I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this yet: I’m going to visit Canada for a week, starting this Saturday.
Well, technically Sunday as we’ll be driving up there from Missouri. To Montreal. It’s going to be about a 28 hour drive.

Yes, we’re driving it. Should be interesting. My 6 year old daughter has no idea what she’s in for. The longest she’s been in a car before is 3 hours. But, we have tons of stuff for her, she has her LeapPad, we have CD’s and XM radio, air conditioned Mercury Sable…and I can’t help but think about some old cratchedy “Back in MY day, we didn’t HAVE new fangled things like shoes” when I think about what road trips were like for me as a kid.

When I was a kid, we’d driven from Seattle to Denver through Utah, Denver to Missouri across Kansas a few times, and always in some un-airconditioned Pinto with one of those 200 page “Fun Pad’s” and an AM radio. Roadside rest stops were barely a step above outhouses and convenience stores were at best a 7-11 and usually some snack rack in a gas station. Long trips when I was a kid sucked hard.

Anyway, we’re visiting my brother who’d expatriated up there a couple years ago with his girlfriend. Actually, she was already there. French Canadian, and one of the few people in her family who speak English. We’ll be visiting Niagara Falls, doing some camping outside Montreal, seeing some sites…but pretty much having to do it on the cheap. (Donations can be made to PayPal in care of druid@celticbear.com LOL.)

When we get back I’ll post some pics and thoughts. I’m hoping we’ll be able to visit a couple of places featured on Rachel Ray’s “$40 a Day.”

How’s this for an interesting topic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polydeism
Discuss. =)

This is an interesting little read:
Becoming CEO (of Your Own Life)
It’s from this Web site I only just started looking at–it was like the 2nd page I’ve read so far. Granted, I’ve read this kind of stuff a million times before…but for some reason the imagery, the this analogy of CEO of your own life is really compelling.

Just thought I’d share.

Back when I was in grade school, in the early 80′s, as with all things related to espionage and crime fighting and playing the role of a spy nearly 24/7, I also tried to learn as much as I could about drugs. No no, just the facts, not the experiences! By the time I was in 6th grade, I knew what were barbiturates and narcotics, what came from what plant and the dangers of each one. But were talking about a time when most of the known recreational drugs were but a handful and most of the information a kid could get was what was in pamphlets and on “Just Say No” posters. And my knowledge then wasn’t really useful for anything except to very occasionally sound like I knew what I was talking about when I’d talk to other kids about the dangers of drugs. (Perhaps, if I’m lucky, I may actually have prevented someone from taking any.)

A few years ago I was browsing through Caoine’s old Web site, and while she’s changed it QUITE a bit now, back then it was very obvious she was into the whole punk, party scene. One of her Webcam pictures showed her, hair purple and I think aviation goggles around her neck, holding a hand-written sign saying “Know your dosage.” Now I’m older and more stupid about some things “these farnabbed youngsters are doin’”, but it’s pretty obvious to me what that meant. And it’s bugged me ever since.

The image of drug users, as a kid, has always been of sleezy creeps pushing drugs onto stupid kids, or your stoners doing a lot of weed. Then later as I got to watch movies, drug users were often bigger than life criminals using them for evils means like in “The French Connection” or leading to self-destruction as in Al Pachino’s “Scarface”. Of course I watched “Dateline” and “20/20″ and other news magazines and so knew kids were using Ritalin as a street drug, and then ecstasy, and other pharmaceuticals… it still always had the impression with me of stupid kids doing stupid things and perhaps getting themselves killed occasionally.

But that sign, “know your dosage,” was the kick in the butt that showed me I was blind to what’s really going on out there. There are a lot of young people out there who are pseudo-smart, that is, while complete idiots for using drugs in the first place are clever and smart about amounts and dosages and effects and reactions…and I could relate. With my early 1980′s knowledge of drug information I felt a little powerful, more “with it,” smart (thank God I didn’t actually try any of that crap. I just enjoyed the knowledge.) These kids today are WAY beyond that what with knowing about chemical properties and reactions of now hundreds of recreational substances. What kind of false sense of “knowledge” that could create. Not to mention, and this is the worst part for my realization, a false sense of safety and security in what they’re doing. When you think you know all about a drug’s reactions and peak and dosage per weight and whatnot, you have a false sense of trust that you can “play it safe”.

And now today I came upon this site: http://www.erowid.org/splash.php.
According to their site: “Erowid is a member-supported organization providing access to reliable, non-judgmental information about psychoactive plants and chemicals and related issues.” It has very detailed information regarding drugs of all types in such concise, scientific presentation with graphs and charts and facts and figures, and everything the young wanna-be chemist drug expert could ever want to use to play with their and others’ lives and physical and mental health.

My nightmare is my daughter as a teen, at a regular normal party, get-together, band or debate party, not even anything close to the “bashes” in TV and movies, and some guy with easy to get drugs and easy to get information, will think it fun to play a “little joke” and put “only a little” of something in her drink….

The world is so different, so much more scary, so much more dangerous than when I was a kid…and I’m only in my early 30′s.

Yesterday morning a word came to me like lightening from above or mold on cheese, I haven’t decided which.
That word was: GROGMONKEY
It stuck. All morning. There was nothing I could do but say it repeatedly…mainly to myself as I already get weird looks at work.
So the only way to execise this meme was to get the domain name.
And so I present the premiere of http://www.grogmonkey.org

(Can you believe that’s the BEST of the monkey skulls I drew last night? There’s a reason I’m a coder and not an artist. *grin*)
What I’m going to use it for? I’m glad you asked! I’d be more glad if you answered.
I have no idea.
I was thinking maybe a fan page to all things piratey. I likems the pirates. I could post factual info and images and stuff.
Or, I could use it as my guide to coding and Linux tips and tricks. Which would mainly serve as my own personal cheat-sheet. *g*
Or…I could do both! (It’s a floor wax AND a dessert topping!) You don’t see that anywhere.
It could catch on. Hey, LockerGnome started out that way, and was the nickname of the site’s creator…and now it’s one of the biggest PC/’Net tips and tricks and reviews site out there. (I met the guy, Chris Pirillio. I have an autographed copy of his book on e-newsletters.)
Anyway, look out for…something, to happen there soon. =)

Interestingly, very few people I tell this to have any idea what “grog” is.
Huh. Go fig.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grog

Every review I’ve read, every one, of the new Tim Burton’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” has been comparing Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka with Michael Jackson. God, I’m so sick of it. As if every reviewer has intuited some subtle connection that he alone has noticed and is imparting to us. Give me a break–they’re all jumping on each other’s bandwaggon. Thank God that no one has said he’s “channeling Jackson” like they did with his “Pirates of the Carribean”‘s Jack Sparrow and Keith Richards. First of all, I really didn’t see that much resemblance from Jack Sparrow with Keith Richards, but whatever. Mentioning the “channeling” of Keith got old after the 2nd time I heard it.

Speaking of resemblance, OK. I can’t deny there may be one. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but here is a pale and weird man in weird clothes, who lives in a secluded palatial mystery place made to appeal to children. Yeah, I get it. There’s a resemblance. But please, must we keep harping on it as if you, reviewer, are the first and only person to notice it? Please God don’t start saying “channeling” either. (And please, Depp, please have a performance in it that does not resemble Jackson himself.) Unfortunately the resemblance is going to be there if they’re going to be true to the Dahl book. I mean, he wrote it decades ago that way: Odd man with weird mannerisms in oddly affectatious dress living secretly in a surreal child’s dreamplace. The fact that Michael Jackson has done the same thing is a sad, pathetic coincidence.

At least Keith Richards is a rock-and-roll hero to most, just some guy to the rest. Michael Jackson, while a “musical hero” to some misguided people with questionable taste, is a sick and sad freak of nature to most and very likely a pedophile with no redeeming qualities. I can live with the overmentioned connection between Depp’s “Sparrow” and Richards, but to compare Depp’s “Wonka” with Jackson is a disturbing and disgusting connection I so would rather not have.

So Karl Rove has admitted to exposing an active undercover CIA agent’s identity to the press. That’s a felony, and potential treason.
And why did he do it? Well, it’s speculated because the agent’s husband, a US Embassador, made public statements contradicting the Bush administration’s arguements regarding weapons of mass destruction before invading Iraq.

Karl Rove was fired from Bush Sr.’s reelection campaign in 1992 for what? Leaking information. To who? Robert Novak…ONE of the possibly three newsmen he leaked the CIA agent’s identity to.

Bush Jr. said several times in 2004 that he would fire anyone in the West Wing who is responsible for the leak.

Do we really think Bush has the integrity to hold to his word? I don’t think so.

The other day I read this blog entry:
http://christianmind.blogspot.com/2005/07/united-church-of-christ-officially.html where the author lambasts the United Church of Christ for accepting gay marriage.
That alone prompted me to write something.
Then I read this entry over on NewSojourn:
http://newsojourn.blogspot.com/2005/07/sola-scriptura-part-ii.html
(I encourage you to read that post and the previous, part 1, post as it has some good theory and discussion seeds for how to view and apply Biblical Scripture.)
But Mark writes on there references to a friend of his “choosing” to be gay. Now, I like and respect Mark, but I really have to question how well he knows his said friend. I can’t speak for that individual not knowing him, but I do know that all of the gay and bisexual people I’ve known and know, only a couple could I say have chosen to be gay. I was involved for six years in college theatre and lived in Iowa City for a time…I’ve come to know quite a few gay and lesbian people. And I can attest that nearly every one I’ve known did not choose to be gay. It’s simply how God/nature made them. In fact, some, including a semi-distant relation of mine, chose for years to be straight in order to deny who they were and fit in with society and avoid the abuse and pain society and family who don’t understand heap upon them. And that has ended in divorce, feelings of betrayal, pain and anguish that didn’t have to have happened. I’ve had a couple of gay friends tell me if it WERE a choice they would so prefer to choose to be straight and avoid the turmoil and abuse they’ve had to suffer as they came to accept who they were.

Some people “become” gay due to terrible childhood abuse that leads to psychological issues. But that’s extremely rare. Similar to heterosexual who becomes asexual because of sexual trauma. But in general, homosexual people are born that way just as heterosexual people are born that way. Do heterosexual people “choose” to be attracted to only the opposite sex?

I was going to ask “Why do conservative Christians have such an intense hatred for homosexuality?” Now that I know there are still people out there who think it’s a choice people make, it makes more sense. It’s sad, but makes sense. If people think it’s a behavior that people can control as they wish, it’s easier to fell good about hating homosexuality because you are technically hating the “sin” regardless of the sinner. If people were to accept that people are BORN gay or straight, they’d have to come to terms with hating the sinner him/herself…or accepting it as a way God creates some people.

Conservative Christians don’t want to accept that being gay isn’t a choice. To do so would force them to question the nature and validity of sin as presented in the Bible.

The objections Christians have:
“It’s prohibited in scripture.”
Perhaps. There’s debate on exactly how accurate the translations of “sodomite” and similar terms are.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_bibl.htm has some good information, a lot of speculation as well, regarding translations of some of the passages in both the Old and New Testaments against homosexuality.
In any case, here’s the problem I have with using Scripture to say “this is bad because it says so right here!” Why do you pick and choose what from Scripture is valid and what’s not?
(For a good analysis of that topic, see Mark’s “Sola Scriptura” posts at http://newsojourn.blogspot.com.)
Because the Bible condemns a great many “sins” we, even faithful Christians, do not consider sins anymore, and commands people to do many things that are considered morally wrong today.
For example:

And numerous other examples that including prohibition of what to plant, what to eat, who to stone, how to sell your daughter, as contained in this e-mail that went around the ‘Net some time ago:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/drlaura.asp

The point is, the Bible is FULL of things that are condemned then that aren’t now, and commanded that are ignored now, by faithful Christians. And one way of thinking, as explained in NewSojourn’s recent posts, is that the individual Scriptures don’t matter so much as the book as a whole. The gestalt–the sum is greater than the parts. Which is great, and I can get on board with that…except conservative Christians still will quote a couple of passages to prove their point. Isn’t that hypocritical?

“It’s a violation of nature.”
Not so. There are many examples of other animals in the world that have homosexual pairings. The bonobo monkey which is human’s closest simian relative, is almost exclusively bi-sexual.
Here’s some information on just how not uncommon it is in the natural world:
http://www.bidstrup.com/sodomy.htm
Now of course, if you’re not an anthropoligist or biologist you’ll want to check this information out for yourself. Do a little of your own research.

“Homosexuals are more promiscuous and lead otherwise more sinful lives.”
Now that’s some research I’d love to see numbers for. Are a lot of young gay men promiscuous? Sure, I think so. Members of the gay community would likely agree that there are a fair number of promiscuous young gay males. But compared to heterosexuals?
Even been to any Spring Break destination? There’s more rampant heterosexual sexuality than you can shake a nun’s ruler at. Oh not to say that makes it OK! Certainly not. But “promiscuity” is not a label that you can hang on gays any more than you can on straight people. In my experience, most gay and nearly every lesbian person I’ve known was either in or was searching for a long-term if not permanent monogomous relationship with someone. Just like most straight people.
Any additional behavior conservative Christians want to pin on gays can be equally applied to heterosexuals in general. It may not make that secondary behavior “right,” but let’s not get sidetracked with secondary issues that don’t apply.

It boils down to one thing, really: Biblical doctrine. So I ask, if you’re a conservative Christian who thinks being a gay person is a sin, why? If it’s because “the Bible says it is right here,” then why is that quote more valid than:
“When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do.
If she does not please her master, who designated her for himself, then he shall let her be redeemed; he shall have no right to sell her to a foreign people, since he has dealt unfairly with her.
If he designates her for his son, he shall deal with her as with a daughter.
If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish the food, clothing, or marital rights of the first wife.
And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out without debt, without payment of money.”
Exodus 21:7-11
And also truely ask yourself this question: Why do you think homosexuality is any more a choice than heterosexuality is?

I have wanted a green glass banker’s lamp for years! I love those things.
I finally found one on eBay for a reasonable price, and now it sits here on my desk at work.
Which is REALLY nice, because we keep the lights off back here in the tech department, so a soft light lamp is perfect illumination to add to the glow of monitors.
Modern tech with blended with old style fashion.

(That’s not the lamp itself, but it looks exactly like that.)
It’s in desperate need of some Brasso, but otherwise it’s perfect! I just bought a 40 watt soft light tube shaped bulb* for it this morning. I felt so proud. =)

*I cringe saying “bulb” after years of working in a threater, a couple as Master Electrician. The glass covered filiment that plugs into an instrument is a “LAMP”, not a bulb. But, the “practicals” that sits on desks and tables are called by ordinary people “lamps” and the packaging on the thingie you screw into them say “bulb”, so that is what I call them too despite my conditioning. =P

Hello, my name is ____ and I’m an Elitist.

I can’t deny I’m an elitist. I’m an arrogant morally superior snob.
And I’m not totally ashamed of it.
Oh, I feel bad if I hurt feelings, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t feel bad about having very definite, strong beliefs.

Over on NewSojourn, Mark posted a blog about tolerance and the co-opting of that term to mean “accepting as equally valid.” I agree with him that it’s happening, and it’s a bad thing. I won’t repost my comment here, but to summarize (oh why, Mark’s probably saying, could he not have summarized on MY site! The dang overwinded freak,) tolerating diverse philosophies is good, agreeing that everything is fine and valid is not good, saying you don’t agree is good.

In person I tend to be a MUCH nicer person than I am online. I admit, because writing on the Internet is very freeing and encourages people, because of the false sense of anonymity, to be a little more caustic and crass. I’m just as vehement and forward with my beliefs in person as I am on-line, but in person I tend to be a lot more meek and mild about it. (And FAR less eloquent and coherent. If you can believe THAT! I’ve reread what I’ve posted…sometimes I don’t even make sense to myself.)

But either way, I very much have an attitude, whether I show it or not, that my beliefs are better than those that differ from them. My wife reminded me of this on my blog the other day. Especially when it comes to fundamental Bible literalistic, I really look down upon them and consider myself morally and, especially, intellectually superior. Which I shouldn’t do. As I stated on Mark’s blog, I don’t think it’s wrong to say “I think you’re wrong.” But to do it respectfully is the key. After all, “treat your neighbor as you yourself would want to be treated.”

I don’t mind someone else calling me “wrong”. Tit for tat. But I would hope that someone who tells me how wrong I am does it with respect and courtesy, even if in an emotionally heated context. And so I should do likewise shouldn’t I.
(That’s not even a question.)

The original reason I wanted to write this entry is so I could apologize to anyone I’ve offended. (Gawd, even as I write that I’m making mental caveats regarding fundamentalist Bible-thumping dogmatic fools who are too afraid to use the brain God gave them. I’m a bad person.)

If someone disagrees with anything I write here, anything I believe, they are always more than welcome to post a comment. As long as it’s not spam, I have always promised to display it and not censor it. It’s one of the reasons I’ve switched to WordPress for blog software–it successfully allows me to auto-accept all comments so long as the author is registered with my site. Spammers generally can’t do that. =) Commenters are free to say whatever they want, call me names, question the humanity of my parentage, it’s fine. I can take it. I should be able to take it if I’m going to put myself out there, no? It’s a sign of maturity to be able to stand up and express your beliefs and stick with your integrity, and be able to take criticism of it. All I ask is that you don’t use excessive profanity. Sure, sometimes even I will the a f–k or d–n when the message needs to have that emotional expulsion that an English curse word can provide, but in general, I feel if you can’t express yourself and comment on what I say without some decorum and thoughtful use of language that does not resort to gutter talk, you really don’t need to be heard. (I’ll either just cut out the profanity if it’s needless or cancel the post and ask you to resubmit.)

OK, anyway. I’m an elitist. My conscience tells me I shouldn’t be, but my philosophical certitude absolves me of the guilt. =) Deal with it.

There was a time in which Cascading Style Sheets didn’t exist…and that was the age I learned HTML in. Circa 1995. It was all TABLE and FONT tags, baby!

Well, a few years ago I finally stopped using FONT tags and started using style sheets for all my font stuff at least. But I’ve been reticent to go all out. I’ve learned how to make border boxes, but I still use tables for all my positioning and widths.

Now this blog. Well, this blog software, WordPress. I’ve been using MoveableType for a few years and except for a few of my own manual changed, had used a downloaded template.
I’m still currently using a downloaded template with this new blog, but at its very core WordPress is so customizeable that I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to get it “just right”. And that requires not only my more than mediocre knowledge of PHP *grin* but a crash-course in more advanced (read: “standard”) CSS’s.

For example. Blockquotes. If you’re reading this blog while I’m using the “borderlinechaos” theme, then you will see the blockquotes style like this:

All this text you are reading right now is in “blockquote”. It brings the margins in and separates the text from the main body of the blog.
The appearance of this blockquote is very different than what it originally looks like in this theme “off the shelf.”

I’ve gone into the CSS of the theme and added margins and a background and borders and padding to make it look “better” (according to me.)

(The big problem with this blog entry, is it’s very likely that within 30 minutes I may be using a different theme entirely. I’m trying first to learn what all I can DO with a theme, with what features I can add and create, for example, over there to the side with the various menus and lists. Then, I plan on finding a theme as close to what I want and then revamping it to what I want permanently. This borderlinechaos theme, if that’s what you’re seening now, is fun, but it’s temporary.)

Anyway, I’m having alot of fun playing with CSS. It’s a little daunting, like learning a new programming language (hey guess what? It IS! *g*) But it certainly does make doing large or comples visual changes a LOT easier!

My wife and I were discussing the interesting facts of evolution the other day, and she brought up an interesting question: Dinosaurs were on the planet a lot longer than humans…why did they not evolve into intelligent creatures on the level of humans?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution

Dinosaurs and their cousins were on the planet for nearly 200 million years! Humans have been here only about 150 thousand years…and look what we’ve created! Civilizations, art, architecture, spacecraft. With over 1,000 TIMES the number of years available to them, why did they remain “animalistic” up until the time they died off?
Oh sure, we know that some were somewhat intelligent, as depicted in Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park”. But no more than at best what some birds, dolphin, dogs, and chimps are capable of.

The religious person would say because…er, a really religious person wouldn’t even acknowledge the existance of dinosaurs I guess, or the evidence of human evolution, or perhaps even the historic record placing humans (even AS humans) beyond 6,000 years ago. OK, but the moderately religious person would say because God made it that way.

For the moment, I don’t like that answer. But we’ll return to it.

There were dinos that had opposeable thumbs. Some had significant brain sizes. Some had complex resonating chambers capable of a wide range of sound that even without vocal cords could have rivaled humans with sound making ability. So, was it dumb chance that dinosaurs didn’t evolve further?

Perhaps. Why not? The chances of life developing in the universe in the first place is almost too small to calculate. So small, that despite the number of other planets in the universe, there IS a chance, numerically speaking and nothing to do with religion, that Earth is the only one with life. So evolutionarily, despite the time and numbers, random chance may have very easily fell in such a way as to have the proto-human branch of the simian family to have that extra spark that allowed us to go beyond just the ability to use fashioned tools (as many other primates can) into what would become viable intelligence.

I can go with that.

But what if we were engineered by God? No, I’m not saying it happened the way Creationists describe. That’s silly fantastic mythology with absolutely no basis in fact.
No, I’m saying what if God didn’t just create a ball of matter and explode it into existance 14 billion years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Universe,) but did it with a design in mind.

Oooohh…I’m treading upon the realm of Intelligent Design here. Scary.
Actually, it IS scary!

But no, I don’t subscribe to ID as believed by the ID proponents. Despite appearance, with some exceptions, ID is basically Creation stripped of overt religious references as a means of trying to insinuate it into public education. At least, any theory of ID that involves Irreducible Complexity. THAT piece of pseudoscience is full of more holes than cheese. Every example IC proponents have put out there have been easily explained away, and every “logical” arguement they have can be refuted. I don’t want to go into it here, but the main arguement is that there are X number of biological enities that are so complex there’s no way they could have evolved, and so like a mousetrap, any removal of a part means the whole fails–ergo, it had to have been created. Of course this COMPLETELY ignores the fact that any organ or cell type or biological process does not have to have started out with whatever purpose they have now, and any number of organs and cells and processes that helped the enitity in question to come to be could have devolved away or evolved itself into another purpose. Like scaffolding.

Anyway, I have some blog on it here:
Of Bacteria and Mousetraps: http://www.celticbear.com/weblog/?p=159
The Final Words (for me) on Creationsm vs. Evolution: http://www.celticbear.com/weblog/?p=161

Where was I…oh yeah! So, what if evolution happened the way 99% of legitimate scientists know it to have happened…but God set the process in motion those 14 billion years ago with the intent of having humans evolve as we have.
Assuming the existance of God, why not? Would not the creator of supernovae and black holes be patient enough to wait 14 billion years for a result? He’s timeless, no? Is he not powerful enough that he can’t create a universe that works upon his designed plan for 14 billion years? Would God not be capable of that, if he’s omnipotent?
I think so.

Reason and skepticism does not rule any of this out. In fact, Steven Hawkings and Carl Sagan have both said that all the scientific discoveries past and future have not nor could not disprove the existance of God. The nature of God, being outide the system known as the universe, makes it impossible to predict whether science is capable of proving or disproving God…which is why GOOD scince doesn’t even try. Carl Sagan did not believe in God as a creature, but has said it’s not impossible for that to be the case. And again I say, why not?

There is only one thing that prevents faithful people from being able to accept the idea that God created the universe and set in motion processes labeled as Darwinian evolution. And that’s a book written between 4,000 BC and 400 AD by a very small group of people that didn’t even exist prior to about 6,000 years ago. This book which has as wonderfully accurate science as two conflicting creation stories that resemble creation stories from Greek and Babylonian and Sumarian and hundreds of other mythologies involving a diety creating the universe in ways completely divergant from what science has proven, humanity beginning with a single fully developed man and woman and their children who must have had incesteral relations, giants intermingling with humans, and a boat that is about 1 billionth of the size that would be needed to hold a VIABLE number of every animal that would then be capable of repopulating the Earth, etc etc. This dang book that is responsible for so much hate and misunderstanding and ignorance and wars and arrogance.

This one book is the sole reason so much of humanity is incapable, (no, UNWILLING) to think outside the book and consider the reality of evolution and geology and biology and cosmology and the not unreasonable idea that God created it all billions of years ago with a Bang. Because religion uses inductive reasoning, which takes a conclusion (what’s written in this book) and tried to find and conform and twist “evidence” to make it fit the conclusion you want. Ignores conflicting proof and evidence or challenges it tooth and nail no matter how valid it is and unreasonable the defended “evidence” is. Meanwhile, science and reason tries to find answers by observing all the evidence and defines what conclusions they lead to.

Can science be wrong? Oh holly hanna absolutely! Often. But that’s the nature of science…to constantly find those errors, test them, throw them out and find better conclusions based on new evidence and test result. And just because one component of a scientific theory is wrong does not make the whole of it wrong! Let me put it this way: The King James Bible mistranslated a lot of the Bible as written in Hebrew and Greek. But how would the religious person view the KJV altogether, as completely wrong? Why are there SO MANY English translations of the Bible? Shouldn’t ONE be “right”? The fact that NIV or NKJ or NRSV all have differences from each other, does that make any of them “wrong”?
(In my opinion they’re ALL wrong and so is the original, but I’m trying to make a point here.)

You know what? It was discovered some time ago that the bones of “Lucy” were not what scientists thought they were, perhaps misclassified for years. But that does not make the whole of evolution wrong nor the countless billions of fossils and strata layer and biologic fragments and genetic material and everything else that proves evolution. It means some errors were rooted out, more tests were made, more analysis done, theories changed to fit the evidence, and we’re one smaller step to better understanding.

This is noteable: Every error in biology and anthroplogy and cosmology and palentology, every error that has been discovered and fallacy of evidence both intentional and accidental, they were rooted out and discovered and exposed and brought to light by who? Not by clergymen or church leaders or theologeans…but by scientists! There is no cabal of scientists seeking to deceive and misinform. The role of scientists is to find the truth about the natural world, and that means scrutinizing and questioning themselves and their peers. Every theory and evidence and supposition gets scrutinized by other scientists and tested and analyzed and thrown out if it doesn’t work or stand up to the scrutiny.

Which is why Creationists and ID defenders feel like there’s a war going on. Because scientists do to them whenever they present their “theories” that scientists do to themselves and their peers: Scrutinize and test and analyze, and throw out what doesn’t stand up to the testing. And since Creation and ID does not stand up to reason and evidence and testing, science throws it out.

What was the point of all this?
I have no clue.
Oh yeah. God instigated evolution and the development of humans as something special from all the other animals now and past.

Not too long ago I blogged my thoughts about God’s purpose for designing the universe in such a way as to allow us to evolve: Evolution May Create God?

I’m still contemplating the idea that we humans are just a small, inconsequential step toward some greater plan to develop an even greater being. Perhaps God himself. Perhaps this is the way God exists: evolves after perhaps hundreds of billions of years into being made from and of the universe itself and capable of creating a universes and then creates a universe out of his own being (being the universe) and sets it off as the Big Bang with the plan that he will be re-evolved from it.

Wow, man.