Monday, October 8, 2012

The "I must be Happy" lie.

Have you ever noticed that the people trying to be the happy all the time are usually the most miserable?  Think about it for a minute, if you are constantly trying to be happy then you are only concerned about your own needs and satisfying yourself.  This selfish happiness ends of pushing away others and you become a lonely miserable person blaming your lack of happiness on your current conditions and other people.

Our culture, media, marketing all tell us to that we deserve to be happy and to do whatever we want to be happy.

I'm not saying being happy is a bad thing but rather it's just an emotion and if we constantly search for a single emotion then we never get to relax and be content with life's ups and downs.  Whatever gave us the idea we should be happy all the time?  Isn't it OK to be able to experience the hundreds of other emotions.

Consider the idea of happiness in marriage.  How many people do you know decided they were no longer happy being married and decided they needed a divorce to make them happy?  I know of hundreds of broken marriages and people that have gone through divorce and ended up more miserable and not to mention the misery their happiness decision caused their own kids, extended family, and friends.

To have a successful marriage, we must learn from our spouse and change.  Maybe that's why opposites attract, because we need an opposite in our life that will tell us when we are out of line and help make us a better person.  Only we have to be willing to accept compromise and be willing to change from our selfishness.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Faith in Evolution



 
I have been told by a great many teachers, scholars, philosophers, scientists, simple thinkers, that evolution is based on science.  Science is always real and based on repeat observable facts and any semi-educated person believes evolution is a fact and explains all life as we know it.  So I start to think about evolution and all the facts and the more I think, the more questions come up.... so I went looking for answers.  After much research I realized that there really aren't answers to my questions but mostly speculation, based on more theories and ideas and the deeper I dig, there is about 99.9% theory interspersed with 0.1% scientific fact based on huge amounts of conjecture.

So if I were to simplify the theory of evolution into one sentence it would be:  There was some type of big event at the beginning of time and this event created planets, stars, solar systems, and then through billions (or trillions) of years everything became organized like you see it today and basic cells were formed on earth and over billions of more years the cells became organisms, which became plants and animals, which became more complex until you get what we have today.  An even more simplistic synopsis is:  If you have enough chaos and enough time, order and life is created out of nothing.

So I have questions about evolution and some people come up with answers but the answers are always based on speculation.  Those that have answers have such a strong desire for their answer to be true (faith).

Here are some of my beginning questions...
  1. Where did the Big Bang come from and how did it happen?  (Theories are widely varied)
  2. Has there ever been a repetitive experiment where big explosions create order like the Big Bang?  (No real answer)
  3. Where did all the stuff come from that created the big bang or did it just come from nothing?  (Theories are widely varied)
  4. So let's just say that the Big Bang happened like all the speculation and the universe is now ready to support life.
    1. What were the initial conditions on Earth like?  (Theories are widely varied)
    2. How did the first cell become a cell (if you know anything about microbiology, you will know that a cell is incredibly complex - millions of times more complex than Darwin originally thought and getting more complex every day as we start to unravel it's mysteries)?  (This is really to complex to even have decent theories and changes so fast, that theories are constantly changing)
    3. How did that cell become an organism?  (Theories are widely varied and slim on details)
    4. How did the simple organisms become complex life?  (Theories are widely varied and slim on details)
  5. If evolution is true, where are the billions or trillions of inter-species fossils?  Remember we are not just looking for the missing link (evolutionary transitions) between humans and apes (or chimps) but of every single species known.  When you think about it, given the amount of supposed time that evolution has taken, there should be so many transitional fossils with all kinds of adaptations (that natural selection would eventually eliminate) that we wouldn't even know what we are really looking at. (Theories really don't address this one)
When you really start asking questions, you come up with 1000's of questions regarding evolution and those questions lead to more, etc... and in the end you are just left there scratching your head and wondering if anyone actually really knows anything.

So what I learned in school is just a bunch of BS based on speculation, theory and no one really has true scientific answers to.  So at this point in my mind, evolution requires a ridiculous amount of faith.

When I come across people that believe in evolution, I marvel at the empty faith they have.  It actually kind of reminds me of the Easter Bunny.