God and what we talk about - Ch4 With

Are we experiencing the presence of God? Is God with us? Does it matter if God is or is not?

Eh.

Many people seem to think so, on all accounts.

I am not so sure.

In my old age (also known as the last 5 years) I have picked and chosen my battles. I used to view myself as an open minded. Now I just am. I have learned that 5 years ago I was in fact not open minded. I probably still am not, though I am a lot more than I was.

I've seen people who are really into the God thing, they feel God is with them all the time. People who are into the God thing and wish God would throw them a bone just once (And some of them, if you are listening, could really use one [not a real bone, I'm talking figuratively. But you probably knew that, cuz you are God.]). Then there is the atheists and the agnostics, for the most part they seem just fine (You don't really miss something you don't expect to be there).

Transcending

People often describe food as being SO GOOD, it transcends. It is more than food can be. I like food, I have sat next to people who talk this way and I can't help but look them in the eye and say "It's alright."

We are supposed to have faith in God, God has a plan for us, God is more than us, transcends us. We are supposed to pray. I've prayed, maybe even twice. I don't remember what it was, but I must have been in a pickle (at least emotionally).

For the most part though, the only thing I feel "transcends" is relationships. There is so much more than what is at the surface.

I don't know if there is more to life than what is at the surface. It seems safer to assume there is not and hope there is. I try to get the most out of life. 

Closing

I apologize for how much of a mind dump these posts are.

I'll leave you with this

 

God and what we talk about - Ch3 Both

Words and how we describe many things. How you describe things make a big difference. You may not even stretch the truth but you may provide too little or too much precision. How something is described can portray confidence and authoritativeness in a description.

Faith and Doubt

It would not be faith without doubt. Without doubt you must be certain, but when it comes to God how could you be certain? Similarly, it is natural to question that which is not certain.

Conclusion

I am not really sure what the point of this chapter is. Seems mostly a verbose way of saying it is difficult to describe God. Yet we can't seem to stop describing God.

God and what we talk about - Ch2 Open

I am a bit of a slacker when it comes to keeping on top of things. I finished a class a month ago that I had been blaming for taking all my time and yet I am still just now getting to chapter 2. Which, by the way, is a really long chapter.

OPEN

There seems to be two camps and you have to belong in one or the other. Either you are a theist or you are atheist. But what about the people who identify as "other"? I would say that I am still biased in many regards (The whole supernatural thing always bugs me). However, I would also say that I am not firm set in my ways and can accept other view points most of the time (There will always be exceptions, like Scientology). I wish more of the world was more accepting of people. Instead if they don't fall within the systems of either side they are shunned and hide from the "normal" world. There are groups that I know that don't speak up, they wish they could but the world doesn't understand. The world always focuses on the bad and a few rotten apples mean everyone has to suffer. When an event like 9-11 happens (I am writing this sitting in the shade of a 9-11 monument) suddenly if you look Muslim you must be a terrorist.

Rob goes into a high school physics lesson (and a little AP Physics) discussing space and time, atoms and quarks. While we can find patterns and compute probabilities, we can't say anything for certain. Why did a certain particle interact the way it did? Who knows, but we can tell you what the odds were that it occurred.

Rob talks about blurring the line between matter and spirit and how observation changes things in the quantum world. This reminds me about one of my harebrained ideas in high school that maybe, just maybe, the world observed away god. I am talking schrodinger's cat, except with the operation of the universe. What if the atoms and the quarks and the fact that plants need nutrients in the soil didn't exist, until we went looking for them? There is more that goes into it that probably only a Software Engineer would think about, but I'll save that for another time.

"We are an exotic blend of awesome [...]." We can describe a great deal of our physical composition, but our soul is still a mystery. The soul is real (A persons sense of identity. I think, therefore I am.), but it is beyond analysis and description. Rob suddenly gets a hardon for the Germons because they have a word to describe the one "beyond analysis and description"'.

If there is anything to pull from this chapter, it is to not be so nitpicky and accept that people believe different things. They might be right and they might be wrong, but so might you. Can't we all just be friends?