I reckon this site has got to be the quietest site, anytime, anywhere, ever. In a sense, it’s like flying under the radar: no one knows you’re out there, so no one will give you dramas.

Some (ill-informed) individuals say that’s why the operating system Linux is so safe: no one uses it.
Right.
Except for Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, MacDonalds, stock exchanges, NASA, the FAA, the White House, postal services, the Pentagon, the Navy (submarines) and virtually all super-computers… which all run Linux.

Yeah, except for them.

But those who claim Linux isn’t a real operating system for users will say: “I never see Linux anywhere… no one I know uses it.”

Those people don’t know anyone with an Android mobile phone, then.

Unfortunately, from a end-user perspective, all they see and recognise is Windows (not even Mac, although you see more Mac systems in the movies than Windows PCs), and that shapes the public’s perception.

Which is why I seriously don’t trust the public’s perception.
“If I don’t see it as mainstream, it can’t be very good,” is what is implied by the pundits’ insistence that Linux is a poor choice for an OS. Never mind that it drives IT worldwide:
“I don’t see it, so it’s not valid for me.”
The biggest, most power, most flexible, most secure OS in the world, but since I can’t perceive it working, it must not be very valid.

Who can see the wind? Who can place a value on love? Who has figured out where the universe ends? or when it began? or why we’re here? Or whether faith in anything makes sense?

When I get up in the morning, I actually exercise faith. We all do.
I have faith in gravity.
I have faith in memory: “where are my socks?” “Who is this person smiling at me over breakfast?”
I have faith in sensations, in depth perception, in smell.

I have to, or I would go crazy: I wouldn’t move… couldn’t move. None of what I have faith in can be 100-percent proven: nothing in life can be fully proven, for in order to be able to do that, one would have to have access to perfect measuring instruments, which I don’t, and who have to have perfect technique, which no one does, and have an infinite amount of time to perform an infinite amount of tests to prove one’s theory, and no one does.

So, we all have to operate on a certain amount of faith. When you pass a car on the road, you have faith they’re going to stay in their lane… if that didn’t happen with almost monotonous regularity, how many would get behind the wheel?

So, we operate on faith, but most of us base our faith on our perceptions.
Which goes back to my original premise: why do we place so much credibility on perceptions? Ours, or anyones?

It’s that fallacious limiting faith on perception that has led to humans seeing themselves as meaningless clots of coincidental molecules, with no hope, no future, no meaning and no Saviour. Our dependency on our own abilities and capabilities has brought us to this desperate pass in human experience. Because we cannot accept the One who created us as Creator, we negate him through our flawed “scientific method” which tries to explain human existence as an accident, a coincidence; thus also negating the concept of sin as sin, where evil is explained as an unrequited need, treatable as a disease; and then, worst of all: making His supreme act of Love – sending His Son to die for sinners on that cruel torture device, the cross – of no consequence to us.

Humans cannot accept that God is better than we could ever hope, though we are worse than we ever suspected. If we believe that God came to die for us but then minimise His sacrifice through so little acknowledgement, such a paltry response as we do in life, any lesser being than God would have been offended by our lack of response to that sacrifice. But He loves us nevertheless: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

And this sad, lonely, desperate humanity is still made up one-hundred percent of sinners. We say “God is Love” but we have no real concept of what that truly means, any more than we know where the wind comes from or how gravity works.

We don’t contemplate gravity: it’s just there, we assume it will always work. It affects our lives but we see no reason to give it much thought. And we treat God’s love the same way… those of us who actually think God exists, who haven’t successfully explained Him away.
In essence, there’s really not that much difference between the two trains of thought, at the end of the day: if the Lord is not Lord *OF* all, He is not Lord *AT* all.