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Life in the Fast Lane (10 unread)

Transgendered

Posted: February 26th, 2010, 2:48am EST by Bull

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Okay, I've written in the past about Caster Semenya and how an apparently black and white issue, your sex (male/female), can be anything but clear. In this case there are clearly understood genetic and biologic factors that can make it extremely difficult to determine the sex of an individual and can even lead to the conclusion that a genetically male person is a female.

Now I see a Dr. Oz show that featured a teenager who was born female but has always felt that she was a male. She had a mastectomy and started taking hormone blockers when she started to menstruate. She looks, sounds, and dresses like a boy and psychologically seems to believe quite strongly that she is a he.

They also had a little boy, maybe 4 years old, that has always believed that he is a girl. He is now a bubbling, happy, cute little girl that just happens to have a penis and dress and act like a girl. Her mother talked about all of the psychological problems this child had as he was forced to dress and act like a boy and how all of those problems have resolved now that they allow him to be a girl.

This mismatch between a person's genetic sex and the sex that they believe they are is called being transgendered. I have to admit knowing absolutely nothing about this so I'll be looking into it. But it makes me wonder about the separate issue of gender identity. Is there something biological going on inside the brain or that happened during prenatal development that caused this? Or is this a behavioral things, a mental illness that could be cured through therapy? With something this basic, I'm inclined to think that there is something biological going on.

Of course, if I was still religious this would be pretty easy to dismiss. Mormons in particular insist that gender and sex are one and the same and are an inherent spiritual attribute. Of course, since we can't investigate the spiritual plane, I guess we just have to take their word for that, as trustworthy as that is.
Indoctrination

Posted: February 26th, 2010, 12:58am EST by Bull

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"Going to church, just like going to synagogue, is indoctrination."

I really couldn't have said it any better. This is from the jewish mother who is suing her divorced husband over taking their daughter to catholic mass.

So what's the harm?

"There will be confusion. There will be an abrogation of her identity."

So the custodial parent, whose greatest fear is that her child will grow up not understanding who she is, has the arbitrary right to force a jewish identity on her child while denying the other parent the right to arbitrarily instill a catholic identity.

Given the mother's bald statement that this is a matter of choosing indoctrinations is it just for the courts to decide which form of indoctrination is correct? Given the mother's admission, I'd claim that the child's best interest would be to disallow indoctrination which is so difficult to undo after a lifetime of programming.

However the constitution allows the free exercise of religion so I'd prefer that the child is raised understanding both parent's religions until she is old enough to choose for herself. In the end the cognitive dissonance will probably serve her well.

-- Sent from my Palm Pre
On Morality

Posted: January 16th, 2010, 8:34am EST by Bull

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Jonathan Haidt, author of "The Happiness Hypothesis", has a very enlightening essay over on www.edge.org called "Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion". One of the first things my wife asked me when I told her I no longer believed in the church was what I'd base my morality on. The question caused me to pause because I'd never really considered it before. What was the basis of my morality? How do I know what is right and wrong? I had a very strong intuition that the church had very little influence on my core morality. In fact, most of the church specific moral values that set it apart were pretty tenuous in value. For example, without the church would you spend any mental bandwidth worrying about the morality of Coke versus non-caffeinated soft drinks? Or would you worry about whether drinking a hot beverage might damn your eternal soul?

The interesting aspect of his essay for me is contrasting the lense that academia looks at morality through with the way that religious people view morality. It is alway refreshing when liberal academics are able to recognize the bias that they bring to a subject and examine it.

A key point he makes is that you really can't trust the reasons that people give for why they think something is moral or immoral. As Haidt says, "People couldn't stop themselves from making up post-hoc explanations for whatever it was they had just done for unconscious reasons." In other words, we subconsciously make a moral judgment and then our conscious brain tries to fit a rational explanation to why we feel the way we do. We may come up with quite convincing reasons and really believe them without realizing that we reached that judgment for quite non-rational reasons. In other words, our morality initially comes from our gut feelings.

Academia has focused on fairness/justice and harm/care as the basis of morality. However these two foundations fail to explain the real world.
Most traditional societies care about a lot more than harm/care and fairness/justice. Why do so many societies care deeply and morally about menstruation, food taboos, sexuality, and respect for elders and the Gods?"
He proposed three additional foundations of morality:
- ingroup/loyalty
- authority/respect
- purity/sanctity
He calls these binding foundations because they bind groups of people together into hierarchical, interdependent social groups that regulate the daily activities of their members. By contrast he calls the first two foundations the individualizing foundations because they protect individuals from each other. People who self-identify as liberals base their morality primarily on the first two individualizing foundations whereas conservatives have morals based on all five foundations. Conservatives care about much more than just individual rights, they also care deeply about loyalty to their group, respect for authority, and purity.
I guess this would only be surprising to a liberal academic, but it does explain why academics and liberals are so tone deaf to the importance of certain beliefs to conservatives. One easy example is sexuality. Liberals want people to stay out of the bedroom. After all, what goes on between consenting adults is no one else's business because it doesn't hurt anyone (harm/care) and they wouldn't like other people intruding into their own personal lives (fairness/justice). The religious right, however, care deeply about other people's sexual practices because those practices are filthy or unnatural (sanctity/purity), violate God's law (authority/respect), and violate societal norms or decency (ingroup/loyalty).
A classic example comes from the movie "Milk" where Anita Bryant goes on a religious crusade to overturn laws that were passed to protect the civil rights of homosexuals. A more recent example of the same thing was the recent proposition 8 in California which pitted social conservatives against liberal over gay marriage. I find this example example particularly because it pits the individualizing moral foundations against the binding ones. The fact that time and time again the binding foundations seem to win over the individualizing ones is, I think, a clear statement of the relative importance to the human species of group cohesion over individuality. Nothing seems to bring us together more strongly than threats to our group identity.
So the crux of all of this is that morality seems to derive more from evolved gut feelings than from any kind of philosophical musing or rational process. Rationality mainly gets involved to justify those feelings and in some rare cases to override our baser instincts.
Magical Thinking

Posted: November 29th, 2009, 7:51am EST by Bull

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Aaron commented on last week's post on Personalities of the Deeply Religious and suggested that perhaps the common thread among the deeply religious is magical thinking. He hadn't experienced the violence that I have seen and that was integral to the upbringing of the Lafferty brothers and that seemed to be part and parcel of religious culture of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and 19th century Mormonism. But with or without the violence and spirit of coercion, devoted religiosity does seem to rely on a willing suspension of disbelief and a desire to believe in supernatural powers that can only be invoked through obedience to the practices of the religion. So, I can't help but agree with him, but I think it is a short stroll from magical thinking to violence, especially for people who are naturally inclined in that direction.

Reading more about the Lafferty brothers today I was struck by what a short path it was for Ron Lafferty to go from a devoted, model Mormon, first counselor in the bishopric and pillar of the community to an abusive, fundamentalist Mormon receiving revelations from God that ultimately led him to murder a young mother and her infant child in cold blood for the sin or opposing him and his brothers and their divinely appointed mission to restore the Mormon church to its true practices and doctrines including polygamy.

In the early 80s he was publicly a role model for the members of his ward, but privately he was consumed by the huge recession and on the verge of going bankrupt. At this critical time he met with his brothers who had already independently discovered and retreated into religious and political extremism to try to correct their ways. Instead he found himself convinced and soon started to require his wife to be subservient to him and started to talk of marrying off his teenage daughters in polygamous marriages to other men. When his wife and children left him and he lost his home he fell under the sway of another fundamentalist prophet who taught him to receive revelations. Unsurprisingly he received a revelation reminiscent of D&C 132 that called his wife to repentance and commanded her to return to him or be destroyed. Then he received a revelation commanding him to kill the people who had supported his wife and helped her leave him. The rest is history.

I'm still left wondering whether extreme religious belief is a fertile ground in which coercive and violent behavior can easily find roots. When you are convinced that God has revealed the truth to you and that ultimately truth will prevail in apocalyptic fashion and consume everyone who doesn't believe, it isn't a huge stretch to believe that you are the instrument for fulfilling God's will to cleanse the earth and help the truth roll forward.
Birthers

Posted: November 28th, 2009, 4:10am EST by Bull

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My dad did it again. He lured me into his bizzaro world of politics. This time it was his conviction that President Obama isn't a natural born citizen. I'd already looked into this one because, unlike him, if this were true or had some basis in fact I'd actually like to know it. The link in the title is to a Salon article that addresses the claims of the birthers. The refutation is pretty simple since none of their claims have any evidence to support them.

So, why do my father and uncle and a pretty significant percentage of the U.S. population belief such stuff? The only conclusion I can come to is that they want to believe it. From there it is pretty easy to convince them using false premises, circular logic, strawman arguments, and other logical fallacies and outright fabrications.

Trying to use reason with these people is much like trying to rationally discuss religion with the converted. They have already reached their conclusions and even when confronted with contradicting facts they filter them and twist them through the lense of their world view and are able to dismiss them.

Take for example their assertion that Obama doesn't have a birth certificate. This falls under the category of a straw man argument. While it is true, it doesn't matter because he has a certificate of live birth. Twist it and turn it however you want the existence of a birth certificate doesn't matter because in the state of Hawaii a certificate of live birth is all that is required to prove birth in Hawaii. You can also claim that his was a forgery or was originally falsified in some way, but without proof you're still out of luck because the officials in Hawaii have repeatedly stated that he has a valid certificate. You'd think that would be the end of it, but it is completely unpersuasive to people like my father.

He brought up the "fact" that Obama had traveled to Pakistan on an Indonesian passport when he was 20. The implication here (which proves to be false) is that if he had an Indonesian passport then he must have previously renounced his U.S. citizenship. I've heard this claim so much that I figured that there must be some basis in fact but I should have known better. This little tidbit is an inference based on a false premise. The false premise is that U.S. citizens weren't allowed to travel to Pakistan at that time. Therefore, he must have traveled there using a passport from another nation such as the U.K. or Indonesia. This becomes "proof" and a "fact" to the birthers despite the fact that U.S. citizens were freely traveling to Pakistan at the time and the actual fact that there was no such travel restriction.

Part of the problem here is that people trust the sources of such things and figure that if they say it then they've checked the fact. They trust the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks of the world to tell them the truth.

How many times do you have to show that wack jobs like the birthers are idiots that are so desperate to prove an extremely unlikely point before you just dismiss having further discussions with them? Unfortunately, I still have to interact with my father and I'm intellectually honest so I continue to research some of his more precious beliefs on the off chance that he may have come across something. I just wish he was capable of doing the same.

One point I'd like to make is that it's not just religion and Mormonism that inspires irrational belief in the extraordinary. Politics is also fertile ground for self deception. Despite the temptation to demonize the religious it is important to realize that the enemy is irrationality, fanaticism, and close mindedness no matter where it is found.
Personalities of the Deeply Religious

Posted: November 22nd, 2009, 4:36am EST by Bull

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On the recommendation of a friend I have started reading "Under the Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer. So far I'm finding a lot of parallels with "Blood of the Prophets" and the culture and circumstances surrounding the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

I'm reading about Watson Lafferty and the following things struck me because of the parallels with my own father and some other Mormons I've known.

He was extremely conservative and was impressed with the ideas of Ezra Taft Benson including the John Birch Society and the pervasive infiltration of communists.

He was very pious, individualistic, and strict. He beat his wife and children and once beat the family dog to death with a baseball bat while the children watched.

He was very distrustful of conventional medicine. He was a chiropractor and once tried to treat a daughter's appendicitis at home with prayers and homeopathy and refused to take her to the hospital until her appendix burst and she was on the verge of death.

Despite the periodic violence his son remember him as a loving father and great role model who raised a very special and happy family.

In comparison my father belongs to the Birchers and subscribes to their beliefs in worldwide communist conspiracies. Those that disagree are pinko commies or fools that are under their sway. He's a birther who thinks Obama is an illegitimate president because he isn't a natural born citizen.

He was very strict and didn't have qualms about using the belt and was known to enforce his will with violence.

He is also very distrustful of mainstream medicine. He believes that laetrile is the cure for cancer but that the establishment has refused to research it because it is free and so they can't make money off of it. He regularly ignores medical advice and is prone to trying crackpot cures.

I wonder if these types of rigidly unconventional individuals are at the core of most religions. I know not all or even most religious people are this way. But I'm thinking of those that are the core; those that are most active, most pious, and who inevitably rise to positions of leadership.

-- Sent from my Palm Pre
Elder Hafen, Come Out of the Closet!

Posted: September 29th, 2009, 11:39am EDT by Bull

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Homosexuality doesn't really bother me so I've always been perplexed by those who are really bent out of shape over the threat of homosexuality to our society. It's as if they think that it's infectious and that by accepting or tolerating it we will encourage its spread. Instead we need to fight it and battle it. After all, any guy could fall prey to the temptations of easy, promiscuous homosexual sex, right? If society says it's okay then think of all of the guys that would stop chasing those icky women and marrying them for reproduction and eternal exaltation.
I know a few of you out there are going, well duh. Of course.
I have news for you. You're at least a little crooked and definitely not completely straight.
Take, for example, the following quote from Elder Hafen, a Mormon General Authority.
In other words, before puberty, boys are typically more interested in other boys than in girls. Then their interest gradually shifts to girls, but a few boys don’t make this transition. Often these boys are emotionally sensitive, introspective, and, especially among Church members, perfectionistic. When puberty hits this group, they can be sexually aroused by many factors. When these factors include other boys, they can become fixated on the fear that they are “gay,” especially if they have male sexual experiences, including male pornography. Then their fixation can block their normal emotional-sexual development.
Now, maybe I'm not your typical heterosexual male, but this doesn't even begin to describe my romantic or sexual interests at ANY point in my life, especially in the years immediately preceding and during puberty. I remember my first crush in first grade on Becky Wolf to this day. My second crush was on my attractive, young, single second grade teacher. Many others followed and by the time I entered junior high I was fairly well entranced by all things female. At no point do I remember ever having even a passing attraction to other males much less being more interested in other boys than girls.
So, my question for Bruce Hafen and Boyd Packer, who he was quoting is if this was their experience? It apparently was also the experience of other anti-homosexual religious and political figures such as Ted Haggard and Senator Larry Craig. They seem terrified of the acceptance of homosexuality because they themselves can easily see themselves succumbing to their own homosexual temptations and without legal and religious proscriptions can see how it would spread.
I had a conversation about this with a friend at work a while back. He was laughingly telling me about a friend who was describing how he could see how easy it would be for a man to become gay and that he could imagine how that could be a temptation that needed to be resisted. Of course, this was pretty laughable to both of us.
Again, maybe I'm way off here and maybe I'm abnormal among heterosexual men, but while I can concede that it may be attractive to some men, I simply can't imagine it. I don't remember ever making a choice about my sexual orientation and frankly find male homosexual sex icky. No offense, but no thank you. It's not hygienic or anything, I just can't imagine being intimate with a man.
Anyway, this whole need to resist the temptation to be gay, repent, be fixed, etc. seems rather like fighting the need to eat or drink water or meet other basic physical needs. The apparent classification of sex by the church as some kind of completely optional, unnecessary physical activity that can be overcome seems pretty unreal to me. Are they gay or frigid? Would they really like to live their lives without any sex or physical bonding with another human being that they find attractive? What would that make their life like? Because that's what they're asking of their homosexual members. For all I know, that's the way they feel about sex with their wives.
The rest of the article is pretty sad that basically asks the gay members he was addressing to repent of their sins (not that their same sex attraction itself is a sin, he points out) and seek the healing power of the atonement to help them either celibate for the rest of their lives or functional heterosexuals who resist their temptations (because what they feel is not their natural state, but a mental illness that can be treated) and be made whole and heteorsexual either in this life or the life to some. Hallelujah!
Just Drop Your Pants

Posted: September 16th, 2009, 11:24am EDT by Bull

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Have you ever seen the Saturday Night Live sketch with the androgenous Pat? Was Pat male or female? We'll never know. As it turns out, answering the question can be a lot more difficult than having the person drop their pants (although that will usually suffice).
The question comes up in sports like track and field where men and women compete separately because of the significant difference in performane potential between the sexes. Occassionally men are caught cheating by entering women's events in "drag" so when a woman comes along with broad shoulders, narrow waist, heavy muscles, and a deep voice and proceeds to blow away everyone in elite competitions, the questions inevitably arise. Is "she" a he, or is she just incredibly juiced like the East German women used to be? Or is something else going on?
The problem surfaced during this year's IAAF Track and Field World Championships when suspicion fell on Caster Semenya when she dominated the women's 800m final. Her win fell under a cloud of suspicion and protest and I wondered why a quick trip to the showers didn't solve the problem.
The short answer is because that wouldn't necessarily answer the question.
The IAAF did genetic testing for a while for gender. They checked for a gene that only exists on the Y (male) chromosome. Amazingly (to me) there were 8 of the 3000 females tested in the 1996 Atlanta olympics that tested positive as being genetically male. They had a Y chromosome. So doesn't that make them male? If so, then why were they allowed to compete?
This excellent blog post at "The Science of Sport" gives a great explanation. A condition called androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) can cause a male embryo to develop testes and not ovaries or a uterus, but to not develop the rest of the physical traits of a male. The external genetalia may be ambiguous and the physical appearance doesn't match the genetic sex. Other conditions can result in ambiguous genetalia and intersex conditions where the person is neither male nor female.
So, the result may be very interesting and counterintuitive (to me at least). Caster may indeed be genetically male, have internal testes, no uterus or ovaries, but be allowed to keep her world championship and continue to compete as a female. And, the controversy may actually save her life because internal testes need to be removed because they can quickly become cancerous and in her case are not needed.
Of course, Mormons have this all figured out as witnessed by this excerpt from The Family: A Proclamation to the World:
All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.
So there you have it. The Lord's prophets have declared that male/female is an intrinsic, eternal, essential characteristic. So, I wonder if they would ordain Caster to the priesthood even though she, her family, and friends all believe she is a woman. Does her genetic identity trump? It's great that the Mormons have a prophet to sort out and address such issues. Perhaps she can get a patriarchal blessing to not only declare her lineage, but also her gender? Or perhaps in a Mormon family she would be forced to be male although she has no penis and feels like a woman. Perhaps it's her burden to be an eternal male destined to pass mortality feeling like a female.
Or perhaps even on topics so apparently easy to deal with, such as gender and sexuality, the world is much stranger and more complicated than we ever imagined.
I'm not holding my breath for the church to come out with anything reasonable on this because it doesn't fit neatly into their black/white world and would to easily transition to other questions of sexuality for which they aren't known for being terribly understanding or reasonable.
Nope, God has made it all so simple to understand.
Sidney Rigdon: A Portrait of Religious Excess

Posted: September 10th, 2009, 2:42pm EDT by Bull

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Over the last few months I read a couple of church history books. The first was Sidney Rigdon: A Portrait of Religious Excess by Richard S. Van Wagoner. The second was Who Really Wrote the Book of Mormon?: The Spalding Enigma by Wayne L. Cowdrey, Howard A. Davis, and Arthur Vanick.

The first is a long overdue biography of Rigdon. He is best known among Mormons for his pivotal role in the early days of the church and was in the First Presidency right up until Joseph Smith's murder. After that he tried to assert his claim to the presidency and when Brigham Young and the apostles supplanted him and other claimants he went his own way and was excommunicated by Young for continuing to try to regain his former leadership role. Like so many early leaders of the church he became an apostate cast by the wayside and largely forgotten.
Most interesting to me was his religious exploits after Smith's death because I think it gives great insight into how to consider his involvement in the founding of Mormonism. After to failing to gain a following in Nauvoo he head east to Pittsburgh (?) and took over leadership of a branch of the church there. He became a prophet and tried to establish a new Zion in a similar fashion to what he had done with Smith in Kirtland, Independence, and Nauvoo. Like those previous attempts he failed miserably. He finally wound up living in impoverished circumstances with his son's family. His son forbid people from discussing religion with his father because of the problems it caused.
Apparently in secret, Rigdon continued to act as a prophet to people who he led via letters as he remotely led them from site to site of new Zions while constantly berating them with prophecies condemning them for failing to adequately support him. His small flock apparently placed great faith in him as they sacrificed everything trying to support him and comply with his arbitrary directions.
In a tragic turn of events for seekers after truth, Rigdon's wife apparently burned all of his papers. One wonders what might have been in that treasure trove that he didn't want exposed to the world but we'll never know.
The second book explores the possibility that Rigdon had a role in the production of the Book of Mormon. Despite the length of the book, there is really no solid evidence. About all that can be said is that they have shown that Rigdon was in the right places at the right times so that it's a possibility. But is is so highly speculative in nature that the case is hardly compelling. It can't be ruled out, but then again neither can the theories proposed by Brody and others including B.H. Roberts who concluded that Smith was certainly capable of producing the Book of Mormon on his own using the resources at his disposal.
But, when you take the two books together it struck me how quickly Smith's prophetic voice changed as soon as he joined with Rigdon in Kirtland, Ohio. Nearly all of the church's revelations were given in Kirtland with Rigdon by Smith's side the whole time. Prior to Smith, Rigdon had already spent years developing his own Christian restorationist theology as a Cambellite minister and had had a falling out with the Cambellites because he seemed to go to far. However as soon as he linked up with the Mormons you can see his ideas finding fruit in Smith's revelations. During this period, not only were most of the revelations given, but he and Smith "translated" the Bible, established Zion in Missouri, and tried to set up a communal order and various business enterprises. It is easy to understand why so many people at that time believed that Rigdon was the real founder of Mormonism.
Like Smith, Rigdon was never successful in earning an honest living with his own hands and relied on his religious roles and the charity of others to support himself. After his split from the main branch of Mormonism it becomes easy to see him continue a pattern until his death where he tried to use the faith of others to his own advantage.
I highly recommend the first book, but not the second unless you really, really want to see how far people are willing to stretch scanty evidence or are very interested in minute details of the period.
Oh. The second book also raises a very good point about how very little we know about Oliver Cowdery prior to his role in the production of the Book of Mormon and the founding of the Mormon church. I've pointed this out with regard to the testimonies of the three witnesses, but it is extremely suspicious how little we know of Cowdery's life. As church historian it makes one wonder at what he might have been trying to hide and the book actually does a pretty good job at pointing out what some of those things might me.
Smith and Rigdon were the key figures in the foundation of Mormonism and it's theological evolution. I think that the character of Smith's closest associate sheds a great deal of light on Smith himself.
Evolution Redux

Posted: April 28th, 2009, 12:44pm EDT by Bull

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I got a response to an older post, Transitional Life Forms, and I figured I post my response here. You can read the response in the comments, but the essence is that it takes more faith to believe in evolution than creation and that there is no evidence for evolution. Here's my response.

Aw, but MonkeyMom, the evidence is plentiful. Over the 4.5 billion years of its existence the fossil record clearly records the emergence, extinction, and continuation of all of the kingdoms. It just happens over extremely long periods of time. So if you expect to see it over the period of your lifetime or even during the period of recorded human history then you'll probably miss it. People easily misjudge probabilities because they can't easily fathom the magnitudes of the involved numbers. But to state that there is no evidence is simply wrong. It's there even if it is just fragmentary snapshots.

What's completely lacking is any evidence that supports a single creation event where all of the world's species were created with no new ones emerging since that creation.

The beautiful thing about science is that it's not afraid to say when it doesn't know something. Regardless, what we do know is that the earth is significantly older than 6000 years and that life has existed on it for a very, very long time, and that the types of life have changed radically over those long periods and that they have changed from simple life forms to increasingly complex life forms and that the life forms have changed to match the conditions.

If you know what fossils are, you probably know how rare they are and that they are only formed under very special circumstances. The result is that the fossil record is incredibly incomplete. This makes it very unlikely that we'll ever see a complete fossil record showing transitions. However, it does show the appearance of increasingly complex organisms over very large time periods.

Evolution is a theory that tries to explain the known facts. So far, it is the most plausible although like all theories it will be modified and perhaps discarded as new evidence is found that either supports it or undermines it.

That's the beauty of science.

I was, of course, joking about dogs being evidence of transitional life forms. I'm not sure that I buy the theory of evolution either. I'm willing to say I don't know. I think that it's quite likely that there are processes that we don't or can't understand because they happen over millions, billions, or trillions of years. Also, by the very nature of the question, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to know the answer.

What I am 100% certain of, is that the Biblical creation account is not how it happened. The evidence on the ground completely contradicts the account unless you read it as a purely metaphorical story whose details are essentially meaningless.

Since you've studied this so much, I'm sure you're also aware of the problems with postulating an all powerful creator. On the other hand, if you had you'd probably understand why that is an even more improbable theory than evolution.

I'm sure it is comforting to believe in a simple answer: God did it. But if I concede that, then you still have to explain what God is and how he did it. Which kind of brings us back to square one. In the end, "God did it" is just a comforting way of saying, "I don't know." And I'm okay with that answer.

In the end our existence is miraculous, amazing, and astounding. Whether or not we believe in God doesn't change that one bit.

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Life in the Fast Lane (10 unread)

Posted: February 26th, 2010, 2:48am EST by Bull

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Posted: February 26th, 2010, 12:58am EST by Bull

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Posted: January 16th, 2010, 8:34am EST by Bull

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Posted: November 29th, 2009, 7:51am EST by Bull

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Posted: November 28th, 2009, 4:10am EST by Bull

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Posted: November 22nd, 2009, 4:36am EST by Bull

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Posted: September 29th, 2009, 11:39am EDT by Bull

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Posted: September 16th, 2009, 11:24am EDT by Bull

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Posted: September 10th, 2009, 2:42pm EDT by Bull

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Posted: April 28th, 2009, 12:44pm EDT by Bull

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