LA Lakers Are No Longer World Champions

The Dallas Mavoricks defeated the LA Lakers 122 to 86, or a whopping 36 point margin in today’s game four in Dallas aired on ABC. We were lucky to get coverage for a round two game. Had the Lakers taken it to seven perhaps they would also have shown that game on TV that would have been next Sunday. Dallas was fantastic in the record number of three point shots during the game. The Marvoricks were ahead 24 points at half time. It’s sad to see the Laker’s season end six weeks early this year but they will have a long off season to think about things. This was Phil Jackson’s last game as Laker coach and Wednesday was his last game at Staples Center. There was an unpleasant incident near the end of the game. I don’t know why the Lakers fell apart since about the first of April after I was bragging about their performance on one of my postings then.

This morning I got coffee from Dana. As I was walking down there I was thinking about turning on the Jesus Christ show thinking “He can’t disagree with me in EVERY program, can he?” I got coffee from Dana and turned on KFI. Savedra was talking about bad mothers and the need for everyone to forgive them. I thought it was a rather unfitting remark for the day, which is to honor mothers. As you know Neil is the one who likes to peg people as “good people” and “bad people” pretty quickly- - and once he’s pegged you he expects you to stay in your box. Neil is also famous for making the remark “People don’t change”. How odd it was, then, when he said “Forgiveness is not for the one who wronged you but for you”. And he went on to speak of the cancer of bitterness and how mentally unhealthy it was. In the first place in the vast majority of cases lack of forgiveness hurts the one NOT forgiven. I know this is true in my case. I’d love to go around with a wish list and say to various people “You will forget this, and this, and this ever happened. I want you to erase it from your very brain cells”. But forgiveness done under duress is meaningless. That this host of “The Jesus Christ Show” would say that forgiveness is for the benefit of the person doing forgiving seems to highlight another slogan of Calvary Chapel Christianity of “It’s all about Me”. Jesus seems to approach every situation expecting all of his callers to be as self obsessed as he is. Don’t come to him with tales about the missionary running out of gas. He doesn’t want to hear it. The only time failure to forgive would hurt the one asked to do the forgiving is if you have some sort of gun to their head, physically or emotionally. For instance if you have someone by the balls and control every aspect of their lives, or at least the key ones, then the victim has no choice. It takes no “grace” for Nicole to say to Elvis Di Mira “You know I forgive you for having an affair with my sister. In fact I’m not even going to bring THAT up. Instead I’m going to blackmail you into staying married to me forever- - so you better start smiling and putting on an act right now”. But the absurdity of “Jesus’” words can be seen if you die and God accuses you. Can you say to God “I demand you forgive me?” or “You know, not forgiving me will only hurt you”. God will laugh in your face- - and Jesus of K F I fucking well knows that. Try that with the phone company when you’re three months behind on your bill”. Besides this- - to judge someone because they will not forgive their worse enemies who oppress them- - is in itself to comit a sin under Christianity. You don’t stick your nose in things that are absolutely none of your concern.

We all have questions about Bin Laden and “What did Pakistan know, and when did they know it. I know this. If I’ve overdue on paying a parking ticket, the government will come after me. They will hunt me down. Bin Laden is guilty of a lot more than a parking ticket but to this day I do not know whether Pakistan was on the side of our government in capturing him. One would have expected that Obama and the leader of Pakistan might pose together for a picture or something. They say George Bush didn’t o to ground zero because Republicans were afraid someone might snap a photograph of the two of them together. We were told that Al Qaeda had plans to launch nuclear bombs in the event of Bin Laden’s death. Where are they even going to get a Nuke from, Iran? They don’t have one, at least yet. That leaves Pakistan. I can’t believe at the very hub of information for Al Qaeda there is nothing more ambitious than blowing up a train on a bridge on the 9 – 11 anniversary. How many people would get killed that way- - given the steep drop of Am-track ridership these days? Al Qaeda is pretty much washed up as an organization. Some Christian group said something awful would happen on May 22^nd, 2011. “How’s that one working out for you?” Strange as it seems we may well be in an era of reduced terrorism threats. We should be happy about this.

You know the President tells us all that America should strive for academic excellence. And yet the easiest way to do this would be to get rid of teacher tenure laws, which make it virtually impossible to fire an incompetent teacher. Students themselves know when the teacher isn’t bringing his A game to the classroom. Like that Sociology class I took in the summer of 1971. The teacher announced “This session we’re going to keep the academic bull down to a minimum. I was disappointed to hear that. I came there to learn – not to get a free grade. He spent time talking about spending his youth in a Japanese internment camp. And we’ve all been in those math classes where a few idiots in class don’t get it, and the teacher has to slow down the whole class to accommodate them. Or there is the Bible study leader that decides “I feel led by God to have a prayer session this week”, which is code for “I didn’t plan a lesson” and it’s usually a sign of the soon demise of the group. And then we have Dr. Levy. I thought we were going to make a major study of existentialism but that’s just another thing Dr. Levy got bored with, so we are again doing “creative aging”, which we are all bored with. I think Joe used the term “sloppy seconds” for Dr. Levy who teaches other classes, but somehow we here don’t benefit from the vast knowledge he supposedly has. Rush Limbaugh is right agout one thing in that a good teacher “pushes” his students. A good academic environment is also one that fosters competition. It’s the American way. Unfortunately- - there are a lot of “life’s lessons” American youth today don’t know.

Richard and Dana and I were talking about Christianity on the patio just now. The sheer number of separate, independent reasons NOT to believe in Christianity is simply staggering. Let’s try and enumerate them quickly. (1) I believe the doctrine of Blood Atonement is an immoral doctrine going out the gate. This is a highly primitive doctrine that believes a Deity can be "fooled" by seeing the blood of an innocent thus "covering" the sin of the individual. (2) There are at least sixteen internal credibility conflicts in the Bible itself whether the resurrection occurred as reported and this doesn't include the contradiction between "Will you at this time set up your Kingdom?" after the resurrection and Jesus going into lengthly detail about the church age the previous Tuesday evening - -warning them their struggle was only beginning. (3) Marcion was an anti-semite and his beliefs pervade the new testament despite the fact he was declared a heretic. He had the first New Testament Cannon, and ALL of his books were kept. (4) Christianity was heavily influenced by Gnosticism. They like Buddha believed in having an “experience” where you come to “know” God, rather than objective reality. By the way angels are somewhat denigrated in the New Testament. They were ignorant of Christ’s coming. And St. Paul referred to Satan and Demons as “ruling the powers of the Air” and I think “Air” is the same word used for “Spirit”. Paul went so far to say that even if "an angel out of heaven" preached a different Gospel from the one he just told you, "let him be acursed". (5) There is no real evidence that any first testament writer even knew of Jesus, let alone a whole organization of Christian churches that apanned the Medeteranian Sea. Nazareth does not appear on first century Roman maps, I'm told. (6) Other myths were paramount including the historic figure Appalonius of Tyanus, who died around AD 110. Also Mithraism was prominent in Roman times evolving into the religion of Sol Invictus or Unconquered Sun. By the way the Angels at the Christmas story (alias ancient Persian myth) seem to contradict other scripture about the angels “not knowing”. Or perhaps the Christmas story in Luke hadn’t been written yet. (7) Any writing prior to Justin Martyr around 140 to 160 AD seems to be mainly myth rather than actual history. The first “historic evidence” of the Gospels is probably around AD 150. Justin Martyr lived till AD 165 and Tatian, a student of Justin, was the first to speak of the then novel idea of their being Four Gospels. (8) None of the atrocities of Nero or Domecian or Caligula are even mentioned. Nero is mentioned in a favorable light in the Bible as someone who seems to have given St. Paul from those persecuting Jews, so he was free to write and have visitors come and go. (9) Evidence I dug up in one of my first blogs ever suggests that the “Historic Jesus” was an “Egyptian” referred to in Acts, who wanted to tear down the temple and was regarded as insane by Pontious Pilate. Other version have his “escaping” execution and by law those guarding him had to be crucified in his place on November 24^th 29 AD during a partial solar eclipse. The man’s name was “Crestus” and he surfaces in 50 AD as a living person whose organization was expelled in Rome by Emperor Claudius, the only Roman Emperor anything bad is said about. Egyptian tradition had “Jesus” or whoever living on till at least 50 AD. DO THE MATH Let’s say each of these propositions has only twenty percent “validity” as a reason. If you consider all nine of them you get 13.42% likelihood that Christianity is a worthy religion. And I am being REALLY generous with the eighty percent. No enlightened Las Vegas gambler would take a gamble on the historic and moral veracity of Christianity. Why are You so in love with it?

People should at least Glance at this Evidence-