Answers to Life’s Questions: Part 2

 by Phillip Ellis Jackson  

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More answers to commonly asked questions.

1. Why is it okay to mock, insult and/or denigrate Christians and the Christian faith, but not Muslims and their faith?

Because unlike the “Religion of Peace,” Christians don’t kill you because you eat pork, let women drive and vote, or draw an irreverent cartoon about their religion.

2.  Why can’t we all just embrace our inner child, live together in peace, and be at one with nature?

These three related questions deserve three related answers.

First, unless you’re Peter Pan, Paris Hilton with a billion dollar trust fund, or a liberal politician who is not held to any standard of competency or consistency by the mainstream media, we all have to grow up and actually live in the real world.  Children are not particularly well suited for making intelligent decisions involving complex issues, which is why we tend to give adults more rights and responsibilities than even the brightest first and second graders.  So stop trying to recapture the innocence of your youth and grow up, take responsibility for your own actions, and try to actually accomplish something with your life instead of wishing you were 10-years-old again.

Second, we can’t all live together in peace because there are people in this world who want to kill you.  There is nothing you can say or do to make them your friends, short of outright capitulation to every one of their demands.  Even then, if you pick the wrong group to surrender to, their enemies will kill you just the same for having signed up with the wrong team.  Like it or not, there are truly evil people in this world.  Wishing it was different will have no impact on your future safety, other than to make inevitable a very bad outcome that might otherwise be avoided if you just grew up enough to face the world like a man and fought for what you believed in.

Finally, man can never be at one with nature because (a) we are not plants, animals or rocks, (b) plants and rocks have no feelings or reasoning abilities, so we cannot possibly relate to them, (c) higher level animals have feelings but no true reasoning ability independent of instinct, and instinct is morally-neutral, so (d) man is superior to all other sentient and non-sentient life forms, as well as the rocks and minerals that make up the earth.  The only way to be at one with nature is to reduce yourself to nature’s level.  This will require others who choose to live and act like human beings to exercise dominion over such individuals much the same way we care for dogs, pigs, goats and horses, which kind of defeats the purpose in regressing to a more primitive state.

3. Why must man mine the earth’s minerals, cut down trees, dam rivers and drain wetlands, and pollute the earth as a byproduct of his existence?

Re-read the answers to question #2.

We need the earth’s resources to house and feed ourselves, to create tools and machines that improve our standard of living, or just help keep us alive period.  This is why God created the earth in the first place, and gave us a brain so we wouldn’t have to live our lives like wild animals.  Unless you believe that man is nothing special, and has no more right to exploit the earth’s resources than a slime mold or sea slug, you intuitively understand this. 

The earth is our supermarket and high school shop class all rolled into one.  It gives us the raw materials we need to shape new things for our well being and convenience.  Living is not the same thing as existing, which is why man invented air conditioners and hot water furnaces in addition to clothes, medicines, airplanes and color TV.  It’s also why books were invented, to both stimulate thought and pass on information to future generations so additional advances could be made for the betterment of humanity.

So, why is there a big fuss about man doing to the earth what he is supposed to do?  Unfortunately, the problem today is that most people won’t invest enough time thinking through an issue to arrive at a real conclusion, instead of simply mouthing the latest politically-correct, feel-good pabulum that passes for analytical thought.  Thus, any effort to reshape the earth is inherently wrong and must be stopped — of course, making sure that only the “rich” (which is defined as “not me”) pays for this effort, and that the consequences of such actions are shared by “everyone” (which again means “not me”).  So, drive (not walk) to your nearest electronics store to buy the latest Iphone — which is made up of minerals mined from the earth that are shaped by electricity provided by fossil fuels, nuclear power or dammed up rivers — so you can keep informed of Al Gore’s latest Save the Earth concert details, which you’ll watch on your 72-inch plasma HDTV if you can’t drive or fly to the concert itself.

All of which leads to a simple, but profound observation.  “It” isn’t necessarily “true” just because a whole bunch of people — who spend more time wondering what Paris Hilton is going to wear to her next court appearance than whether man or the sun is actually making the earth warmer — think that it’s true. This is the problem with consensus science, which is what the radical environmental movement relies on to convince us that we’re destroying the world.  It does not allow for any evidence that doesn’t fit the pre-formed consensus.  Therefore, CO2 is labeled as a global warming pollutant which must be reduced, until you stop and think for a moment that 6.5 billion people (not to mention domesticated and wild animals, as well as plants and trees) exhale/expend CO2 as a byproduct of the respiration process. 

All of which means that to save mother earth, we don’t need to get rid of our cars and factories.  We need to get rid of you.

4.  Why is the U.S. media not the best source to determine whether we are winning a war?

From the memoirs of General Giap (North Vietnam): "What we still don't understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi.  You had us on the ropes.  If you had pressed us a little harder, just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender!  It was the same at the battles of TET.  You defeated us!  We knew it, and we thought you knew it.  But we were elated to notice your media were definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields.  We were ready to surrender.  You had won!"   

5. Why are most college professors liberal?

Tempting as it is to say “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach,” the real answer goes much deeper than this.

Academia is the only paying job in America where it doesn’t matter whether you’re right or wrong about an issue.  As long as your university colleagues agree with what you say, you get tenure for life.  Your theories can be totally wrong, your predictions completely off base, your analysis of the world fundamentally flawed — and none of this makes a whit of difference.  As long as you maintain the proper politically correct positions on the major issues of the day, the keys to the faculty lounge will remain firmly in your possession.

Outside academia, things work a little differently.  Try this in the real world and the guy who hired you on Monday will have you escorted from the building by Friday, so another person can occupy your desk three days later.  This is because the “bottom line” in business isn’t measured by one’s feelings, or good intentions, or how much you hate Republicans, Conservatives, and especially George Bush.  You actually have to accomplish something to keep getting that paycheck.  And another article in the JLPC (Journal of Liberal Political Crap) doesn’t count as a true “accomplishment.”

For those who still doubt the validity of this observation, allow me to share a true story from my own family to illustrate academic practices and thought.  My daughter was in her freshman biology class during the 2004 elections, and had to suffer through the daily rantings of her Biology teacher who hated all Republicans and Conservatives. He would begin each class with an unsolicited diatribe about Bush, the war in Iraq, how Republicans liked to starve young children and take away old people's social security — the typical liberal claptrap you get from a Michael Moore wanabee.

After a few weeks of this my daughter and some other students began to talk back. They didn't appreciate him forcing his personal beliefs on a captive audience, particularly in a subject area that had nothing to do with history or politics. This only emboldened him however, and he became even more virulent in his denunciations of Republicans, Conservatives, and Bush.

Finally my daughter (who is not particularly "political," but who does pay some attention to politics) had enough. She spoke out loudly when he said that "the difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats rely on facts and not emotions to form their opinions, while Republicans don't have any sense of history or know any facts at all." 

Because of her strong reaction the teacher singled my daughter out and challenged her to a test to prove him wrong. He said he would select a key event in American political history, and if she could tell him the month and day it happened, she would be excused from class that day and receive an "A" in her science lab.

Now, not withstanding the fact that only a liberal Democrat would trade an "A" for the opportunity to make a political point instead of requiring her to actually earn the grade, it shows the vacuousness of his logic when he equates the possession of "facts" with the memorization of a specific date. What difference would it make if US independence was declared on July 3 instead of July 4? The "facts" of this critical event in American history have more to do with the content of the Declaration of Independence, and the colonists' socio-economic ties to England, than with memorizing a particular date on the calendar.

Anyway, my daughter figured that she had nothing to lose, so she accepted his challenge. He leaned back in his chair and smiled. "Tell me the month and day Richard Nixon resigned from office in 1974." Without hesitation she answered "August 9," picked up her books and began to leave the room.

Her teacher shouted to her to stop, and accused her of bluffing her response. My daughter stood her ground, and he quickly logged onto the Internet to search for the answer. There was silence in the room for about 30 seconds as this man (who interestingly didn't know the answer himself) stared quietly at the screen. Then, without lifting his head, he said in a subdued voice, "you may go."

The room erupted in applause, and my daughter left. Later here friends sought her out and asked her how she knew the answer. It was a complete coincidence that her teacher chose that question. What he didn't know was that her father (me), who has a degree in political science, has always joked that the only way he can remember his wedding anniversary is that it happened on the date Richard Nixon resigned from office.

Now, try this same thing in your real world job — and see how long it takes Human Resources to alert security that another individual needs to be escorted from the building.

Politics: General, Humor

Read more articles by Phillip Ellis Jackson