Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

S o is he? The god of the Old Testament is a rather vengeful misogynist sort given to fits of temper and rather aloof from his creation. It is the Good News of the New Covenant that introduces a loving saviour who is engaged with the universe. Can an omnipotent god be held to moral precepts or is she above petty human concepts of good and evil?

The charismatic denominations would have you saved by the blood of the lamb, a personal saviour who brings comfort and solace in times of need. A soothing concept to which the faithful are driven by threat of the fires of Hell.

The cartoon and following paragraph outline a debate that has raged for millennia. Just how active is God in the operation of his universe and does he intervene in the day to day affairs of his creatures. Creationists would have us believe that a loving God actively created the world and all that is therein. Science and logic would hold that universal laws exist that operate unattended by a higher power. Prayer has as its object in many cases a hope that God will intervene and miracles can happen.

If you jump off a cliff and your parachute fails to open.... If your drinking water is poisoned by lead or mercury.... If two vehicles approach one another at 60 mph.... The universal laws of nature exist. They are neither good nor bad. The moral concepts of good and evil apply to man's use of God's Creation. If you get trapped under water you will drown; on the desert without water you will die of thirst.

Always we suffer from the unfairness of bad things happening to good people. In the OT paradigm such misfortune would have been seen as punishment for wrongs committed by an individual or the society in which he lived. However loving or caring we conceive of our god to be she cannot protect us from the consequences of our decisions and actions. Our lifestyle choices will affect our health, the climate we live in will affect our clothing and housing choices. If we build on a flood plane sooner or later our house will be flooded.

God Is. He is neither bad nor good. But is there a God, ah, that's the question.

Best Buy is offering a free in-home consultation regarding a tech savvy world in which appliances would interact with other tech such as your cell phone. Which presupposes one owns such a thing. Experience counsels caution. This morning my tablet's OS was updated. The keyboard that interacted fine by bluetooth connection suddenly is no longer recognized. I'll let it charge for a day to make sure that isn't the problem before I panic. What if that were the high-tech entry system that suddenly decided not to grant me entry to my home?

In my grandmother's day the likes of Publisher's Clearing House and Jay Norris made her feel important keeping her mailbox full of ads for snake oil remedies such as Minard's Lineament or Dodd's Little Liver Pills. Cod Liver Oil and Spring Tonic--the latter mainly a sweetened brandy. Today the internet has taken up the slack with spam offering male enhancement, someone to occupy your bed, weight loss remedies, you're a winner or the latest enhancing your gut culture. Well we know that exposure to bovine gut culture will kill you. Cures for invented syndromes such as that little blue pill for erectile dysfunction have even gone mainstream.

The first browser I ever used automatically blocked all ads. The Lycos Browser came with my IBM home computer. It was only later I became exposed to the world pop-ups on Internet Explorer. Anyone who still uses Microsoft's free hotmail account knows of the thousands of daily spam that litter their inbox. So of late I use software to block ads on Zuckerberg's Facebook and Ghost anti-tracking plus AdBlock generally. Seems I live in a fool's world. It's those ads that keep the internet free and pays the bills for content providers. As I have discovered even the lowly Bridgewater Bulletin want to charge you for reading their content.

In an attempt to fight back websites are refusing to grant access to their content if your computer blocks tracking cookies and AdBlock is paying for its free software by white-listing sites for pay. Oh what a tangled web we weave!