I’m currently taking Speech as my current college course and am past the half way mark in the course.  I will be extremely glad when this particular course is over because “public speaking” is not my strong suite.

I really wish I had more to say on this site, but although I’ve had a few ideas pop into my head that would be right up the ally for this site, by the time I think about the site, I’ve already forgotten about those ideas, and nothing has really irked me off to the point of needing to talk about it here.

College courses continue to plug a long one course at a time (having filed my 2011 Tax return I am hoping that will be remedied after this next session).  Web design course that I just finished was an absolute total blast. I learned things about HTML coding and CSS that I had never thought of before, and what a difference it made in how I code HTML from how I coded HTML in the past.

As usual in my courses I’ve been scratching my head at the “Quality” of work that some of my classmates were putting in, and am amazed at the fact that they are getting passing grades.  More and more of my classes are running into this issue, and at this point is starting to make me think that in the end my degree will be nothing more than an EXPENSIVE piece of paper that says “I have a bachelor’s degree”, but that is a ramble for another time.

Have a couple of ideas rattling around in my head for posts that I may write today or tomorrow,  super sensitive topics that everyone likes to voice an opinion on, yet no one else wants to listen to unless they agree with your viewpoint …. Sounds just perfect for this place, but I’m still debating in my head….

Things of note for this place, and me I just finished another college course and have already started my next course.  Last course was “Connectivity” which was supposed to be all about “Connecting and managing your network”; so far, in my return to college, it is the leading course for “What a waste of money of time”.  I say this because the Professor, or as he liked to be called “Instructor” never opened the textbook once, and never really taught the class.  I really feel for my classmates that I’ve heard describe themselves as “Computer Illiterate” because while they may have gotten a good grade using methods that were allowed, they gained practically nothing out of the course.

My new course that I am now starting is web page design, and even though this is week 1 of 8, and I’ve only read the first 3 chapters of 5 assigned for this week, I have really been enjoying this class so far.  Not only is the reading interesting in what has changed over the years since I’ve last had to code a webpage, but this course Professor is actually engaging the class in the course discussion threads and posting.   As this course is about web page design and development, I find myself thinking about this place, and possibly other domains and sites that I might like to setup.  In fact, our course project for this course is to design and deploy a small web site by the end of the course.  This means that this course has some serious potential.

Train of thought just left the building, so until next time….

So I was watching something on TV this last weekend, and for the life of me I can’t remember what the exact name of the show was, or if it was on the Science channel, Discovery, or History channel, I guess I should start keeping a pad and pen next to me to write this stuff down. Anyways, as I was watching this program it began to talk about the “Rapture” and the different viewpoints on the rapture, and how people think it may happen (before or after the tribulation).  As the show was discussing this, they had some guy come on talk about how he doesn’t understand why there is this belief system where only a small group of “good” people are taken away, and everyone else is left to fend for themselves instead of society throwing that belief system out the window and just working together. Well this statement has just flat out annoyed me, because it is wrong.

So let’s get it right people.  When the “Rapture” happens (I say when cause I am a Christian, therefore there is no “if” here), it will not be a small group of “Good” people that are raptured away.  It will be those that believe in and saved by Christ.   Our humanly definition of “Good” has absolutely NOTHING to do with it.

And for this I am extremely grateful, because if the rapture was based on some form of the word “Good” , absolutely no one would be raptured, because absolutely No one is “Good” enough in the eyes of God to be raptured except through being saved by his son.  As the Bible clearly states that “All have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God” Romans 3:23.

Ok, stopping here so I really don’t go off and start “preaching” on my blog.  And I think that is the first time I’ve ever quoted an actual verse and verse reference on this blog.  Just wanted to clarify that ‘Good” has nothing to do with who gets raptured away, and/or gets into heaven for that matter.

So um, until next time

In other news, after over a year of no work, I have finally begun to try and “job” hunt. Oddly enough though, everything I want to do is stuff that I think could come in handy to have a good working knowledge of several years down the road (such as Active Directory), but so far every posting I have found has been 2-3+ years experience required, or really odd hours that would basically mean never getting to see my family except for Sundays.

And in yet other news, I am currently going through MMO withdrawal.  My laptops video card gave up the 3d gaming ghost this past week. I managed to nurse it along for 3 days, but it finally completely gave it up 2 days ago, so I’ve had ZERO MMO / Interactive gaming and am seriously feeling the boredom.  I’m looking at the possibilities of a new laptop but sadly that could still be anywhere from 1 – 2 months away before I replace.

Yes, this was a random ramble, I know I said there wouldn’t be too many of these unless they were password protected, but 1) I couldn’t sleep when turned the laptop on 2) I felt like typing something, and 3) Even though it’s just a few extra clicks , I really don’t feel like pass wording this post….

Enjoy and Til next time.

This topic was actually brought about by a conversation that I had with my mother one day this last week.  I don’t recall exactly what we were talking about or why the comment came up and brought this idea to me, but we began discussing why God placed this particular tree in the garden if he didn’t want man to sin in the first place.

Now if you’ve ever had any amount of decent “religious” conversations with a variety of people sooner or later you will hear comments that vary along the lines of “Christians are just ignorant and follow blindly like sheep”, or perhaps “What type of God intentionally does something that will fail?” or maybe even “If God knows everything, and doesn’t want man to sin, why did he put that tree in the garden?”.

The answer to these questions is quite simply that of free will.  God doesn’t want people to follow him and obey his word simply because he said so. While there is a certain aspect of religion that requires this particular type of obedience, he also wants it to be because the follower freely chose to believe and obey, and not because he simply had no choice.

So in a direct answer to the first question that I’ve heard, in that Christians are just ignorant and follow blindly like sheep, if this were truly the case God would not have put the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden.  There wouldn’t have been a need to, or a point in doing so, because without that tree man would more than likely not have sinned and fallen, because that was the only rule that God had placed before man, and man who was at that time inherently good(after sin man became inherently evil), would have blindly followed God because he would have never known, or thought that there was a choice in the matter, or even another choice that he could have made, because the thought would have never crossed his mind.

In direct answer to the second and third question, God did not intentionally do something that would fail, although he did intentionally place the tree in the garden, because he intentionally wanted to give man the decision to obey, or to not obey.

Now for the part of this post that I find to be a complete mind boggle but extremely interesting to think about, and that is the following:  While there is absolutely nothing in the Bible to corroborate this idea or thinking except a small chicken scratch and what little human reasoning we are able to produce, I believe that there is a possibility that had man not eaten of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil when he had, that eventually when man had matured enough God would have lifted the restriction of not eating of this particular tree.

I say this with the following reasoning, that throughout the remainder of the Bible God is repeatedly referenced as a God the Father, and that he considers those that are his (or saved) to be his children.  In our limited understanding of God, this father to child relationship is the same as a parent to child relationship.

Taking that into consideration there are many times in raising children (while I have none of my own, I have 2 nieces and nephews, and am not so old as I can’t recall how I was raised), where the parent will say,  “No, you can’t do something”, or “I don’t want you to do  something”.  Often times when parents do this they don’t necessarily tell their children why they don’t want them to do whatever, just that they don’t and expect the child to obey them.  Now while there are many things that parents tells their kids “don’t do this”, some of those things are things that parents tell their kids not to do because their kid is not mature enough in some manner or another to properly handle whatever that thing may be, or in some cases the timing of wanting something may not be appropriate etc.  The key point here is that eventually at some point in time the child becomes mature enough, or the timing to do something is now appropriate to the extent that the parent then allows the child to partake of something that they had previously been forbidden.

In the brief time that I was discussing this with my mother, she very firmly commented on the fact that this just could not exist with God, because it would require God to change his mind, and that is just something that is not possible with God, because God would not be God otherwise.  Now my counter point to this is that if this were the case, this would not be a case in which God was changing his mind, but a point in which a previously unknown condition had finally been met, thus making it the appropriate time for God to have possibly said that it was now ok to eat of that particular tree.

This post has actually taken me several days to get to this point, and my train of thought just left me, so just thought that this was an interesting concept for food for thought.

As this post is so long, there is a More Link.

When this post was originally written I had just started attending church again on Wednesday nights.  While I now go to church on Sunday mornings instead of Wednesday night, the original sentiment of the opening of the post was that I’ve seen enough of the world without church, to know now that attending church regularly is definitely a worthwhile endeavor, and that fact still stands, if not even more re-affirmed in my mind then it was then.

The very first sermon that I heard on that first Wednesday night had a guest speaker (at the time of the original post I couldn’t remember the speaker name, and I can’t recall it now either), and while the guest speaker had an overall decent sermon there were several things that I just really scratched my head on.  In particular he made a point about science.

The guest speaker was discussing Jacob and the placing of poplar before his flock in order to get them to produce speckled offspring (not going to quote the scripture reference, but it is there in Genesis). As he was discussing this topic he commented that there are people out there that attribute what happened to science, and genetic manipulation, but that what happened was not science or genetic manipulation but the awesome power and a miracle of God.  This statement boggled my mind then, just as much as it boggles my mind now.  I have even recently re-read this story, and am still completely dumbfounded that the speaker made this statement.

The question I tried to pose in the original posting of this topic is the same now.  Why in the scientific and religious worlds is it always one or the other when it comes to trying to justify ones belief system?

I ask this because since the original posting of this topic, I’ve seen tons of supposed “Science” shows on TV that are trying to disprove the Bible, and yet at the same time we have supposed “Christians” running around that are trying to ignore science so they can go with “the power and awesomeness of God” instead.  While giving God credit for his power and awesomeness is a worthy thing to do, I also think that we should credit God for his Omniscience as well when that credit is due.  For me this is easily done by Christians in the support of scientific endeavors and research because increased scientific understanding within the right mindset will also increase our understanding of awesomeness of God.

This causes me to really scratch my head when I see Christians trying to push away science so that they can cling to a misconstrued interpretation of “the power of God”.

I say this because of how true science works.  Science, when it is done properly is a world of using the scientific method to prove or disprove theories and hypothesis.   Now it might be argued that this is not so for theories, however, if you can’t prove the rationalization of a theory then it won’t stand up forever because eventually someone will devise a way to test the theory and more than likely prove it wrong, or come to an inconclusive decision due to the lack of data or understanding as the results were something that isn’t immediately identifiable or explainable.

This means that in order for science to work correctly, science must be observed, which means that there must be someone or some device there to record the events as they happen.  Science must then be able to ask why an event happened, and then run tests to see if their ideas on why something happened are correct.  This means that science is always looking towards the here and now, and forward to the future, as that is what can be observed, and never back towards history.

Even if a scientist has access to original starting data and results of those experiments, if he questions those results then he would re-rest the original data and results for himself.  He would not just ignore the information  and implant his own assumptions in the place of obtainable test results, as it would taint the results of any data that was gained from that point on.

What this means for Christians is that science cannot, nor will it ever be able to disprove religion or the theory of creation, or any other miracle or event in the Bible.  This is because in order to disprove the Bible science would have to be able to either observe the original event, or discover a way to test the validity of the original event.  As at the time of the writing of the Bible, there was no such thing subject of science, and verifiable scientific documents are extremely scarce until sometime after the Dark Age, or were not even kept at all, there is no true scientific method to prove or disprove the events of the Bible.  There are some ancient astronomy charts and tablets available from the time of the Bible to show that an extreme basic form or science was already underway, and while astronomy is a form of science, the records from that time period are not conclusive or verifiable for disproving the events of the Bible.

The existence of astronomy brings me to the next point that just because we can measure the speed of light, and that with this information we can triangulate the distance to star and discover that it is 90 billion light years away, does not necessarily mean that the earth is at least 90 billion years old, so what is recorded in the Bible can’t possibly be true.

This is the point in this post where I comment on people being “Open Minded” because I know there will be people that read this that at this point want to be “Closed Minded” and just write this post and site off as belonging to a religious nutcase.

Continuing on, most modern well recognized religions, worship one God, which they consider to be the True God, and everyone else’s viewpoint is wrong, and most of them contain the history that pertains to their religion.  Within that history are events and actions that are completely unexplainable by any means other than calling them a miracle. Well, at least that is what they call them in the Christian religion.  Now whenever Christians talk about any of these miracles, you will almost always be able to find them referencing to “the power of God”, “the awesomeness of God”, “the Grace of God”, “the goodness of God”, etc.

As they continue to talk about these events and miracles, from time to time someone will try to answer the question of exactly how a miracle happened, other than to just say that it was “the power of God” because for some reason or another they have a gnawing feeling inside them that there has to be some other answer which could explain the miracle as well, and even better emphasized the awesomeness of God, because the knowledge to accomplish whatever would not have existed in general man in those days.

While this next part is hugely conjecture on my part, it is based off many conversations that I’ve had with both believers and non-believers of the Bible, and that is that instead of Christianity encouraging these explanations through science or accepting these explanations, they reject it, and the person that posted the explanation.  The person that posed the explanation then gets to hear such phrases as “I’ll be praying for you” , or “the devil has influenced you, let me pray for you” or if you want go back into history, these types of explanations would probably have been declared as heresy, and the people speaking them would have been jailed or worse, executed.

So now I pose the question, Why is this?  If my rationalization is correct, and science cannot disprove religion, then why are Christians so afraid of it, when they should be utilizing as much science as possible to disprove the false sciences of the world, or to further emphasize the awesomeness of God.

Now when I say “disprove the false sciences of the world”, I am referring the basic concepts of macro evolution, that we all came from monkeys, and that everything grew from amoeba’s.   I will give science and genetics some credit in that there are a lot of similarities between multiple species. However, genetic commonalities do not equate to scientific proof.  The fact that because of said commonalities certain species can carry the embryo of other species is not proof that we came from monkeys, in fact there is no proof whatsoever to back the concept of macro evolution and that we evolved from monkeys, it just doesn’t exist.

In fact most scientists today preach and teach the theory of evolution (specifically macro evolution), and many scientific unknowns as if they were scientific fact because they do not like depending upon faith, because faith is something that cannot be tested with repeatable tests, and therefore do not fall into the realm of the scientific method.

The thing about faith, is that it is mandatory in practically every religion in the world, because there are just so many aspects of religion and spiritualty that cannot be properly quantified.

The best description of faith that I have ever seen, actually came from an obscure ex-PCC (Pensacola Christian College), and self-professed ex-Christian, that I found once while scouring the internet.  He basically said that faith is meant to help us get from the unknown to the known, and that once we get to the known we no longer need faith.  Essentially faith is about getting from A to B to C to D, while starting at A , and not knowing what B, C or D consist of, or even how to get there.  Once you do finally reach D, in retrospect you know what it took to get through A, B, and C, to get to D, and therefore you no longer faith in regards to A, B, and C.   Now you need faith for wherever you are going from there.

I happen to disagree with this outlook on faith, because this is where faith comes into this topic, because faith is not about just looking forward to the uknown, but faith is also about looking back to the past, and to things that science nor history can explain due to complete lack of documentation of the time and era.

Sure as far as history goes we have the ancient hieroglyphs and other writings, but who is to say that our translations of such texts are even remotely accurate, because we are taught that our current interpretations of those writings are accurate.  The interesting thing about this concept is the fact that languages evolve with the passing time from generation to generation and what means one thing for a generation may mean something completely different for another generation several generations down the line when the meaning or context of a word or image is lost and therefore misinterpreted.

So we take all of this, throw it all together and I pose the following:

If Christianity believes in a God that is Omnipresent, Omniscience, and Omnipotent, then why can’t they believe in the possibilities of God using his awesome power, knowledge and revelations to account for various different things that are covered in the Bible that may be explainable by todays science.

While growing up, Christian children are taught “God knows exactly how many hairs are on your head” , and “God spoke to people directly back in Bible times” ,  Yet science had absolutely nothing to do with Jacob and the poplar rods ?  Who is to say that God didn’t tell Jacob what to do?  Just because it isn’t recorded in the Bible doesn’t mean that stuff didn’t happen. There is no recorded record of Jesus’ life from thirteen to thirty three (approximately).  No one disputes that the remainder of the years not recorded existed, they just weren’t recorded.  But I would be almost willing to guarantees that  If a Christian in today’s world, tried to say “Hey wait a second, behold the power of God, or awesomeness of God, not because he made it *Poof*, but because his hand of knowledge was present in guiding Jacob in knowing what needed to be done, so that Jacob would be ‘blessed’ or in this case grow extremely wealthy” ; that they would probably be heavily criticized for saying such.

Or even better yet, if God is Omnipotent and can create anything or do anything,  and he created the Earth and the rest of the universe, and in the way that he did, then why do they go against stuff such as the Big Bang Theory so heavily, rather than admitting that in today’s science, in the way that we understand things, that that theory, might just be accurate to some extent, but that the process didn’t take Millions or Billions of years to complete, but a matter of moments as God exercised his Omnipotence, and Omniscience in one great “Miracle” that created the Earth, and the Universe as we know it, placing every star and every molecule of matter in the exact position that it needed to be, including placing every ray of light exactly where it needed to be, and creating every scientific rule that we have discovered and the ones that we haven’t discovered , so that the Universe would function as a whole, without freakishly imploding upon itself.

This is not being Gullible, or straying from the faith … This is realizing that If a Christian truly has faith and belief in God, that a Christian should allow scientific explanations to be, and allow them to be presented, so that their faith can be shown, in that they believe in what is the unknown and un-provable, yet awesome power of God.

And for those hardcore agnostics or atheists that may be out there.  Christianity using science to clarify or demonstrate faith in their creator is no different than those that believe that we all came from monkeys. There is no proof either way. The only difference is that one belief holds you accountable for your actions and responsibilities, while the other belief pretty much lets you do whatever you think is right, according to your own moral judgments.

Well, I think that is a pretty decent re-write of that post, I actually managed to cut some stuff out. I think there was a comment or two that went with this post, but I figure maybe some new comments would be good, even if they are the same old comments as before.

Over the past few months I’ve begun listening to KCBI instead of music when I am out driving. This last week I heard a commercial on the radio for a new Christian website proclaiming to provide new information further confirming events in the book of Genesis as further proof that the story of the Bible is real.  I finally remembered to pull up the website today and take a read because I am interested in these types of things.

Aside from the introduction the site has 5 current pages with “Expositions” which have some fairly deep and in depth information that supposedly helps prove the book of Genesis and should absolutely confound any hardcore evolutionist.  Please note my wording in that last sentence in that it supposedly helps prove the book.  As much as I believe the Bible and like stuff like this, the problem that I have with this site and their writings is that there is ZERO citation, other than a paragraph in their “Strategy” section telling readers to essentially Google it (Not the words they use, but the point).

This is absolutely unbelievable, because they are asking people to get the word out about their website via the radio, word of mouth, etc. and to state this information as fact to evolutionist to see if they can dispute it.

As a Bible believing Christian the very first thing I asked myself is “What are your sources? Telling me to Google it is not a good answer, because you can find anything on Google (or any search engine), and even then, which link or source are you pulling some of your information from?”  As this is the very first question that I ask myself, it is also the very first question that I would expect an evolutionist to ask.  This means you have to be able to answer with something other than “Oh I got this information from <insert website>”, because the very next question is “Ok, then where did they get the information from?” and the answer absolutely cannot be “I don’t know, the website doesn’t say, they just say to look it up on the Internet for yourself”.

I’m sorry, but this is not acceptable, without citation there is practically zero credibility to what this site is trying to say.  There is a reason why people use citations in literature of all sorts, and that is to backup whatever it is they are trying to say with other information that can be verified.

With that said, as the site is fairly new and still trying to “get the word out”, I decided to click the contact us page, and be nice and request that they use some form of accepted citation such as MLA or APA , so that people can tell where they are getting some of their information other than “We got it from the Internet”.

The response I got back:

The material is really original, and the facts of history which are properly interpreted with this new material are easily confirmed via google, such as the greek kings Plato wrote lived in the timeframe of Atlantis.  And I believe the key words to be googled are noted, so I don’t think you have a point.

This response completely blows my mind.  I could respond back to the responder, however, at that point it would just become an argument, because this response is clearly from someone that has no desire for the work that they are supporting to even stand a chance at being viewed as using “Credible” information and something to think about.

I know that this site has never drawn much traffic, and this post will probably be no different, but I would consider it to be extremely rewarding and powerful if somehow this posting generated enough traffic and comments to the originating site so that they will change their policy on this, and use proper MLA or APA citation so that they have some form of basic credibility and cannot instantly be shot down based on the fact that there is none.

So with that settled, where do I begin from here?  Previously, I used this place as a dumping ground, if something came up that I needed to vent on or rant about, this is where I would do it, and up through 2010 I was fairly active here.  2011 however, saw a huge difference in what I felt like spending time on, and just the general fact that things have changed for me, in that I haven’t felt the extreme urge to explode on some topic in a very long while.  While I may still use the site to some extent for posting things of a ranting nature, more than likely those topics will be found to be password protected so that only a select few can view them.

This does not mean however that I won’t be putting anything up for the general public, but it also does not necessarily mean that I will be updating regularly either (we shall see). Instead posts that make it up for the general public will attempt to be thought out more, and hopefully provide more food for commenting.

Another change from the past, is that previously I held back on some topics, in particular topics of religion, well ironically and perhaps sadly, I am not close enough to anyone that I go to church with to effectively have someone to enjoy talking about these topics with, and I’m tired of feeling like the topic of religion is some taboo thing that no one should talk about because “I’ll be forcing it upon others”.  If I feel like bringing something religious up, I will.

Looking forward to seeing what I can do with this place in 2012, so until the next post, Later.

I have a backup of the old stuff if I ever need it , or decide against the crazy idea that is currently bouncing around my head … but we shall see ….

For the time being I am focusing on a new theme / look for the site, so that is where it shall start.