God, with angels, reveals himself to Abraham | Giovanni Battista Tiepolo | Wikimedia Commons

Guest Post

By Dave Gresham

For almost 70 years, the Palestinians and Jews have been fighting with each other. It’s the latest installment of arguments that began 4,000 years ago.

Did God give the land of Palestine to certain people, or not?

If God did not, then who put lies in God’s mouth in order to steal?

And if God did, then what was promised?

These questions have never been answered to the satisfaction of everyone involved, and the dialogue between the parties always turns into violence.

With that in mind, the key to solving the problem in Palestine is to consider the illnesses of most of the people involved (since they claim to understand God better than others and think they are God’s favorite). By illnesses, I mean the religions that most of the people involved are following, which are Judaism and Islam, and also Christianity, which has generally supported the Jews recently.

Because all three groups have elevated written words to be the voice of God, instead of trusting the innate authority of love and the golden rule, it may be possible to use information from those ancient texts to fix the problem.

Therefore, the following remedy for the situation in Palestine will be based on scripture and common sense. This is regardless of what may be the actual historical truth, long since lost in time, if it was ever known by them in the first place. In the interest of comprehension for the layman, this account will be as simple and abbreviated as possible.

We begin with Abraham. He is a physical and/or spiritual patriarch to the people of all three mental illnesses previously mentioned. Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. The Palestinians trace their lineage from Ishmael, son of Abraham. The Jews trace their lineage from Judah, son of Jacob, son of Isaac, son of Abraham.

God made promises to Abraham that he would bless him by making nations of his offspring, and also that all nations of the world would be blessed thru him. Many years later, God made similar promises to Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, who he renamed Israel. These promises were both physical and spiritual in nature. Read more »

A demonstration following Ukrainian parliamentary elections in October, which international observers deemed unfair. | AP Photo

Guest Post

Note from Dan: Dave Gresham posted this as a comment on Oct. 28, and it attracted little attention that day. But it’s an interesting concept nonetheless, and it asks the question: What would our government look like if elections were free from the sort of corporate-money influence they’re rife with today?

By Dave Gresham

A one-party political system is a dictatorship. A two-party political system is the same tyranny if an outside group controls both. And this is the situation the United States is dangerously approaching, because corporate billionaires now choose the candidates in every national election. In other words, no politician can afford to run for the higher offices without the support of the wealthy, so candidates promote policies that favor the tiny minority of rich people – at the expense of the vast majority of regular citizens

A fair political arena would not only allow, but encourage, a multitude of opinions, instead of just two versions of the same monopoly. Indeed, a proper election system would have numerous candidates, all running as an independent without parties. In this way, politicians would stand or fall on their own merits, rather than their promoters.

One solution for getting independent people into government again is to have all elections begin with lotteries. In addition, all losing votes should rollover until just one candidate remains with the most ballots cast in their favor. Read more »

Members of the Squalicum High School Rotary Interact Club race each other while breaking up bread for stuffing  Nov. 21 2012, a while preparing food for an annual free Thanksgiving Day meal in Bellingham, Wa. | AP Photo/The Bellingham Herald/ Philip A. Dwyer

By Dave Gresham

The first principle of reason is to treat others as you would be treated. The concept is innate knowledge, and even infants understand it, though they lack the ability to articulate the concept. Indeed, by the time a child can talk, the idea is the first wisdom that they can express with words. In fact, so exceptional is this one single principle, it is literally the only thing that all rational adults agree on.

Certainly many people do not obey this “golden rule,” especially among the young, for we all cling to selfishness, but no one denies it. To do so would publicly humiliate oneself, since the idea carries its own authority.

Reasoning also concludes there is another facet to this universal principle, which is that we should love each other. This also becomes self-evident, for no rational person wishes others to be unkind to them.

More than anywhere else in our lives, love and reason are seen in their fullest flower within the family unit. Our spouses, children, parents, friends and relatives are the happiest part of our lives. So the concept as it applies to society is clear: The golden rule and love must be the core foundation in any proper system of governance – and the most loving and reasonable structure is a family. Read more »

AP Photo

Or most ‘out there’ conspiracy theory since JFK’s assassination?

Note from Dan: The essay below is from Smith Mountain Lake-area real estate broker Dave Gresham. The views are his; the subhed above is mine.

By Dave Gresham

There are tens of thousands of steel framed skyscrapers throughout the world. Not once have any of them collapsed without the use of explosives – until Sept. 11, 2001 . . . according to our government.

And on that amazing first time in history, not just one, but three of them crumbled!

In addition, if that is not astounding enough, all three went down as straight as arrows, with zero toppling whatsoever. In other words, they literally collapsed into their own footprints!

Moreover, and this is astonishing to the point of miraculous, all three buildings fell close to, or in actual fact, at the speed of gravity! This means free-falling, with no resistance from the steel structure under them – and no resistance from the steel structure woven into them!

Hmm…

What really happened? Read more »

Grafic by Dan

Note from Dan: The following is come courtesy of Dave Gresham, a real-estate broker at Smith Mountain Lake. He’s also a regular on this blog. Fyi, The Roanoke Times is not owned by one of the major ccorporations Dave decries.

By Dave Gresham

We know that a person’s mind influences their actions. So our behavior could be called the output of the mind, at least in general terms. This begs the question: What about mind input?

The past 40 years have seen dozens of large U.S. media corporations merged into just six giant conglomerates. They own almost all of mainstream media, including film, television, radio, newspapers and magazines. The problem is that their major stockholders, typically billionaires, select the boards of directors, who in turn set the management that chooses what the public sees and hears – and how it’s presented. Obviously, the slant is to benefit those wealthy owners.

Especially disconcerting is the pathetic state of major news outlets, which have become nothing more than the public relations arm of the military-industrial complex. The same people own it all. And they aim to keep it that way.

Having conquered our information systems, the wealthy have also developed a stranglehold on Congressional policymaking. In fact, they voted that corporations should be treated like people, while real humans are regarded as equipment and have less control of their government than any time since the American Revolution. And this is largely because news networks are used by rich owners to subtly promote agendas which decrease our civil rights and income, while they get corporate immunity and skyrocketing profits. Read more »

Amy Goodman | Chris Eaves.com | Wikimedia Commons

Note from Dan: Dave Gresham, a businessman  from Smith Mountain Lake and former Occupy activist, penned this little ditty.

By Dave Gresham

M E M O

October 12, 2012
To: My Minions at Virginia Tech
From: Satan
Subject: Maintaining the Status Quo

Are you aware that Amy Goodman was allowed to speak at Virginia Tech recently?

Have you lost your minds?

Of course, we already knew that General Electric and its stockholders earn billions of dollars making bombs, then make billions more by owning a thousand news outlets that always say we are right for dropping those bombs (and need to make more).

But why in Hell would you let someone talk about it to regular folks? Did you learn nothing after independent news wrecked our Vietnam War? Read more »

Carolmooredc | Wikimedia Commons

Note from Dan: Dave Gresham is a real estate broker and regular on this blog. A while back, I incorrectly characterized him as an atheist.

By Dave Gresham

Just as plants grow, mature, and then fade, so it is with people’s bodies. The vessels our spirits dwell in are literally organic machines, for our body’s growth and decline happens automatically, from start to finish, just as it does with plants.

The only part of us that is not organic machinery is our spirit, that life force which animates us and wherein each of us recognizes the “I am” of our individual essence. So the vessels we will dwell in begin at conception, but our actual spiritual life inside these machines begins when?

Surely we do not put on clothes while their fabrics are being woven, though after weaving, the cloth might possibly be cut and sewn while wearing it. Surely no one moves into a house at the start of construction, though once the foundation is in and the framework erected, then we might live there while the building is completed. So some amount of structure must come to pass before a thing can actually be used, and this same principle applies to our souls inhabiting our bodies while they are under construction in the womb.

As to the moment a soul takes up residence in a fetus happens, we do not know. Personally, I believe the moment of unity between flesh and spirit depends on the parents and the child to be, so it might be very early in the pregnancy in some cases. But it is also clear that some pregnancies are miscarried or stillborn, often when the parents truly wanted a child. So where was the unity of body and soul in those cases? It was absent is the answer. So who can truly know the moment of union? Or why it does, or does not happen?

But this we do know… Read more »

Grafic by Dan

Note from Dan: This was submitted by Dave Gresham, who lives on the Franklin County side of the Smith Mountain Lake. He has recently waged a campaign to persuade the Franklin County Board of Supervisors from opening their public meetings with denominational prayer.

By Dave Gresham

For the past couple of months I have been working to stop Franklin County’s policy of opening their meetings with Christian prayers. (First privately, then publicly when that failed.)

Last Friday, one of the Board members told me that they have decided to go back to non-denominational prayers only. (At least until a higher court rules on the ACLU’s lawsuit against neighboring Pittsylvania County, who had been opening their meetings with Christian prayers, until an injunction stopped them.)

Why don’t these so-called leaders read the Constitution and Bill of Rights?

Church and State are to be kept separate. For the protection of both!

These actions of mine have resulted in total strangers calling me, most of them with hostile insults. I have also received a number of similar emails. And every one of them is a righteous Christian, of course.

The letter that follows is one of the few responses I bothered to write to any of these detractors, since he was at least polite.

I share it in hopes of getting more people to think about what they believe, versus what they know, which are not the same concepts. Read more »