Bevear (.org)

So, haven’t posted in months. Thought I’d better update the old blog.

The big news is that I’ve moved away from the city of my birth, and have moved to sunny dunedin. Har har. I wish it was sunny. But, I am really enjoying myself, I’ve gone back to university to retrain as a (medical) Doctor. Bit of a big decision, but over the past years I’d been looking for a way to integrate my desire to pursue knowledge, and my desire to do stuff for people. Medicine is great like that. The entire class is a bunch of geeks (though not socially inept geeks), and the profession, while having it’s fair share of ethical issues, offers a relatively objective way of helping people.

So, that’s what I’m up to. Now you know why I don’t update this regularly! (and if I do, you’ll know why I suddenly start spouting medical stuff)…

Organic food is one of the latest trends out there. It’s part of a reaction against the commercialisation of food, and all the evils accompanying it. I mean, who wants food with nasty chemicals on it? So the basic idea is to avoid non-organic methods in the production of food. Advocates of Organic foods would argue that it’s both healthier for us, and healthier for the environment. I want to look at these claims

For a start, is it really healthier for us? It seems intuitive that natural is good right? Well, natural food is good, but if you’ve ever been stung by a bee, or stepped on a thorn, you’ll have (hopefully) quickly learnt that nature is not geared towards meeting our needs. Yes, there are a lot of non-organic substances that can mess us up, but there are also a lot of organic substances that can also mess us up good. So we should avoid the fallacy that natural = good.

Is it better for the environment? Perhaps. It might prevent the build up of chemicals that build up in the environment, but bear in mind that organic farming produces less food per acre than non-organic farming. Again, chemicals can be bad, but so can organic products.

My main issue I have with organic food is that it is often taken to be a primary indicator of healthiness, when it’s only a secondary measure of healthiness. Maybe organic foods are healthier than non-organic foods? If that’s the case, we should buy them not because they’re organic, but because they’re healthy. So why bother looking for what is and isn’t organic? Why not just look for healthy foods? If it’s organic, sweet. If not, no worries. No sense getting all dogmattic about it.

[There's also the issue of 'organic' starting to become a brand name, which starts to exclude small scale local farmers, which kinda defeats the whole philosophy behind it all.

So: buy healthy, buy local. Importantly, make sure you read up on where you food is coming from. Be aware of where you food is coming from.

Yeah, what are other's thoughts on the matter?]

In my previous post, I argued that christians should support gay rights, on the basis that there is insignificant biblical evidence against it, and that conversely, the biblical narrative encourages christians to be an advocate for minorities and those who have not recieved justice. I wish to add to this argument.

Premise 1: ‘It is not good for man to be alone’. It is an inalienable right that someone should be able to live with their mutually chosen partner. An individual’s right to form a close intimate bond with another individual should not be taken away, without very very good reasons.

Premise 2: There exists homosexual individuals who would not be satisfied by a heterosexual relationship. I’m not saying that homosexuality has a solely genetic aieteology, I’m just saying that some people are at a point where they just couldn’t do a heterosexual relationship.

If one deems homosexuality to be wrong, this means that there will be individuals who have had their right to form an intimate relationship taken away from them.

What would you do if someone told you that even though you loved someone, you were not allowed to be with them? If you have a partner, think about them. What would it be like to look upon your very relationship as something pathological, something wrong, something to be repressed, ignored? Think what it would be like to spend the rest of your life away from them, knowing that although you both love each other, you must live apart?

I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

I’ve been thinking about homosexuality, and have come to the conclusion that Christians in general have missed the boat. We should be the ones pushing for gay rights, not fighting against them. By demonizing homosexuality I think we’re missing a great opportunity to do a great good in our world, and instead are letting ourselves become tools for evil. I want to outline some of my thoughts on the matter.

Read the rest of this entry »

So since moving south, I’ve been church shopping. This means going to a whole lot of different churches, and checking out what they do, how much free stuff they give to new people (one church gave me chocolate, a definite plus!), how welcoming the people are, what the service is like, etc… I have a bit of an informal points system going (which isn’t an objective measure, it’s a measure of how good the church is for me - I appreciate that a low scoring church for me might be a high scoring church for others)

Read the rest of this entry »

Brehaut is doing something radical. He’s doing the blog thing without the comment thing. Comments do have a few problems associated with them, mostly the problem of worth; comments are generally not as worthwhile as blog posts (see brehaut’s post for more).

Read the rest of this entry »

I had a thought today*. Christians often treat porn as wrong. Just wrong. Do we think about why it is wrong?Perhaps. Usually it’s the old ‘it’s outside of God’s plan’ answer, which incidently, isn’t really telling us anything, because it just begs the question, how, and why is it outside of his plan?. But often it’s dismissed as wrong and judged as such without really much thought.

Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone who has done a decent amount of philosophy / epistimology has probably learnt that it is impossible for a human to disprove the possibility that they are merely a brain in a jar (if you don’t know what this means, watch The Matrix). You can’t disprove that your reality is a simulation, because all your experiences and hence knowledge could merely be the product of this simulation.

My question for you is this - could God disprove that his reality is a simulation?

The Westboro Baptist Church (responsible for godhatesfags.com) was concieved of, and is run by athiests. I mean, who else would come up with such a convincing argument to put people off church?

I’ve recently been thinking about movements. Joining (or starting) a movement can be a half decent answer to the ‘what difference can one person make in the world?’ question. If you’re part of something bigger, hopefully you can have a big effect. But I’ve seen a couple of issues with movements:

Read the rest of this entry »