I took a two-week break from the world, or at least tried to. It was no use. Regardless of where we were, man’s horrific intent and bad news encroached on our attempted serenity.

I keep thinking about the analogy of a chimpanzee with a loaded machine gun sitting on a fallen jungle tree with an empty bottle of vodka at its feet.

What could possibly go wrong?

Now, replace the chimp with Iran, the machine gun with a nuclear weapon, $6 Billion, and an empty bottle of Islamic-instilled antisemitic & hatred… this picture becomes the disaster in Israel.

I once heard some of these inhabitants described as the result of space-men breeding with lower-form primates… Apparently, some escaped the labs, and what we have today is the culmination of millennia of religious indoctrination.

A literal translation in Arabic, Islam means peace;” it’s said to be “the way of peace.”

All evidence to the contrary.

In truth, Islam means “unconditional submission” to Allah.

If I had studied psychology instead of engineering, I might discern what transforms people into monsters. The Media Industrial Complex reports that 80% of the Israeli bodies recovered show signs of torture – even the children. A special kind of wickedness inspires torture, but the evil that stimulates men to hurt children is incomprehensible and reprehensible. I used men here since women are persona non grata in Islamic society and do not participate in these atrocities.

The Western world has vastly different views on everything. We hold our children sacred. It may seem that way, but we have a peculiar way of showing our resolve. At least, that’s what we want everyone to believe. Merka’s main claim to fame is duplicity. Say one thing, then do the opposite.

Our borders are secure and closed, yet over 17 million people have arrived in the past few years. We say secure and closed, but the evidence indicates otherwise: classic duplicity.

Merka has no idea who’s in that burgeoning throng of 17 million geographically disenfranchised visitors. Are they interested in being good Merkans or harboring millennia of religious indoctrination intent on bringing down the Great Satan from within? Are they here to contribute or destroy? So far, the Department of Hapless Security (DHS) has identified 227 on the terror watch list. I would imagine there are easily five times that already here.

Let’s consider the child sex trade as an example. If our children are indeed sacred, how can we allow 85,000 illegal immigrant children to be lost in the system? Maybe the child sex trade isn’t a mainstream problem as the Media Industrial Complex suggests, but it exists. According to the omniscient internet, only 5% of men and an undetermined number of women fantasize about sex with children.

So, once again, the numbers don’t make sense unless these children are indentured servants working as chicken flickers, box stackers, or farmhands until their debt is paid. You’d think someone would know where they are, especially since children are our future. This is more classic duplicity… we care about the children, but it’s OK to misplace 85,000 kids from poor countries. Seriously?

We redefine words with legal mumbo-jumbo to exclude and permit specific horrific acts. Take abortion, for example. It’s necessary to define when life begins to allow murder. By stretching this rationale to the limits, I submit that we can define life’s beginning to permit retroactive abortions up to age 18 and maybe further to empty the prisons. You see, the end justifies the means…

China Joey released $6 Billion of Iraquistans money and five terrorist prisoners in exchange for five Merkans.

What could possibly go wrong?

What happened to our policy of NOT negotiating with terrorists or paying ransom for hostages? This moronic act put a Billion Dollar price tag on every Merkan.

At a boy, China Joey… Let’s Go Brandon!!!

I do not infer that Israel is blameless in this little soiree’. It takes two to tango, and the music has been blasting in that part of the world from the beginning. The last peace in the region was over 4500 years ago. In fact, the world has been at war for the past 300,000 years – basically, when homo sapiens emerged on the scene.

Israel emerged with the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1917 and became a country in 1947 when Britain took over Palestine, and it has been a point of contention ever since. Israel makes concessions, but it’s never enough and never will be. Now that the land is valuable and fertile, everyone wants it. Here’s another Western export – something for nothing. We call it welfare.

The blow-by-blow descriptions we enjoy courtesy of the voyeuristic Media Industrial Complex are nothing new. Homo Sapiens have always been interested in bloodshed and butchery. We’ve been perfecting the art of war for over 300,000 years, becoming quite efficient and skilled at it. One of China Joey’s progenitors, Sun Tzu, wrote a book about it in the 5th century BCE.

Our ancestors had to read about it or hear the tales from traveling minstrels. Today, it’s just slammed into your psyche at lightspeed from a world away. God, I can’t wait until we colonize another planet. Hopefully, there may be a slight delay in the live feed, giving us a chance to digest the carnage. And as hard as I try, I cannot escape the chyrons – text-based graphic overlays displayed at the bottom of a screen, like closed captioning or crawling info during a newscast – and news pop-ups on every screen in view.

I’ve been considering the topic of evil’s origin. I want to offer an opinion about this topic.

My opinion will be controversial for many of you. My intent is not to offend, proselytize, convert, dissuade, or disparage anyone’s faith or religious choice. That’s not who I am. I want to offer an alternative view to your indoctrination.

I’m making the point that everything we do involves choice. It is not oversimplification, distortion, or exaggeration. Everything we do requires us to choose. Everything! OK… Almost everything. There are autonomic impulses like breathing and your heartbeat, but everything else is a choice.

I’m convinced there is a God – A Great Spirit – A Supreme Being regardless of the name or what you choose to call it. This entity, like the universe, has always existed. We recognized it, but because of our limited awareness, we limited God to live within the confines of our imagination. We create boundaries and restrictions for the concept of this image we created. In this case, we invented God to fill a void and to fit within our limited and finite understanding.

Since we created a concept of God, He conforms to our image and limited comprehension of the infinite possibilities of the universe.

We see the world based on cause-and-effect relationships: for every good, there is a corresponding bad, et cetera. We believe in balance – everything must balance. Because God is benevolent – perfectly good, there must be malevolence – perfect evil, to balance the equation. We created The Devil, the embodiment of all that is evil, to balance God’s goodness.

The result: our world is ethically and morally in harmony. The equation is balanced. But… would a perfect God allow illness or suffering or even death?

The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Paradise explains the idea of choice to our limited comprehension. Initially, everything was perfect, and there were a few simple laws. One of these laws forbade Adam and Eve from the knowledge of good and evil – knowing the difference. God gave them a choice, the same choice he allows all of us. We can choose for ourselves.

At least, that is how we comprehend the complexity of this situation.

You know how this story ended.

I believe that when Adam and Eve decided to disobey God, and by choice, they needed an excuse for their decision and called it the serpent, Devil, or whatever it was they made. But it was an excuse for their decision, and we have been stuck with it ever since. It explains the need to balance this equation. Adam and Eve broke the law and tried to blame someone else for their choice.

Did Adam and Eve really exist, or is this a parable or a morality lesson? That’s not important. The fundamental importance is that we’ve used this same excuse for millennia to excuse decisions and willful disobedience. Flip Willson’s character Geraldine used to say, “The Devil made me do it…” but in fact, it was a conscious decision.

Many accept the Bible as the inspired word of God. I agree that those who wrote this fantastic compilation of wisdom were inspired, as were the lessons they related. These lessons chronicle every critical message and warning from the beginning of man’s understanding. It is a book to teach readers these lessons in a form that they could absorb. They are the stories that instruct and guide us through life.

I do not take the Bible literally; I see it as symbolic and metaphorical. The texts are instructive stories. Consider the circumstances and level of education when the Bible was written. The people of those times were farmers, shepherds, and artisans but were poorly educated. Few people could read. Most of the world’s history was recounted orally – word of mouth. Those who could read were a tiny percentage of the population. Most of these people relied on the aristocracy and clergy to tell them the stories.

Why would anyone change the message to favor their agenda?

We all know how well that worked.

The role of religion or Belief systems in our lives is, and always will be, a tool to control behavior. When men learned that people believed in the existence of God, they began to manipulate these stories and faith, interpreting them to serve their purposes.

The premise is based on reward and punishment: the carrot and the stick.

Lead a good life and go to heaven – the reward.

Lead a bad life – sin – and be condemned to Hell for eternity – the punishment.

Three of the Ten Commandments stand out for me: Two are written, and the last is by George Carlin.

1. You shall have no other gods before me.

2. (#6) You shall not kill.

3. (Carlin) You shall keep your religion to yourself.

#1 – Other gods… Anything that takes your attention from the Almighty God – is another god. If you focus on the Great Spirit, you will make the correct choice and live in harmony. If your attention is on another god, your choice will reflect your distraction. Stealing, adultery, murder, lying, dishonoring parents, coveting, and cursing all represent other gods, so if you choose to do these things, you have another god, breaking the first commandment. Break one, you break them all… it’s that simple and that intricate.

#2 – Killing… It’s difficult to rationalize, but most wars are fought for gods or with god on your side, making it a righteous cause.

If both sides contend that god is on their side – who does god favor… the winner? He must have liked them better since they won. But god was on the other side, too. Why did they lose? Did god abandon them, or did god not show up?

Maybe god was rooting for the other side… what kind is a god this? Is this loss a punishment? Did we do something wrong? Didn’t we sacrifice enough virgins?

If killing is wrong, why is the Bible so replete with it?

This example is a silly discussion for the sake of making my point. Taking a life is wrong – no matter whose name it’s done in or the reason. Taking the most precious thing in this universe is wrong. Some religions consider it inappropriate to kill a bug – because all life is sacred. So, when you think of how little we value life, you can see the point of this commandment and why some people fight for the life of an unborn child. More Western duplicity or convenience or expedience? Maybe it’s all three!

#3 – Keep your religion to yourself. Several parables and teachings in the Bible and other books deal with this, but the most salient deals with a candle and a bushel. It speaks about being a shining light to the world. One does not light a candle and place it under a cover; you put it on a stand so that all might benefit from its light.

Does a candle badger people, preach to them, beat them with the Bible or other text, or insist they are damned for eternity for not believing? No, it is a beacon that draws people to itself so they might also see. If your life is a shining example, people will want to know more about you, your beliefs, and why. They will make the choice; you can’t do it for them.

Do you believe that you are or will be held accountable for your decisions? Do your good deeds expunge bad choices? Is this tit for tat? Is someone keeping score” Or is the idea to lead the best life possible?

In Matthew 22, The Disciples were talking with Jesus “… and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He [Jesus] said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

“Mankind owns the evil we do. It’s not God’s wrath or punishment. We do this to each other, not in god’s name, or God’s name, but in our own. We can invent causes or rationalize the situation and claim that the other guy hit me first or that our response was proportional, but remember that “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” ~ Gandhi

October 19, 2023

~ The Author ~
Charles R. Dickens was born in 1951, is a veteran of the Vietnam war, for which he volunteered, and the great-great grandson of the noted author, whose name he shares.

He is a fiercely proud American, who still believes this is the greatest country on the planet, with which we’ve lost control and certainly our direction. He grew up in moderate financial surrounding; we’re not rich by any stretch, but didn’t go hungry – his incredibly hard working father saw to that. As most from that era, he learned about life from his father, whose story would take too long to tell, other than to say that, he is also a fiercely proud American; a WWII and Korean war, veteran Marine.

In addition, Charlie is a retired blues guitar and vocalist – a musician. This was his therapy career. Nothing brings him as much joy as playing music, and he wishes that he could make a living at it… but alas… life goes on!