The Rant Institute

I'd like to propose a new theory of addiction based on a variation of PTSD. Rather than "post," substitute "pre." Pre Traumatic Stress Syndrome is when the trauma of the past creates a fear of experiencing a similar trauma in the future. The two become mirrored relfections of each other. In the way PostTSD leads a person to become stuck repeating a past trauma, so pre-TSD leads people to be stuck between the past and the future. There, they hide in the closet of a safe moment. Like Holden Caulfiled and Peter Pan, they do not want to grow up. So, like an abused child escaping an abusive exerpience by going to a "safe place" in their head, hiding in the intensity and beauty of the momment allows someone to avoid the giant shadow on the wall of the future that is being projected from behind them by the trauma of their past. Addiction, for such people, is when someone repeatedly elevates the intensity of the present moment so they can more easil...

Where is the evidence that the Christian God is a "good" God if man, who is his highest creation because he alone is made in the image and likeness of God, is so evil? Man, by this standard, is the greatest evidence of just how "evil" God truly is, or at least how imperfect and even incompetent. The rejoinder to this question offered by "believers" is that man has free will. But here is the problem with this reply - it only proves that God is incompetent. Here's why. Consider the prison population around the world. World Prison Population List, published in December 2021, reports that there may well be in excess of 11.5 million prisoners worldwide. In 2021, there were 7.87 billion people in the world overall. 11.5 million is 0.146125% of 7.87 billion. Hence, more than 99.8% of people of all different religions manage to use their free will to avoid the "hell" of prison. That's an impressive number of people using their "free ...