What's a Barrel Shifter?

Well, certainly not someone who handles the beer supplies in the basement of a Public House!

A "barrel shifter" is a part of the Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) of a typical microprocessor, the heart of computers and similar technology such as mobile cellphones and TV set-top boxes. Oh yes, I could describe how it works, bus arbitration and the rest, or even lower down within the architecture, gates, clocks, latches, timers, multivibrators...whatever.

I understand the nuts and bolts, the "how"; but does that mean I understand the "why" of a computer? What is its purpose? Why was it made the way it was? Who invented it?

This is what being an atheist means: possibly knowing at least something of how the universe operates, but having absolutely no idea why any of it even exists, including themselves. They certainly haven't a clue who created it, preferring to ignore that and claim it wasn't created at all, though having no answer to the obvious next question of what produced our universe and us. They might as well be automata, unthinking robots, if that were the limit of their capabilities.

They say "Oh, science will provide the answer one day: we just haven't found it yet", which is a convenient (and, to be fair, to some extent understandable) get-out. However, the word science means merely knowledge; and is only a way to explain what already exists. Science creates nothing itself: it needs creative minds (not the physical brain, except as a mere tool of the workman) to utilise that knowledge and to invent, devise, innovate, create something new and original.

Some people more-or-less worship science, which is ridiculous. Of course, we also need to be careful about worshipping other false idols or ideologies. The only way to avoid those pitfalls is to get to know the Creator of the Universe, his character and his purpose for us. That sounds somewhat clichéd, but it is the correct approach.

Those of us who have got to know even something of that God's true nature are well aware of at least the thrust of his purpose for us. It also helps us filter out the obvious false idols (most obviously those faith systems that place some of us above the rest, purportedly as their god's agents and allowing them to have power over us) and bad or corrupted religions. There is not a billionth of a percent of doubt in such cases: they are that obvious to anyone with any real idea of why we are here.

The real power in following our destiny is primarily dealing with our own problems and facing up to them. Yes, there is a Saviour; but it is our task to handle our lives and our environment (in all that word's senses). Yes, there will be miracles, to be sure; but we are not to be dependant upon them. They are additional blessings. Practical living rather than actual blind faith is the right way, and has always been so.

With what is coming, here on Earth, it will be vitally important to be able to make these distinctions, and not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and be left with nothing as the atheists (and the agnostics) have so far done. That would suit the false prophets and their ilk down to the ground, working as they are (knowing or inadvertently) for evil.

Why give up? Many millions of us aim far higher than that, and we have a real purpose in life. Sometimes the enactment of that purpose is visible to others, occasionally to many. Often it is not. The difference is that we have a reason to be, beyond the purely animal, hormonal and mechanical.

We are truly alive. Come and join us!