This blog is a progressive story of my search for Truth that started many years ago.
So it will most likely do a B.C. to A.D. transition thing after a few posts. But until then it
will just have to go back in time for awhile with the latest posts last.
22 January 2009
15 January 2009
Fat Boy Slim, Chicken Coops, and the Universe..
As I sat there, heart pounding, still in shock from having survived a Rave where Fat Boy Slim and thousands of other kids came out to a chicken coop some where in the middle of nowhere Eau Claire, Wisconsin to free the animal that coursed through their veins. My buddy turns to me wide eyed with pupils dilated and asks. "We all just came from hunters and gatherers right man?" The question dove into my chest as I realized that I was finally at the fulcrum of a very rapid crash into the pending reality that I was only recently starting to see. All that I had thought was real and worth living for was mutating into chaos all around me. The exciting talk of sex was leading the ones I loved into single parenthood or STD's. Cool sarcasm and the supposed humor of sexist or racist comments had recently raged through the bottle that used to bring joy but now brought abuse and senseless violence. The compensation for this chaos with drugs had been instilled in us through our parents failure to find a balance in Truth. Now their tactics of coping with the dark had guided us into more effective means of sustaining the pass time of "the numb". And "the chaos" had now shoved some of my friends and family past depression into attempts at suicide...some successful.
So everything in me at that moment struggled to grasp for Truth that wasn't there. Yearned to clutch on to it and have it break my rapid descent into chaos. But I had nothing. I had been coping to. I didn't have Truth. But what I did have was the knowledge that this "truth" that I did have was a lie. This "truth" that society deals to its youth daily. This "truth" that told me the first day of my biology course freshman year of High School, that "our sole purpose in life is to reproduce." That "truth" that tells us to do whatever feels right at the time......That "truth" was a lie leading to Chaos. And that chaos was destroying the lives of my friends while I sat idly by allowing it to consume me.
So what did I do in my moment of clarity? I climbed to the top of the 3 story party house we were at and scrambled up on to the pitch of its roof. And when I sat and looked up at the sky I realized that I was trying to get to Truth...that I was trying to get to God. But it seemed it had already gotten to me. I have never seen such small round clouds before that night or so many. Nor had I seen clouds move so fast across the sky. And the full moon blazed down through them at me as if it were a flash light from heaven itself ripping through the darkness and scattering the clouds away.
That was the night that I began my quest for answers. That was the night I prayed for Truth.
But I didn't know to whom I prayed.
So everything in me at that moment struggled to grasp for Truth that wasn't there. Yearned to clutch on to it and have it break my rapid descent into chaos. But I had nothing. I had been coping to. I didn't have Truth. But what I did have was the knowledge that this "truth" that I did have was a lie. This "truth" that society deals to its youth daily. This "truth" that told me the first day of my biology course freshman year of High School, that "our sole purpose in life is to reproduce." That "truth" that tells us to do whatever feels right at the time......That "truth" was a lie leading to Chaos. And that chaos was destroying the lives of my friends while I sat idly by allowing it to consume me.
So what did I do in my moment of clarity? I climbed to the top of the 3 story party house we were at and scrambled up on to the pitch of its roof. And when I sat and looked up at the sky I realized that I was trying to get to Truth...that I was trying to get to God. But it seemed it had already gotten to me. I have never seen such small round clouds before that night or so many. Nor had I seen clouds move so fast across the sky. And the full moon blazed down through them at me as if it were a flash light from heaven itself ripping through the darkness and scattering the clouds away.
That was the night that I began my quest for answers. That was the night I prayed for Truth.
But I didn't know to whom I prayed.
14 January 2009
Where do you begin?
Well I started my quest by adding a little questioning spirit to my daily life. I was at the time taking a probabilities class and decided to randomly ask my professor what the probability of our Universe was. He shocked the whole class and said there was no chance. He went on to talk about some Anthropic Principle and how the whole universe is so perfectly balanced that when you do the math it's improbable to say the least. That made me feel like I was onto something.
That evening I went back to my place and with my thirst for knowledge still driving me I picked up some Time Life Atlas book which was a sort of overview of life on planet earth. It started off with Pangea...you know, the super continent. Where all the continents look as though they were connected at one point in history. Well I started thinking about that idea a little more and something peculiar dawned on me. If all the continents were at one point connected, then they wouldn't have been drifting apart as they do today. That would mean that there would be no shifting of the continents. That means no earthquakes. And they also taught us that mountains were caused by continental shelves buckling into one another. But if they weren't moving at all, wouldn't that mean that at one point there wouldn't have been any mountains, not even volcanos? Would there even be any Tsunami's? It was seeming to me that at one point in history the earth could have been a perfect shell with no cracks to bleed from. I was shocked with the implications of such a pristine planet. But then I remembered winter and summer. Two of the biggest destroyers of life on the planet. How could it have been perfect with those two killers. So I continued reading in this Time Life book and I couldn't believe what I saw next. They had this diagram of earth not tilted at all but spinning perfectly upright like a top circling the sun. And they went on to say what life would be like if this were the case. We would have consistent 12 hour days all year round. And there wouldn't be any seasons. The equator would be a desert and poles would frozen but there would be at least two bands of 24/7 spring happening all around the globe. But that's if the ozone was anything like it is now. Which might be unlikely considering that the earth at one point was able to cultivate such awesome amounts of plant life that it could sustain animals that were radically more massive then anything we see today. I later discovered that archaeologist's have found Gingko leaf fossils two feet in diameter as compared with today's 2 inch wide variety.
Are you putting together what I started thinking? Could we have been knocked on our Axis! Could we have at one point had an earth without frozen winter or burning summer, without earthquakes or volcanoes, tsunami's or maybe even tornadoes? And this Eden of a planet then came head to head with a demon asteroid that shattered its perfection. Haven't we all heard that it was some massive asteroid shower that ended the Jurassic period. Well what if it was just one meteor? And one big enough that could knock our perfectly spun top to where we are now. Like say the one that hit the Gulf of Mexico some million odd years ago that the History channel just last week made mention of.
This all seemed to lend credence to some of the major world religions claims that the earth used to be perfect. That at one point there actually may have been a Garden of Eden called the Earth. Where we didn't need coats for our unsuitable skin to survive winter or scales to cope with summer like I would have guessed we would if evolution were the only truth. Now not only was the universe starting to look too good to be true, but the earth as well. It started to make sense to me that there had been some super intelligence that created this place for good, but something wrecked it. And it seems like a funny thought to me now, but then to think that since we put an owners manual to everything usable that we create, why wouldn't God? And so it just made sense to research the oldest books on the planet to see if there's a creation story that matched up with how we know from the "Big Bang" that we came into existence. I was now so curious to see whether or not there were any other scientifically plausible claims in any of those religions ancient history's. Could it be possible that this planet was designed and designed for perfection? I couldn't believe what else I found.
That evening I went back to my place and with my thirst for knowledge still driving me I picked up some Time Life Atlas book which was a sort of overview of life on planet earth. It started off with Pangea...you know, the super continent. Where all the continents look as though they were connected at one point in history. Well I started thinking about that idea a little more and something peculiar dawned on me. If all the continents were at one point connected, then they wouldn't have been drifting apart as they do today. That would mean that there would be no shifting of the continents. That means no earthquakes. And they also taught us that mountains were caused by continental shelves buckling into one another. But if they weren't moving at all, wouldn't that mean that at one point there wouldn't have been any mountains, not even volcanos? Would there even be any Tsunami's? It was seeming to me that at one point in history the earth could have been a perfect shell with no cracks to bleed from. I was shocked with the implications of such a pristine planet. But then I remembered winter and summer. Two of the biggest destroyers of life on the planet. How could it have been perfect with those two killers. So I continued reading in this Time Life book and I couldn't believe what I saw next. They had this diagram of earth not tilted at all but spinning perfectly upright like a top circling the sun. And they went on to say what life would be like if this were the case. We would have consistent 12 hour days all year round. And there wouldn't be any seasons. The equator would be a desert and poles would frozen but there would be at least two bands of 24/7 spring happening all around the globe. But that's if the ozone was anything like it is now. Which might be unlikely considering that the earth at one point was able to cultivate such awesome amounts of plant life that it could sustain animals that were radically more massive then anything we see today. I later discovered that archaeologist's have found Gingko leaf fossils two feet in diameter as compared with today's 2 inch wide variety.
Are you putting together what I started thinking? Could we have been knocked on our Axis! Could we have at one point had an earth without frozen winter or burning summer, without earthquakes or volcanoes, tsunami's or maybe even tornadoes? And this Eden of a planet then came head to head with a demon asteroid that shattered its perfection. Haven't we all heard that it was some massive asteroid shower that ended the Jurassic period. Well what if it was just one meteor? And one big enough that could knock our perfectly spun top to where we are now. Like say the one that hit the Gulf of Mexico some million odd years ago that the History channel just last week made mention of.
This all seemed to lend credence to some of the major world religions claims that the earth used to be perfect. That at one point there actually may have been a Garden of Eden called the Earth. Where we didn't need coats for our unsuitable skin to survive winter or scales to cope with summer like I would have guessed we would if evolution were the only truth. Now not only was the universe starting to look too good to be true, but the earth as well. It started to make sense to me that there had been some super intelligence that created this place for good, but something wrecked it. And it seems like a funny thought to me now, but then to think that since we put an owners manual to everything usable that we create, why wouldn't God? And so it just made sense to research the oldest books on the planet to see if there's a creation story that matched up with how we know from the "Big Bang" that we came into existence. I was now so curious to see whether or not there were any other scientifically plausible claims in any of those religions ancient history's. Could it be possible that this planet was designed and designed for perfection? I couldn't believe what else I found.
13 January 2009
Christian, Muslim or Jew
I decided to save myself a ton of time and research the findings of scholars who have dedicated their careers to studying ancient cultures and their creation stories. That way I could see if they knew of any world religions that matched up with how we know the universe came to be. That is through the Big Bang Theory, which is pretty well established throughout the science community. The latest information on the big bang is that the whole universe prior to it's expansion was the size of a pin point or more likely according to many cosmologists...nothing. Which is fascinating because I've never heard of something coming from nothing that wasn't in some fantasy novel. They also say that the initial state of our expanding universe would have been pink light, since hydrogen is the most prominent element throughout our universe. Then from that energy the light condensed into matter.
It so turns out that the only creation story on the planet that claims the universe both came out of nothingness and that there was a beginning of time and a beginning to matter all starting with light is the creation story found in the ancient manuscripts of the infamous Dead Sea Scrolls. It also happens to be the creation story of which Muslims, Christians and Jews all ascribe to. It is the creation story of Genesis which in Hebrew means beginnings.
I was floored with the comparisons in Genesis where God says "let there be light" to "ex nihilo" which in the Hebrew literally translates, out of nothing. Then from that light he separates the darkness and creates matter. And then goes on day after day until you have Adam and it only took some 120 hours. Unless you do a little bit more research into the Hebrew language once again. It turns out that the word used for a day is Yom in Hebrew. It's the very word that's used many other places in scripture to refer to an epoch or a period of existence of time. Like "In the day of King David". But what really led me to not understand this to be referring to a literal day(not to mention the dilema of there not being any sun to begin with to establish the 24 hour period we know of as a day:) is that the creation story in Genesis is actually a Poem. And It's actually a very structured and beautiful poem that's easy to remember. It's set up as three days of separating what God is creating and then three days of filling that creation. And the real beauty of the poetry is that it actually matches up with reality. It starts with God speaking things into existence and then blowing life into Man. Funny enough many cosmologists even compare the shape of our Universe to a balloon which I find rather ironic. Then this light was sculpted into all sorts of celestial mobiles culminating in a masterpiece that God once again breathes life into. In fact in the New Testament the greek word Poema which means masterpiece is used only twice. Once to speak of the creation of earth and then referring to us, His masterpiece.
There were many other connections with the beautiful poetry of the Torah that rang true with the now knowable universe. Which has only been in the last decade that we can actually see into the depths and unlock the secrets of our universe thanks to the Hubble telescope. For instance, in the poetry of the prophet He talks about God stretching out the universe! And how he sits above the "dome" of the earth, implying that it's a sphere. (Isaiah 40:22) And that's just scratching the surface.
But now I had to wrestle with which of the three faiths was the right one. Or at least I thought that's what I had to do. After all, if your not a republican then you're a democrat right? But It seemed to me that the fight was more than just over the tiny plot of land called Israel. But didn't it really boil down to just one question? The question that split time Before Christ into the present Anno Domini (In the year of our Lord). The question who really is Jesus?
It so turns out that the only creation story on the planet that claims the universe both came out of nothingness and that there was a beginning of time and a beginning to matter all starting with light is the creation story found in the ancient manuscripts of the infamous Dead Sea Scrolls. It also happens to be the creation story of which Muslims, Christians and Jews all ascribe to. It is the creation story of Genesis which in Hebrew means beginnings.
I was floored with the comparisons in Genesis where God says "let there be light" to "ex nihilo" which in the Hebrew literally translates, out of nothing. Then from that light he separates the darkness and creates matter. And then goes on day after day until you have Adam and it only took some 120 hours. Unless you do a little bit more research into the Hebrew language once again. It turns out that the word used for a day is Yom in Hebrew. It's the very word that's used many other places in scripture to refer to an epoch or a period of existence of time. Like "In the day of King David". But what really led me to not understand this to be referring to a literal day(not to mention the dilema of there not being any sun to begin with to establish the 24 hour period we know of as a day:) is that the creation story in Genesis is actually a Poem. And It's actually a very structured and beautiful poem that's easy to remember. It's set up as three days of separating what God is creating and then three days of filling that creation. And the real beauty of the poetry is that it actually matches up with reality. It starts with God speaking things into existence and then blowing life into Man. Funny enough many cosmologists even compare the shape of our Universe to a balloon which I find rather ironic. Then this light was sculpted into all sorts of celestial mobiles culminating in a masterpiece that God once again breathes life into. In fact in the New Testament the greek word Poema which means masterpiece is used only twice. Once to speak of the creation of earth and then referring to us, His masterpiece.
There were many other connections with the beautiful poetry of the Torah that rang true with the now knowable universe. Which has only been in the last decade that we can actually see into the depths and unlock the secrets of our universe thanks to the Hubble telescope. For instance, in the poetry of the prophet He talks about God stretching out the universe! And how he sits above the "dome" of the earth, implying that it's a sphere. (Isaiah 40:22) And that's just scratching the surface.
But now I had to wrestle with which of the three faiths was the right one. Or at least I thought that's what I had to do. After all, if your not a republican then you're a democrat right? But It seemed to me that the fight was more than just over the tiny plot of land called Israel. But didn't it really boil down to just one question? The question that split time Before Christ into the present Anno Domini (In the year of our Lord). The question who really is Jesus?
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