Betting Your Life

I just removed a militant atheist from my Google circles. It's a relief. Like saying goodbye to a particularly determined Jehovah's Witness. I have no ill will toward atheists, but the constant "I hate religion and I'm smarter than you" rain of hatred gets old quickly.  I think we can all coexist on the whole God/no God issue if we simply respect each other. 

Ultimately, you're betting your life one way or the other. I personally believe in God, but not some of the add-ons that the political church has installed (ever-burning hell, immortal souls, guilt, etc.). Jesus came to relieve guilt, to teach us to forgive, be better people and to prepare us to live forever.  I think it's worth the bet. Certainly my life is better because of my walk with Christ. And I promise I won't burn anyone at the stake, blow up the local farmer's market or call you names because you don't believe the same things I do.

It's a huge universe and we don't know much about it yet and God may actually be the multi-dimensional intelligence that we Christians believe He is. If so, He would not be required to reveal Himself in some kind of fire and thunder display for the amusement of atheists. There might actually be a reason for Him not to do so. If God exists, it's likely He has to be very careful tampering with things here today in order not to have bad things happen farther down the timeline.  I trust a pan-dimensional intelligence has more information than me. As a matter of fact I've seen some pretty amazing things that support my belief that He does exists and knows more than I do.

If I'm wrong, what does it matter to the likes of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins? Really. Are these guys the summit of human intelligence? Are they clairvoyant that they can look into the universe and see that there is not anything that is beyond their understanding. Religion of the sort that has not been corrupted, looks at the universe and says, "Whoa, that's a lot bigger than I can get my brain around." And we stand in awe of that, knowing we're not such big bugs in the vasty universe after all.

For some reason we are designed to wonder after the infinite - to search for something or some being who exists beyond food-gathering and sex. We look for meaning.

God, while we cannot begin to explain Him, does help us to make sense of it all and human beings so badly want to make sense of it all. Perhaps that's in our design for a reason. I find in that evidence of God. I do not demand that anyone believe or do anything as a result of my belief. Believe. Don't believe.

God, I believe, gave us free will - took a chance that all the trouble that would cause would be worth it in the long run. It would take a God who lives outside the stream of time to appreciate what sacrifices might need to be made to safely turn loose a creature with free will in the universe. Otherwise you'd get Klingons, the Borg and all manner of evil guys running around from planet to planet murdering and enslaving others just like in the sci-fi novels.

What kind of crappy universe would that be?

Just one man's opinion.

© 2014 by Tom King

Pet Peeve: Spamming for Jesus

I find no record of God ever having hired a PR team.

One of my pet peeves is using Jesus to promote spam. It happens a lot and many people who are insecure in their relationship with Jesus seem to take the command to share a Facebook post, e-mail or Tweet if you aren't afraid of Jesus as a heavenly command.


Fair Warning: I ALWAYS delete anything I receive that ends with some version of "Share this if you are not ashamed of Jesus".  As anyone who reads my stuff is well aware, I am NOT ashamed of Christ. I am openly Christian and take a good deal of abuse for it in the forums.  I do not have any need to prove I am not ashamed by passing along somebody's attempt to arm-twist for Jesus. If I find the post to have exceptional value, I delete the "not ashamed" bit and pass the post along on its own merits. Otherwise it goes straight into the dumper.

I find that a good deal of the share-if-you're-not-ashamed posts I receive contain a disturbing level of lies and misattributions.  People write up something that makes God look like He's not fooling around and really means it and/or attributes the quote to someone who never said it, then tack on the "not ashamed" bit and send it to people who trust them.

Or, they get some of this stuff in their email box or see it posted on Twitter and feel like poor old Jesus must need a PR boost.  It was this very kind of nonsense, human beings thinking God isn't doing well public relations-wise that gave us things like these:

• The Crusades:  An early version of the if-you're-not-ashamed-of-Jesus tactic.  The pitch went something like, if you're not ashamed of Jesus, you'll pick up you sword and go take Jerusalem back from the Muslims since apparently God couldn't hold onto it on His own.

• Sunday Services:  An early church PR committee changed the ten commandment Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, something for which there is no scriptural authorization.  It was a PR gimmick by the Roman church to attract more pagans to services. The priests figured that since the pagans were already going to temple on the "venerable day of the sun", they would be less inconvenienced in converting if the Christians worshipped on the same day everybody was used to.  Moving the day of worship also distanced the early church from the Jews - a double bonus considering the bad press the Jews were getting at the time.

• Hell:  The priests were having trouble with all the emphasis on love and mercy in Christian theology. As the church became more a government than a faith, the theologians were tasked with finding a tool in scripture they could use to keep the troops in line.  By twiddling with the nuances of Greek and Hebrew and ignoring virtually every scripture that clearly described the how the gift of eternal life is given, the priests borrowed the Greek idea of Hades, something the pagans they were trying to convert were familiar with and gave it a more diabolical twist.  The doctrine of an ever-burning hell and eternal torment has been used for more than a thousand years with suitable embellishment as an effective tool to scare people into showing up on Sunday and making regular contributions to the church. Don't believe me, shop around some of the churches out there and you'll hear sermons as scary as a Freddy Krueger movie. In high school, I read Cotton Mather's famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". That sermon made Puritans weep and faint from terror all over New England in colonial America and had the added benefit of increasing attendance and the weight of the contents of the offering plate. It also increased Mather's power over the colonists and there, my friend, is the link to the dark side.

• The Military/Governmental/Religion Complex:  It started with Constantine marching his army through a handy river and proclaiming the all "baptized".  At one time the church political held frightening power over the Western World, with the power to elevate and destroy kings and princes.  A Muslim Fatwah was amateur stuff next to a Papal Bull. During all of this, the faithful were treated to the spectacle of church bishops, cardinals and even popes with stables of mistresses, incredible wealth and political power.  Cardinal Richelieu was responsible for a great deal of the corruption in the French government that brought on the horrors of the French Revolution. When ever you get some megalomaniac or gang of politicians trying to "take over the world", the first thing they do is make sure everybody knows that God is on their side whatever hellish business the politicians are fixing to get up to.

In all of this mess, however, the church invisible - made up of the humble faithful sons and daughters of God throughout the ages - has continued to thrive and grow, not by beating it's collective chest and proclaiming, "I'm not ashamed of Jesus," but by study, prayer and sharing their faith. The true church, the golden thread through the tangle of denominations, factions and sects, moves forward ever growing, not through political manipulation nor by misguided attempts to make God "look better", but by living by the Golden Rule and loving God with all their hearts - walking with Him in their daily lives.

Why should I need to say "I'm not ashamed of Christ," much less send often-poorly written and even misleading spam to ten friends within the next 24 hours so that God will send me money if I do and so He doesn't strike me with cancer if I don't?

People who tell me they are "not ashamed of Christ" sound disingenuous. As Shakespeare once eloquently put it, "Methinks thou dost protest too much."

I'll let God handle his own public relations thank you very much and I won't participate in your efforts to fix up his "rep". I don't feel at all qualified to appoint myself his press secretary, especially if I'm going to have to use guilt, shame, intimidation, lies and bullying to do the job. Jesus described the scene at the judgment where God's PR guys would show up and say, "God I did all this stuff for you, I got you some really good press on Facebook and wrote thousands of tweets to boot.  Let me in." 

And God looks 'em in they eye and goes, "Funny, I don't remember hiring a public relations team."

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King

Human Frailty: Why We Can’t Stay Awake in Church

(c) 2013 by Tom King

This morning I ran across one of those Facebook posts designed to make you feel bad about yourself.  The post criticized folk who nod off during church services.  If you can stay awake for a three hour movie, you should be able to respect God enough to stay awake for a couple of hours in church. 

Well, I just want everyone to know I can fall smooth off to sleep in any movie you care to put up on the screen.  ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ right off into the popcorn while nubile scantily clad starlets set off explosions to the right and left (not that I watch such things mind you) and despite the fact that the theater, in order to keep the projection room cool sets the thermostat on “Arctic”.  And I do nod off in church more often than in theaters, but there’s is a perfectly good reason for that.  I go to church more often than I go to theaters.

Of course, people fall asleep in church, but it’s not about respect for God.  It’s not that we would rather worship celebrities than God.  It’s about temperature, timing and sound.  

• In theaters, they turn the AC on high to keep the projectors cool.  It gets so frigid in there you have to stay awake to keep from freezing to death. In churches, on the other hand they keep the AC low and the temperature higher to save money on the utility bill.
• There is also the occasional explosion and with Dolby sound they are fast becoming more and more realistic. In churches, if anyone makes a startling noise he or she is quickly shushed lest they wake their fellow members of the congregation.
•  Add to that, it's not only warm,  but it’s quiet.  To make matter worse, you have this guy with a deep baritone voice with this Walter Cronkite face and conservative suit standing up front speaking in gentle soothing tones after you just had a big breakfast.  
• AND It’s the end of a hard work week and you’re tired and you had to get up early to get everybody ready for church.  God gave us a Sabbath rest for a reason.  WE NEED IT! 
• Finally, you have the architecture working against you.  Services are supposed to be conducted in a restful setting.  The architects design church to be quiet, reverent and solemn places.  It’s true, however, that Fundamentalist Protestant church services are harder to stay awake in than the kind of services offered by Catholic and high church protestant denominations like Lutherans and Episcopalians.  These guys salt the service with sudden bursts of congregational participation activities which require standing up and reading off bits of the liturgy, singing or running up to the rail for communion.  This makes it harder to doze off in a mass. But give me a good old Baptist, Adventist or Church of Christ pastor on a warm summer morning after a week of hard work, family duties and business and you might just as well dissolve Ambien in the communion wine.

So, before we jump on the farmer, plumber or contractor for nodding off in church, accusing him of disrespect for God, let’s step back and wonder how God looks at it.  He gave us the Sabbath to give us a day to recoup and recharge.  I suspect he doesn’t mind it too much when the 70 year-old deacon nods off somewhere between the offertory and the benediction. We used to have a head elder back in Louisiana who almost every Sabbath, dozed off and started snoring while sitting on the rostrum behind the pastor.  The church started moving the elders off the rostrum and Elder Mickey continued snoring peacefully after that in his spot at the front right of the church next to the organ. He was a good man. He just worked long hours and he was getting old.

Look at it the way God the Father looks at it.  Remember when your kids used to fall asleep eating supper – dropped his head right down into the plate, face-first.  You didn’t berate him for disrespecting your cooking.  You picked the poor thing up, wiped off the potatoes and peas and tucked him into bed for a nap.  I expect that’s how God views the situation.

Besides, dozing off in church is a useful barometer for an alert pastor. It help him pastor know when he’s reached the end of his sermon.  If a third of the congregation is doing the head bobbing thing, it’s time to wrap it up and break for lunch.  I know pastors who used to write their sermons so that when the head-bobbing reached a certain pitch, he could cut to the end and wrap it up before the deacons began sawing logs in earnest. 

I’m just sayin’

Tom King

Can an Agnostic Call Himself a Christian?

I read a piece today by a man who says he isn't sure he believes in God, but he likes Christians so much he calls himself one. 

I've been where he is. My walk with God began with a weird prayer,

The signs are there, though the journey
getting to them can be downright uncomfortable.

• "God, I don't know if I even believe you exist, but you make all kinds of sense. So I'm in! I'll read the books, go to church and do all that stuff so I can find out who they say you are, but at some point I'm going to have to meet You in person. You have to show me Yourself. I'm betting my life here that you're real."

And you know what. I've met Him.  Not in the Mosaic, fire-on-the-mountain sense, but over the years, through a whole series of unmistakable signs along the way, He has shown me that He is there and that He is watching my way.

Many Christians are horrified by people like the man above.  How dare he doubt God?  These religious absolutists are so busy being morally certain that they are right that many times, they never quite meet the God they talk so much about and their religion does them little if any good. There's a whole church in Kansas like that. They picket soldiers funerals and taunt gay people. They are so wrapped up in their own righteousness that they've never met the God of the Golden Rule.

I was an agnostic when I found God. I didn't change that much in the days after I was baptised. I was still skeptical. I was anything but morally certain.  But I bought myself a pocket Bible and read it every day walking back and forth to classes at school. 

And I did change. I became a better person and it was none of my doing. I didn't grit my teeth and try to be a good person. I just kept trying to find out who this God person really was and the more I got to know Him, the more it changed me. 

My friend is on the right track though many Christians would find that hard to believe.  There's some evidence that God actually prefers an honest skeptic to a close-minded religious bigot that thinks he can read God's mind.

In the end, it's not membership in the church that will save you. The church is just where you go to hang with people who believe like you do and want to work with you to do the kind of good deeds you will find yourself compelled to do when you spend time with God.  Churches are like God's aid stations where the wounded soul may go to be patched up.  But we don't fight the war on evil in the aid station. We get back out there and do some good.

It's a fascinating journey - trying to find God.  I highly recommend it to anyone looking for what British author Douglas Addams called "The answer to the universal question about life, the universe and everything else."  When you look for God, He will find you and in time, he will even answer the universal question for you. It make take several million years, but he gives you eternal life to boot. 

How cool is that?

Tom

Science Fiction's Disturbing Futures

Are we doomed to lose ourselves in the collective?

(c) 2012 by Tom King

There are two basic routes science fiction authors take in developing future utopias/dystopias.


Collectivism/Social Justice/Surrender the Will:

One popular idea is borrowed from Easter Religions like Buddhism and favors an ultimately collectivist penultimate civilization.  This future nirvans take three possible forms - all of them either unlikely or unpalatable.

The first is the "sea of thought" utopia.  This future pictures a world in which, through some machine initiated device all humans are eventually absorbed into a sort of galactic thought-mush where we are vaguely happy being part of the collective consciousness and unhappy should we emerge from the sea of souls to spend even a short time as a lonely individual. I rather prefer being an individual, myself, but then I never saw the point of psychedelic drugs back in the 60s either.

The second collectivist vision is "the machine facist state".  In this cheery scenario, we either become or are replaced by the machines or by vast magical superbrains and all blindly serve the collective. Some believe this will be a machine collective, others an organic one. Either way I want none of it. I've always sort of had a problem with authority anyway.

The third collectivist vision is the most nonsensical - the Star Trek Next Generation universe. In this fantasy, everyone's needs are taken care of somehow - we know not how - and everyone runs around doing his job simply because he or she wants to.  And since their needs are automatically taken care of, they magically become hard-working, creative workers who are fulfilled by their jobs. What these authors portray is the airy socialist nirvana that relies on the myth that ordinary folk just need a certain number of needs met along Maslow's heirarchy to trigger their inner altruism. It's a fantasy which posits a state very like the Christian idea of heaven, but without the bother of having to put up with a pesky God or even the need to submit to some sort of change in nature like conversion or death and rebirth.

It doesn't matter to these cheery optimists that all attempts to create these sorts of workers' paradises have heretofore failed miserably and often violently because inevitably too many people choose to embrace their self-centered wolf-like nature and tend to instead, run about slaughtering all the nice people in order to win power over them all.  Collectivist governments are notoriously vulnerable to megalomaniacs.

Ayn Rand/Hard Capitalist/Free Will:

This vision of the future universe posits either a rough wild-west flavored galaxy like Poul Anderson's Nicholas Van Rinjh Trader to the Stars adventures and Joss Whedon's Firefly or to an alternating descent into self destruction and anarchy followed by a rise to cultural greatness. Usually the no hope stark anarchy dystopias are written by people who favor the magical Star Trek collectivist vision who want to warn people what's in store for them if they don't adopt the collectivist view.  These stories actually should be considered part of the collectivist literary canon as examples of morality tales.  Phillip K. Dick wrote this kind of stufff which even post-modern Hollywood had to cheer up by adding a little mildly happy ending to his dark tales.

Isaac Asimov, something of an intellectual elitist himself, posited a secret society of elite smart people called the Foundation who figure out how to mathematically manipulate history. Even then Asimov, a keen student of history, only allowed his mental supermen to roughly poke and prod history along in a general direction that kept humanity's corrupt leaders from killing too many people in the process. He recognized that human nature tends to overpower central planning in the end.

These more conservative views of the future tend to be held by people with a working knowledge of history and of the ebb and flow between anarchy and regimentation that countries undergo throughout their histories.

The God Is In Charge View:

I favor another view - the idea that there likely is a powerful consciousness, an interdimensional being if you will, who is behind the design and upkeep of this particular universe. I believe He's using the earth as a laboratory in which to grow decent people who have free will, but who choose to reject doing evil because they've seen enough of where that leads.

It makes sense He will aid them in transforming into the people they choose to be and will at some point harvest the product of His vast social experiment, provide them some sort of durable, everlasting housing for their consciousness and then use those trustworthy individuals to create the sort of utopian universe the Trekkies would like to see happen -only without the Borg and where Klingons and Romulans were nice people.

I don't see where that's such a preposterous idea either.

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King

God Smiles: Daisy and the Blankie

by Tom King  (c) 2012

Daisy the Wonder Dog

They say that if you need a dog, God will give you one. As Wendy Francisco points out in her children's song, God and Dog, dog spelled backwards is God. I think that's more than an accident of spelling.

I always said I'd never be one of those old people who was stupid over a pet dog.  I was wrong.  If you've read this blog much, you've heard about Daisy the Wonder Dog till you're probably sick of it. But something happened early this morning that made me understand a little bit more how God must feel about us sometimes when we try so hard to get it right.

I had a conversation the other day about how my faith is periodically restored when people perform random acts of kindness without there being anything in it for them at all. My wife has been wanting denser foam in the sofa cushions. Sheila is from redneck stock, has virtually no behind and has a bad back to go with it. Whenever we get a new sofa she always stuffs the cushions till they are about the firmness of concrete. I don't sit on the sofa anymore because I actually have a butt and need a nice large depression to accommodate it. For her, hard as granite is comfy.

Anyway, she called the furniture store where she bought the sofa and asked what it would cost to replace the foam in the sofa cushions with a denser foam. She explained that she wanted to know how much she needed to save up to get the job done. The lady asked her some questions, did some calculating and then told Sheila there'd be no charge for the replacement foam. She told Sheila "God bless you," and that she hoped Sheila's back got better soon.

That kind of thing is what I'm talking about. It must make God smile to see people do very sweet things like that.

Daisy, our spoiled, but very obedient half Lab, half Border Collie, half blue heeler, half who knows what else, woke me up early this morning. She usually sleeps on the bed with us, but lately, since Sheila's been having lower back and kidney problems and she's been in a lot of pain, she's taken to sleeping on the floor on Sheila's side of the bed.  About halfway through the night, she jumps up on the bed and sleeps the rest of the night at the foot. After I get out of bed, she takes my spot and scoots up next to Sheila to keep her company..

Daisy had apparently decided early this morning to come up on the bed to join us, but something was wrong. She kept circling the bed and whining. I woke up and found her sitting patiently on the floor beside the bed staring at me. I patted the bed beside me and called her to jump up. She wouldn't. I tried to coax her up several times, but each time she kept running around to Sheila's side of the bed and looking at the floor. I finally got up and went around to see what she kept looking at.

Turns out that during the night, Sheila had woke, decided Daisy must be cold and pulled her plaid blanket off the bed to cover her up with. (Sheila always thinks Daisy is cold - despite the vast amounts of fur I keep brushing out of her winter coat).  Daisy looked at me. Then she looked over at the bed, then looked down at her plaid blanket.  I knew instantly what was wrong.

Daisy napping on her "blankie"

Sheila lays Daisy's plaid blanket over our bed at night so if she (the dog, not Sheila) sheds it gets on her blanket and not on the quilts and bedspread. Daisy's blanket is light weight and much easier to wash. Daisy knows she is supposed to wait to jump on the bed till her blanket is in place.

She had evidently seen that her blanket wasn't spread over the bed, so she figured she shouldn't jump up on the bed till it was. I picked up the blanket and spread it over the bed. The instant the blanket settled in place, sixty pounds of excited pooch came hurtling across the room and leaped onto the bed.  I got a good swift lick in the face, she turned round twice and curled up in her spot, grinning happily.

I understand why God might smile at our struggles to obey him and be very pleased even when we can't do it on our own. I also understand why He picks up the blanket for us once in a while too.

Tom

Disproving God

(c) 2011 by Tom King

(Sorry this runs long - it's a long philosophical muse, written on a soft Sabbath afternoon.)

Someone recently told me with perfect certainty that God and all religion can be easily disproved.

Simply because you have not seen it, does not mean it does not exist.  You can say you are reasonably certain the thing does not exist, but I'm pretty sure an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient trans-dimensional being might just be able to avoid appearing on your radar without a lot of trouble if it suited Him.

Easily disproved?

Really?

And how is it you can disprove the existence of a thing anyway? Not having seen it yourself will not do. I have never seen an atom, but I'm fair certain they exist.  In "proving" the existence of black holes, for instance, you can only do so by observing what is happening around them to infer their existence. Physicists infer the existence of dark energy because something must be pushing the universe apart at ever increasing speed because otherwise it would be slowing down all the time due to gravity.

Physicists first postulated dark energy based things they observed in the heavens. Then, they sought to find mathematical proofs of their theory about dark energy, thereby building a case for its existence.

In the same way no one can prove the existence of a multi-dimensional, powerful being, save by observation of the world around us and the ways in which God (or whatever you wish to call him) impacts that world.

Plenty of eye-witness testimony, some of it contemporary, claims to have witnessed or experienced acts of God. I have a couple of my own experiences that are not readily explainable by either physics or psychology.

Does this mean that all who experience such events are liars because their conclusions about whether or not God exists differ from yours. I would hope, given most of you believe strongly in science, that you would wait for empirical evidence before drawing a conclusion.

Carl Sagan argued, that if God existed, he would surely provide unmistakable proof of His existence. This might not be so, if God were deliberately limiting man's access to such absolute proof for a reason – some purpose he had for insuring that the evidence of His existence remained deliberately thin on the ground. If this were true, you would only find hints of his existence in unexplainable phenomenon like dark energy, the properties of water, the exactitude of Earth's orbit, the presence of its moon to insure stability and perfect size and composition to promote life. As Freeman Dyson once said, “...it looks as though the universe knew we were coming.”

Given that even the scientific community remains divided over whether God or some vast intelligence exists, it seems to me a truly open-minded person would wait for the theory to be tested. Christianity is just such a testing procedure for the theory that God does exist and cares for us personally. I came to Christianity making a deal with God. "Prove to me you exist. I'll follow the program You've laid out to the best of my ability and you show me that You exist.”

I have tested the hypothesis that God exists to the point that I am convinced that He does. Unless you have thoroughly tested the hypothesis for yourself, you cannot say one way or another whether my own experiment is valid or not.

The fact that Christians squabble among themselves over points of doctrine or church practices means nothing. Scientists do the same thing over points of scientific doctrine. The proof of the pudding, as they say, is in the eating.

My experience has been that God patiently changes a person as a result of that person's on-going relationship with Him. I find that I am free of things that once held me down. I find that I do what I want more than what I was once compelled to do by my nature or upbringing.

Do people abuse power as Christian leaders? Absolutely.

Do scientists abuse their power? For sure!

Do politicians? Ya, you betcha.

The great controversy in this world is not God vs. Not God. It is between those who serve themselves and those who serve others.

If God wished to create an immortal race of individuals with complete free will; a people that God could be sure wouldn't mess things up again, who would do what is right, because it is right and not just when it suits their selfish purpose and, if, at the same time He could preserve the creativity, the energy and the vast potential of creatures with free will, how would He do that?

My theory is that God would plant those creatures alone on a planet, allow them to work out both sides of the argument - the mercenary vs the philanthropic approach to life and see what happens. Then at the end of it all, save the essence of who they are, grant them immortal bodies and turn them loose in the galaxy to live, love and create.

The only creature capable of such a thing would be one who exists beyond mere three dimensions, one who can see today, tomorrow and yesterday all at the same time, one to whom time and space are endless, who can work out ever detail so that in the end, the great goal is achieved -- a free people who, by their very nature, will never perpetrate evil upon each other or anyone else.

The idea makes sense, I'm not the only one who ever believed such an idea. Millions of Christians believe something along those lines. I can't think of any other way to make people with free will that won't wreck the universe. The Earth, I firmly believe, is a crucible in which free people are made. Everyone has a choice. Live for yourself and do what you want and you get this life and then die and disappear (Eccl. 9:5). The other choice means you accept the discipline and educational program God offers and you get eternal life and total freedom given back to you for completing the coursework.

I'm betting the second pathway is correct. Whichever way is correct, it shouldn't matter to anyone else. It is my choice and affects those who choose their own way not in the least. You may do as you wish, live as you want. The only thing I'll fight you on is if you try to limit my right to live as I choose.

It's a philosophical difference. It is not something you can play philosophical "Tag You're It" over. You believe one way or the other and it's hardly likely you'll ever agree. It comes down to majority rules in the end.

If religion is a fraud, it may perhaps one day be crushed by the preponderance of evidence. Or, Jesus may come back and settle the matter. As in science, the wisest thing to do is to wait for enough studies to come in before you plant your flag on one side or the other.

Tom King - Tyler, TX

Albert May Have Been Right

 – It Appears God Doesn't Play Dice With the Universe

by Tom King (c) 2010

In order for Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity to work, he had to force the equations a bit to fit what physicists believed about the universe at the time. To do this Einstein added a factor he called the cosmic constant represented by the Greek capital letter “lambda”. He later abandoned the idea of the cosmological constant and called it the biggest blunder of his life. Scientists have lately returned to the useful idea of the cosmological constant to explain what they are calling “dark energy”. Dark energy is the the unexplained force that is causing the increasingly rapid expansion of the universe.

Big Bang Theory predicted that the force of gravity would cause the expansion caused by the original big bang to slow and eventually reverse itself. When scientist Brian Schmidt of the Australian National University in Canberra and astrophysicist Adam Riess of Johns Hopkins surveyed distant galaxies to find out the rate at which the universe was slowing, they discovered to their immense discomfort that the speed at which the universe was expanding, in point of fact.

In the absence of a plausible reason for this expansion, the team “discovered” dark energy in 1998. Dark energy is a name for the force that is increasing the speed of expansion of the universe. Like the cosmological constant, dark energy is a name for something cosmologists don't understand. The more researchers looked at the data, the more it proved that what they were seeing was true. Something was pushing apart the universe faster and faster. A key expected consequence of the Big Bang Theory was missing in action.

Scientists, in an effort to resolve the problem, have retreated to Einstein's discarded idea that the vacuum of space has energy that acts repulsively – the cosmological constant. The multi-verse believers call it an accidental condition unique to our peculiar universe that probably doesn't exist in other parallel universes as though that somehow explains things. Either way, the point is the universe is being pushed apart at a steady rate – not too ffast and not too slow – and physicists and cosmologists don't know why.

I think do.

I can only think of one force in the universe powerful enough to be responsible for pushing apart galaxies.
Unfortunately, the scientific community has a bit of a blind spot there. Carl Sagan once complained that if God existed, he would give us irrefutable evidence of his existent. What if he has and we're just ignoring it because it's not the sort of evidence we expected?

As CS Lewis said in his classic Chronicles of Narnia, “He's not a tame lion.”

When you need one....

God has worked a couple of small miracles for us this past week. They weren't quite what we asked for, but then miracles from God seldom are done the way we would do them. One of these small miracles happened today.

Sheila and I have never owned a dog. We had a sweet little beagle that belonged to my daughter, but we've never owned one ourselves. We're not cat people, so we've owned a half dozen or so one time and another. Go figure!

Madeleine L' Engle wrote that you shouldn't look for a dog. God will send you one when you need it. Sheila and I subscribe to this view. Dogs are a lot of responsibility and we were pretty sure we weren't up to the responsibility.

Apparently, God disagreed. This morning while doing my semi-regular good deed for the elderly woman my wife takes care of, I was minding my own business pressure washing Miz Mary Bob's house. As I turned toward the patio to fetch another length of water hose, I saw a black shape moving through the grass on its belly. As soon as I spotted it, the shape rose up and staggered toward me grinning.

I swear, she grinned at me. It was a skinny, lop-eared, part labrador puppy (I think) with enormous feet and ribs showing through thin fur. She approached me like a long lost friend and threw herself down on her back in front of me and begged to be scratched on her belly.

"Hello," I said. "Where'd you come from."

I couldn't resist and scratched her belly. She jumped up against my legs and put her head in my hands and began licking and nuzzling against me.

"Oh, no, you don't," I thought. "Nice dog," I said giving her a dismissive pat and turning away. As I climbed up the porch I realized she was right at my heels. I sat down in a chair and she came over and laid her head in my lap, looking up at me with these sad brown eyes.

"Sheila, help," I called out.

Sheila was out the door in a couple of seconds expecting to find me bleeding on the porch. She took one look at the dog, opened her mouth and no sound came out.

"I think I'm in trouble, here," I groaned.

"Don't look at me," she said, coming over beside me and stroking the dog's head. "What are you going to name her?"

We have decided that we didn't have any choice in the matter. This little girl needed us and apparently, God had decided we need her. God immediately provide us with enough money to get her basic equipment - we are so broke right now, that we'd never have excepted the responsibility without a clear sign that God knew we'd be able to take care of her.

Besides, she likes to lie beside my chair, sit in my lap and comes when we call her. Our kids don't even do that reliably. I think this dog was meant for us. She followed me around lying in the various flower beds about the place where she could watch me scrubbing down the house. As I was finishing up, I looked over at where she was lying amongst the lantana. She had her head draped across the border of the flower bed, one ear lopped over and grinned stupidly at me with those big watery eyes.

I sniffed in disgust, "You had me at hello!" I told her. She jumped up and loped unsteadily over for another head rub. She is so weak from hunger, her muscles aren't very strong and she's kind of unsteady on her feet. Sheila will fix that though. Fattening up starving creatures is her forte'.

We tried out names all morning. I thought of calling her "Angel" and then "Honey" and then "Babe". Finally I realized I was trying to name her after Sheila.

She suggested flower names and thought Gladiola might be good (we'd call her 'Glad' for short). I thought, "Hmmmm?" and then tried out Gardenia, Rose, Chrysanthemum, Magnolia (Maggie for short) and Indian Paintbrush, but nothing seemed to fit. That made me think of Sheila's old college nickname (Indian Wheezer), then I thought of "Daisy".

It sounded right. I called her that and she responded a little. Probably my imagination, but that sealed it. We spent the rest of the afternoon giving her a flea bath, brushing and treating her for ticks. We fed her a little at a time. She was starved and ate every bit. She was dehydrated too and her body temp seemed high so we gave her water with bits of ice in it which she drank down eagerly.



It's nice to be able to do things for a creature that appreciates your attentions. She didn't much enjoy the bath, but she never snapped at us or growled. I haven't heard her bark once. She spent a good deal of the rest of the day sleeping in Sheila's lap, her belly full and warm. She was very reluctant to go in the house at first, but she's decided our room must be our den and since she's apparently joined our pack, she's taken up residence there. Sheila made her a bed and then got down on the floor to show her how to use it.



She's such a sucker for anything that needs to be fed. She spent the rest of the day worrying about how the dog was breathing, her temperature, her heart rate and whether she had Parvo, heartworms, Rickets or Scurvy. I had to look up on the Internet, whether she should give Daisy an aspirin or not. My oldest son Matt's comment when we introduced him to Daisy this afternoon was, "Well, at least Mom will have someone to obsess over besides me!"

Little Miss, Matt & Nancy's cat hasn't stated her opinion yet. We're delaying formal introductions because she's currently in her psycho cat phase and she hates dogs anyway. I think she'll like Daisy, though.

Mom passed out around ten o'clock tonight, exhausted from worrying over the dog. They're both sleeping soundly as I write this. Daisy has decided on her own sleeping spot and it's not her bed. Sheila may have a rival for her recliner.



Meanwhile, I better log off and go to bed too. Apparently, God wants me to take regular walks.

I'm just sayin'

Tom