This Dumb, Dumb, Dumb, Dumb World

January 31, 2015
Day 276

I really don't know where to begin, but I suppose I should start with the news I heard just yesterday that gave me the idea for this blog entry.  The Super Bowl, long known for its use of Roman numerals, has declared that next year, instead of having Super Bowl L, we'll all have Super Bowl 50, officially ending the tradition.  There's no clear reason why, but it seems they think L is just not sexy enough for their advertising.

There's a new TV show on before GLEE called World's Funniest Fails.  The videos are all examples of people having hilarious or painful fails, and a few of them--from the little I've seen--are very funny.  My problem is, there seems to be a very obvious laugh track on there, as well as several planted fake audience members.  On one occasion, the sound I heard was an audience laughing raucously, but the visual was of people clapping politely, and behind them, there were rows of empty seats.  I even saw a woman looking at her cell phone!  Laugh tracks have always been stupid, but they've worked for the most part.  This show though?  It's as fake as fake TV gets.

There's a brewing feud between Katy Perry and Taylor Swift, or so we're told.  Andy's theory is that we've only been made to believe there's a feud between them so that when Taylor Swift shows up as a surprise musical guest with Katy on stage at the Super Bowl, it'll be like this incredible makeup moment on live TV.  I really hope that's not what transpires, but Andy's guess is a very good one anyway, and fits right in with the dumbing down of our already dumb world.

I'm not going to touch on politics exactly, but more people seriously need to start actually investigating the news stories they share on Facebook.  I see so many fake facts passed around, so many angry rants, so many completely idiotic, non-factual venting sessions, it makes my brain hurt.  I don't care if you're a Republican or a Democrat.  Cross-check your information before sharing it!  Don't believe a story just because you heard it on your favorite news station either!

And finally, I got into a slightly heated discussion with a friend last year over Creationism.  He believed the world is only 6,000 years old, because his pastor told him so, pointing to something in Scripture.  People like this believe the dinosaur bones were all placed in the Earth as a clever trick from Satan or something, I'm still not quite sure what the fairy tale is, but that isn't where the final straw broke.  I asked him who Adam and Eve's sons slept with to create more human beings, and he said the law against incest had not yet been written, so they had sex with Mom to start populating the planet.  I was in shock, but I didn't get mean, and when I tried to disagree, he promptly unfriended and blocked me right away.

So what do I really think about some of these extremely dumb traits of our extremely dumb world?  I actually don't blame most people.  Instead, I blame the puppet masters at the top: the politicians, the preachers, and the PR folk who make it all happen exactly as they want.  We live in a world in which massive amounts of good people are being brainwashed every single day, and they don't even realize it.  Their ignorance is their bliss and our dismay, and sadly, I don't see it changing anytime soon.

My God Problem

June 20, 2014.
          Day 51/365

I've written about this before, but today I'd like to just reflect briefly on my conundrum, especially in light of the conundrum as I see it.

If I imagine these two mountains on either side of me, religion on the right and science on the left, I see myself in a valley between them.  I enjoy both science and spirituality immensely, and all the greatest thinkers I've followed closely in my life love both of them too.  Unfortunately, there are lots and lots of people who live on one mountain or the other, and just hate the other mountain.  It's worse than a sporting team versus sporting team kind of hatred, or even a political party against political party kind of animosity; this is a full-blown-epidemic kind of crazy, a mass refusal to acknowledge any redeeming qualities in the other mountain.

The attacks on the mountain of religion are everywhere, and the attacks on the mountain of science are just as prevalent, if not more baffling, because facts get thrown out the window when people attack science.  So I find myself stuck in the middle here between these two mountains. 

The stubborn religious people (and I'm talking about the really far-gone ones, not the everyday church-goers), well, they don't seem to have any common sense at all.  Some of these nut balls (and yes, I do feel quite comfortable calling someone a nut ball who thinks dinosaur bones were planted as decoys by Lucifer) are out to demonize science as innately evil.  Why?  All scientists are doing is examining cold, hard facts.  Calling them your enemy is like calling basic math the work of Hitler.

And the stubborn fools on the other mountain?  The scientific atheists?  They think anyone who's had any type of spiritual experience must be either crazy or stupid, or at the very least suffering from false hopes and sick delusions.  They refuse to listen to the accounts of so many people who have had so many absolutely real experiences.  They think we're all just psychotics or false dreamers. 

It's to these science-minded fools that I feel much more disappointment, because they're smarter than this.  I expect more from them.  I expect them to see the vast amount of unexplainable phenomena as worthy of lots and lots of further study.  Instead, they write people off, saying it must be explainable by science and science alone.  God, whatever God is, must be impossible.

So this is my God problem.  I'm seeing people on either mountain who just refuse to see things from the other mountain's point of view, and worst of all, refuse to even meet me in the valley.   

I cannot tell you with proof that my experience of the resurrected soul of my father was real.  I cannot point you to a place in my brain where you can find that recording, and watch it for yourself, understand it for yourself.  Yet I know without a shadow of a shadow of a doubt that it all happened exactly as I've told the story a hundred times. 

Religious People: Dismissing science as just a dangerous road heathens walk on is just ridiculous.  They may not have the same goals as you do, but they want to learn, to understand, to pursue Truth the same as you do, if just differently.

Science People: I understand why you need facts, but surely your love and appreciation for knowledge seeking would show you this is a vast mystery even to you.  Surely you see that the mysteries of so many spiritual phenomena are worth analyzing instead of just dismissing outright.

I find myself in this valley, and I know I sound like I'm just throwing stones at the mountains.  But if you don't mind, I'd like to make a choice between them now, between nut balls and stubborn fools, because quite honestly, I'd rather talk with the stubborn fools.  I'd rather keep pleading with the science- and logic-minded atheists to find the proof for God I know must be out there.  I'd much rather have meaningful conversations with them than throw stones with the crazies. 

So call me a fool then too.  I don't mind.  I'm a fool for believing--in science and spirituality.  I'm a fool for believing we can all try a little harder to learn from each other, try a little harder to talk to one another, and open our minds to all we still don't know. 

I may be a fool for trying, but trying is less foolish than staying put on just one mountain.

Science vs. Religion: We Have A Winner!

May 29, 2014.

If there's one topic that drives me nuts more than any other, it's this one.  On my left side are atheist-minded people who refuse to believe me when I say I've received enough absolute proof in my life to confirm the existence of an afterlife and a higher power.  And on my right side are religious-minded people who refuse to believe that science is telling us all the truth about the age of the Earth and the facts of the known universe.  On both sides of the conversation, there are people who just refuse to listen to the other side.

You are not thinking clearly when you refuse to listen to scientific fact.  You are likewise not thinking clearly when you refuse to open your mind to the many people worldwide who have had absolute spiritual experiences that cannot be explained away by science.   

The wisest words any of us can ever say are, "I don't know."  We can shake a bible or even a whole library filled with scientific books (that's a lot of shaking!) in people's faces, but if we cannot also admit there is so much more we still do not know, we're accepting a forever-cloudy view of existence.

It annoys me to no end when comedians like Bill Maher and Seth MacFarlane mock religious people incessantly and rudely.  I totally understand when they are doing it to call out hypocrisy and hatred, but when they do so with hate and judgment themselves, they have completely fumbled the ball that is civilized conversation.  When they reduce their argument to mean mockery, they are failing.

Likewise, it annoys me to no end when people care about a religious text more than another human being.  When you choose doctrines over souls, you're doing it wrong.  You're failing at being spiritual in every way, shape, and form.  You may in fact be succeeding at being religious, but you may as well be worshiping a golden calf in the desert, such is your misguided love of the written word.

So who's the winner in the age-old battle between science and religion?  The free thinker!  The agnostic!  The truth seeker who knows she does not know all the truth!  The only possible winner is the soul, who may or may not call himself a soul, who stands in the middle of this age-old battlefield, and listens to both sides.  The person who listens and learns, pursues all he does not know with humility, who survives without flinging mud at either side: he is the one who always wins.

The pursuit of Truth with a capital T is one best undertaken while wearing a t-shirt that says, "I'm with stupid" as the arrow points inward.  I don't know, you don't know, none of us know even 1% of 1% of the answers to our questions. 

We do know some things, and for those, we should listen to one another.  In most matters though, we must always remind ourselves of the old Irish adage: we have two ears but only one mouth for a reason!  An agnostic is someone who does not know what the answers are, and in that sense, we are all agnostics.  We are, all of us, not on the left or the right of this or any debate, but all of us actually in the middle, together, forgetting all the time to use our two ears.

Am I right, though?  I don't know.