John's Commentaries

An Open Letter to the Ducati List; Of Mortality and Motorcycles:

I've browsed several comments on this thread as well as several other threads of similar content, and the bottom line always seems to be the same... Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die... er... ride and enjoy it now for there ain't no guarantees of a future of any sort other than drifting off at the hands of Jack the Dripper.

Well, if you haven't heard it before let me be the first to tell you that isn't all there is. If there is one thing I am sure of it is that there is a life beyond this mortal coil once it has been shucked. The question changes more than slightly when you begin to take an eternal view of your existence.

Christ came to give all of us life, and to have it more abundantly. Comparing this promise of life to riding its like going faster, breaking deeper, attempting things that others see as impossible. This is the type of life that God has promised to everyone who accepts His Son as their savior. God is not a cosmic killjoy and He didn't put us on this giant Uncle Milty's Ant Farm just to watch us wage battle against our environment and each other.

Hey, I've got two ducs and I play a number of games with the physical limits of this mortal existence just like you guys do. But I know that on the odd chance that l meet with a premature end while so engaged it is not "lights out" nor is the party over. The real question is how do you want to spend eternity?

Thanks for listening if you made it this far,
John

A Response from Christopher:

If there is (a god) He's got a pretty sick sense of humor…

And before the flames start, it's too late -- I sold my soul to the Devil a long time ago!!!

;o)) Christopher

My Response to Christopher:

Christopher, buddy,
THAT is a pretty sick sense of humor you're sportin' there yourself.

Riding a bike especially, and flirting with physical annihilation, you may end up in a position where a change of heart is no longer an option. The spiritual side of things is real, unfortunately, you may not be convinced of that until you're ejected from this game by an errant FORD, etc.

If you'd like to talk about it, feel free to contact me off list.

I care,
John

And Now a Different Commentary from Jeff:

"Religion is the opiate of the masses" -- Gary Nixon (I think)

JEFF

My First Response to Jeff:

Hi there Jeff,
This is John. The origin of that oft' quoted line was Karl Marx I believe (the missing fourth of the Marx Brothers). And at this point I'm sure that he and the esteemed Mr. Darwin are both well convinced of the folly of their opinions.

I would be willing to take on any arguments you care to proffer regarding the existence of God, the deity of Christ, the condition of man -- from a scientific, philosophical or historical point of reference. If you've got some good ones let me have 'em.

Believe me, I want to be correct in my beliefs as much as you do. But I'm willing to let reason stand for itself. Faith is not the belief in something that cannot be proven. It is confidence in what you have proof of. The proof that I am speaking of is not some subjective "experience," but objectively verifiable to even the most jaded of materialists.

Please don't feel pressured to respond. But if you are interested in the truth and not someone else's version of it, let me know.

God bless you,
John

Jeff's Retort:

Hi!
Unfortunately Messrs. Marx and Darwin aren't convinced of anything because they are both very dead. Good luck in your personal relationship with the One True God! As for arguments, go to any decent library and grab an armload of satanic writings in the Paleontology, Geology and Evolution areas. Comparative Religion is also enlightening.

JEFF

My Final Comments to Jeff:

Dear Jeff:
Thanks for writing back. I see from your response that you're not really serious about this topic. Fair enough. I realize that nobody really enjoys having their pet excuses exorcised because that then leaves them with only two options, to continue deceiving themselves or to change. By choosing not to honestly consider the evidence, and the total lack of evidence on the side-of secular humanism; you are perhaps choosing the wiser route which will enable you to bypass either of those two "inglorious" options, for now.

I myself spent the first 32 years of my life by the dictates of the aforementioned holy trinity of science with arguments that I thought were quite witty. I can't say as I blame you or me -at that time in my life, because the Church has unfortunately dropped the ball in a BIG way when it comes to intellectual discourse in the fields of science and reason.

I will grant you all of the above. However, providing a "popular" argument does not make one right any more than providing an "unpopular" one makes one wrong. To continue with my story... It wasn't Billy Graham or some other evangelist that made me reconsider my positions on the human existence. It was of all people, Rush Limbaugh.

I don't even know what Rush's religious persuasion happens to be. All I know is that I listened to him on a challenge from another computer analyst that I was working with at the time. I had already prejudged Rush to be an arrogant pseudo-intellectual posing as a conservative to bilk bucks from the mindless brainwashed minions who followed him. And I was confident that my assertions were correct for the first couple of days…

But then he started saying some things that made sense to me regarding the baselessness of "political correctness." He persuaded me to start reexamining all of the crap that I had always taken as the "gospel truth" from Kindergarten through my six years in college. Guess what? On reexamination; with the benefit of being trained in the field of science, as it should really be conducted, without the use of any preconceived conclusions as the politically correct crowd chooses to do; I found that secular humanism, political liberalism, and the majority of the studies involving Evolution and Paleontology, as they are now defined in the 1990s, are totally without any evidence of being true, or good, or any other positive adjective you want to throw their way.

It's all bunk. And most of us swallow it all, hook line and sinker, only because these lies purport to "prove" that we owe no allegiance to any "higher power" and that being self-interested to the exclusion of all others is a "good" thing.

Anyway, I will now step off my soapbox so that I can get back to doing the laundry .For me it was perhaps just a fortuitous occurrence that my arrogance ran head-on into my lack of knowledge which caused me to reconsider the essence of man, thus leading me eventually to know man's Creator. But it may have been the hand of the Creator Himself that pushed me into the path of the oncoming collision.

That however is something you probably won't consider until you have your own collision, literally or figuratively. Either way you will have to deal with it at some time, now or later.

Good talking to you Jeff. I promise no more of this stuff unless it's by your choice. Back to the Ducs!

God bless you,
John Showalter