I know it’s been a while since I’ve had an update but I’ve been going through a lot of medical stuff and still working through recovering all while trying to re-learn who I am. No offense but this hasn’t been top priority :-). I’m working on a write up of what happened and what’s going on but it will take some time. There’s a lot to go over. If you’re reading this thanks for sticking with me while I go through all this 🙂
Continued from Part 9
With my renewed passion for god, I decided to put myself back to all in for Jesus. Living back with my parents I began to take the church classes over again. I involved myself in ministry again. I also started to date my high school girlfriend again (for the third time). This time, however, I somehow convinced her to marry me. We moved in together shortly after that. My parents were ecstatic.
Moving in together was not really something brand new to either of us. We had both either lived with our parents or roommates, neither of had ever lived alone so we were used to sharing spaces. However, the apartment we lived in was small, ill-maintained, but super cheap. That last part was the selling point :-). As we started our new co-habitation situation, I started dragging her to church. Eventually, I got her involved with the music ministry (she’s an amazing vocalist). We were able to serve together on the team, I’d play guitar and she’d sing backup vocals. It was something we could do together and enjoy (or commiserate on depending on the day).
Things at the point seemed to be going well. We were happy, making enough money to set some aside for the wedding but then I had life changing injury. I had fallen at work and sprained my back. This incapacitated me for a number of weeks and wasn’t able to work my wonderful retail job. I was on track for management but my career path had come to an abrupt stop. I began to panic. Workers compensation only paid so much and we had bills to pay. With no degree and no other skills to speak of I was at a complete loss for what to do. I quickly learned the pills that eased the physical pain also eased the mental pain. It was something that I struggled with for a long time after.
The first fall
So as I was in college I wanted to assert my independence. I got a full time job. I eventually moved out of my parents house since I was then able to support myself. In doing all of this I eventually stopped going to church. I didn’t feel like going anymore so I just stopped. When my parents asked I would tell them I had to work weekends (which was true). I will say this though, even though I had given up on church I had not given up on “God”. I still believed very heavily in Christianity.
At a certain point I came to a crossroads. I found the stress of a full time job and full time school to be a bit too much for me. I had to make a decision. This would follow me for years (and to an extent still does). I left school. I felt that the classes weren’t the right fit for me. My job gave me enough satisfaction that I thought I would make a career out of it.
This was also about the time I moved in with a girl with whom I had been dating. I didn’t seem like a big deal. I needed a place to live, she wanted to move out of her parent’s house. I remember at that time I could pack all of my belongings into my Hyundai Accent and just go. Things went ok for a while but I ignored a lot of my financial issues. It all came to a head one day when the bank wanted to repo my car. I ended breaking up with that girl and moving back in with my dad. That was perhaps one of the most humbling experience in my life.
I lived there only a short time before the “you should come back to church with us”‘s started. I eventually relented. It seemed serendipitous that the sermon was on the parodical son. I remember at the end of the service we got into small groups of people to pray for each other. At the end my dad pulled me in for a moment and said “He still loves you.” I began sobbing. And thus began my journey back to Christianity.
How do you explain how the universe is so perfect for life?
This is another question I see a lot. There is this notion that the universe is set perfectly in motion and in no other way could life have formed. Some limit this just to life on earth but the same thoughts apply. Firstly the universe is definitely not perfectly tailored for life. In fact the opposite seems true. Most of the universe is space. And it’s huge. “Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And there is a lot of nothing in there. Seriously there is of area where nothing can survive. If the universe were made to suit life there would be way more places for us to live. Even in our solar system with it’s 8 planets (sorry Pluto) only one of them has the ability to support human life.
Even looking a just earth there are problems with it being tailored for human life. Three quarters of the planet is covered in water. And then there are places like the poles which have such cold temperatures very little can survive there. Also vasts deserts of nothingness. There a very few places where humans can flourish without bringing in outside resources to sustain them. In fact we wage wars and kill each other for those resources, as they are limited and will eventually run out.
I do grant that there are certainly other places that may harbor life outside our solar system, they are relatively small in number. Yes we are finding more and more possible planets in what seems like everyday however, when you think about the scale of the universe this number is minuscule. In short, no I don’t see a universe being perfect for life. I see a universe where gravity and electromagnetic force control how and where things end up.
Side note: Sorry the late post. Time has gotten away from me this week after the holiday. I hope to get back to regular posts shortly!
Continued from Part 7
So at the ripe and enlightened age of 17 I was expected to pick the course of the rest of my life. Settling on computer science, I began applying to school and really wanted to get into the Rochester Institute of Technology. I applied to a few other schools but this was my dream school. Anxiously I awaited and eventually received my acceptance letter. I was thrilled! My father reviewed the documents and was concerned about the cost. We took a trip to the school and spoke with the financial aide department. Essentially there wasn’t anything they would be able to do about the cost and would need to take out loans for it. When we got back, home my dad essentially told me there was no way I was going to this school and needed to spend two years at community college. I was heartbroken.
I came to call this thirteenth grade. There were a lot of people I went to high school with that went here. I became resentful and didn’t put much effort into school. Instead I spent that time working on trying to become a leader in the church. I started a bible study at the college. I made sure to reserve the room that had the big windows so people could see us in there and might stop and ask about it. Didn’t get a whole lot of response to that. It ended up just being a bible study for the people that went to my church and school. This was also about the same time that I started taking classes at church. They weren’t formal learning but more of a getting to know yourself type thing. I’m realizing now how ineffective it is. Part of it was taking a Myers-Briggs test. When I first took it I was an ENFJ. I took it again a few years ago it had changed drastically to INTJ. After leaving the church I found how unreliable these tests actually are.
Part of my college curriculum required us to take the philosophy of logic. It basically teaches logic gates and how to calculate true/false statements. I found a lot of these portions very interesting and lead me to take a few other philosophy classes, ethics and metaphysics. Ethics was a pretty great class. It got me thinking about how we arrive at what we deem right and wrong. However, I essentially just used it to fill in the gaps of things not directly stated in the bible. Metaphysics was a bit more eye opening. Metaphysics deals with the nature of reality. Things like how do we know we’re not just a brain in a vat being fed memories and sensory inputs. I liked to entertain these types of thought experiments but didn’t put much actual stock into it.
Isn’t atheism just another religion?
I’ve seen this one a few times out there. People like Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis like to tout this one. He takes it a step further in saying that atheism and those who believe in the theory of evolution are religious and want to kill Christianity by saying they aren’t a religion so they can be taught in schools…yeah so no. But to get back to people who genuinely think that atheism is a religion, no it’s not.
Atheism is an answer to a single question, “Do you believe in a god (or gods)?” There are no tenents of atheism. There are no rules, no dogma, no other unifying factor in it other than a lack of a belief in any god. We don’t meet weekly and study “The God Delusion” or watch old videos of Christopher Hitchens. I’ve heard it explained this way which may be helpful: Atheism is as much of a religion as not stamp collecting is a hobby. My lack of beliefs do not guide my actions, only my beliefs.
We atheists don’t have a club. Most of us disagree on a lot of things. We disagree on whether morality is subjective or objective. We disagree on whether there is free will. There are a lot of things that we don’t have in common. Literally the only idea we share is a lack of a belief in a god. I know I’m repeating this a lot here but this seems to be a huge point of confusion. There are other idea that atheists may gravitate towards such as Secular Humanism but again that’s also not a religion any more than a book club is. The confusion here might just be a paradigm issue. Theists just may not understand that one can live a life without religion.
Continued from Part 6
I coasted through high school doing the least amount of work I could get away with. I began to resent school and wanted only to do “church stuff.” I was easier to me. There were few wrong answer do things and nearly no studying needed. When ever I came across a problem I didn’t know I could just answer “I feel like God is saying…” And that would be the end of it. I absolutely loved playing on the worship team. I replaced a lot of time studying school work with practicing playing guitar.
I think the first time I had any thought of doubt would have been freshman year. That’s the year, in my school, you took earth science. The age of the earth stuff never really bothered me, I hadn’t done the biblical math yet. He did say one thing that stuck with me though. He said “Sorry to break it to you but the water going off your back does so in the exact same pattern as a fish.” I never looked into this but it planted a small seed. In Sophomore year I had read up some on creationism and decided to debate my biology teacher on whether evolution was a real thing. I was indeed brought down from my high horse.
Being one that always enjoyed science,I began to shift my views on some of the teachings of the bible to what science had taught me. Instead of being a staunch “God did” christian, I decided that what ever science finds that “how” god did it. It was easier to maintain my cognitive dissonance that way. Not that I knew what that was before I left religion but I do now 🙂
What would it take for you to believe in God?
Firstly I would have to ask which god? Yaweh? Allah? Zues? Vishnu? But getting past that and assuming they meant whichever god they believe in I suppose there are a lot of things. Perhaps something written in our DNA that has their signature in it? Like “Yaweh was here”. But readable in every known language. This would have to be in the DNA of every living thing.
I often thought that maybe magical sky writing they everyone could read in their own language but that could be alien in nature.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clark
The long and short of it though (borrowed from Matt Dillahunty) is that if there was a god, it would know exactly what evidence I would need.