It was the fall of 1986 as I recall. SGM Brown tended to scold me whenever I left the office without a jacket. I would tell him that I am cold-natured and that, unlike him, I had hair, on the top of MY head, to keep me warm.
Whenever we were kidding each other, it was always amongst ourselves; our professional relationship was kept at the highest level, and I never once would speak out of line to, or about any military service person.
Then one day... I got the most chilling sense that something was terribly wrong. There was no explanation for this "vibe" or whatever the sense of doom I had come over me.
I walked back up the steps to the chapel - no it was a brisk and urgent scamper back into the Chapel's administrative offices. My heart was pounding.
"What got into you?" SGM Brown asked. Then he said sit down before you pass out. "You are white as a sheet - what happened?"
"Okay, so I was walking from the Chow Hall..."
"Dining Facility." SGM Brown was trying to break us of the less-than-professional jargon, and it wasn't working so far.
"...right. The breezeway - you know, that walkway to the Mailroom..." I was still shaking.
"Slow down. Do you need me to get the medic over here?"
"No, an exorcist maybe. Is Chaplain Dan here?"
"Check the sign-out board - he was here about 10 minutes ago. I think he took your G-jet (the lime green K-car government vehicle) to go to the Pentagon for a meeting. Why would you need Chaplain Donohue for an exorcism?"
"Because you know that officer with the crazy eyebrows - that Chaplain Kent talked about in Monday's Staff meeting?"
"Yes, the one here for class at the War College? or is it the ICAF?" (Industrial College of the Armed Forces)
"I think it's the one that backs up to the gate to 8th & I - where we go through to the Marine Corps sick call."
"Yeah. So what happened?" SGM Brown was stamping tickets with an automatic numbering attachment - never mind - I just remember that I was now upset that he had black ink all over his uniform shirt.
"This is crazy, but I passed the guy and saluted - I held my salute and said, "Good afternoon, sir."
"Yeah, then what?"
"He didn't return the salute, he slowed his walking down, he stopped and just stared at me as I walked past still holding my salute."
"Maybe he thought the breezeway constituted a no salute area... no, you were correct to salute. Did he make any kind of harassing gesture toward you?"
"No, Sergeant Major - it was like - I can't explain it - okay, if air around us had colors - you know like an aura... the air around him would be gray and black and smell like sulfur-like rotten eggs - like propane smells."
"Did he actually smell like that? Was he in uniforms or civies?"
"No, (I looked around the office) J.T., he was creepy as hell - I mean literally - he had demonic weirdness around him. I know Chaplain Kent told us that we had our first Satanist here on Fort McNair, and that the Army has an all religions welcome policy, but there is something very evil and divisive and destructive about that person. You gotta go see for yourself. I'm telling you - he is not a patriotic person - there is no way you can follow Satan and be pro-America. You told me that yourself when I first arrived here. You asked me what denomination I am, what I believed about our founding fathers, and if I am a Christian. You told me that it would be very difficult to do this job if I were not saved."
We had already had two suicides in one week, and a debriefing was on the schedule for that afternoon and I was tasked with setting up the conference room. SGM Brown excused himself to go get another shirt and I went to the kitchen to set up the coffee pot.
Officer Aquino crossed my mind these past three decades, but, this past year truly made me understand why there were deeply motivated soldiers, strong Christian men, and women who I had sadly watched make decisions because they refused to compromise their commitment to our Lord and Savior.
One Chaplain gave up the chance to have his first 1-star general rank - he refused to support the newly-accepted Islamic Chaplains training. I am very proud to have known Chaplain Dave Peterson, Chaplain Joe Colley, Chaplain Larry Woods, Chaplain Joseph Batluck, and Chaplain William Morrison. None would bow or break, neither would they compromise or bend just to tolerate what had become "PC" No, these true warriors loved their country and they respected the blood sweat and tears shed for all of us.
Allowing a Satanic Leader into our military was a mistake - a very huge and devasting error. The backbone of this country rests on the bound and true word of God. Anything contrary to the Holy Bible is NOT in the military's best interest. It has shown us why, and we are doomed to repeat this horrific history if we don't fight for and salvage what is left of our fraying homeland.
About a week later, SGM Brown came back from picking up the mail - he too had experienced the demonic stench and aura of Michael Aquino. We agreed. This was bad.
I don't know why there would be nothing. I'm just saying there is evidence it is way older and the big bang is big bullshit. It sounds like you are trying to say I have some "faith" that the universe is eternal like I am going around making grandiose pronouncements about it like you do or something. I don't tend to speak in absolutes. Not that much.
Well those are the only choices, either the universe is eternal, or something started it at a fixed point in time. And since we dont know of any mechanism by which things in this universe start existing (quite the opposite, we know they cannot be created or destroyed), it stands to reason that something we dont yet understand via study of natural law started it.
I dont take issue with you refusing to stake out any position at all, that's your right. But for people who have staked out a position that something outside what we know of as natural started it at a fixed point in time, they/we have not taken up a "ludicrous" or "anti logical" standpoint.
It is "kicking the can down the road" for the same reason the Big Bang theory did, (it has transferred the unexplainable to a non-observable origin) and therefore left the realm of "science". But it is quite logical, in the same way a biologist can tell an invasive species must have come from somewhere else."logic" and "science" are not the same thing, even tho they do intersect a lot
Why? Why not just go back to your original point about the law of thermodynamics and think it over and consider the simplest answer: matter and energy have always been there. They can change form but they cannot be created. Why would you ever claim it can't have been created according to the law therefore the only possibility is a supreme being must have done it? I don't even want to say how that sounds to me. I'm trying to be nice!
"Always" is eternity. Therefore unobservable and not scientific. You can say that, that is your prerogative to believe that it has always been here and nothing caused it. I would just say that is not in keeping with Western logic, because in the western civilization's school of thought everything is cause and effect. When we observe the universe you're saying it is an ongoing effect with no ultimate cause, and that's more in keeping with Eastern schools of thought, which hold the difference between cause and effect is an illusion.
Saying the universe is an infinite self-existing transition of matter and energy changing forms reminds me of an old joke about explorers trying to convince an Iroquois chief that the world is a globe that hangs on nothing. The Iroquois tradition holds that the world is mounted on the back of a giant turtle.
Thinking they have him trapped, the Europeans say "Aha! But what's beneath the turtle?"
"Another turtle" says the chief.
"And beneath that one? You must get to the bottom eventually!"
"No!" Says the chief. "It's just turtles, all the way down!"
That's how any self-existing argument for the universe appears to me, a souped up, scientific sounding "turtles all the way down" logical fallacy.
When did I ever say anything about "belief" in anything? You are glossing over a lot of what I am actually saying and replacing it with projection. I said there is evidence for something. You are trying to spin that into I believe this and that. I try not to believe anything if I can help it. It's like "having a position" on virtually unknowable questions; why get stuck in some moronic belief system when there is bound to be a better way to understand things out there?
I think that is a bad analogy. There is nothing to explain in an infinite eternal universe. It doesn't need to rest on anything. Your belief in god requires you to explain who god's mom is though and so on. So that is a double whammy. You have the endless turtle problem, not me.