First, consider this Bible reference:
Luke 9:49-50
“Master,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us.”
“Do not stop him,” Jesus said, “for whoever is not against you is for you.”
That seems like an absolute proclamation. Jesus certainly did not say, “Whoever preaches my doctrines exactly according to some standard made long ago is for you.”
This is a direct sequel to Corruption and Betrayal in a WoW Guild.
In 2012, I and Stormchick started the guild Stormchasers in World of Warcraft. Then the following year, Stormchick’s owner left the game and turned the guild over to me as Bichorak. I worked very hard over several years to build it up until it had hundreds of characters and had gained many guild achievements. One of the members that joined it later was named Rolltowin, a monk. He also worked very hard to help me and the others, so I generously rewarded him with promotions, until finally he was a high-ranking officer second only to me in authority over the guild. But it seems that was not enough for him. Not content to offer me helpful advice and suggestions to improve the guild, he often issued harsh personal criticism of my leadership decisions. Over time, these attacks eroded my self-confidence, and also by the fall of 2015 my work schedule was actually hindering my ability to manage the guild properly. Of course, the guild HAD grown too big for one person to handle, hence my appointing officers like Rolltowin and several others. I finally decided I needed a break from handling the guild so much, so I agreed to make Rolltowin the new guild master. I instead became HIS second in command.
Later, I quit the real life job I had been doing, but because things seemed to be going smoothly with the guild under Rolltowin’s leadership, I was content to leave him in charge. But everyone still knew I was a co-founder and earlier leader of the guild. Rolltowin seemed to resent that, because he continued to criticize me on many occasions whenever I did something he did not like, claiming I was breaking guild rules and abusing my power. But in fact he often did not clarify rules when he made them and so I was caught off guard when I did things the way I was used to doing them when I was guild leader. It was very frustrating!
Things came to a head on August 30 of this year, the same day the new WoW expansion Legion was launched. Nerevar, another officer of Stormchasers, abruptly left the guild saying he wanted to join some friends in another guild. Rolltowin was not online at the time, but I was, so in his absence, I did two things I thought would be done normally:
I assumed that if Rolltowin did not agree with my actions, he would simply countermand them later and tell us to wait. Instead, when he came online later he actually DEMOTED me from my officer status and made an issue of that in open guild chat, much to my shock and anger. He did allow the officer election to go forward, however.
It was incomprehensible to me that I as a co-founder and former guild master would be treated so badly by someone I considered a friend and loyal to the guild. After a final discussion with Rolltowin in which he stated that my demotion might be only temporary, but refused to clarify under what conditions I would regain my officer status, I concluded that he actually had no intention whatsoever of restoring that status and really wanted me out of the guild completely. So on September 14, I left Stormchasers and pulled all my alts from it too.Then I, along with others from Stormchasers and some strangers, formed a new guild, originally named Freedom Raiders but now titled Guardians of Lore.
After another member of Stormchasers moved from that guild to my new one, Rolltowin attacked me over it. I then put him on ignore.
A couple of nights later, Rolltowin denounced me in my former guild, proving he was NOT ignoring me at all and was out to ruin me.
I admit that I am far from perfect and have made some mistakes, but it seems to me the biggest mistake I ever made was listening to Rolltowin so much and allowing him to take over Stormchasers. From now on, I will never allow someone to take over a guild of mine unless I know I am leaving WoW completely, just as Stormchick did for me. I was naive and was taken advantage of and now I know better! If people do not like my leadership, they can just leave and form their own guild! I have done that twice so far in my WoW career and it is not as hard as it might seem at first glace.
Read this horrible story:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kentucky-gov-matt-bevin-says-bloodshed-might-be-165058821.html
Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin says bloodshed may be needed to protect conservatism
September 13, 2016Bevin speaks at a picnic on Aug. 6, in Fancy Farm Ky. (Photo: Timothy D. Easley/AP)Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said conservatives may need to turn to physical violence in order to protect the United States against contemporary liberalism.
The Republican governor put forth the controversial suggestion after speaking of the “degradation of society” during an impassioned, 15-minute speech at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. The provocative comments started to gain national attention at the start of this week.
“America is worth fighting for ideologically. I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we don’t have to do it physically. But that may, in fact, be the case,” he told the crowd.
Bevin suggested that if Democrat Hillary Clinton were elected president, she would set the nation on a dangerous course that might require bloodshed to correct. He told the audience that the “candle” of liberty might go out “on our watch.”
To hammer home his point, he paraphrased a famous quote from Founding Father Thomas Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
“Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children,” he said. “It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood that is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something that we, through our apathy and our indifference, have given away. Don’t let it happen.”
Bevin encouraged young conservatives to speak up, be bold, sound the alarm and wake up others. He told the conference attendees to not keep what they’ve learned from speakers and their books to themselves.
According to Bevin, too many people these days are following the example of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who infamously tried to appease Adolf Hitler and promised “peace for our time,” as opposed to his successor, Winston Churchill, who is widely celebrated for understanding and combating the threat of Nazism.
He said liberals mock conservatives into silence by accusing them of being intolerant when they speak their minds. He lamented, for instance, that many conservatives have remained silent concerning “the atrocity of abortion.”
“It’s a slippery slope. First we’re killing children. Then it’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ Now it’s this gender-bending kind of ‘don’t ask, don’t be a bigot, don’t be unreasonable, don’t be unenlightened, heaven forbid, just keep your mouth shut.’”
On Friday, at a banquet in Washington, D.C., Bevin was awarded the Distinguished Christian Statesman Award from the D. James Kennedy Center for Christian Statesmanship, a ministry of Evangelism Explosion International.
Bevin’s office has not responded to a request for comment from Yahoo News, but he did post a statement on Twitter encouraging people to listen to his comments in their entirety. He suggested that the mention of bloodshed in his remarks was a reference to military sacrifice and that “any intelligent person will easily understand the message” if they listen to the speech.
And some might call me intolerant for saying there should be no place for conservatism in our governments? This is why! If we do not destroy them, it is increasingly clear that they will destroy us, just as they tried to do 150 years ago during the American Civil War! It was indeed conservatives who led the southern states to secede from the union to preserve the institution of slavery, resulting in vast numbers of unnecessary deaths! And what motivated slavery in the USA? Racism. Indeed, racism and fascism are the actual ideological roots of modern American conservatism, not liberty and justice for all. Gov. Bevin is not fighting for America at all, nor is he asking his bigoted followers to do so, but to fight for the society he lives in to continue to be white dominated forever. BTW, need I mention that Thomas Jefferson was himself a southern slaveowner?
But no, I do not want conservatives like Bevin to be silent at all. The more those idiots rant, the more liberals like me can expose and react to their hateful rhetoric and discredit it at every turn.That’s what free speech and freedom of the press is all about.
Ever heard of the “Liberal Redneck”? He is a comedian who has recently begun making political statements through the New York Daily News and on YouTube. He talks with an accent that makes him sound at first like a typical southern white man…..but his messages are very different!
This was the very first video of his I saw:
Satire in general is often amusing, but pairing it with serious issues like this is….HILARIOUS! Sometimes the best way to respond to absurdities is with ridicule.
Such as…..
The first video mentioned suicide rates among veterans. This video expands on that point:
A video released this month strikes directly at the “war on drugs” we have been fighting constantly since the 1970s.
Below that video is a link to a petition that I will reproduce here:
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/please-do-not-make-kratom-schedule-i-substance
Here’s one more from him:
I hope he keeps it up for years to come!
One of the most powerful appeals of dogmatic God-centered religions like Christianity can be summed up perfectly in this song by Steven Curtis Chapman that was all over Christian radio back when I was a Christian. Even now, it is beautiful to me.
Sometimes His eyes were gentle
And filled with laughter,
And sometimes they cried;
Sometimes there was a fire
Of holy anger,
In Jesus eyes.
But the eyes that saw hope in the hopeless,
That saw through the fault to the need,
Are the same eyes that look down from heaven
Into the deepest part of you and me.CHORUS
His eyes are always upon us;
His eyes never close in sleep.
And no matter where you go,
You will always be in His eyes, in His eyes.Sometimes His voice comes calling
Like rolling thunder,
Or like driving rain;
And sometimes His voice is quiet,
And we start to wonder
If He knows our pain.
But He who spoke peace to the water
Cares more for our hearts than the waves,
And the voice that once said “Youre forgiven”,
Still says “Youre forgiven” today.Sometimes I look above me when stars are shining
And I feel so small;
How could the God of heaven and all creation
Know I’m here at all.
But then in silence He whispers,
“My child, I created you too
And youre my most precious creation;
I even gave my Son for you.”CHORUS
His eyes are always upon you;
His eyes never close in sleep.
And no matter where you go,
You will always be in His eyes,No matter where you go,
You will always be in His eyesSometimes His eyes were gentle
And filled with laughter,
Christians often say that we are called to be like God and Jesus, to be as loving towards lesser beings as possible. Meanwhile, when we look at how atheists often present themselves on the internet, we see very little compassion or respect for the downtrodden and broken. Instead, we see bigoted crap like this from the “Amazing Atheist”:
No, you bastard, you know nothing about the topic of triggering….
That video comes from the same sort of atheist who claims that religion itself is a scourge to society. I referred directly to such an atheist fanatic while commenting on a much earlier blog entry:
https://dalehusband.com/2010/08/09/misdefining-terms-for-purposes-of-propaganda/#comment-677
http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2010/06/in-defense-of-m.html#comment-219719
truthspeaker | June 15, 2010 2:53 PM
It wouldn’t matter if all religions behaved like the Society of Friends and the ELCA. It is still based on the premise that believing in things without evidence as a virtue. As long as it starts with that premise – and it always will, because if it didn’t it wouldn’t be religion -, it will always be evil. There’s just no getting around it – promoting irrationality as a virtue is bad for humanity. No matter how much you polish the turd, it will still be a turd.
Both the Unamazing Asshole and the “truthspeaker” can go fuk themselves. Denying something does not disprove it, in both cases. And ignoring the good that religious people often do in the name of their religions is, well…..IGNORANCE!
I will rewrite the song by Steven Curtis Chapman to reflect how I wish white male atheists would conduct themselves, instead of only thinking about themselves.
Sometimes our eyes are gentle
And filled with laughter,
And sometimes they cry;
Sometimes there is a fire
Of righteous anger,
Deep in our eyes.
But the eyes that see hope in the hopeless,
That see through the fault to the need,
Are the same eyes that look within ourselves
To seek the best of what we can be.Our eyes should always be looking;
Our eyes never close in sleep.
And no matter where we go,
We will always see with open eyesSometimes our voice comes calling
Like rolling thunder,
Or like driving rain;
And sometimes our voice is quiet,
And they start to wonder
If we know their pain.
But if we speak peace to the world
And care for their hearts anyway
Then the voice that once says “You are loved”,
Will say “You are loved” every day.Sometimes we look above us when stars are shining
And we feel so small;
How can such tiny creatures on this one world
Make a difference at all.
But then in the silence remember,
That we exist in vast numbers too
And when we all work as one species
There is so much good we can doOur eyes should always be looking;
Our eyes never close in sleep.
And no matter where we go,
We will always see with open eyes
Could that happen? Perhaps, but we would have to look to these:
Because it is HUMANISM we all need, not just atheism. If the progressive humanists among atheists can defeat and drown out the conservative bigots, and then provide all the charitable and emotional needs of people who need help and comfort, then they will cause the final downfall of dogmatic religion around the world. Let it be so.
Reincarnation is the notion in some Eastern, Indian or Dharmic religions that people who die later return in a different body to start a new life, usually with no memory of their previous life. Often this is paired with the concept of karma, the idea that people go to a higher or lower form of existence based on how they lived in their previous lives.
By contrast, in Western religions that are based on the Jewish and/or Christian scriptures or at least are descended from them, reincarnation is rejected and instead people’s souls are assumed to either go to a place called heaven if they are good (or are true believers) or hell if they were evil (or followed a wrong religion) and never return to life.
I have no empirical reason to believe in reincarnation or indeed any form of an afterlife and it is my understanding that the idea of a soul that can be separated from a body and exist apart from it is simply impossible. Indeed, when a person’s brain is damaged in some way, it is clear that the person is also damaged, so why not just assume that when the person’s brain is completely destroyed at death, the person ceases to exist completely? But that idea seems to frighten most people witless. Why? How did we come up with the idea of an afterlife to begin with? Perhaps because of near death experiences that someone might have had on rare occasions?
Read my earlier statement about spirituality. Because of my open-mindedness on that issue, I have created a concept called “Radical Reincarnation” in which every person and animal that has ever lived was once within every other person and animal that has ever lived. In short, we were all Adolph Hitler, Albert Einstein, dinosaurs, cavemen, and dodos at one time or another and we are also part of the universal life force that we return to when we die. This life force, timeless and incredibly powerful, is what most of us have mistaken for “God”. And it is greater than we will ever know. Of course, I cannot support this idea with any evidence whatsoever, but I also know of nothing against it……..and no, it is NOT the default position to say something is not true just because it has not been proven. Atheists who assert that are as narrow minded as some religious bigots. Rather, individuals are free to believe or not believe something that has no proof and no disproof. I reject the idea of heaven and hell for eternal souls because it HAS been disproven. Radical reincarnation certainly has not…..yet it does not exist in the Dharmic religions either.
Dale Husband's Intellectual Rants 