Log and Speck

"Proofs" that God doesn't exist

2010-08-11T11:54:00.002-05:00

I found an interesting website last night, one that I encourage anybody reading this to look at, regardless of religious belief. The site is godisimaginary.com, and it's got a list of 50 "proofs" that God doesn't exist. These are not actual proofs that God isn't there, of course, since that's not actually provable, but they are very convincing. I've read through the first five, and if I had read these a couple of years ago I would have come out of the atheist closet a lot sooner. The first couple show that prayer doesn't work, just like I said a couple posts ago!

Anyway, I challenge all the Christians who happen to be reading this blog (all 2 or maybe 3 of you) to head to this site and read through a couple pages there. I know you probably won't, because you will usually refuse to even look at anything that contradicts your precious worldview. If this is the case with you, well enjoy living with your head in the sand I guess.

I will not be quiet. Just so y'all know.

2010-08-09T14:33:00.002-05:00

So since I've been antagonizing religious folk on the internet quite a few Christians have told me something to the effect of "It's fine for you to be an atheist, but you shouldn't try to force your beliefs on other people." When people tell me this at first it makes me mad, then it makes me chuckle, and then I get mad again.

Since my intent is usually to offend religious nuts, I won't pull any punches or mince words here: people who tell me that are hypocrites.

To simplify things I'll address the rest of this post to those people.

First off, you are followers of a religion of which evangelism is a core tenet. You are supposed to force your beliefs on other people. The Bible tells you to. You don't have a problem with the act of forcing one's beliefs on others, you have a problem with my beliefs. Christians talk about God all the time, and hardly ever are they called on it. As long as Christians are talking about how much they love God I will continue to talk about how much I hate him.

Second, I am an American, and so are virtually all of you. As an American, I have the right to bash your religion, whether or not you agree with me. So either admit that you don't really support the First Amendment or be quiet. You can bash atheism all you want, too, but don't tell me that I'm wrong for talking about it.

You might ask, "Well why can't you just leave us alone?" If you were a bunch of peaceful Buddhists meditating in the woods then I probably would. But you're not, you're a member of a religion whose history is drenched in the blood of dissenters. Christianity has been a dangerous and detrimental plague on society for thousands of years, and until you collectively stop killing and oppressing your fellow humans, I will continue to speak out against you.

I will not be silent and I will not leave you alone.

Christianity confuses me

2010-08-08T01:11:00.002-05:00

So I'm fairly well versed in Christian lore, but I just don't get it. Here's my understanding of the premise of Christianity.

A long time ago God created hell so he could send some rebellious angels there. Later he created earth and people. The people disobeyed him by eating some fruit, and "sin" came into the world. Now, because Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating fruit*, they were doomed to hell, where God sent all those bad angels eons before. I'm not really sure why this is, but it just is. Two to four thousand years later, depending on who you ask, God decided he'd give the people a break and sent his son Jesus to earth to die for everybody's sins. Why it took God a few thousand years to get his act together enough to do this is not clear. Anyway, Jesus, who was born of a virgin (apparently abstinence isn't 100% effective after all) was God's son, but was also God. He had to die, because that was the only way God, an omniscient and omnipotent being, could figure out to resolve the whole people are sinful because the first people ate some forbidden fruit and now they're all going to hell thing. So, because of some rules that God made up (I'm assuming, I mean, he created everything, right?) he had to kill his son so that he didn't have to just damn everybody to hell anymore. Once Jesus was killed after living a completely sinless life he rose from the grave and now all you have to do to get to heaven is telepathically tell him that you accept him into your heart.

Are you confused? Me too.

If any biblical scholars can explain to my why any of this stuff had to happen I'd be grateful. I really don't understand why God had to go through this big multi-millennia long drama in order to get people into heaven. Why couldn't he have just done it from the start? Does anybody understand this stuff, or do Christians just never stop to think about how the premise behind their religion doesn't make any sense? Lots of questions.

*I'll address how the story of the Fall is an illogical and unfair mess in a future post.

Imagine

2010-08-04T11:55:00.003-05:00

I don't really feel like writing anything today, so here's a picture I've seen floating around the internet. Richard Dawkins mentioned in in The God Delusion as an ad for some kind of documentary.

Imagine. Likely the secularists will imagine a better world and the religious people will imagine a bleak wasteland of vicious hedonists humping everything in sight. Personally, I think it'd be pretty rad to not have to deal with suicide bombers anymore, because I doubt many would exist without the 72 virgins incentive.

Why do I see a bunch of wealthy Christians?

2010-08-02T16:48:00.002-05:00

I've been to a lot of church services in my day, and one of the things I remember a preacher saying is if Jesus says something twice, it's way important, and if he said "he who has ears to hear, let him hear" or something to that effect then it's also very important. Today I'm writing about something that Jesus not only said twice, but said "he who has ears to hear, let him hear" about.

Open up yer Bibles and read Luke 14:26-35. Verse 33 is my favorite: "So therefore, no one of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions." (NASB) Verse 35 is the "he who has ears." Now read Luke 18:18-25. This is the story of the Rich Young Ruler, which most people who grew up going to Sunday School know, but almost nobody seems to actually care about. Notice verse 22: "And when Jesus heard this, He said to him, "One thing you still lack; sell all that you possess, and distribute it to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." The Rich Young Ruler didn't like this, and became very sad.

Jesus' words seem very clear cut to me here. He says twice, in fairly plain language, that in order to be a follower of Christ one needs to sell all off their possessions. He doesn't say "Thou shalt give a little bit to charity when thy budget allows it" or "thou shalt volunteer at a soup kitchen no less than twice a year." He says you must give up all of your possessions and serve God. Now I know a lot of Christians who are by no means rich, but they're certainly not the widow giving all she had. (Luke 21:1-4)

So what gives? Why do Christians still have stuff? Before anyone angrily points out Luke 18:26-27, saying I pulled my verses out of context and ignored these ones, sure, things impossible with men are possible with God. But I don't think that this is just a get out of jail free card, allowing you to keep all your possessions because anything is possible with God. Jesus said in plain language that you were supposed to sell all your stuff and give your money to the poor. He said it twice. I don't think this one verse negates the numerous times poverty is extolled as a virtue in the Bible.

Prayer Changes Things

2010-07-31T10:00:00.002-05:00

If you're as obsessed with me as I am, which is probably unlikely, you'll know that I made a post about prayer over a year ago. The message in this post will probably be somewhat different.

The way Christians think about prayer is ridiculous. They understand that God usually doesn't answer prayer. The way I used to rationalize this is that "God always answers prayers. No is an answer." After a few years of praying, I started to notice that the answer was "no" an awful lot of the time. The answer was "no" so often that it started to look like prayer wasn't changing much at all. Now that I look at it from the other side of the fence, the way God answers prayer looks a whole lot like coincidence to me.

Christians chalk up this whole phenomenon up to "God working in mysterious ways." So when God doesn't answer your prayers, he's got his own mysterious reasons for not doing so, and the Christian must be content. On the rare occasion that a prayer does get answered, it's never Jesus thundering down from the clouds on a fiery chariot to silence your annoying co-worker with his gigantic sword. Instead your co-worker gets disciplined by the boss for being an asshole, or whatever. Nice little things like this happen to atheists all the time, and we don't even spend time praying for them. What gives? Y'all have a direct line to the most powerful being in the universe, how come you're not more successful than us?

As for the psychological benefits of prayer, yes those are real. So if you're praying for something in your life that you need to do yourself, like lose 5 pounds or nail a job interview, then yeah, pray like crazy. Praying helps you focus on an issue and sort out your thoughts. I still kind of pray (not to God, of course), because it's how I calmed myself down and sorted out my thoughts for years. Meditation can do the same stuff.

So if you want to pray about your crippling internet porn addiction, go for it, it could help, but if you're praying for rain or your elected officials you're just wasting your time. Really.

Nature, man

2010-07-30T11:47:00.003-05:00

Hey people. I know my massive reader base is probably disappointed that I haven't posted in over a week, but I was in the mountains with my brother for 5 of those days and I was feeling lazy for the others.

While I was in the mountains I was again and again awed by the incredible beauty of nature. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison is mind blowingly epic and beautiful, hands down the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Nature is really some awesome stuff.

Lots of Christians claim that seeing all the splendor and grandeur of a mountain range is evidence that God exists. What? Does a person who's lived their whole life as an atheist and never thought much about God think that when they look on a mountain range? Do I, a recent convert to the infidel camp, think that? No. It's ridiculous. This is 2010, there are very good scientific explanations for the vast majority of natural phenomena. Resorting to "God did it" is intellectually lazy, and saying "God did it for us" (This seems to be the general Christian viewpoint) is unbelievably arrogant. Mountains being beautiful is in no way evidence for God's existence. You see something awesome, you think "man this is awesome", and because you already believe in God you mentally connect the dots.

Also, I find it interesting that Christians never cite a forest fire destroying literally millions of lives as evidence of God's awesome loving existence. You never hear a Christian say "Man, check out those coyotes devouring that newborn deer. God must exist," or "Hey, that thunderstorm blew these baby birds out of the nest, and now their tiny bodies are all mangled. Praise the Lord!"

Problem of Evil

2010-07-20T11:06:00.002-05:00

I made a post a couple days ago dealing with the problem of evil, but I seem not to have made my point the way I wanted. I'll just post Epicurus' version of the problem of evil, since he was the first to formalize it and his millennia old argument still has not been satisfactorily discredited by religious apologists.

Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?

Why indeed?

These Books are Good

2010-07-19T14:15:00.002-05:00

Hello people. I'm on too many different prescription drugs right now to come up with an intelligent thing to say about philosophy, so I'll recommend a couple of books. Most atheists who are like, into being atheists have probably read these, but I think Christians and any people of faith should read them too. They're very anti-religious, but they're very well written and they'll make you think.

The first is The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris. Sam Harris is a philosopher and neuroscientist who attended Stanford and UCLA and has written two New York Times bestsellers. In The End of Faith he sets out to prove that religious belief is not only stupid and irrational, but dangerous and detrimental to society as well. He doesn't only accuse fundamentalists who fly planes into skyscrapers and shoot abortion doctors either, but indicts religious moderates as well. Read this book, it's good.

Secondly I'd like to recommend The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, a genetic biologist at Oxford with a charming accent. He indicts religion for making people blind to scientific discoveries and uses his expertise in evolution to discredit Intelligent Design. Be warned though, Dawkins' tone is biting, and is not for the easily offended Bible thumper.

If you're a secularist, definitely read these. They'll make you jump around and fist pump like those weird Italian dudes on the Jersey Shore. If you're religious, definitely read these. They'll open your eyes to aspects of religion you never thought of before. If you make it through the book unscathed your faith will probably be stronger than it was.

I'll leave y'all with a quote from my favorite philosopher, the late great Mr. Robert Nozick. "Only the refusal to listen guarantees one against being ensnared by the truth."

Omnibenevolence

2010-07-18T16:23:00.003-05:00

The problem of evil has been hotly debated for thousands of years. How does an omnibenevolent God allow evil in the world? Christian apologists have written volumes trying to reconcile the existence of evil with their all good and all loving God, but they were really wasting their time. If God is pure good, he wouldn't ever do a single evil deed. If he ever did anything evil, then he's not purely good, end of story.

God did a lot of obscene things in the Bible. For instance,

-he allowed a man to kill his own daughter in Judges 11:29-40
-he killed the first-born of every Egyptian family in Exodus 12 because Pharaoh wouldn't let the Israelites leave, after he himself hardened Pharaoh's heart against... letting the Israelites leave
-he said slavery was okay in Exodus 21 and Leviticus 25
-he said it was cool to sell your own daughter in Exodus 21
-he said witches should be killed in Exodus 22:18, a verse which led to the torture and execution of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children as young as two in medieval Europe
-he sanctioned numerous genocides throughout the Old Testament
-he killed every living thing on the planet except for a handful of people and two or seven of every animal with his flood.

Even if God is real, he doesn't seem very good at all, much less purely and only good. And lest you think I'm ignoring all the good and merciful things God did, I'm not. I know that God did some fine things in his day, but imagine this: Bob is a fine upstanding person. He's a member of the school board, the pta, the rotary club, and numerous other things like that. He donates 50% of his income to charity. He spends a month every summer helping poverty stricken children in Africa. He spends his weekends volunteering at soup kitchens. He does all sorts of good stuff. He also kidnaps, tortures, rapes and murders a little girl once or twice a month. It would be absolutely ludicrous to say that Bob is a good person. Why do people still insist on calling Jehovah a good God?

God Loves You

2010-07-17T12:24:00.002-05:00

I haven't been an out of the closet atheist, as it were, for long, but already I've gotten several reconversion attempts. I've argued with quite a few Christians who try to see things from my point of view and offer intelligent responses to my obscene rantings, and it's a lot of fun debating with those people. I've also had more than a couple people tell me something to the effect of "God loves you. Just because you reject him doesn't mean he rejected you. Anytime you want to come back to him he'll be there waiting with open arms. You'll never be truly happy until you accept God again."

Come on, people. I'm insulted. I became an atheist because I value reason and logic more than blind faith. Are you naive enough to think that badly paraphrasing the Parable of the Prodigal Son is going to send me running for the nearest church? I believe what I believe because of science, logic, and critical thinking. If you want to try to convert me those are the tools you must use. Making unsubstantiated claims about God's desire to forgive me as soon as I get through my little atheist phase is just going to make me mad. Carl Sagan once wrote something like "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence." If you expect me to believe that I can telepathically talk to a 2000 year old undead Jewish dude, you better have some pretty strong evidence to back it up.

Peace, Love and Misogyny

2010-07-16T12:58:00.003-05:00

"9 Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments; 10 but rather by means of good works, as befits women making a claim to godliness. 11 Let a woman quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. 12 But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. 13 For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. 14 And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being quite deceived, fell into transgression. 15 But women shall be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint." - 1 Timothy 2:9-15

The Bible is just full of great moral absolutes, ain't it? Women: stop fixing your hair, don't wear nice clothes or jewelry and just try to be good and do what you're told, okay? Don't even think about ever telling me what to do, because I have a penis, and you don't. In fact, I'd prefer if you just stopped talking most of the time. After all, it was freakin' Eve who got tricked by a snake, not Adam. I mean, yeah, Adam took a bite too, but Eve took the first bite, that bitch. But hey, if you women can keep it together, restrain yourselves, and try not to lose your sanctity you get to have children! I mean, that's what all y'all are for, right? Having kids?

Why do women put up with this? Why do men still think this is an acceptable way to treat their mothers, sisters, daughters and wives? It's 2010, why do billions of people still think this is okay?

Foolish

2010-07-16T04:04:00.004-05:00

It's been like, a year or something since I've posted. I doubt many will read this, but I'm up at three in the morning unable to sleep so here I am.

I thought I'd post about my favorite Bible verse, Psalm 14:1. For those of y'all who don't have a Bible handy I'll go ahead and lay down the New American Standard version of the verse right here.

The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God." They are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds; There is no one who does good.

I love this verse. It's just dripping with all the sorts of stuff Christians like to hear. Fools say, "There is no God." Of course they do. Back in the day, they called people who didn't believe in God "fools." Today we call them atheists. If we replace the "they" in the second part of the verse with "atheists," we get something like this: "Atheists are corrupt, atheists have committed abominable deeds; there is no one who does good."

Well that's interesting. According to the Bible, atheists are all corrupt individuals who can't do a single good deed because abominable ones take up all their time. This puts me in somewhat of a difficult position, because I am an atheist. Or, if you're Biblically inclined, a fool.

Remember about a year ago when I made a post about my determination to keep my faith strong when I got to school? That didn't happen. You see, I read the Bible cover to cover twice the summer before I headed off to Tulane, and I discovered there's a lot of crap in there.* All the terrible junk in the Bible, such as dudes letting their concubines get gang raped to death** , had me kind of turned off of the whole Christianity thing by the time I got to college. I still believed in God, but I was sufficiently distanced from Him to not feel a bit of guilt when I got hammered my first night in New Orleans. It was all downhill from there. I got into philosophy, and I read books written by non-Christian philosophers. (Gasp!) I won't go into all the details right now, because that's not the purpose of this post, but for now I'll say this: I'm an atheist, and I like it. I've loved being an atheist more in 6 months than I loved being a Christian in 6 years.***

So, back to Psalm 14:1. The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." I say that, in my heart, I guess, many times a day. That must make me a fool. I don't like that. I think I'm a pretty swell guy. I think I'm pretty smart too. Chances are good, about 96% actually, that I scored higher on my SAT than you did (or will). I'm in the honors program at the 50th best university in the nation, according to U.S. News. I don't know how many universities there are in the country, but I bet there's at least 1000. So, am I an arrogant d-bag? Kind of. Am I a fool? The jury's still out on that one.

They (atheists) are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds, There is no one who does good. Hmm. I don't really think I'm that corrupt. I haven't ever taken a bribe or embezzled, or any of the other things you hear about when you read newspaper headlines about corruption. I don't think I've committed any abominable deeds, but I suppose that depends on your definition of abominable. If underage drinking is abominable, or if you think gratuitous use of the "f word" in everyday conversations between 18-20 year olds is abominable, then I'm the abominable snowman. If you think of as abominable thinks like rape, murder, and bigotry, then I'm squeaky clean. I also like to think of myself as a person who does a good deed on occasion. I hold the door for people, I spent months helping 4th graders in the ghetto learn long division, and I told a couple redneck dudes today (yesterday, technically) that racism was "not cool, man."

I'm 19, so I guess I'm probably pretty retarded by normal person standards, but am I really abominable? Come on now, people.

* If you don't believe me about the crap, check out this extremely irreverent but also very accurate representation of Genesis 19.
** Judges 19; my version says "ravish," not "gang rape."
*** I say 6 years and not 18 because I was about 13 when I really started to be a Christian for myself, instead of just because my parents told me to. Calling a 7 year old a Christian is like calling a 7 year old a Kantian. They don't understand the Bible any more that they do Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals.

Oh My God! Music

2009-07-21T19:21:00.002-05:00

I hate praise music. Hate it. It puts me in a decidedly un-worshipful mood. Uninspired bass and drums thumping along underneath guitars and piano that are entirely devoid of musical imagination, all playing the same four chords behind some guy/girl moaning softly like they're in physical pain. What part of that is supposed to get me all fired up for Jesus? I know there's no accounting for taste, but why is this contemporary praise stuff so popular with Christians?

As a bass and guitar player, it really frustrates me listening to and watching praise music. The guitarists don't ever do anything outside of simple strumming, and the bass players are seemingly satisfied with playing four or maybe five notes throughout the entire song. I saw Casting Crowns last year, and the bassist stood in the same spot for the whole show, playing straight quarter note rhythms and never deviating from the roots of the chords. For non musicians that sentence just means the bass lines were boring. I don't want to pick on just this one guy, I can't remember ever hearing an interesting bassline in praise and worship music. There are times when simple music is important, but an entire genre of completely colorless musicians? No thanks.

I know that praise musicians love the Lord. I'm not slamming them for that. But if you're going to create something to give glory to the most amazing being in existence shouldn't you put some work into it? God know we love him either way, yes, but why not actually put some skill into offerings? Praise musicians seem to think that throwing a few choruses of "you're totally awesome God I love you so much oh my God oh my God oh my God oh my God Jesus Jesus"on top of some lame music is beautiful art. I read in a magazine, I don't remember which one, a letter to the editor about praise music having low standards. The writer said "Make good art, not just Christian art" or something to that effect.

If you're satisfied with music that any 8 year old who's been playing guitar for a month can reproduce with no problems then go out and listen to your hearts content, but I'll spend my time listening to real music. Christian doesn't have to equal bland and lacking imagination.

Cabbages and Kings

2009-07-15T18:42:00.002-05:00

Or Chronicles and Kings, actually. I've just read 1 & 2 Kings this last week, and now I'm slogging through the Chronicles. And I've noticed something. They're practically the same thing! Not exactly, Kings talked more about certain people and subjects than Chronicles and vice versa, but they're extremely similar.

Does anyone know why there are 4 whole books where a couple would have probably gotten the job done? I haven't done any research at all, the answers probably easy to obtain, but I'm feeling particularly lazy today.

Well I'm gonna go read some more Chronicles. It's not really light and airy reading, so it's taking me a while to get through. I might look up the Kings/Chronicles issue later. Just leave this page open and hit F5 every few minutes if the mood strikes you. I may update later, who knows.

Gnarly Trails

2009-07-09T21:16:00.002-05:00

So I haven't posted for a couple months, which isn't really the regular update schedule that my readers crave. If you scroll down the page you will notice that I once went without posting for the time it takes a zygote to turn into a wriggling little baby. Now I've got it down to a lot less than the gestational period of a pig. In case you were wondering, pigs are pregnant for about 3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days.

The above paragraph was carefully designed to show off my knowledge of our porcine friends. It has nothing to do with the rest of this post.

About a month ago my family and I moved from the Oklahoma panhandle to a little town in Northeastern Colorado. It's a significan't improvement. I liked it better the day we got here, but today it got a whole lot better.

I was riding my bike around town, and I thought I'd head by this cool little fishing hole that's maintained by the local Lions club. I saw a dirt road going off into some trees and I figured I'd follow it. After a few minutes I discovered that there are dozens of roads crisscrossing around this little tree filled wilderness park like area, and they are perfect for mountain biking! They're covered in lots of steep hills that are really fun to ride down, and there's lots of sharp curves to power slide around. As I was racing around and around the park I noticed gaps in the grass that looked like trails heading off the roads every now and then. I thought I'd take one and what do ya know, the park is also filled with bunches of straight up bike trails. There are several jumps where one could get mad air if one wanted to. Several turns even have berms and there's even a rhythm section.

The area is pretty overgrown, 3 or 4 foot tall weeds go right up to the trails, but it's still very rideable. There's one huge bowl like area that's filled with water. Judging from the dozens of trails that head over the lip and down into the quagmire it must have been quite the extreme bike park in its day, which looks to have been quite a while ago. Even with a good portion of the trails underwater, the huge weeds, and the mossy mud puddles everywhere, it's still a ton of fun down there. I felt like a real mountain biker again, something I hadn't experienced since we moved down to Ooooklahoma.

I'm as happy as a pig in mud.

2009-05-10T18:52:00.002-05:00

So I heard somewhere that some crazy huge percentage, I'm not sure of the actual number, of Christian kids leave the church and never come back when they get to college. Since I'm leaving for college in just a couple of months I'm gonna try my hardest not to become part of that statistic.

One of the first things I'm gonna do when I get down there is find a church. It's gonna take a lot of willpower but I'm gonna try to drag myself out of bed every Sunday and go to church without having to be told by Mom.

I'm gonna keep reading the Bible every day and pray all the time for God to keep me focused.

Finally I'm gonna try to do that campus ministry thing I mentioned a few posts ago. If I'm working on sharing the gospel with others I should be more focused myself.

If you've got any tips, encouragements, or whatever I'll totally appreciate it.

On a completely unrelated topic, happy Mother's Day! I love ya Mom! I wouldn't be the incredibly amazing guy I am today if it wasn't for you :)

Sticks and Stones

2009-05-04T21:47:00.003-05:00

I ride my bike around a lot, and I have a lot of time to think about various things when I'm miles away from town riding up and down the Panhandle's incredible straight roads. Today I got to thinking about how when I was little it was really a big deal, in school and at home and everywhere, to not call names and not say hurtful stuff to people. In high school it seems that virtually everyone has forgotten about that. Every day I hear, and say, words like faggot, retard, idiot, and other things that I'm not gonna write down. It's like it isn't even a big deal anymore to be constantly trying to cut other people down. Almost everybody in my school is guilty of it, myself included.

Almost every day I'll either witness or be a part of a verbal battle that has more curse words than most R rated movies. And we do it right in front of teachers too. I can only think of 2 teachers who will even say anything when two students start cussing each other out right in front of them. What happened? In second grade I'd get in big trouble just for calling somebody dumb or weird. Now I can yell down the hall at somebody, proclaiming them to be a bleeping bleep bleep or something and not even get a reproach from a teacher.

And maybe it actually hurts that annoying kid's feelings when I hurl expletive laden insults at him every day. Maybe it doesn't, but still, I'm not putting a very Christ-like image if I talk like that.

I'm certain that I've read scripture dealing with cussing and name calling and the like, but being the scatterbrained teen that I am, I can't bring any verses to mind. If I run across any I'll put it in the comments.

So anyway that's all I've got for today, so when I head to school tomorrow I'm gonna try to do like my mom says and if I don't have anything nice to say I won't say anything at all.

I'm back!

2009-05-02T22:41:00.000-05:00

So my blogging fervor kind of died not too long after I started this bad boy almost a year ago. I've been doing all sorts of crazy wild teenager stuff like building computers and doing mad donuts in my parent's pickup.

Anyway I figured with graduating high school and shippin' off to college looming right up in front of me that this would be a pretty good time so start bloggin' again. I'm headed off to Tulane University right smack in the middle of the Big Easy in a few months, so it should be interesting to see how a good Christian kid from the Oklahoma Panhandle deals with life in one of the biggest party towns in the country. It will probably harder to stay on the straight and narrow down there than it is in Boise City, USA, so if all yall would pray for me in the next few months I (and my mother, I'm sure) will appreciate it.

Anyway, to get you caught up, I'm graduating in just a few weeks, and I'm heading down to New Orleans in August. I plan on majoring in Music Performance, but that will likely change.

Um, I guess I'll post a little bit about biblical stuff, since that's kind of what this blog was supposed to be about. A couple months ago in Sunday School my teacher mentioned that there were 31 chapters in Proverbs, so it's really easy to read a proverb every day of the 31 day months. So I just finished up with Proverbs 2, and learned some good stuff. I should seek wisdom, stay away from murderers, and watch out for the adulteress who flatters with her words. Good advice!

Well that's all I've got for you today, so I'll see you in another 8 months!

Prayer Really Does Change Things

2008-08-01T22:16:00.000-05:00

I work waiting tables at a Pizza Hut, and for the last couple of months I was really butting heads with one of the managers. For whatever reason she was always giving me the most distasteful jobs, busing my tables for me and claiming that gave her the right to keep the tip, and making me stay at least an hour late every single night. I responded by being a little butthead, and doing everything I could to make her job harder.

One night, after listening to me rant about it for the thirtieth or fortieth time, my mother had the audacity to suggest I pray for this manager, who I'll refer to as PHM (Pizza Hut Manager) from now on. She said also to pray that I would be nicer to PHM, because the Bible says

"But if your enemy is hungry, feed him, and if he is thirsty, give him a drink; for in doing so you will heap burning coals upon his head." Romans 12:20 NASB

After much deliberation I decided this wasn't such bad advice, so I asked God to literally heap burning coals upon PHM's head. He told me that probably wasn't going to happen, so I did what I knew I was supposed to and actually prayed for her, asking God to change my attitude, and to help PHM in every way he could, which I was hoping would be a promotion to a bigger Pizza Hut far away from where I worked.

After a few days of praying for PHM whenever I remembered to, things started to get better at work. I was being nicer to her, and in return she was being nicer to me. And I just found out today that the big boss of this Pizza Hut gave PHM a talkin' to about some of the things she did that grieved me so sorely. Burning coals? Not quite but I'll take it. Today she actually did some of my work for me and sent me home a little bit early. Yay prayer!

Falls Creek

2008-07-26T23:04:00.000-05:00

I just got back from Falls Creek, a huge Christian youth camp in Oklahoma, and it was an amazing experience. In addition to having a great time hanging out with friends and getting to worship God with 6000 other teenagers I learned some things from God this week.

The first thing I figured out is that I've been going about my relationship with God all wrong. I've got several atheist friends and whenever I was around them I would sort of hide the fact that I was a Christian, because I was almost ashamed of it. I wouldn't come right out and deny my faith, but I wouldn't come right out and talk about it either. I would tell them stuff like "yeah I'm a Christian, but I'm not like the other Christians you know, I'm not into church and most other Christians are stupid," or something like that. I looked pretty cool for my non-believing friends, but I almost felt like I was apologizing to them for what I believed, and I wasn't right with God. At Falls Creek I came to realize that being a follower of Jesus is absolutely the greatest thing in the world, and not something to be ashamed of. So I made a decision to not hide my faith anymore. It's going to be hard, and I'm kind of nervous about it, but I think it's what God wants me to do.

Another thing that happened to me at Falls Creek is that I felt called to be a campus missionary. What the people at Falls Creek challenged me to do was get people praying for the students at my high school and then share my faith at least once a month. From the minute I heard about it I haven't been able to get it out of my head, so it seems like God is pointing me in that direction. I'm scared to death at the thought of sharing Christ with my classmates, but I suppose that if I can help get one person saved it will be worth it.

-Ross

Check One Two

2008-07-14T00:19:00.000-05:00

Welcome to Log and Speck, my blog about trying to be a Christian teenager in today's world. Here I'll be ranting and raving and posting incredibly deep thoughts on Christianity and religion and whatever other stuff pops into my head at the time. Hopefully if this blog gets any kind of readership (is that a word? readership?) going it could be a witnessing tool of some variety. Anyways, I'm just kinda getting to feel for this blogging stuff, so that's all for now.

-Ross