We Are Off! (Almost)

My wonderfully hot wife and I leave for a week in the Caribbean in 3 hours. Celebrating our 16th wedded year together, 19 years total. Our first really big trip. Too excited to sleep. Will catch up with all of your comments when I get back. RAWK! Hope Luke doesn’t mind me stealing his word now and then.

The Link

I haven’t been in the habit of linking to items in the news so much, but this particular story strikes me as important. It is no secret, as I have stated on this blog, that I see no contradiction between the first chapters of Genesis and evolution. They are completely compatible. Furthermore, I believe evolution to be as much a fact of life as gravity. It is the way it is and us arguing about the way it is will not change a single quark. Instead, I think our task  should be to discover how it is through good science, good philosophy, good debate, and the senses and powers of the mind that God gave us. We should be using good science to help us understand the bible better. And we should be using the bible to help us understand good science better. They are compatible and complementary, and you get more out of one when you consider the other.

The cool thing about this new fossil discovery is that it is felt to be at a branching point in the evolutionary tree. That branch is along primate evolution where one trunk divides into two branches. One branch goes down the direction of lemurs and such and the other branch goes to monkeys and humans. There are characteristics that differ among these groups which make them separate and this fossil sits right at the crux of where those two branches diverge. It really is very exciting. I’ll let you read the article to find out the details if you like.

Missing Link Article

The real problem with this debate, evolution vs creation, is very interesting. to me. I see both sides making the same mistake really. Both sides hold fundamentally to their way of considering the world, and it is odd that both sides hold to reason as the utmost value. Creationists hold to the bible as literal (historical vs metaphorical). Why? Because it removes doubt. It allows you to believe in something solid. It relys on reason. And that starts with Genesis. If it is literally  (historically instead of metaphorically) true then we have some foundation on which to base our interpretation of the remainder of the bible. It is logical. Evolutionists do the same thing except that they throw faith completely out. Why? Because is not logical. God and the spiritual cannot be proven to exist through objective data so they are not real. In the end it is the same mistake on opposite ends of the line. And there is a whole lot of truth in the middle that gets missed.

The Matrix Revolutions – Truth Part 1

I have heard people say that they were disappointed by the 3rd movie. Well I did not experience that. I found my interest increasing through the entire series and did not feel unresolved at the end. I loved the whole thing and plan to watch all 3 several times. It really needs to be taken as a whole. The individual pieces do not mean as much when considered separately although they each have plenty in them to stimulate discussion.

So I want to discuss the fight scene near the end of the piece between Neo and Agent Smith. The entire scene is really rather surreal. The rain. The dark. The intensity of it all. At one point near the end of the confrontation, it appears that Agent Smith has gotten the upper hand. The exchange goes like this: 

Agent Smith: Why, Mr. Anderson? Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you’re fighting for something? For more that your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Yes? No? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. The temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can’t win. It’s pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?
Neo: Because I choose to.

Or if you prefer to watch it, this:

Well there is so much in this I could probably write a book. But I want to deal most specifically with the idea of truth that Agent Smith suggests to maybe be that thing for which Neo is fighting. I think that truth is the very foundation on which Neo is fighting. Of course, if you know the story, on the surface he is fighting for love. But that love is founded in truth.

Neo existst in two worlds. The false “vagaries of perception” which is the Matrix is one. This is where the majority of humanity is living, content with just jumping through the hoops, not even realizing that what they see and believe to be truth is a lie. But Neo has been enlightened. The scales have been removed from his eyes. He mainly exists in the hard core reality, only entering the second world of The Matrix when necessary to serve the purposes for which he and his comrades are fighting.

Neo knows the truth because he was willing to challenge the mainstream. He was willing, way back at the beginning of the story, to question the Koolaid that everyone else was drinking. He was willing to do the work. He was willing to confront the lie. He was willing to take the risk. His pursuit of truth was not met with favor by most. His pursuit ticked a lot of people off and his enemies increased. But his trek for truth also led him, contrary to the words of Agent Smith, to that greatest of human emotions and experiences. Love. And when you’ve gotten to love, my friend, I believe you’ve gotten to God.

I will follow this up with a part 2 post on what was the nature of the truth which Neo sought. Sometimes it was empiric. But sometimes it was in his gut. Sometimes, truth was something he had to choose to believe in without a lot of empiric support.

 

“The Matrix Reloaded” and Inclusion

OK. I finished The Matrix Trilogy. Amazing stuff. To all those who are not movie watchers, if you ever decide to jump through a movie hoop, these three are worth the viewing. I am not a huge movie and TV watcher myself as I don’t have enough time (and would rather train anyway). But I think there is more in these three movies than in just about any other series that has philosphical material : Batman, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars.

In reloaded, a conversation took place between Commander Lock and Morpheus about how best to deal with the impending attack. Lock of course believes in the traditional “let’s organize our military and blast them.” Morpheus on the other hand, while not discounting Lock’s point of view, places more significance on “The Prophecy” that Neo is “The One” who is destined to save Zion during this very crisis as not only their way of life but their very exsitence is threatened. During this exchange, the following lines are said:

Commander Lock: Damn it, Morpheus, not everyone believes what you do.
Morpheus: My beliefs do not require them to.

That is an amazing response from Morpheus and reminds me of the current state of affairs in our culture. Christians think that everyone who does not “convert” is living in sin and doomed for hell. Followers of Islam think that the West is full of infidels who must be exterminated. Democrats and Republicans both stick to ideologies til death rather than genuinely cooperate. Atheists think that anyone who believes in anything other than that which is empiric and rational are idiots. And on and on and on and on and on it goes. Of course I realize that not everyone in these groups holds to such stereotypes. But there sure is a lot of it going around.

Instead, shouldn’t we all be able to sit at the same table, respecting each other’s experience, respecting each other’s beliefs, instead of telling each other where we are wrong? Instead of telling each other that we hold all the truth and you don’t hold any of it. Instead of telling each other we are going to hell or heaven based on which hoops we have or have not jumped through or that there is nothing beyond this life. Etc, etc, etc….

We all hold bits of the truth. Lock tried to tell Morpheus that his was not truth, and Morpheus countered with a response of grace that actually affirmed what Lock thought was true. He was not threatened. Man, how much better this world would be if that is how we all sought to interact, grace and affirmation with an honest hunger to know and understand each other’s truths.

 

 

Drinking The Koolaid

Galileo: “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended to forgo their use.”

Galileo was condemened by the church and sentenced to confinement within his residence for putting forth and holding to the idea that the earth was not at the center of the solar system. It was essentially a universal idea believed to be rock solid from the bible itself that the sun was the center. Not the earth. Galileo challenged said belief and would not back down. He trusted his observation instead of drinking the koolaid. He paid a high price. But he was right. And he knew it.

I don’t know that I all out chugged the koolaid. But I certainly took hesitant sips for a lot of years. There was something always nagging inside me that what I was being told just didn’t add up in some ways. It didn’t all fit together. And it didn’t make sense that God would either intentionally deceive mankind with certain elements of creation or, as Galileo puts it, expect us to forgo part of who we are as humans. It just didn’t sit well within me. So I kept sipping until I found the courage to spit it out.

I am thinking of things like this: God must have created dinosaur fossils and an apparent very old age into the earth. Or this: the laws of physics were altered by and “The Flood.” And even this:  the current state of mankind (good/evil or upright/fallen) is the result of an interaction over an apple between two people and a talking snake.  In the end, I think it all comes down to how literally the bible is to be taken.

I eventually realized something. NO ONE, no matter who they are or what they say, takes the entire bible literally. NO ONE. A simple example would be cutting off your arm if it causes you to sin. Who does that? NO ONE, at least no one who is not locked up in a rubber room for their own protection. There are plenty of people walking around saying that they do. But they don’t.

So why the big battle over the first few chapters of Genesis. To hold literally to that is to build one’s entire faith on a very flimsy house of cards, subject to the slightest whisper. And what kind of faith is that? A weak kind.

It makes much more sense to me to understand that we do not yet understand all there is to know about how to interpret nature. And we do not yet understand all there is to understand about how to interpret scripture. And we will never understand all there is to understand about either of those. And in that is God’s genius, really. Nature is always changing and the bible is a very dynamic book. They complement each other. They don’t threaten each other. When we discover something new about the one, we should use it to help us better understand how to look at the other. That is a much better way to live than to force feed koolaid.

My First Time – Wow!

No. Not that. Get your mind out of the gutter. What I mean is, The Matrix. I just finished watching it for the first time. That makes me some sort of nerd I know. Of what sort, I’m not sure. But some sort. Anyway, it seems that there is too much to say about it. Where does a person even start? It is an amazing movie with all sorts of philosophy, religion, commentary on humanity. I’m floored. It will take awhile to process it. I may have to watch it a few more times.

I’ll just put up my most memorable line for commentary from everyone. I just don’t know what to say. Maybe the most amazing movie I have ever seen.

Morpheus to Neo: “Neo, sooner or later you’re going to realize just as I did that there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”