I live in Winter Park, FL, which is pretty much a suburb of Orlando. We tried to treat Irma initially with the kind of healthy skepticism/optimism people do with these things, hoping it wouldn't be as bad as forecasted. It never is, right? I went through Charley in 2004. It was loud and windy, of course, but it never really got that bad where I was, though I did lose power for 5 days. Irma was EVERYTHING they said it was going to be.
The winds were picking up all day Sunday. I was hoping to get as much football in as possible as I'm a Packer fan (KEEP READING!) Around the time the game ended was when the our power went out. It was one of those progressive deals where the wind picked up and the rain started falling heavier and it was only a matter of time. Ours went out around 9 PM. I talked to my Dad on the phone around 11 PM. At that time, it was windier than a regular bad storm and the rain was spitting, the kind that heavily sprays your face from big wind gusts. I sat on an old couch I have on my porch and just kind of took it all in. Of course, I was thinking: "This is going to be as bad as it gets, right? Pretty windy and rainy but...what are the wind gusts right now? 40? 50? Shouldn't get much worse than that, right?" So I listened to my IPOD in bed and figured I'd sleep through most of it. I turned the IPOD off around 1 AM and my ears were greeted with just incredible noise from outside, dwarfing anything I'd heard from Charley. I went to my glass door, opened it and looked outside and it was a maelstrom. The winds had picked up probably 40 to 50 mph from where they were when I first started listening to my IPOD. I had a good view of several large trees and they were being whipped around like feathers in a wind tunnel. It was like wind bombs were planted inside and were going off. Even the biggest trees looked like they were going to break into pieces at any moment. It was like the wind was a human tearing apart a piece of broccoli. There was a leaning tree across the way that I was particularly cheering for. It got battered and slightly uprooted but survived. I couldn't turn away, partly from curiosity and partly from fear. It was like I'd miss the falling tree with my name on it if I turned away and I wanted to see it coming. And, hey, Pliny the Elder's curiosity got him killed when Vesuvius blew and buried Pompeii in 79 AD so I definitely wanted to be cognizant of what was happening. If he could be intellectually courageous, so could I! Every now and again, a blast of lightning would shine in the clouds and, coupled with the wind and rain, was particularly eerie and terrifying. It was one of those humbling experiences where we realize just how easily weather can rip us to pieces or turn us to slush whenever it really wants to, which is the scariest when we're actually in the grip of that weather. I got a bit of sleep around 2 AM but the winds didn't die down. It was so constant and lasted so long that there was no exhale period. It even stayed windy the next day, though the rain had gone and it was sunny out.
I got up early the next day and went to a friends to see if she was okay. Branches and leaves littered the complex. Large fences were blown down and gutters were torn asunder. Interestingly, we didn't have much of a rain problem the morning after. The water level of our local creek wasn't out on control and there were only occasional collections in the parking lots. I think we have good drainage where we are. I lost power for almost 48 hours, which is more than acceptable when you get hit like we did. I won't go into any of that. Bottom line, if any hurricane of this intensity comes again, GET THE FUCK OUT! I rode this one out but I'm not sticking around for the next one. It was as bad as the weather people said it would be. Still, it was also a bit of an honor watching it happen. Hopefully, it will be the biggest one I ever see but now I can now proudly wear the "I Survived Irma" T-shirt.
Tuesday, September 12, 2017
Sunday, September 3, 2017
God - Should we keep trying to figure "Him" out?
As we all know, mankind has pondered about God and the idea of God since humans have been able to think and wonder. Religious structures (such as ziggurats then churches) were the first buildings built in town in the ancient world and the most powerful people in the communities (apart from a king) were priests. Why? Because we all die and we don't know what happens. That is the great mystery. Let's be honest. Death is terrible. We rot. Our faces and our bodies shrivel up. We can't do the fun things in life we've always done EVER again. No more of our favorite music and films. We'll never see our beloved family members and our beloved pets ever again and, if all consciousness dies with us, we won't even remember these things. Death sucks. It's the destroyer of hope and joy and happiness. Death is a genocidal murderer and no one escapes. Death is extinction.
Soooo! With all that happy stuff out of the way, why do we think about God? Because we need to, we MUST, think that we will not end. Yes, we need it for our emotions. Atheists love pointing that out as to why believers believe. My question to atheists would be "What's wrong with that?" IMO, no human being can relish the idea of being TRULY dead, of our consciousness ending and all we know and love. Such people are like ones that would welcome Alzheimer's disease because it's pretty much the same thing, isn't it? The mind is destroyed and we're forced to go with it.
With the rise of scientific knowledge, we've become very unimaginative and non-curious about the idea of a higher power or a higher "something." I'll state now that I'm a 100% science believer and adherer and I do not believe that the idea (necessarily) of God and a scientific universe existing at the same time is a belief in Intelligent Design. Some of the greatest philosophic and scientific minds in human history have STILL, ever after much knowledge of the physical universe has been achieved, pondered and wondered about a thing called "God." That's what truly smart people do. Most scientists try to find God in the Big Bang, the starter and creator of the universe. Philosophers just want to know what the heck is going on and ask God questions even if they don't have to.
So, if we're going to ponder the idea of God in our "I don't believe in jack shit" society, how do we go about it? A better question is "CAN we go about it?" meaning there have been so many theories about God over the thousands of years of human history that we have to ask ourselves if it's all been thought of before. Truly, the more ideas of God, the more religions and scientific wonderings and philosophic deductions we read, the more we wonder if we're closer to an idea of God or farther away or we just throw up our hands and say we don't know. To me, we're all naturally agnostic about the idea of a God because we just can't prove His (using the Christian term) existence one way or another unless we believe that the idea of God has already been hit on by someone. I enjoy studying unsolved murder cases and the Jack the Ripper case is one of my favorites. In assessing Ripper suspects, I ask the question: "Do I believe the Ripper is one of the suspects already named or do I believe he's escaped the suspect list thus far and that we have to keep trying to find him?" I view God the same way. Has God, the true nature of a thing called God, already been hit on by someone? Do the Christians have it right? What about Hindus? Buddhists? The Greeks and Romans believe in a many gods and goddesses (as do Hindus.) Is there something in any of that? The Pharaoh Akhenaten believed the sun was the true God. Various ancient Greek philosophers believed the world began in fire or water. Aristotle believed in a Prime Mover, the idea of cause and effect. The universe moves forward, therefore something must have started it moving. Whatever that original mover is is "God," the thing that started it all. And, of course, scientists posit the Big Bang Theory that dust and gases condensed with incredible pressure, blew up and sent force the materials and structures that make up the universe today. Others say they don't believe in religion but they do believe in a "higher power." What does this mean exactly?
Surely one of these ideas has to be the correct one, right? Our greatest minds have used physical evidence through experimentation and logic through physical observation and intuition and everything else in the book. At least one of them must have succeeded where others have failed? This is where atheists are born. They look at the evidence as they see it and conclude that God isn't real. Their argument is overwhelmingly that God can't be real because religion is stupid. I would point out to them that they do not believe IN RELIGION but, who says religion knows what God is or isn't? A God may exist that religion has completely missed, the unnamed serial killer that escaped the suspect list (you all understand I'm not saying God is a serial killer.) THAT is why we have to continue to try to figure out if God, or whatever we believe everything is about, exists or not. It's possibly the Road Not Taken (yet.) We take the one less travelled by and that makes the difference because we discover and we pioneer. WE may be able to figure out the God question where genius minds have tried before! Science is all about discovery and experience. Humanity is all about discovery and experience. We need places for our minds to go, puzzles to work on. New territories and worlds to discover, new ideas to think up. That's how humans grow, how we evolve. It may be the dumbest thing in the world to want to know but that is the most human thing we can do. We die. We HAVE to try to figure out why, whether our lives mean anything, if how we live our lives means anything. That's the true joy of thinking IMO. We don't stop short trying to understand a hard reality that we all must face and what happens afterwards because however we consider that reality to be is how we think God or the idea of a God is. Plus, how boring and lazy and hopeless just thinking we go in a hole and shrivel up and rot and that's it! No. We have to wonder and we have to ponder because WE CAN. We can think in those ways and that separates us from mindless animals, that sheer, evolved ability to think and feel there's a way we can live on in some capacity, achieve a form of consciousness or happiness independent of our bodies that rot, the thought that we may have something called a soul that lives on. That's what life and hope are all about. The greatest minds in human history have pondered whether something called God exists or not. I choose to follow in those footsteps. I refuse to just say it's all stupid and screw it. I want to know. I have to know.
Thanks for reading.
Soooo! With all that happy stuff out of the way, why do we think about God? Because we need to, we MUST, think that we will not end. Yes, we need it for our emotions. Atheists love pointing that out as to why believers believe. My question to atheists would be "What's wrong with that?" IMO, no human being can relish the idea of being TRULY dead, of our consciousness ending and all we know and love. Such people are like ones that would welcome Alzheimer's disease because it's pretty much the same thing, isn't it? The mind is destroyed and we're forced to go with it.
With the rise of scientific knowledge, we've become very unimaginative and non-curious about the idea of a higher power or a higher "something." I'll state now that I'm a 100% science believer and adherer and I do not believe that the idea (necessarily) of God and a scientific universe existing at the same time is a belief in Intelligent Design. Some of the greatest philosophic and scientific minds in human history have STILL, ever after much knowledge of the physical universe has been achieved, pondered and wondered about a thing called "God." That's what truly smart people do. Most scientists try to find God in the Big Bang, the starter and creator of the universe. Philosophers just want to know what the heck is going on and ask God questions even if they don't have to.
So, if we're going to ponder the idea of God in our "I don't believe in jack shit" society, how do we go about it? A better question is "CAN we go about it?" meaning there have been so many theories about God over the thousands of years of human history that we have to ask ourselves if it's all been thought of before. Truly, the more ideas of God, the more religions and scientific wonderings and philosophic deductions we read, the more we wonder if we're closer to an idea of God or farther away or we just throw up our hands and say we don't know. To me, we're all naturally agnostic about the idea of a God because we just can't prove His (using the Christian term) existence one way or another unless we believe that the idea of God has already been hit on by someone. I enjoy studying unsolved murder cases and the Jack the Ripper case is one of my favorites. In assessing Ripper suspects, I ask the question: "Do I believe the Ripper is one of the suspects already named or do I believe he's escaped the suspect list thus far and that we have to keep trying to find him?" I view God the same way. Has God, the true nature of a thing called God, already been hit on by someone? Do the Christians have it right? What about Hindus? Buddhists? The Greeks and Romans believe in a many gods and goddesses (as do Hindus.) Is there something in any of that? The Pharaoh Akhenaten believed the sun was the true God. Various ancient Greek philosophers believed the world began in fire or water. Aristotle believed in a Prime Mover, the idea of cause and effect. The universe moves forward, therefore something must have started it moving. Whatever that original mover is is "God," the thing that started it all. And, of course, scientists posit the Big Bang Theory that dust and gases condensed with incredible pressure, blew up and sent force the materials and structures that make up the universe today. Others say they don't believe in religion but they do believe in a "higher power." What does this mean exactly?
Surely one of these ideas has to be the correct one, right? Our greatest minds have used physical evidence through experimentation and logic through physical observation and intuition and everything else in the book. At least one of them must have succeeded where others have failed? This is where atheists are born. They look at the evidence as they see it and conclude that God isn't real. Their argument is overwhelmingly that God can't be real because religion is stupid. I would point out to them that they do not believe IN RELIGION but, who says religion knows what God is or isn't? A God may exist that religion has completely missed, the unnamed serial killer that escaped the suspect list (you all understand I'm not saying God is a serial killer.) THAT is why we have to continue to try to figure out if God, or whatever we believe everything is about, exists or not. It's possibly the Road Not Taken (yet.) We take the one less travelled by and that makes the difference because we discover and we pioneer. WE may be able to figure out the God question where genius minds have tried before! Science is all about discovery and experience. Humanity is all about discovery and experience. We need places for our minds to go, puzzles to work on. New territories and worlds to discover, new ideas to think up. That's how humans grow, how we evolve. It may be the dumbest thing in the world to want to know but that is the most human thing we can do. We die. We HAVE to try to figure out why, whether our lives mean anything, if how we live our lives means anything. That's the true joy of thinking IMO. We don't stop short trying to understand a hard reality that we all must face and what happens afterwards because however we consider that reality to be is how we think God or the idea of a God is. Plus, how boring and lazy and hopeless just thinking we go in a hole and shrivel up and rot and that's it! No. We have to wonder and we have to ponder because WE CAN. We can think in those ways and that separates us from mindless animals, that sheer, evolved ability to think and feel there's a way we can live on in some capacity, achieve a form of consciousness or happiness independent of our bodies that rot, the thought that we may have something called a soul that lives on. That's what life and hope are all about. The greatest minds in human history have pondered whether something called God exists or not. I choose to follow in those footsteps. I refuse to just say it's all stupid and screw it. I want to know. I have to know.
Thanks for reading.
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