TED Community » Verble Gherulous

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Jesus Christ, literature, love, and the acoustic guitar

An idea worth spreading

That to be a Christian you must 1) love God more than you love yourself, and 2) love every other human being as much as you love yourself. It's a radical concept from a subversive book called the "New Testament" and after 2000+ years it still doesn't seem to have caught on just yet!

Talk to me about

Anything you would like. I love to talk and talk and talk (to which my wife will attest!)

People don't know that I'm good at

Cryptoquotes. I love cryptoquotes. Once, I got so good at them that I could do them on sight, in my head, no pencil or pen needed.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +27.90 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Conversation: Has the time come for the U.S Second Amendment to be repealed or amended?

  Dec 24 2012: The 2nd Amendment reads "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
  
  What this implies, and what we Americans forget, is that it means that yes, the people have the right to bear arms, but we also bear teh responsibility of making absolutely certain that we have a society that knows what those arms are for.
  
  They are for the security of our persons and our property. They are not for Jokers to slaughter moviegoers or for psycho richboys to kill kindergarteners. If we want to keep our second amendment protection, then we as a country need to deal with the issues of the growing number of psychotic shooters - just heard another on the news this morning, 2 firefighters dead battling a blaze in New York.
  
  This is not the time for gun owners to cling to their Glocks citing their freedom. Their freedom is in danger because they have not stood up to create a culture of gun safety, gun responsibility, and the knowledge of guns as a tool and not as a phallic extension of their erroneous manhood.
  
  Yes, the second amendment was put in place to make sure that the American people would never be forcibly suppressed by the government. But it was not put there so we could think childishly in terms of "good guys vs. bad guys"
  
  Therefore, if we want to keep our precious freedoms, we must make ourselves again worthy of those freedoms.
• +2

  A comment on Conversation: Have our National News Media outlets become simple propaganda machines, feeding us a one sided version of the news?

  Oct 7 2012: Let's be clear: Fox News never represented itself as unbiased. The ridiculous "fair and Impatrial" moniker aside, Fox News established itself as a counter balance to what it perceived was a liberal bias in the news. In actuality, they realised they could make money by spinning news to a specific segment of the population who already had very narrow and conservative viewpoints. These people were not being served (or rather, pandered to) by a media that actually tried to present facts in a coherent manner enough to make people think.
  
  Yes, I am saying that Fox News started out with the intent of pretending to be news so that they could make money off a segment of the population who did not like the news. Along the way they have grown into the ultimate conservative propaganda machine.
  
  The most insidious fallout from this has been that other media outlets, such as CNN and NBC, were thus pushed into a position where they had to make their presentation of the news as angry and as exciting as Fox. If they continued with the same boring "here's the facts format" they would be put out of business. Some might even say they they were just forced to take off their mask. In all honestly, news has always been slanted, just never before slung with such bile.
  
  Ultimately, the fault lies with the people. If the people were interested in hearing the facts, the news would present the facts. But we want to be catered to, and we want to know that our convictions are right, and by God we sure don't want to be asked to think. If we truly wanted facts in our news we would be tied to the AP wire and that would be our only source.
  
  I love editorials, and I love journalism presented like hard-boiled detective fiction, but I separate that from real news and I never confuse the two. Unfortunately, very few people even want to distinguish the difference between their own narrow minded outlook and that lost incomprehensible called reality.

• A reply on Conversation: Love is overrated

  Sep 24 2012: I know this well. The search is the key, and it takes a lifetime to learn how to search well. Once I learned how to search, that's when I realised my perfect peace had been with me all the time.
  
  And also, when my soul mate and I had both found and created each other.
  
  This is why it is so important to tell everyone always to keep searching, exploring, with an open heart and mind.
  
  "Changing brings change" - so well said, thank you!

• A reply on Conversation: Love is overrated

  Sep 22 2012: It's because these people don't exist. The perfect person for anybody does not exist. What you are to do is to find the person with whom you grow into the perfect couple. Two people, growing together, changing to become that Prince/Princess Charming.
  
  That takes time, commitment, honesty, and a devotion to each other and the goal of creating that type of relationship.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Love is overrated

  Sep 22 2012: With your comment about communes I'm assuming you mean love in a carnal, monogomous sense. The relationship and courtship of love.
  
  I am a monogomist. I believe in monogomy so much I've done it three times (more if you don't count the church and the paper) you might call me a serial monogamist. It's great, it's wonderful. I've screwed it up more times than I can count, but I think I finally got it right. Or at least that's what my wife tells me.
  
  So, while I am not the best example of a continually successful monogomous relationship, I will always defend it as the ultimate expression of the completeness of the human being. There is so much of us that is only half, and two people coming together, in spiritual as well as a carnal sense, is the greatest, the ultimate, expression of how we are only complete when we finally subsume ourselves into a greater whole. It demonstrates that we are not complete on our own, but in one other, we can be a greater "together."
  
  While open relationships or communes are wonderful ideas, especially when people can compartmentalise their living relationships, and when a greater sense of communal love permeates those collectives - basically, when everyone understands their own set boundaries enough not to get their feelings hurt - then yes, they can work for a time. To me, the main purpose is to love each other, to be kind and giving to each other, to help each other through this life.
  
  In fact, I've even seen some communes - open relationships like this - work. For awhile. Just like marriages.
  
  However, I will always state that a loving, monogomous relationship is the ultimate demonstration of two human beings reflecting the varied aspects of the creator God, and is the perfect example of two humans giving up a life centered around self for a life centered around a unit.
  
  But that's just my opinion.
  
  And lastly . . . LOVE - can never be overrated!

• A comment on Conversation: Love is overrated

  Sep 22 2012: You can never "find" your true love, until you wake up one day and your true love lies sleeping on the next pillow, the same as s/he has been for the past twenty years. That's when you've found your true love.

• A reply on Conversation: Is Faith inherently irrational?

  Sep 22 2012: Thank you for the explanation. Yes, I did misinterpret your response and being flippant, but I must apologise for my somewhat testy response in return.
  
  I realise my example is rather facile, and really touches only the surface of faith. But I use it to illustrate the difference between rational faith and irrational faith. Again, faith is essentially being certain that what will come to be will indeed come to be, and to prepare oneself for that eventuality so much that you, in a sense, act as though it has already come to pass. That is how faith, very logically, prepares you. This may seem like a self-fulfilling prophesy, the power of positive thinking, whatnot, but it is quite rational.
  
  Unless taken to the extreme - such as disaster mongers who "know" for certain that the world will end unless they jump off a two-story rock in AZ on 12-21-2012, ripping a hole in the fabric of space time and thus saving the universe. (Just saw that guy a few nights ago on TV - an example of irrational faith)
  
  Granted, faith does not always have to mean faith in God. I speak of Christian faith because that is where I draw my faith. That does not mean I disparage the rationality of the sources of other people's faith.
  
  The central tenet of Christian faith is to realise, however, that we as humans, can lead ourselves astray. Our own whims and desires can alter our impression of what is logical, or even rational. That's why we are called to study this force beyond our understanding (God) so that we can attain an objective viewpoint on our world, our fellow humans, our universe, and our lives.
  
  I'm not saying it all makes sense. I'm not even saying I can explain it with any sort of coherency. All I'm saying is that faith is not INHERENTLY irrational. It certainly CAN be, but not in and of itself.
  
  Thanks for allowing me to clarify.

• A reply on Conversation: Is Faith inherently irrational?

  Sep 18 2012: May I suggest if you've already answered your own question, then it is not necessary to ask of others?
  
  Your question is telling. You believe that faith is inherently irrational, and thus should be diacarded. My example was an illustration between rational and irrational faith.
  
  Faith can be irrational. Or rational, depending on the person. But faith is not inherently irrational, because it does not go against reason, but rather, qualifies reason.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: Is Faith inherently irrational?

  Sep 14 2012: Faith is not 'inherently' irrational, which is to say, faith in itself is not based on irrational thought.
  Faith, in the truly Christian sense, only means that one can state with certainty that what has not yet happened has in fact already happened.
  
  OK that does sound irrational, but let me try to put it this way: you've heard the phrase " Dress for the job you want, not for the oneyou have.". Imagine you are so certain that you will get that greeat job, that faith guides you to dress the part, and diligently to prepare for those responsibilities, to learn what you need to know so that one day,when everybody elseknows what you knew all along, that you were going to be in that position, you are ready. That's faith.
  
  Irrational faith is just going into the office, plunking yourself down in the big chair and issuing wild orders until security comes to take you away.
• +6

  A comment on Conversation: Do you find it difficult to engage in intellectual conversations with people in general?

  Aug 29 2012: I have always had this dream that we would live in a culture in which, when two people unknown to each other get on an elevator, there will not be silence, or even the "Hello"Howareyou"Fine" ritual, but one will look at the other and say, "Nietzsche or Kirkegaard?"
  
  And then the other might reply "Socrates."
  
  And by that they will know there is an attraction.
  
  Sadly, to this day, no woman has ever replied like that. They just keep hitting the "open door" button frantically.
  
  
  Seriously, though, you just have to keep searching the right people. When you're in a conversation like what you described, try to find a way to draw the conversation into something interesting for all involved. Example: guys who are into football - football can easily be led into a conversation about physics: muscle power, the amount of energy expended in order to gain momentum, which can eventually get you into particle physics if you work it right. I usually take football convos into history, by using the analogy of the Battle of the Bulge in WWII: that usually achieves the required result for me.
  
  Someone may never get to the Higgs-Boson with you, but the sign of a great conversation is when all involved walk away somewhat enriched.