Those dutifully following the "It's Thanksgiving, ergo I'm grateful" script should step aside and give hollowed-out human husks celebrating sobriety anniversaries this week center stage
Those dutifully following the "It's Thanksgiving, ergo I'm grateful" script should step aside and give hollowed-out human husks celebrating sobriety anniversaries this week center stage
I saw Benji Durden in the results. He’s got 10 years on me. Sub 2:10 guy in the day. I remember him running in the sweat suits and not getting to compete in the ‘80 Olympics.
As a "low-grade Bible-bopping swamp-bumpkin" my desire for a young universe is tied in with my desire that there haven't been millions of years of carnage. Never mind 10,000 years of carnage is more than I would have picked, had it been my choice to do so. You can be in a field of runners and not consider that your identity, and you can do the same when it comes to theists. Quite frankly to me this business of suffering and dying has been on my mind from my earliest memories. I'm convinced that God exists, but how and why things have been working out in the manner that they have is pretty unclear. I think now that any speculations as to why or to what end ultimately fail. I've read perhaps 60 or more apologetic works in the last two years and they all fail in some way. I think that in some way, pretending to know is a blasphemy of sorts and that the strongest arguments of atheists have been railing against the blasphemy of the apologists. At some level that is. People have their reasons for what they choose to believe. I imagined and at some level still do that "goodness" is something real and transcendent and that the source of this "equation" is God. I'm applying to myself the argument that if I'm manifesting any "goodness" that "goodness" is not self generated, but something I'm assenting to whose source is not me - rather God. So if I'm dissatisfied with the state of human affairs, then God must all the more so be dissatisfied. I think of it as a sort of second law of thermodynamics, but applied to goodness. That the lesser is always and necessarily a dim representation (and getting dimmer all the time). But I can't stop looking, so I'm reading everyone's thoughts on the matter that I can find. I have to exclude in my mind and heart any conclusions that God doesn't exist or that God is evil. I know many have, but I can't do that. I also know that everyone has to work these things out for themselves. This isn't to say I believe all conclusions to be equal. I don't. I think poorly and even with revulsion some of the ideas many have about God/non-God, but all these people have the personal responsibility and right to work these things out. I also don't believe in "personal truth". I do believe people have personal experiences ,and I do believe that truth is out there, outside of me and waiting to be discovered, not self-generated. So I keep looking and I know that's what I have to do and I'll keep doing that as long as I have time. This reminds me of the apocryphal tale of the drunk who lost his wallet in the darkness "out there" and who is asked what he is looking for under the street-lamp and he says "I'm looking for my wallet" when asked, and when asked where he lost it he points to the impenetrable darkness. Asked again why he's looking under the street-lamp if he lost it "out there" and he replied "it's too dark out there to see anything!". I have only my own mind as a lamp to these things and it can only see so far even when I try to get another's view on these things. The rest is "out there" in the impenetrable darkness. So I have faith that there is light beyond the darkness, but beyond that I don't know, but I'll keep looking.
I saw Benji Durden in the results. He’s got 10 years on me. Sub 2:10 guy in the day. I remember him running in the sweat suits and not getting to compete in the ‘80 Olympics.
Also, I ran a sh*tty 10k yesterday.
As a "low-grade Bible-bopping swamp-bumpkin" my desire for a young universe is tied in with my desire that there haven't been millions of years of carnage. Never mind 10,000 years of carnage is more than I would have picked, had it been my choice to do so. You can be in a field of runners and not consider that your identity, and you can do the same when it comes to theists. Quite frankly to me this business of suffering and dying has been on my mind from my earliest memories. I'm convinced that God exists, but how and why things have been working out in the manner that they have is pretty unclear. I think now that any speculations as to why or to what end ultimately fail. I've read perhaps 60 or more apologetic works in the last two years and they all fail in some way. I think that in some way, pretending to know is a blasphemy of sorts and that the strongest arguments of atheists have been railing against the blasphemy of the apologists. At some level that is. People have their reasons for what they choose to believe. I imagined and at some level still do that "goodness" is something real and transcendent and that the source of this "equation" is God. I'm applying to myself the argument that if I'm manifesting any "goodness" that "goodness" is not self generated, but something I'm assenting to whose source is not me - rather God. So if I'm dissatisfied with the state of human affairs, then God must all the more so be dissatisfied. I think of it as a sort of second law of thermodynamics, but applied to goodness. That the lesser is always and necessarily a dim representation (and getting dimmer all the time). But I can't stop looking, so I'm reading everyone's thoughts on the matter that I can find. I have to exclude in my mind and heart any conclusions that God doesn't exist or that God is evil. I know many have, but I can't do that. I also know that everyone has to work these things out for themselves. This isn't to say I believe all conclusions to be equal. I don't. I think poorly and even with revulsion some of the ideas many have about God/non-God, but all these people have the personal responsibility and right to work these things out. I also don't believe in "personal truth". I do believe people have personal experiences ,and I do believe that truth is out there, outside of me and waiting to be discovered, not self-generated. So I keep looking and I know that's what I have to do and I'll keep doing that as long as I have time. This reminds me of the apocryphal tale of the drunk who lost his wallet in the darkness "out there" and who is asked what he is looking for under the street-lamp and he says "I'm looking for my wallet" when asked, and when asked where he lost it he points to the impenetrable darkness. Asked again why he's looking under the street-lamp if he lost it "out there" and he replied "it's too dark out there to see anything!". I have only my own mind as a lamp to these things and it can only see so far even when I try to get another's view on these things. The rest is "out there" in the impenetrable darkness. So I have faith that there is light beyond the darkness, but beyond that I don't know, but I'll keep looking.