Eden Shrugged: Unabridged Edition "For the Last Shall Be First" (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781546240082)

I am the son of two Irish immigrants who came to this great country many years ago to find a new life. On June 16th (Father's Day) the two of them produced a 12- pound 4- ounce bundle of joy who ended up giving them many gray hairs and wrinkles on the rocky road to his horizon. The lessons they taught me and the love and kindness they always showed me made me the man I am today. They told me to always avoid talking about politics and religion at any public gathering, but they never told me I couldn't write about it in a novel, and they never told me I couldn't throw in some graphic erotic sex into the story. // Someone once asked me did God create man or did man create God? I said what does it matter, what would you do with that information if you had it? I wondered why people asked time sensitive questions like these eons too late. At a very early age I began to see that intellectuals spent a lot of their time on mental masturbation. They wallowed in pondering the "chicken or egg" mystery, and the "if a tree falls in the forest" question. I always tried to avoid intellectual pursuits - you might say I'm an "a-lectual" I focus on the eternal beauty of the primal id that makes us who and what we are. If a tree does happen to fall in the forest I would have no interest in analyzing the sound waves it produced literally, metaphorically, or philosophically. I would be more interested in whether or not there was enough yellow caution tape in place to prevent nature lovers from being injured. I have a tendency to use the word "next" much more often than I use the word "why." It is with this mindset that I tell my stories about the common everyday humans that dwell on this planet. // Going through life as an 'a-lectual' affords one the opportunity to experience life as an ever-evolving, continuous learning process -- learning all of life's simple lessons as you go along. Learning what is, is more important than intellectualizing about what was. Some of the "a-lectual" experiences that taught me simple life lessons and made me who I am today are as follows: // While serving my country in the U.S. Army in a non-combat roll during the Viet Nam era, I learned how to make my bed with neat hospital folds in the corners. In the process of making my own bed I learned the meaning of that old adage "you've made your own bed now lie in it." //Several years and two knee replacements later after being a third string NCAA football player on the practice squad for both offence and defense, I learned that the words "to be or not to be" trumped the words "to win or not to win" // During my many deep-sea fishing trips and boating adventures, I learned about that holy feeling of "from whence we came." // While using my VA benefits to pursue a degree in digital electronics I learned that ones and zeros really do matter and Ohm's Law and Kirchhoff's Law are real, and science is real. // During the later years of my career as a Maintenance Engineering Specialist, I learned the meaning of the phrase "if it aint broke don't fix it," and at the same time I learned if something essential is broken you must do whatever it takes to fix it. // In my post-graduate education in the laws of physics, I learned that "energy can neither be created nor destroyed," which brings us back full cycle to the original question - did God create man or did man create God? If energy can neither be created nor destroyed, where did this energy originate? Let the scientist sort it out. Scientists are the Jonah(s) God uses to impart knowledge to humanity so they can choose right from wrong. He carefully picks atheists for this job because He knows their minds are not cluttered with religious fundamentalism. I have studied the scriptures for most of my adult life with that same analytical mindset I`ve always applied when reading any scientific journal, and I firmly believe that the scriptures provide valuable clues for scientists to explore and follow up on. I...