Flawed Thoughts (Part 1?)

 One of my earliest blog posts was on The Third Choice in a Two Sided Argument that is something I have pondered for quite some time. I have continued to ponder it since that post and perhaps refine it a bit as well. The question I posed is "Why do people insist that Creationism and Evolution are mutually exclusive theories?" Now, I use God when I could use Supreme Being, but I'm not sugar-coating anything. My belief is in God, not just as the Supreme Being but as the Creator, and besides, anyone who merely believes in a Supreme Being is probably not a proponent of Creationism anyway. Creationism is after all a result of the book of Genesis. And I intend my arguments for people of faith rather than just anyone because they have that singular point as well. In my original post I ended up getting off tangent with a discussion on the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Invisible Pink Unicorn. The discussion is not intended to make scientific types accept God, there are other apologetic discussions for that. Rather it is intended to get Christians to accept science and to see that the use of science is not an indication of a weakness or inability to create in any other way.

The first thing I realized after posting initially was that I did not intend to engage the thoughts of the scientific community, only those people of faith. Those who typically see anything scientific as not of God. I describe it as my Christian Flawed Thought. It is every bit as troublesome as the Scientific Flawed Thought. The CFT discounts the fact that science, scientific principles, and even the drive and desire to prove something all comes from God. It is not a worldly concept that merely leads to a humanistic explanation--in its purest form. Now perhaps as often as most of the time this drive does lead to a humanistic explanation. These would be the people I call "educated beyond their intelligence." Having this group of people seems to feed the belief that scientific endeavours are not of God.

Regardless of how the belief came about, or is perpetuated, there is a syllogistic gap in the logic that in itself becomes an incredulous object to those on the other side of the coin. One of my favorite authors, Douglas Adams, used the fact that the religious take any questioning of their faith as an affront to their faith and disallow it as an argument in favor of not believing in God anyway. His thought was that anything that required you to not think about it in order to prove that it exists, or that can only prove it exists by not proving it exists, must not exist. Those thinkers succumb to the Scientific Flawed Thought, that simply proving something (scientifically) is a sign that it is not from God. This also has a syllogistic gap in the logic, right at the very end, but in some ways the two flawed thoughts feed on themselves because the belief that proof shows non-existence increases the belief that the need to prove is a secular non-faith based activity.

There is still more to come on this subject, but the main point remains. Science cannot explain away God, but Christianity cannot explain away science.

Growing a Human

While Proverbs 22:6 "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." was not the subject of the conversation the other day, it did occasion me to think of the following analogy. It is one I have contemplated for some time. Growing up we get a skeleton for our faith. This begins as our parents show their faith to us. Notice I am not saying just the Christians, Muslims do it, Hindus do it, atheists do it. Parents show their children what is important to them. More often than not, these are the ideals that the child grows up with as well. How the parent treats them, as important or not, also begins to send messages to the children as to how they should treat the matters.

Now the skeleton by itself is extremely flexible-in someone else's hands. Knees can bend in 2 directions because there are no tendons or muscles to restrict them. A child's view of religion is not very deep. It is very open to interpretation, and without guidance it can lead to anything. As we are able to grow in our faith, we understand better and are required to take fewer things by faith having gained an understanding of the truths behind them.

As we get older and bigger we add tendons and muscles and maybe eventually skin. The reasons for some of the bones being where they are becomes evident. Or at least it becomes clear that they simply are where they belong. You can't get muscles before the skeleton. And while the muscles and tendons can be seen as restricting the movement of the skeleton, it is the way the body is meant to be. The truth of the way the body should move. The more body we have built, the more truth we understand, the closer we come to having something to put skin on, and a face. Eventually if we are lucky enough, we can get a complete body. It isn't by chance or accident, and it isn't overnight.

One of my absolute favorite CS Lewis books is Til We Have Faces. It is an allegory of the Psyche/Cupid myth, and contains, of all the unlikely things, idol worship and a class of priests unlike any you would ever expect to meet in a Christian work of literature. Idol worship, sure, idol worship by the "good" guys? Not expected. It all boils down in the end to a point where the question from God to the main character is how can we speak face to face, unless you have a face? Without being able to comprehend the biggest question of all, how can it be discussed?

On a macro scale (and unless you look deeply at the remainder of the plot) this mimics the legendary agnostic Douglas Adams' answer to the question of life the universe and everything. We are given the answer (42) but cannot understand the question until a greater event has occurred.

No, these two don't go hand in hand. And likewise the moral of Til We Have Faces is not that we cannot understand anything about religion until we understand everything about religion. That is more a Josef Heller novel. The point of it all is that we start to grow our human body as a child. The input our parents give (or don't) is important in starting that off. That start also gives us the impetus to continue (or not) to build our understanding of how it all works until such time as we are able to no longer have to rely on faith alone to grasp the fundamental truths of it all.

Abnormally Normal

Douglas Adams once shared an anecdote about a cab driver. Said driver always saw people in movies and on television getting into a cab and yelling, "Follow that cab!" Having never had anyone jump in his cab in over 20 years of driving convinced him that he was that cab. Mike Warnke once shared that weirdness is a relative state. For proof he offered first a view of his relatives, then that weird is only weird around normal people. A normal person hanging out with a group of weird people would be weird while the rest would be normal.

Two seemingly un-connectable concepts, but I will now show the connection. On the radio I heard someone discussing adult ADHD and saying that more and more people are being diagnosed with disorders and as a result the group of normal people is shrinking. More and more people are getting pills for things that previously we, or our parents, have just taken for granted. I don't take medicine, even most prescriptions my doctor gives me. I haven't seen a psychologist or psychiatrist and just suck up feelings of inadequacy, fear and doubts.

As the "normal" pool shrinks, I come to realize, I am that guy. I am a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant, non-smoking, male with multiple pieces of parchment from institutions of higher learning. I see patterns and love circuitous stories, I am strongly devoted to my Lord, my wife, my family, my country and my job. No one has ever accused me of being "right" or of being "all there". Someone a few weeks back said they wished they could be in my head for just a few minutes. I replied that there are times I don't even want to be there.

If I am "normal" we're all in trouble. Hop on the bus with me. Be that person with me. Let's change the norm back.

Reset

Over the course of the last twenty years my wife and I have taken many trips. We have gone to a few weddings that were out-of-town, family reunions, trips to sick relatives, deliver something, or to drop off/pick up the kids. We've gotten to some destination spots like Washington DC, Orlando, Savannah, the Grand Canyon, San Francisco, Tombstone, or Victoria. We've taken some road trips including 8 different trips of greater than 2500 miles one way, by car mind you. The one thing we don't do a lot of is relax on trips. Typically our trips have been work related. My employer sent me to a conference, meeting, or training session and I was able to bring my wife and/or family along. Sometimes I stayed a little longer, sometimes we were only there for the length of the reason I was sent. Rarely have we had a time when we didn't have somewhere to be or something to do. This can be quite annoying at times.

Including our honeymoon (which after 19 years still isn't over yet) we may have had 6 trips with nothing planned. This trip we are currently on is one of those 6. At least now, upon our arrival to pick up my oldest children from their aunt and uncle, we had to take my middle child about 150 miles west to meet her church group. We drove for 6 hours then my brother-in-law, sister-in-law, daughter and I went another 2.5 hours there and back. Other than that, no plans.

This morning I woke up and opened the balcony door to hear the Gulf while I read my Bible. It was drowned out to some extent by the sprinklers watering the grass. Then the tractor came by leveling the beach. Now the staff is preparing the pool for the day. Everything needs a reset. The pool, the beach, my family and me. It may be daily, it may be once in a blue moon, but never neglect the effect of getting a minute to reset, start over and recharge.

"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc., and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons." - Douglas Adams

Update: Is an updaet to a post called Reset a Re-Reset? Anyway, I didn't properly proof this one this morning, and was on my iPhone typing, so I only just fixed some of the glaring errors of this morning.