universe… exists merely because there are an infinite number of universes and we just happen to be in one that appears to be designed. (1) Another theory along these lines is called “Punctuated equilibrium”. This is an evolutionary theory that exists, not as much as a result of research but rather because of the lack of evidence for evolution in the fossil record. As one person aptly put it, “it is like saying that elephants must run through our living room very fast because we never see them”.

These are but two theories that qualify as science, not on any scientific bases but because they reject a designer to whom the theorist might owe a reckoning. The case could be made that its only purpose is to bolster other theories that new discoveries are having the effect of weakening. The fact is that there is just too many ingredients in some “theories” that simply cannot withstand the rigors of real science but are nevertheless needed for political purposes and so remain.

Some of these theories morph into accepted fact over time by undergoing their own process of evolution and so develop more of a religious air about them because of their bases in faith. Political, as opposed to scientific, terms like “consensus” are then adopted in this evolutionary process to prop up theories since there is disagreement within the scientific community on the trustworthiness of the theories. When has anyone seen the word “consensus” used to support the idea of gravity, or the periodic table? The very word “consensus” comes through the door hauling baggage stuffed with politics. The fact is, if questions remain among those within the discipline, ignorance remains; and so should open minds. It should be remembered that ignorance in its own right is not a bad thing but a thing to be conquered; that is unless one has ordered his life around ignorance posing as fact. In that case it is the questions that must be defeated, and ignorance defended by all means.

So it comes about that antitheses to politically accepted scientific theories are rejected, not because of the scientific method, but rather according to a system of beliefs. Gone is the typical open minded curiosity that should be resident in the scientist. Belief, now posing as science, has morphed into religious fervor that has solidified theory into fact. This belief turns with its politically motivated self-righteous wrath against all who imply that the theory may not, after all, be true. Dr. Dave Pilbeam, speaking along these lines, lends some insight to this as he aptly wrote considering such mindsets:

“...perhaps generations of students of human evolution, including myself, have been flailing about in the dark; that our data base is too sparse, too slippery, for it to be able to mold our theories. Rather the theories are more statements about us and ideology than about the past. Paleoanthropology reveals more about how humans view themselves than it does about how humans came about. But that is heresy.” (2)

So how do humans view themselves? I would say, in a word: “Autonomous”. Yes, that is our ever and always goal by any means necessary, even if it means becoming slaves; a thing at which man has proven himself especially adept.

To be sure, and let me state, we are today the benefactors of scientific theory. But it is not anti-science to assert that there remains the necessity that science keeps itself corralled in the arena of science. If it is possible to test theories to render them true or false then all must be willing to accept that which is true, even the scientist. But when the ramifications of a theory are as profound as those that are based on theories that clearly exist for the purpose of dispensing with objective truth and an ultimate law-giver, let us not close our minds. Let us not muffle and oppress by outlawing opposing views without basis. In conclusion, while it is reasonable and logical that no humble person should deny that gaps exist in man’s knowledge concerning both our material and spiritual world; it is neither reasonable nor logical to throw stones at another man’s “gaps” when one’s own are made of glass.

1. From Eternity Matters

2. Conservapedia

On Karma

A friend of mine posted this on his blog "A Tiger's Got My Back" a few years ago. I've found myself thinking about it many times since so I thought I'd just post it on my blog for easy access.

Karma is ubiquitous in today's American culture. I hear this term bantered about on the radio, on TV and in conversations. For some reason that, quite honestly, escapes me, people actually believe in karma. I wish to show two reasons why the idea of karma is not viable.

Karma is the idea that moral actions are rewarded or punished through an impersonal system, whether it be some kind of law, or the universe itself, etc.* Let us note first of all that, in order to believe in good and bad actions as the inputs to the karmic system, one must hold to some standard of Good. After all, how can good behavior be rewarded--and more importantly, bad behavior be punished--if there is no standard on which to judge? Karma without the idea of the Good is like a capricious master, deciding your fate on a whim. This is hardly a fair scenario, and if karma isn't about fairness, then what is it about? But this idea of the Good must also be a universal standard, if the universe or a universal law is responsible for punishment and reward. Now, every good postmodernist knows that the first rule of postmodernism is "there are no moral absolutes." So the relativist who believes in karma (and I have yet to meet, see or hear a karma-espouser who is not a moral relativist) is faced with a contradiction--there both is and is not a universal standard of Good.

Now I myself do believe in a universal standard of Good. Should I therefore admit that karma is at least possible, given my worldview? Not quite. Karma runs into another issue when one recalls that it is believed to be an impersonal system: Put a good action into the system, get rewarded; put a bad action into the system, get punished. Here's the rub: How does an impersonal system differentiate between good and bad? Good and bad are moral categories, and only persons have an understanding of moral actions. If, for example, I were to use my computer to hack into Wal-Mart's customer database and steal all of their information, my computer would not stand in my way. It would not send me an email letting me know it disapproved of my actions because they were morally wrong. But were my wife to walk in while I was breaking into the database, she would immediately let me know that what I was doing was wrong. For her, the distinction would be immediate and obvious. For my computer, no distinction would ever be forthcoming. Karma is an impersonal agent, just like a computer. Therefore, karma is not able to know the difference between good and bad.

To reiterate, karma presupposes an absolute standard of Good, which contradicts postmodern moral theory, and it posits the existence of an impersonal agent that can differentiate between good and bad, which is another contradiction, since only persons understand this distinction. This leaves the believer in karma with an untenable assertion on two counts.

In other words, in postmodern America, karma simply cannot be.