recap

At year's end I should have something to say, I suppose. Flipping the calendar from one year to the next is a good time to review the past and plan for the future.

Two thousand nine has witnessed a couple of events that I would mark as important. Probably the most significant personally, after nearly three years of search and study, is that I no longer see religion as something with significant meaning in my life. I cannot expunge a lifetime of religion from my life nor do I desire to do so, but I've decided to eliminate it from my day to day living. Whether or not there is a God is something I am not able to determine. Frankly, no one ever has. It is simply an indeterminable fact whether God exists or not and that is okay with me. I'm finding life meaningful in venues that are not religiously related.

Family wise we experienced the college graduation of our oldest son. Our second son continues working with his dad in business, the third continues in his studies of music and linguistics, while the youngest abides at home with her mom. Our studies of algebra, science, history, grammar, etc. continue. (We really do have a lot of fun.)

I thought I’d note my book list for 2009. It tells a part of my journey. This year I read: Taking Flight, The Way To Love, and Awareness by Anthony De Mello; The Power of Now and A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle; Loving What Is by Byron Katie; Summerhill School by A.S. Neill; The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins; Billions and Billions by Carl Sagan; A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking; Christianity Before Christ by John G. Jackson; Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel C. Dennett.

My “To Read List“, a few of which I've already started includes: The Greatest Show On Earth by Richard Dawkins; Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne; The Demon-haunted World by Carl Sagan; How We Believe and Why Darwin Matters by Michael Shermer; What I Believe by Bertrand Russell; Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond; The End of Faith and Letter To A Christian Nation by Sam Harris; and a few more. That should pretty much take care of 2010.

My increased thirst for knowledge and understanding came after many years of getting along and not rocking the boat. Five years ago my life support systems failed. I’ve had to redo so many things. Determined not to build upon the same foundations, here I am today living a different sort of life. It is a happier life, a more fulfilled life in many ways. Fragments of the past surface from time to time, but I’m gradually laying to rest the former illusions and presuppositions. It is a wonderful life and 2010 will no doubt bring more surprises my way… looking forward to it.

change

"Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, canceled, made nothing? Are you willing to be made nothing? Dipped into oblivion? If not, you will never really change." D.H. Lawrence

"When you’re finished changing, you’re finished." Benjamin Franklin

"Faced with changing one's mind, or proving that there is no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof." John Kenneth Galbraith

"Security is mostly superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable." Helen Keller

"Things do not change; we change." Henry David Thoreau

live honestly

In the past five years, I've attempted to turn heaps of disillusionment into a revitalized belief in God. That goal has not been successful. I wrote the following last week, after at least one other longer rendition, and am now ready to post...

I’ve been doing what my blog name says. I’ve taken another look into many different arenas of life and the fear that I feel when I think of telling others what is happening inside me today is swirling in circles in my gut. I am afraid to be open and afraid to not be open. My past “lifestyle of the religious and righteous” for years taught me well how not to be open. But I no longer have the need to be religiously righteous. I am growing up. I will manage my life, thank you, please.

On the other hand, why be open in a world that doesn’t seem to care. I suppose that exposing myself is like all the rest of life… a risk. Diving off the 10 meter platform would have a similar effect I suppose. Whether I could surface, assuming I would survive the impact, seems unlikely. But by me never trying to elucidate these new understandings seems even worse. Therefore, I continue…

An about-face 180 degrees is how I view most things these days. Not an easy task considering I’ve already lived most of my life. If there’s another life, I know nothing about it. It’s never been proven to me, empirically, to be fact. My certainty in eternity has been exposed as nothing more than wishful thinking. It’s something about which I just do not know. One book is no longer sufficient evidence for me.

The idea of a "God" has been on my list also. I’ve never seen this God, heard this God, felt this God, tasted this God, or smelled this God. I know that others will say there is a God and that they have experienced him. I have no criticism of that. Everyone’s experience is their experience. I said the same for many years. The God that I thought existed makes no sense to me anymore. I can wish for a God to be true, but wishing is just that… wishing. If the God that I had created internally was a reality, it could have proven to me its existence during these searching years. To be clear, I’m not saying that there isn’t a God. There could be. Just not one I can conceive of. I can’t and won’t attach a label such as atheist or agnostic to myself. Labels are inadequate. I suppose I’m an unbeliever of sorts. But even that is insufficient.

Living life honestly is what I want to do more than anything else… honesty in thought, speech, and relationship with others. If there is a core from which life can be lived, honesty and reality would be mine. In these I have hope for a better life.

have you ever believed a myth?

Am working daily to dislodge the hook, line, and sinker in my stomach... annoying at times, but mostly enlightening.

reorganizing

Three weeks later...

The battle is over. Evolution won. Now what? Reorganizing beliefs can be so messy...

dupery begone

Thomas Jefferson, one of the most influential founders of the United States, said:

"The priests of the different religious sects . . . dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live."

Perhaps this explains the seeming lack of intellect in creationists who debate their case against the scientists of today in the creation/evolution debate we have in America. Certainly there are many very smart people arguing for creation, but their arguments don't come in at the same level of scientific methodology presented by evolutionists. Do they see the writing on the wall and argue out of fear? Or have they so convinced themselves that they would somehow be less human if evolution were true and then it would threaten their worldview or the plans of their god or perhaps even the existence of their god? (Warning: Bombshell ahead!) (Why use small "g" in god? I'm implying simply that perhaps their "god" doesn't really exist. Anyway... not the one they've created in their theologies.)

The next generation of children could determine the direction of this issue. We see the battle for the minds of these young people, beginning in elementary school through high school into college, if they make it that far. If college doesn't happen, I regret that they may be only getting half of the story.

My opinion... educate the parents. The local churches and in turn the local schools through high school bend toward creationism. One view is propagated in the society effectively. It's up to parents to take the issue seriously. Get online and educate yourself. Help your children decide with integrity of mind and thought, once the facts are in, which is correct. Either way, duperies (acts, practices, or instances of duping) need to be extinguished.

evolutionary ignorance

This post is about ignorance.

Ignorance - n. the condition of being uneducated, unaware, or uninformed. (American Heritage Dictionary 2009) Origin: 1175-1225; Middle English from Latin ignorantia; derived from the word ignore.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the exodus of young people from the Christian church in America after they leave home and go on to college or work. A Barna Group survey from September 2006 said that 61% of twentysomethings had left and not returned to church life.

There are probably a number of reasons for this exodus. The one I’d like to focus on is the one I think may be most prevalent. When young people leave their parents’ home, either due to college or employment opportunities, many for the first time are presented with the freedom to think for themselves.

When these young persons go away to college, they may be introduced to academia that is quite different from their high school experiences. The majority of students attend high schools which are public and therefore restricted by separation of church and state law. High school teachers are not allowed to proselytize their students regarding spiritual matters. Parents or the local church are mainly the ones who take this instructional opportunity in a child/student’s life.

At college, living away from home, the young person has the opportunity to test their beliefs, doctrines, whatever it is that they’ve known and followed previously in regard to spirituality. Many of the parents I’ve known through the years would think this unfortunate. “Those university professors are brainwashing our children.” (I used to think this way but don't any longer.) The years of input from the parents moves into testing time. Testing that could not have been run while their son or daughter was living at home under their tutelage.

What is it that these youth encounter? They are introduced to points of view that not only differ from theirs, but views they may never have even heard of before. I think the one thing they face which challenges their beliefs more than anything else is scientific evolution and its acceptance by not just faculty but by other students as well.

Due to my evangelical Christian background, I’ve never taken time to study evolution in depth. I did not include evolution in my home school curriculum until now. I assume that the church we were part of when my children were in high school didn’t teach the subject either. If it was talked about, it was probably labeled as untrue and anti-creation and “we don’t agree with it“.

A person can’t really blame them though. Once you open the can of “evolution” worms, it’s hard to put them back in. Actually if you look at it with reason and science, it may be impossible to put them back. What the newly graduated high school student faces is science and many intelligent people who have done their homework.

Most parents don’t react well when they realize their child’s views are changing. I personally saw this in several of my children but had no resolution for them. Knowing little about evolution, I was at a loss to intelligently converse with them about it. A religious person might say, “But the Bible says ______.” This wasn't good enough for me. I wanted understanding. Without an understanding of the scientific discoveries that had been made in the past 100 years or so, I knew I had an internal conflict that needed to be resolved.

What to do? I’ve begun to study evolution and scientific discovery. I want to understand why churches and those who stand for creation are so opposed to evolution and the teaching of it. The word “theory” doesn’t necessarily mean that facts are not known and have not been proven. Music theory and Einstein’s relativity theory are proven and accepted today.

So… after a couple of weeks, the worms are all over the place. And it's okay. It’s rather amazing actually.