Hijab Irony, Submission

“[I feel unsafe] all the time. I had someone follow me home from practice and try to report me to police. And this is right on 28th and 7th in New York City… 

I want people to know that as hard as [these racist incidents] are on me, they don’t come even close to things we’ve seen like the shooting in North Carolina or the rhetoric around the Khan family at the DNC. 

It’s ridiculous and we as a country have to change and I feel like this is our moment.”

In a world with no truth, everything is relative. Note the young woman is competing from the USA -- the country that "has to change". Sharia Law Islamic states? No concern about THEIR changing!

Islam means SUBMISSION to Islamic law, or it means DEATH which is also a form of submission.

Why does the the left love Islam? Because they believe in SUBMISSION -- they just think they can use Islamists just like they use Blacks to gain POWER -- the they may well treat them as they do Christians today -- or very possibly kill them and Christians just as they abort babies today.

There are only so many 8lb rocks you can dodge when buried up to your neck -- then you learn submission.

Brain Damaged Hildebeast Video

The last couple weeks have seen the MSM pull out all the stops to paint Trump as "crazy". This video is really worth a watch ... they are all real videos of the Hildebeast. Imagine if they had THIS kind of footage of Trump!

Having Babies, Playing Volleyball

USA Volleyball Star Makes Comment about “Having Babies” That’s Pretty Ballsy in This Day and Age:



Playing Volleyball as a purpose in life is accepted in the modern world as worthy. That is fine with me -- it is always a mystery why so many that believe in a godless, truthless, meaningless universe, one should be born with "a purpose,  like volleyball, but as a Christian, it is easy for ME to imagine it.



Having babies? One of the Twitter posts from below indicates that "Donald Trump must be running NBC" to allow it's watchers to be exposed to such arcane thinking.



The modern left is far more intelligent than that -- having babies just isn't worthy anymore, let alone raising them. We have "advanced" far beyond that!



Coming out as gay or transgender, now that is "brave" ... and worthy of a lot of media accolades. Thinking such foolish thoughts as there being two genders and the reason for such is to carry on the human species makes one think of the worst human currently living according the the media "Trump".



Perhaps humans have simply become too "brilliant" to survive?



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Utopia Delayed, Harvard Surprised

Chicago, San Francisco, and Other Progressive Utopias | Power Line:

A worthy column to read. If "progressivism" is so grand, why is that the large urban centers which are run nearly entirely by "progressives" ... with the possible exceptions of a few like Dallas, Salt Lake City, ??? are such hell holes? I mean, if "progressivism" is so obviously successful, why is it that say Detroit? or Chicago? or DC are not "model cities" that the rest of us poor fools could look to as shining examples?

Could it be that progressivism doesn't work? Perhaps it is Socialism we really need ... lets move to Venezuela.

You want possum with that?


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David Brooks Summarizes The BOistan Problem

Trump’s Enablers Will Finally Have to Take a Stand - The New York Times:

When you lash out at someone in anger, you have an extreme tendency to unwittingly admit the truth of your own soul. It tends to be unavoidable. Here is Brooks on Trump:

"He is a slave to his own pride, compelled by a childlike impulse to lash out at anything that threatens his fragile identity. He appears to have no ability to experience reverence, which is the foundation for any capacity to admire or serve anything bigger than self, to want to learn about anything beyond self, to want to know and deeply honor the people around you."

What a wonderful statement on the human condition and the condition of man in BOistan. "Slaves to our own pride". Jesus diagnosed PRIDE as being at the center of both the original fall and the ongoing nature of fallen man. So, we all -- like Brooks in this column, lash out like children and what we see to be a threat to our fragile identities, unless our identity is in Christ.

America was a nation "under God". It revered God, our Founders, the Constitution and the Family.

BOistan is a nation without reverence. Each persons own truth is supposedly "sacred" and to be revered, which means in reality that only the truth of "The Party" (TP-D) is actually to be revered and admired, or at least submitted to. Brooks wants TP to be revered, and anyone that doesn't bow to TP must be destroyed ...

You either stand with a man whose very essence is an insult to basic decency, or you don’t.

At one time in a country known as America, the fallen nature of ALL was an "insult to basic decency", but all were worthy of redemption by Christ's Blood.  We were and are ALL filthy sinners, thus "insults to basic decency", but we are also all precious in that God loves us and wants to save us. We were a nation "under God", with a limited government and a shared morality.

In BOistan, 60 million innocent babes in their mothers wombs have been declared to be "unfit for life" and "decently"? slaughtered.  When man takes such power to himself, the entire concept of "decency" is destroyed and replaced by POWER. Brooks believes that POWER  actually IS "decency". When you replace God, you have to -- power is all that remains.

There comes a time when neutrality and laying low become dishonorable. If you’re not in revolt, you’re in cahoots. When this period and your name are mentioned, decades hence, your grandkids will look away in shame.

Speaking out for God's decency has already become a cause for shame before our children and grandchildren, and many Christians have already paid a HORRIBLE price for their faith. Defending the Constitution, the right of the unborn to live, the right of prayer, the right to honor marriage as between a man and a woman, the right to understand humanity as male and female -- all these and more have been declared "immoral before TP", and those who hold to these timeless values in the face of  the power of TP are regularly shamed by the educational and media system.

Since they are shamed by education and media, they are often shamed by their own children and grandchildren who can't stand up to the deluge of the left wing machine. Each time we are shamed we pray harder that there will come a time when they come back to the love of God and we will see them in eternity.

TP has indoctrinated the young to dishonor their parents and grandparents if they refuse to bow to the "truth" of TP vs the Truth of Christ. The government of TP is declared to be "god" in the stead of God. TP breaks the 4th commandment to "honor your father and your mother", with "shame your parents into supporting TP, or at least into keeping silent under threat of losing contact with you". What a friend Satan has in TP,

BOistan stands as a monument that "power" and "decency" only go together in the hand of God. Christians pray to God, not BO nor Brooks.

For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.

In BOistan it is the duty of all who obey Christ to do whatever we can to oppose the immoral and ALWAYS highly imperfect government.

Trump is certainly an imperfect vehicle, however compared to the alternative, he is a Rolls Royce!


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Facts, Belief, Truth, Convincing

Why facts don’t matter to Trump’s supporters - The Washington Post:

When the USSR and the Berlin wall fell, I learned the absolute depth of "belief over fact" personally. I actually BELIEVED that the US could and would consign the USSR "to the ash heap of history" as Reagan had promised on June 8, 1982. From the time Reagan was elected, and during at least the first six years of his term, I would have been one of those people that the media would have argued "fact's didn't matter".

During those years, papers like the WaPo regularly referred to Reagan as a "madman", "simple minded", "unable to listen to reason", etc. In the world I lived in, the USSR **WAS** an "evil empire" that enslaved it's people, killing millions in Gulags and leaving all but the most elite standing in line for basic necessities. Even the most elite lived lives less luxurious than an average middle class family in the US. It was clear on NPR that the USSR to them was a very reasonable place -- not perfect, but often better than the US in "free education, healthcare, etc".

But by the time the wall fell, those who had once had so much passion for how foolish and "ignorant of facts" Reagan and his supporters were, lived in a different world.  Now, "Everyone had always known that the USSR was in serious trouble and likely to implode". Reagan and his supporters like Thatcher actually DELAYED the end of the USSR with their "bellicose tactics". "It was all Gorbachev ... he was a visionary guy that came along and changed the game". Fools like me were still ignorant and unable to accept facts, that part had not changed.

Being part of "The Party" (TP-D) means that you are ALWAYS right and you can point at the poor unwashed masses and tut-tut about how they completely ignore "facts". How confidently you can support your own candidate, the wholly truthful Hildebeast who has indeed never told a lie!

The article does have some insights into human thought, but they are REALLY not new at all.

The authors wrote: “The more often older adults were told that a given claim was false, the more likely they were to accept it as true after several days have passed.”

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks" ... Hamlet, written in 1600. How many times do you REALLY need to tell me how much of a liar Trump or Reagan is? How crazy they are? How they are/were "a danger to life, the universe and everything"? Isn't it surprising that if you are a chain smoking parent (your candidate is at least as big a liar), screaming about the evils of smoking to a teen every day is more likely to make them want to try smoking than to avoid it? Perhaps the brilliant left knows a great deal of the science of human nature, but they have failed to figure out that it has MUCH more to do with emotion than science.

When critics challenge false assertions — say, Trump’s claim that thousands of Muslims cheered in New Jersey when the twin towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001 — their refutations can threaten people, rather than convince them. Graves noted that if people feel attacked, they resist the facts all the more.

"When accused of killing 3 men and a dog, he promptly produced the dog, alive". The dog is "beside the point" -- producing it doesn't affect the important accusation of killing 3 men. The media is doing a version of this relative to Trump. Pretty much anyone remembers seeing throngs of cheering Muslims after 9-11, Paris, Charlie Hebdo, or virtually any other violent act carried out against the west by Islamists. 

The USUAL locale is "The West Bank", but there are others. Here is that violent right wing spewer of hate Anderson Cooper on the uber right wing networks CNN talking about some in the US in 2009: 

So the "fact" is that Muslims often DO cheer violent acts by others in their religion -- because they feel that their religion is correct and such actions are justified. The same reason that this column feels justified in saying that "facts don't matter to TRUMP supporters" when the article points out that it isn't just "Trump supporters" -- it is everyone human. 

Trump’s campaign pushes buttons that social scientists understand. When the GOP nominee paints a dark picture of a violent, frightening America, he triggers the “fight or flight” response that’s hardwired in our brains. For the body politic, it can produce a kind of panic attack.

All humans attempt to "push buttons", as does this column -- it too tries to paint a "dark picture" of Trump. The way that Western civilization once advanced was by putting it's philosophy "outside humanity" in the realm of Christianity and ancient philosophy to have a position of actual moral authority. Science has the authority of mechanism ... it can make things work, and explain how they work, but it has zero moral authority. "Right and wrong" are not within it's purview ... nor is emotion, other than to study the effects of it as we study the effects of gravity. 

Our only hope to return to civil society and the ability to be able to discuss and sometimes even CONVINCE educated people is to return to knowing what epistemology is.

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Execution, The Great Satan

Iran: Nuclear scientist executed for spying - CNN.com:



At one time our nation spent hours of coverage and reams of paper on the issue of if a CIA worker that commuted into Langley every day ("deep cover") had been "outed" (Valerie Plame), it demanded a "special prosecutor!".



Now, we freely admit that Hidebeast's email shenanigans cost the life of a spy and nobody cares.

But U.S. officials at the time said Amiri had defected voluntarily and provided "useful information to the United States," a claim supported by emails sent to Hilary Clinton -- then Secretary of State -- and released by the U.S. State Department last year.

If we actually had any adversarial media in this country, just imagine how they might treat such a slap in the face to BO as the Iranians executing a guy and calling us the "Great Satan" just as he is giving us a fresh lie about his $400 million ransom not being a ransom!



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Diebold, Rigged Elections, BO Rule

Obama: Trump Claims of Rigged Election 'Ridiculous' - NBC News:



Here is the lefty rag "Mother Jones" lamenting about Diebold in March of 2004. In 2004, "Diebold" was on the lips of nearly every lefty "before the election". If we wanted to look harder, I'll bet we could find BO himself "concerned" over fair elections.

An incredulous President Barack Obama called Donald Trump's claims that the upcoming election could be rigged "ridiculous" and said he's never heard "someone complain about being cheated before the game was over." 

"I don't even really know where to start in answering this question. Of course the election will not be rigged. What does that mean?" Obama told reporters Thursday after being asked if he could assure voters the upcoming presidential election will be fair.

This is an obvious case where the "BO Rule" clearly holds -- If BO assures you of something, you can be pretty sure the opposite is true.



BO has "never heard someone complain about being cheated before the game was over". "The game" in this case is elections and it isn't hard at all to find people that believe that elections have been and will be rigged. BO is from Chicago, the home of one of the greatest election rigging machines in the country, the one that elected Kennedy in 1960.



In BOistan, the leader can get on  TV and tell the country that putting $400 million in unmarked cash of various currencies on a plane at night and flying it into a country that holds the hostages until the cash arrives is "not a ransom" and a large percentage of the people "believe", or at least say that they do, because to do otherwise would take them out of being in good standing with "The Party".



Increasingly, everything from your job to your social standing depends on being a member in good standing of "The Party".  The ability of "The Party" (D) to state ANYTHING (the more obviously false it is the better) and have the willing masses all declare "We believe what The Party sayeth" is a cornerstone of life in BOistan.



Thou shalt believe and repeat as truth the words of The Party!

Coulter Steals My Title

Ann Coulter - August 3, 2016 - THE WRATH OF KHAN:

She stole my title, but she wrote a better column. It's a shame I don't like blondes or skinny girls, or I'd likely be in love with her. I liked this paragraph especially:

Yes, a candidate for president of the United States is supposed to be prohibited from discussing a dangerous immigration program because Khan's son was one of fourteen (14!) Muslim servicemen killed by other Muslims in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's why we're obligated to import yet more Muslims – including, undoubtedly, some just like the ones who killed his son. Q.E.D.!

She never made the point which I expected her to make. What did Hildebeast sacrifice? Her character? Her femininity? Her eternal soul?  What "moral authority" does the Hildebeast have after voting FOR the invasion of Iraq, probably entirely based on political expediency?

We will never kinow, because those that are bumping along in the left ditch really don't care,

Put A Johnson In It

Gary Johnson Polls Surge, Mitt Romney May Endorse Libertarian Candidate:

So you are "libertarian" and you think it is GOOD if Mittens endorses your candidate? Did you miss the "libertarian" dogma about NEITHER MAJOR PARTY HAS ANYTHING TO OFFER!

So we see  "libertairians" gleefully signing up for a scenario like the following:

Even if Gary Johnson wins the popular vote, he would have to win overall in enough states to pull from Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The History News Network lists a few states that “could” end up giving Johnson their electoral votes. Alaska, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. Although these states would only supply Gary Johnson with 32 electoral votes, that could be enough to keep Clinton and Trump from running away with the race. It could, potentially, keep both Clinton and Trump out of the White House.

So in never never land, "The Johnson" MIGHT end up winning Alaska, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming! Thirty two whopping electoral votes -- we will leave out the conjecture about "winning the popular vote". Hello? He isn't going to win California, New York, Illinois, Florida or Texas, so he WILL NOT win the popular vote!

So we have "libertarians" salivating over the prospect of the election being thrown into the house, and "somehow", rather than electing a Republican or a Democrat, (if we are REALLY on Pluto here and the D's take the House), one of the two major parties will look around and say "hey, we REALLY need a Johnson stuck right where the sun doesn't shine!".

Really? First of all, what "principle" is it that the "libertarian" party has that would want an election decided this way? "Win Baby Win"? I think we have PLENTY of folks with that philosophy already.

Seriously? This is just too weird to even contemplate someone writing it.



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Western Heritage = Neo-Nazi

The Chart-Topping DNC Email? | Power Line:

If somebody had hacked the Trump campaign, we would be reading a daily stream  of embarrassing items, and WHO hacked it would either be a hero, or immaterial!

As it is, TP has declared that "Putin did it to help Trump", so nobody cares about whatever it is that TP had to say about their donors, "Taco Bowl Outreach",  the fact that they rigged their primary for Hildebeast, or much of anything else. Certainly not the screen grab from below.

Yes yes, **I**, and people that care to take the time to look understand that the left wants to destroy "Western Heritage" (Civilization / Culture) and replace it with pagan tribal "culture".  The idea that "Western Heritage" --- Christian, Greek, Roman, etc is somehow "National SOCIALIST", especially in the completely godless form of Hitler, is a complete non sequitur, but it is what much of the left thinks. When you don't believe in truth or consistency, "non sequitur" isn't really part of your vocabulary!

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As Crazy As Reagan? WDATPDIM

Trump asked 3 times in an hour security briefing why we can't just use nuclear weapons:

Let's not even talk about any "believability" about the "asking 3 times" -- we really don't need to listen to Hildebeast tell us that the FBI said she was "truthful" on national TV, BO sending $400 M to Iran and allowing them to get nuclear weapons in a sham deal, nor reams and reams of what is happening in BOistan.

I need to convert "What difference, at this point, does it make?" into a nice long acronym "WDATPDIM"

"W dat P dim"

It seems like people just have this really big problem understanding that NO RULES means NO RULES!

Horseshoes, hand grenades, nuclear weapons, biological warfare, killing 60 million babies, grownups, disabled people -- NO RULES means no rules! Is that really so hard? What the hell did you expect? "morality"?

My faith in a bunch of guys sitting around on MSNBC looking all serious about making a claim about Tump and "asking about USING nuclear weapons 3 times"  has about a 99.99999% chance of being COMPLETELY fabricated, or possibly just  bit of an "enhancement" of him asking three THINGS about the use of nukes. As in maybe "what is the process from a need to use to actual use", "if we are attacked with a nuke from say North Korea and decide to respond in kind, do Russia or China automatically do anything?" ... oh, I could go on. If I was getting a briefing like that I'd have some questions that could be called "asking about USING nuclear weapons" if you wanted to phrase it that way.

The current media push is to paint Trump as insane. I like Scott Adams on this front. Hollywood notwithstanding, how likely is it REALLY for 70ish billionaires with jets, choppers, beautiful wives and children, etc to suddenly go insane and blow up the world? Well, if you are an easily led, not much for deep thinking left leaning soul, I suppose it might "feel" likely -- Hollywood certainly likes to give you that impression in all sorts of films.

Back in 1980, LOTS if people were absolutely convinced that Ronald Reagan was going to destroy the world. They did a big made for TV movie called "The Day After" and I knew A LOT of people personally that were CONVINCED it was "all over". Reagan was a "madman" and the USSR was populated by nice folks who just wanted "peace". They were in the role of Islam today -- the youth found communism to be "the non-religion of peace" in those days.

The one thing that the left has a real tendency to do if you get them excited enough is for them to completely slip the bonds of any sort of reality and set the bar so low for a Republican that if they can walk on stage, look at the camera and even stammer out of few words, people go "What was the fuss about again"?

They set Reagan up as being so "bark at the moon, foam at the mouth, totally unaware of reality, living in old movies, etc", that walking out, smiling and saying something nice made the media look like they were clueless.  Likewise, with W, he was caricatured as being a combination of Satan and Barney Fife, likely unable to even read, such an odd juxtaposition of pure evil and total incompetence was portrayed in the media  that to even form a mental picture of "what to expect" was impossible. When a pretty regular looking guy walked confidently out and talked plainly and simply with the air of reasonableness, people immediately knew the media view was a complete fabrication.

Is Trump purposely putting them in a complete frenzy so that when people get serious about thinking about the election in October he comes off as totally truthful, competent and reasonable in comparison to the caricature so carefully built by the media -- let alone Hildebeast.

Who knows, NPR is still locked in on the Wrath of Khan angle -- a completely fabricated tempest that is hard to imagine any serious person having a concern about. I LIKED Ronald Reagan, I don't "like" Trump, but that isn't really important to me. I'm choosing the candidate that will be most opposed -- and I think it is clear that is Trump.

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BO's $400 Million Iran Ransom

U.S. Sent Cash to Iran as Americans Were Freed - WSJ:

BO is indeed a nice guy. Trump is unhappy that he was attacked by an Arab parent of a killed soldier in a  a war that Trump was against at the convention of a candidate who voted FOR the war as Senator. The media is very unhappy that Trump doesn't like to be attacked.

BO on the other hand sends his friends $400 million in cash stacked on pallets on secret planes at night as part of an overall payment of $1.7 billion with barely a concern. America was a nation that used to have huge investigations about "arms for hostages" -- although memories are very short these days, "Iran Contra" was pretty damned important to the press at one point. "The Wrath of Kahn" is too big a story to worry about $400M in cash on pallets -- we can safely ignore anything BO might do that looks wrong, because the media assures us that it is fine. The job of media today is to move from one Trump Tempest mostly of their creation to the next.

BOistan is a different country. When the ruler does a sham deal with folks that regularly shouted "Death to America" (one of BO's favorite chants), the sheep bleat "Long Live BO!" ... and cover their mouths in horror at the latest Trump Tempest.

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MPR Preaches The Party Mythology

Trump's party is not your granddaddy's GOP, but it's been building over time | Minnesota Public Radio News:

"The Party" (TP-D) is a party of wonderful people -- they are the government, they fund MPR, both with the tax monies of unwilling funders and with the donations of loyal TP members. TP is goodness and light, the opposition is backward, racist, poorly educated, prone to clinging to guns and religion.

TP isn't really much for history, only small snippets that fit a narrative which glorifies TP. Gone down the memory hole is the fact that TP was the party of slavery, then of Jim Crow and segregation for 100 years. This article is a little rare because it DOES point out that REPUBLICANS broke the TP stranglehold in the Senate and passed the Civil Rights Act.

If you want a pivotal year in this history, you might choose 1964. The Civil Rights Act was passed because Republicans of that time provided the votes to break the filibuster by Southern Democratic senators. One Republican who did not support the bill was Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who won the party's presidential nomination that same summer. 

Goldwater won only five states outside his home state that November, and they were all in the Deep South. Four years later, Richard Nixon and his "Southern Strategy" reclaimed the White House for the Republicans. Despite Alabama Gov. George Wallace's third-party candidacy, Nixon won five states from the old Confederacy plus Oklahoma, Missouri and Kentucky.

Turns out that Goldwater believed in the Constitution and it's clauses on States Rights. He understood (correctly it turns out) that if those clauses were devalued, Washington would usurp the powers that were reserved for the states and the people. We used to live in a country where people could disagree and not call somebody a racist.

TP is the party of POWER over principle / truth / law / honor / loyalty / ANYTHING! Blacks were far better off under Jim Crow than they are under the thumb of TP. TP destroyed their culture and replaced it with a matriarchal structure without fathers, where the black man is replaced by the Federal Government and left to lives of addiction, drugs, crime and victimhood. BUT, TP, which was both the party of slavery and Jim Crow, now purchases over 90% of the black vote and keeps the black population enslaved to it's social programs.

See, Barry Goldwater created Donald Trump by way of Richard Nixon! The Republican Party is a bunch of RACISTS! It's a simple narrative. It happens to be completely false, but it is one of the core articles of faith to TP, so it is repeated like the Lords Prayer.

When you are the party of POWER, with no morals at all, plus control of the media, you can pretty much convince the sheep of whatever you want. As I've discussed many times, 5 or 6 thousand young black men  kill each other in TP controlled cesspools of cities and TP cares not at all. "Cops murder blacks" is an important narrative -- it may account for as many as 100 black deaths in a year while the urban policies of TP account for 50x that number of lives, but no matter. TP cares ONLY for power, and the "Black Lives Matter" helps them keep control of their captives.

Isn't it nice to see "public" radio spread a noxious calumny and call nearly half the country "racist" using millions of dollars of the money of the people that are being slandered!

Welcome to BOistan -- they aren't locking up their enemies yet, just calling them names. The end of the Constitution, the rigged system, the destruction of morals and the constant coarsening of debate -- indeed, even "public" media directly lying and calling names in the service of TP, none of THAT had anything to do with the rise of Trump.

Nope, it is all Barry Goldwater's fault! The level of gullibility of the BOistanians is remarkable.


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When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

https://www.amazon.com/When-Breath-Becomes-Paul-Kalanithi/dp/081298840X

A good and worthy book, and I LOVE the title.

The premise is simple, brilliant neurosurgeon about to embark on his career contracts lung cancer (he never smoked, as if that makes a difference) he fights, he dies. It is a good and worthy read, but while exposure to this particular work might be of special use to some, it is well worth it to read  Ecclesiastes 1 and just ponder a bit even if you ARE going to read the book:

The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
2“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher,
“Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.”
3What advantage does man have in all his work
Which he does under the sun?
4A generation goes and a generation comes,
But the earth remains forever.
5Also, the sun rises and the sun sets;
And hastening to its place it rises there again.
6Blowing toward the south,
Then turning toward the north,
The wind continues swirling along;
And on its circular courses the wind returns.
7All the rivers flow into the sea,
Yet the sea is not full.
To the place where the rivers flow,
There they flow again.
8All things are wearisome;
Man is not able to tell it.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing,
Nor is the ear filled with hearing.
9That which has been is that which will be,
And that which has been done is that which will be done.
So there is nothing new under the sun.
10Is there anything of which one might say,
“See this, it is new”?
Already it has existed for ages
Which were before us.
11There is no remembrance of earlier things;
And also of the later things which will occur,
There will be for them no remembrance
Among those who will come later still ... 

Remember, this is Solomon writing this -- the wisest man that ever lived.

Page 167 begins Paul's (the author) discussion of his Christian faith, and this passage especially hit me:

The problem, however, eventually became evident: to make science the arbiter of metaphysics is to banish not only God from the world but also love, hate, meaning — to consider a world that is self-evidently not the world we live in. That’s not to say that if you believe in meaning, you must also believe in God. It is to say, though, that if you believe that science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis for meaning and, therefore, life itself doesn’t have any. In other words, existential claims have no weight; all knowledge is scientific knowledge.

The Biblical definition of "vanity" is anything apart from God -- which is MEANINGLESS! Human life and wisdom is "vanity" ... which apart from our relationship to God (which is ETERNAL) is meaningless. Consider the words of Solomon and replace "vanity" with MECHANISM. If we have no spirit, then ALL is mere mechanism, but if we do have spirit, then we are spiritual beings having a mechanical (physical) experience which is VERY short!

Science is all about mechanism and mechanism only. In programming, I can write a program in any programming language,  a wealth of styles, run it on at least hundreds of operating system / hardware combinations. etc. What counts is "the algorithm" which started in my head and was "expressed" in the program, then "reified" (made real) by the interaction of the compilers, interpreters, operating system, and under it all, the hardware.

I agree with Paul (the author) when he says "Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create with each other and the world, and is never complete. And Truth comes somewhere above all of them ... " 

Being the sort of person I am, I realize that it is definitely by the Grace of God that my wife is 3+ weeks into recovery rather than 3+ weeks into the grave. My model has always been that I would precede her in death ... it seems "fair", she is younger, and lord knows that I need her MUCH more than she needs me! 

But I know that is not Truth -- that is a wish, which is as ephemeral as the passing of a gravity wave. 

The author was willing to admit that even two very much in love and committed people had problems in their marriage .. prologue, page 9 ... "But I'm worried we want different things from our relationship. I feel like we are connected halfway. I don't want to learn about your worries by accident". 

"Half way"? Pretty damned good for a relationship. One human brain is the single most complicated thing we know about in the universe -- at least trillions of connections, and mostly we are completely clueless of how it operates. Two brains? And for believers, "spirits", "love",  and connections to the infinite? Perhaps .0001 % "connected" is all even the closest can hope for in the life in which we breath. 

I fear I did not give the book high enough praise. READ IT, there are a myriad of things that make it worthwhile to read -- you get to know a brilliant neurosurgeon on a fairly deep level and understand a TINY bit of what it takes to walk that road. 

In the end though, Plato, Caesar, Augustine, DaVinci, Luther, Einstein -- pick your favorite. Only ONE life and death really matters eternally -- Jesus! ALL of us DEARLY want to be "special" -- The author talked of his expertise, the fact that he had not caused a leak of spinal fluid in a year, and some surgeon trying to help him did. I sometimes feel pride in my writing, or my maybe "imposing presence" in some cases. The author was WAY more special than I will EVER be, and  ALL of our works which we so very much want to be "special" are "filthy rags" --- BUT, in the power of Christ, we are all infinitely loved! (sadly, not all of us accept that love)

My kitties love me, which makes me feel good day to day. More importantly, I realize the greatest theological truth in history -- "Jesus loves me, this I know!" Next to eternity, the length of our lives here is definitely "vanity" -- we have a lot of very dear wishes, but they are not truth, they are vanity. 

So, when my breath becomes air, I'm ready.