To Be or Not to Be a Vegetarian; That is the Question

 A lot of protein from meat makes cells break down faster I believe the story goes. So vegetarianism or fruititarianism (veggies and fruits) is actually good for one's health. I believe one could practically live on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because of the protein in peanuts (don't try this at home, it could be dangerous). Keep in mind though the lifestyles of hardship of moose for instance. Very cold winters, no nerves to feel cold in the legs, intelligence about equal to that of a cat or less. If killed with an adequate bullet the quality of their lives isn't terminated with cruelty. After all when they get old they become prey to predators and torn apart while alive, or they die of cancer without adequate veterinary care. A swift, merciful end of their lives might actually be regarded as a kindness, and honoring their life by eating their meat could be considered respectful, especially with barbecue sauce.

Domesticated animals raised for food might be a harsh experience for the animals. Perhaps not so much for cattle, since their lifecycle is so formulated and terminated. Eating dogs probably is wrong, except humans might be starving or poor and need the protein. I like wolves and don't feel even distant cousins of wolves should be raised to be eaten...that just seems wrong. If people don't have good morals themselves, they aren't much better than animals anyway and the law of nature is to eat anything that can be digested. That could be something recognized by Jesus Christ who said it was ok to eat all kinds of meat. The criterion of humanity is laden with original sin, probably the physical incarnation in a temporal, thermodynamic context is the correction, and everyone in it is doomed if they aren't personally saved. So go ahead and eat meat...it's kind of a lifetime last supper for the condemned and makes no difference on their eternal fate.

Theodicy and Free Will; Interesting Relationships to Consider

...It is fascinating material to think about; the relationships of free will, the problem of evil and God being responsible for it or not etc. Augustine believed evil is somewhat phenomenal and a result of mankind falling away from a perfectly-in-accord with the goodness of God and his commands lifestyle of human founders Adamas and Eve. So evil is somewhat comparable to a crumbling mountain that resulted from flicking a bic on some short fuse to explosives buried throughout the stone after being warned not to and then philosophically wondering if God is to blame for injuries and deaths resulting from the blasted rock.

A little Augustinian theodicy, some Calvinist predestination; it seems to work out well enough. People do tend to extrapolate about God's relationship logically to responsibility for created elements of the Universe, upon human logic and knowledge that aren't likely to be better than it is on cosmology. The issues of salvation through grace and election or works, or infusion first and then works and then salvation, are related to positions on theodicy. It isn't known of course, if due to predestination and lack of actual free will, if God has a purpose and salutary destiny even for those condemned, or if there is partial free will there can't be some kind of hidden future parole for original and subsequent sin, and hell.

The question of how can God create a Universe with less than what contingent sentient beings in it consider optimal content can be the subject of much thought. Yet is is all theologically interesting and worth considering. Obviously loyalty of 'laity' to church dogma even to the point of violence in the past; persecutions and such are problems in a way separable from the theological investigations in themselves. One must prefer sound theological doctrines drawn from correct hermeneutics to error, so there is a reason for denouncing select, phenomenal false doctrines that arise. Yet schisms and a profusion of varieties of hermeneutics and dogmatics aren't new or too likely to stop. There are important issues such as the problem of homsexual marriage that have occurred that probably stimulate more schism and apostasy than researches into God being responsible for what he creates that humans regard as evil. Especially if evil becomes church doctrine, the question of free will returns.

For Sect. Kissinger was an extraordinary Diplomat

  With the passing of Henry Kissinger the United States has lost its foremost diplomat who had a strong vision for America’s role in the world. He died the 29th of November, 2023. A pragmatist who wrote a thesis on von Metternich in graduate school, the nation’s former National Security Adviser and Sect. Of State during the end of the Vietnam War and post-war period was able to break the diplomatic freeze with Communist China and its leader Chairman Mao Zedong and get the ball rolling on transforming China into a form of capitalist rather than state authoritarian economy.

Former Sect Kissinger was no stranger to controversy; even in his last couple of years he took a stand in opposition to America’s rash policy of hostility toward Russia and military support for Ukraine. With a doctorate in history he well understood Russia’s historical claims on Ukraine and the need to keep Russia in the pro-western camp regarding security, economics and environment. Henry Kissinger was instrumental in getting SALT talks to limit nuclear weapons going with the former Soviet Union. That was in effect was the earliest opening for detente.

Kissinger living to the age of 100 experienced the Second World War as a soldier in 1945 and  was stationed in Germany where he learned first-hand of the disaster that war is. He understood the need for security and in striking careful rational balances in international relations. Security needs to occur with historical precedence, equal justice, economic security and political freedom for the masses.  the need for security and in striking careful rational balances in international relations. Security needs to occur with historical precedence, equal justice, economic security and political freedom for the masses.

If a Rental Time Travel Machine were Affordable...

 I would go to a time before time existed, when there were no laws of physics to pass the time considering how to avoid, when time travel traffic cops didn't need to sort out billions of time travelling machines crowding no-space and one could get a good view of the creation of time easily finding a parking spot at the edge to watch it.

Questions, Answers and Philosophy?

 Philosophy may provide quite a bit of knowledge that one hadn't had before. For me that is a good thing. If reading history one likes to discover new areas that one doesn't know much about, and philosophy has similar content to learn. One feels pretty good for example, after learning classical logic before moving on to symbolic logic and learning a system or three. With more knowledge one may ask better questions, or invent new ideas that seem worthwhile and can make commonly held opinions seem quite inadequate or even wrong. Philosophy in the modern world may be a learning tool at end, if one exhausts most primary content, for then one may realize or develop the opinion that the sole meaningful point in life is that of one's relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ and the hereafter that does eventually follow. In the meantime one tries to make the world a better place so far as possible, for others as well as oneself. Then one encounters questions like 'is it really impossible to make the world much better or just?' etc.

A Definition of What Morality Is

Morality is a description of the way people and society actually conduct themselves. Obviously that can vary or flux. Some patterns are recurrent, some behaviors are acceptable and others receive social reproof or approbation.

Some people have made formal systems of morality, in some cases moral behavior has historical precedent. If one has moral duties, believing one has been commanded by God to behave in a particular way, those divine commands may provide a moral system or structure.

Not only is behavior a source of moral description; qualitative and quantitative analysis, so is the way moral behavior is described and the situations in which it is applied subject to variability. In the ante-bellum south the excuse for slavery (or one excuse) was that Negroes were not human and therefore they could not be harmed by being enslaved. 

Society may not be able to recognize select situations as occasions for moral decision. Pejorative values (majority values) are often use-truth values wherein white is called black when it is convenient for the power class interest to have that value.

Philosophy and the Bible

 I believe the history of philosophy is substantial and comparatively few have even read most of the primary works. That being said fields like the philosophy of logic and analytic philosophy are worthwhile yet even fewer read that. Philosophy is kind of like an accoutrement to the last supper really. Understanding the world a little better isn’t such a bad thing.

The New Testament does follow chronologically (appx 480 to 540 years after) the Old yet it isn’t a derivative. The N.T. are largely letters written by disciples of Jesus Christ, and apostles like Luke and Paul. The O.T. has a fascinating history going to the foundation of the Hebrew language probably invented by Moses circa 17th-16th century B.C. Moses had access to Hebrew oral traditions dating perhaps to Abraham circa 2000 BC. The material was passed on to David who brought all of scripture together and probably in the court of Solomon or Rehoboam a comprehensive work of it was assembled that has changed very little the past 3000 years. There were some well known redactions from the J and priestly writers of the OT. 

https://www.lulu.com/shop/garrison-clifford-gibson/a-commentary-on-berkhofs-intro-to-the-new-testament/ebook/product-1qn8ydk5.html?q=A+Commentary+on+Berkhof%27s+Intro+to+the+New+Testament&page=1&pageSize=4 free ebook

The New Testament was written in Greek in the first century, yet that is not the Torah aka Pentateuch-the first five books of the Old Testament. That was originally written in Hebrew except for Daniel and Ezra in Aramaic . The New Testament is different from the Old. The New Testament was written in the first century A.D., while the last book of the Old Testament- Malachi- was written in 430 B.C. The Septuagint translation into Koine Greek occurred in the 3rd century B.C. Septuagint means ’70’ in Greek. There were 72 scholars with six from each Israeli tribe that made the translation.