Rants a dwindling..

Wow, I did not realize it had been so long since my last post. Actually, i have done half a dozen or so drafts to post on various things, but never really finished them enough to publish anything. Plus, I've been really thinking hard about not being anonymous anymore, and thus migrating everything into 1 blog. Each time I consider moving to one single blog I just can't seem to justify it. This one is mainly for rantings and just my own personal thoughts on things. The others that I have tend to be much more family related. Now that things have settled down I'll be sure to come up with something interesting to write about within the next day or so :)

Just Cause..

It's been 2 months since my last post! My how time flies. I've just not found much to blog about lately, besides I barley have enough time to read through the 400+ posts a day from the various news feeds. I think PA hammers out around 200+ posts a day itself. Really it's getting quite crazy yesterday I checked my google reader after not logging in for 3 days.... Over 3000 posts where in there. Granted some are dupes, but wow. Anyway, life is going pretty good.. Obviously getting prepared for all the holiday fun. Got a nice long weekend coming up. Looking forward to spending time with the family and maybe getting some home projects done. I think my problem with the blogging thing is the fact that I spend roughly 60hrs a week in front of a pc coding applications. Well, just figured I'd wish everyone a fun filled year end :)

Good Deed/s...

Just the other day the family and I went to SAM's to pick up some supplies, as we were leaving I heard a very familiar sound.. (I tend to always drive with the window down) Anyway, it was the sound of an engine failing to have enough juice to ignite the fuel. Immediately, I stopped the truck and began looking around. Then threw the truck in reverse, slowly backing up to see if I could spot this sound and verify my suspicions. Sure enough "bingo" I noticed a red ford ranger with 2 people in it. The man already a cell phone to his ear attempting to find someone to help. I waved to the gentleman and asked if he could use a jump. His facial expression changed from disparity to excitement instantly. Since I always carry jumper cables in the truck I was more than happy to help this man and his wife. I mean hell it takes me what 5 or so min to pull up, jump out of the truck, connect the cables and BAM he and I are both on our merry ways.
In all honesty this is not really a rarity for me. Anytime I see someone on the side of the road, hood up, or someone walking down an isolated road with a gas can in hand.. I will usually give them a lift or see if they need help. What is shocking to me is the fact that so few other people put forth this simple gesture of concern for others. What is quite humorous, is that when I mention this gesture of kindness to others to those I know personally of a religious faith, their response is usually surprising. Instead of seeing the "Good Samaritan" side of this act, their initial reply would be something like, "Well, you just never know.. They might have a gun, or want to rob you". How pathetic, so they don't help people because they are afraid it's a muse? You would think their "god" would protect them... Of all the various people I've helped, I've yet to find one that was "faking" being broken down. So, if you see someone in need take the 5 or 10 min to see if you can help. I'd be willing to bet if everyone did just a little something to help others as cliché as it might sound the world truly would be a better place. We shouldn't be fearful of doing something kind.... Just some thoughts for today...

Crazy busy...

I've been quite busy for the past few months with some other priorities... And i must say it is quite difficult to just keep up with all post. (Planet Atheism jumping from 39 to 103 blogs! wow) However, things have somewhat slowed down. After I play catchup for the next few days attempting to read some posts, I'll be posting some new stuff. Also, you might have to bear with me but I'm planning on migrating another blog to this one. It's just too much trying to maintain 2 blogs :)

Reflections

I was laying in bed last night after listening to some of Julie Sweeney's clips earlier that day, recalling to myself some of the questions I had in my younger years involved in the church. I suppose it started with questions like these:

If God created Adam, did he have a belly button? (later i would here jokes saying sure he did, when God was finished he said "Pop" your done!)

When God created Adam from clay, was he standing up or lying down?

If he was lying on the ground how did God sculpt his backside? Did he breath life into Adam, then when he stood up he sculpted his backside? or did he flip him like a hamburger before bringing him to life?

If he was standing up, how was the clay strong enough to hold the weight of the clay for the upper body?

How did God create Eve from a Adam's Rib? Did he just form more clay around the rib? Or did he just grow eve from the rib bone like you would grow algae?

Why did God not want Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge? Does that mean God wants us to remain stupid or ignorant?

Why did he want us to be naked? Is God some sort of pervert?

These were questions I would ask and never get replies from. Instead, I was typically told, "Well God is all powerful, what we can't understand we are not meant to." or they would get angry at the questions I would ask.

I started thinking about the physiology in the christian faith as well. This faith developed employing some rather successful techniques. Besides the obvious believe or go to hell. One of my mothers favorites was "Be sure your sins will find you out" a paraphrase of Numbers 32:23 "But if ye will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the LORD: and be sure your sin will find you out." At first this was a powerful motivator as a child until my first "test" of it :) I did many such tests as a kid. After not getting good answers to my questions above.. There were nights I would lay and bed asking God or even Satan to reveal themselves to me. I tried to make deals with them. I'd say stuff like ok God, if your real, if you exist, prove it to me! Show me with something tangible or personal. Honestly, I made the same offer to the Devil. Obviously neither took the challenge.

My wife tells me sometimes I'm obsessed. She will ask me if you don't believe in god why is it something you talk about or mention so often. Well, because it's everywhere!

Sorta like when you buy a new car. You love this car, and you don't recall seeing that many of the on the road. However, once you are in the car and driving around you start to notice they are all over the place. The same seems to be true with respects the christianity, once you move away from it you start to notice how intrusive into main stream life it is.

Who am I

My name is Robert. I'm a 32yrs family man, with a good and understanding wife, and a good son.
Let's start with my background... My first experience with religion prior age 12 was that typical of most people. We went to church for Easter, and Christmas. Except for the brief time I once went to vacation bible school, but that was for a girl... so I don't remember anything about the church or what they were teaching except for learning that damn song about "Germs" my invisible dog.... (I still find myself singing that chorus sometimes lol) . A few years later is when things really changed.... My parents joined a Pentecostal church, and things seemed to change over night. All my music was thrown out, movies at the theaters were out of the question, and I started attending the private school at the same church, just to name a few. To sum it up, from age 12 till 17 I spent around 6 days a week involved in church. After graduating it went back to just every wed night and both services on Sunday from age 17 - 21. After turning 21 I found myself in and out of church till around 25. During this time was when my biggest changes would happen. Although my journey actually began around 10th grade. I remember because it started in school with a course they called "New Testament Survey" and with the Science curriculum that they taught, if your curious the curriculum was ACE. First, let me get this out.... When I was in this private school, Dinosaurs never existed.... they were considered fake because there was no biblical background for them!! You would not believe my surprise when a couple years ago I heard that now Christians claim there IS biblical text that refer to creatures that could have been dinosaurs... wow what a difference 10yrs can make! Back to my story, My first glimmer of doubt came with how the Science course began to explain creation and the flood. Keep this in mind, you are hearing First hand account of what I was taught from 1986 - 1992. At the time the explanation of the creation and the flood went something like this. God created the earth same as you've heard before, by their counts with the whole "day is as a thousand years and a thousand years is as a day to God" therefore the earth could not be any older than 6000 yrs. Next came the explanation for the earth/flood. Basically the entire planet was a tropical paradise. They explained this by saying there was a vapor like canopy of water encompassing the entire planet. This created a "global warming" effect making the planet a perfect place where there temperature was tropical everywhere. God cause the flood by allowing the vapor to collapse onto the planet, with all this water coming down (btw, they never explained the water that supposedly shot up from the earth) the planet was completely covered with water and remained that way for 40 days until the water receded. Even at my age, and even with my strong beliefs at the time.... this was very difficult to accept. I had so many questions that were unanswered, so many unknowns... Another thing that attributed to my yearning to learn more was the fact that I was always told it was "Wrong" to read anything that did not support our beliefs or did not give "God" glory. In that respect , my teenage years were extremely sheltered from real life. It wasn't until I finally started to work in the real world that I found other people who not only had similar doubts, but had completely different beliefs. The only other real interaction with those of different faiths I hung around with were those at the Martial Arts School. They gained alot of respect from me of course, not only because it's part of the study of the Arts, but because of their high level of respect for others regardless of how they believe. I suppose the biggest eye opener was when i began reading books on my own. Starting with of all people "Tim Allens - I'm Not Really Here" , that led to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, witch led to "What the Bleep Do We Know" (a very entertaining read), and "The Dancing Wu Li Masters" (Excellent Book in my opinion), other books I read around the same time but in no particular order include: "essential Philosophy Everything You Need to Understand the World's Greatest Thinkers" ; "everything's Relative and Other Fables from Science and Technology" ; "The Handy Religion Answer Book" (this was a hard read for me.. it's like reading a school book, but it's packed with tons of information about the 8 major religions Judaism,Christianity,Islam,Buddhism,Hinduism,Confucianism,Taoism, and Shinto) ; "Misquoting Jesus The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why" (another excellent book!) ; and "The God Delusion" (another pretty good book). After much conversation with the few people similarly minded, and much deep thought and meditation brings me roughly to where am i today. This post became much longer than I originally intended, but it's seems to be a pretty good background :) If you made it this far, glad you stuck around! Now, it's your turn! Let me know when you post your story, you can email me at rpkthoughts@gmail.com

Do you believe.....

Q: Do you believe in the God of the Holy Bible?
A: No. I do not believe there is an all powerful entity that interacts with us on a daily basis. Nor do I believe that he sent his son to save us all from an eternal hell.
Reason: Say for the moment we ponder this... God created the earth and everything in it. Why? Because he wanted a species that would serve him by choice? So, our entire existence exists in order to serve a God of whom we can not know for sure exists. Interesting dilemma here, but it gets better. God goofed. After awhile, he decides that he does not like what he created and is going to destroy it all and start over. Except for Noah and his family (hey, he doesn't want to get his hands dirty again by forming another human from clay). So, he floods the world killing all mankind, and they re-populate the earth with stronger convictions of serving the Almighty. Now, Moses comes along.... God must have been in a good mood today because he decides to play ventriloquist with a burning bush. Well, that does the trick for Moses... and he becomes the person that is going to Free "God's" people. Yea, at this point your probably wondering.. what the hell? How is it that now there are only "certain" people God likes at this point? WTF happen? Does this mean that there are other Gods out there playing the same game? Creating other humans? No not really... to be explained all we have to do is just say that these people are the ones God chose. Why? Who knows. Maybe because they were slaves, and you know how much God hates slavery (forcing someone to do something just because you can). Besides it's all in Gods big plan.. you know the one where he is planning for the upcoming sacrifice of his son so that ALL of mankind can be saved, not just "His" chosen, to serve him. Well guess what, Moses gets these people freed with God's help... and yet again they screw up, and God makes them wander in the dessert for 40yrs. I wonder if this time it was similar to when you dangle a string in front of a cat, just for kicks to watch it chase it around. Jumping forward God finally gives them what they were looking for "The Promise Land", but not without some more cruelty. The have to fight, kill, pillage, plunder, and completely wipe out an entire civilization. Sad part of this, it's still going on. They are still fighting over there in Israel over this shit. Well as we move on, God decides that again things are not going all that well, and this time he will take a slightly more personal approach to things. He plants his seen in Mary, to bring forth the "God"/Man creature. Similar to Hercules except without the super strength. The rest I'm sure you are familiar with... Jesus came, was crucified horribly on the cross in order to bear the sins of all mankind so that we could all be saved from the eternal hell and SERVE GOD! Does it make sense now why it would be difficult to believe in this kind of God?

Q: Do you believe the Bible is the True/Inspired word of God?
A: No.
Reason: I think the Bible is a great work of fiction and worth reading, but I do not think one should base their lives, moral values, or seek the Bible for direction in life.

Q: Have you read the Bible?
A: Yes. Have you?

Q: Do you believe God created the world and everything in it?
A: No.
Reason: I think that man evolved from simple creatures, over a long period of time. Simple creatures evolved into more complex creatures through the process of evolution. If you want to understand this process, there are many books on the subject.

Q: Are you open to the possibility that God could exist?
A: If you are referring to the possibility that a form of intelligence could exist and be perceived because of their increased knowledge or Technology as a God, then yes I believe there is a possibility for creatures to exist that have evolved more than we have. Do I believe the God of the Bible is one of those creatures? Sure, I suppose it's possible that the God of the Bible was actually a creature of significant knowledge or technology that was screwing around with us. Again, I don't believe that God created the world and everything in it, or that he/it is watching over us reading our minds, recording our thoughts, and interacting with us daily.

Q: What about quantum mechanics, quantum physics, reality as we perceive it, matter, sting theory, multi-verse theory, etc..
A: What about them? I am fascinated by what we are learning in these area's. Is it possible these fields will reveal that God exists? I don't think so, not the God defined by the Bible. If we redefine God as some sort of inter connectivity between humans on a quantum level, like a massive super computer, where all our minds are connected but at the same time being used like some super massive universal computer. Sure that sounds plausible. There are many things in the field of quantum physics that completely change the rules, but i still don't think that's evidence for the One True God of Judaism/Christianity/Islam. I think it's more evidence that we are all connected and if we work together we could accomplish incredible things. Just like a super computer with many computers programmed to work together, the trick is getting them to work together, and that is what I think we should work towards. One thing that I can claim for sure is that I do not know all or have all the answers. Religion does claim it has those answers and that those answers are simply to say it is "God", and that in my opinion as well as many others is simply not acceptable.

Q: Are you an atheist?
A: An atheist is defined as someone who denies the existence of God. If you define God as the entity as described in the Bible, then yes I am an atheist. Otherwise, I guess I would fall under simply a lost sinner category.

I'll add more to this list as i think of them...