10 Reasons Why I'm Not Voting

Here's 10 reasons why I'll be exercising my right to NOT vote in this year's presidential election:

1. Politicians are corrupt.
2. John McCain is corrupt.
3. Barack Obama is corrupt.
4. Sarah Palin is corrupt.
5. Joe Biden is corrupt.
6. The American voting system is corrupt.
7. The political campaign system is corrupt.
8. The media is corrupt.
9. I hate how things have gone so far.
10. McCain and Obama might as well duke it out in a steel-cage match. That would be much more civilized than the current campaign has been.

"Better a poor but wise youth than an old but foolish king who no longer knows how to take warning. The youth may have come from prison to the kingship, or he may have been born in poverty within his kingdom. I saw that all who lived and walked under the sun followed the youth, the king's successor. There was no end to all the people who were before them. But those who came later were not pleased with the successor. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind." Ecclesiastes 4:13-16

Reflecting at 26

It's the eve of my 26th birthday. By my standards, that's still pretty young. I still have yet to get to that point where I'm self-conscious about my age. Though I must admit, 26 feels a whole lot closer to 30 than 25 does, and 30 does seem kinda, sorta old. Anywho, I had the sudden urge to make a list of things I would like to do before I'm 30. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Teach myself calculus and physics.

2. Take a summer trip to Alaska.

3. Enroll in some business classes (In case I decide to pursue one my dreams to own my own coffee shop/bookstore.)

4. Marry an intelligent, joyful, Christian woman.

5. Get a decent start on writing a book.

6. Establish a healthy diet and regular exercise routine.

7. Learn how to spend less money than I make.

8. Attend WrestleMania XXVI, XXVII, or XXVIII

9. Make volunteering for community projects, relief efforts, etc. a regular part of my life.

10. Get a driver's license and a car. Btw, if anyone would like to help me with this one, I need some free driving lessons. ; )

Evolution, Creation, and the Irresistible Urge to Exist

Any biologists will tell you that it is quite astonishing how life can exist in the most extreme conditions.  It's everywhere.  From scorching hot geysers to Earth's frigid poles to the deepest parts of the oceans, life somehow finds a way to spring up and survive.  We have found living organisms in places we never thought we would.

I had my own little revelation regarding this fact today.  Vines and branches were beginning to overtake the XA House recently, so I started chopping and snipping away at them, just a little each day for the past week or so.  It left a few nice little compost piles of dead leaves and wood, which I decided to rake up and put in garbage bags today.  As I was raking up one particular pile, mostly leaves and wet soil from all the rain we've gotten in the last week, I discovered an entire little ecosystem that had developed there.  As I tore the brushed away at the canopy of this makeshift biosphere, little creatures scattered in every direction.  Rolly pollies, worms, and all sorts of bugs ran off, presumably to find new shelter.  I was amazed at how quickly this miniature world had become inhabited.

Many people, including both people of faith and people of science, are unable to see anything but conflict when looking at the ideas behind Evolution and Creation.  Many others however, (including myself) look at these two ways of accounting for existence, and, far from seeing inherent conflict, we see two complementary Truths.  Evolution is a story about the complexity of life developing from an odd, irresistible urge in every living thing, from single-celled organisms to homo sapiens, to live and to reproduce.  The Biblical account of creation is a story about a God who creates life by the mere act of saying, "Let there be."  I find it quite compelling to think that perhaps this urge to live that Darwin taught us about can be explained as a near-obsessive obedience to the diving command that Genesis teaches us about.

Read Genesis 1 again and notice that it is not a story of God crafting every plant and animal individually and micromanaging their existence.  God actually commands the Earth itself to bring forth these creatures, and the Earth, of course, obeyed.  The way I see it, Evolution is simply what happened when Creation listened to God's voice saying, "Let there be."

On the "Anti-naturalist"

One of the most basic foundations for a person's worldview depends on what kind of thoughts the words "natural" and "supernatural" bring to mind. A naturalist can be defined as someone who believes that the methods of science are sufficient to explain everything that exists. At the other end of the spectrum is the supernaturalist, who believes that there are things that exist that are beyond "nature." In other words, that there are phenomena that we experience that originate from somewhere beyond the material world, and are thus beyond the scope of the types of explanations that science offers.

Something I've observed recently is that there would seem to be a third category, (or maybe a sub-category of supernaturalist) that I would call anti-naturalism. (That word already has a certain meaning in the philosophy world, but I'm "re-coining" it here for a different purpose.) The anti-naturalist could be described as a supernaturalist who gives special favor or status to the supernatural phenomena, while thinking of natural phenomena as mundane or somehow less special than supernatural phenomena.

I find anti-naturalist tendencies to be fairly prevalent among Christians, and this, to me, is disheartening. I can understand it somewhat. It's quite thrilling to experience things that seem to have no possible natural explanation (i. e., miraculous healing, meaningful coincidences, etc.), and I believe that God likes to show his might and good will through such things. However, to look down our noses at the natural world is to deny the simple and essential notion that God created it all. We tend to have this fetish for the supernatural because then we know that "God did that," but dare we deny (whether explicitly or implicitly) that God also provided the meal that we ate for lunch. Or that he created the ground we walk on, the oxygen we breathe, the friends and family we love so much, etc.

Perhaps this is why Jesus said that it's a "perverse generation" who looks for a sign. I don't think he said that to condemn us when we desire to see God's hand reach out to us in a special way. I think the perversion is simply failing to recognize that the whole universe is a sign, and that the invisible qualities of God are made known to us by that which he has created. Sure, a miraculous healing is quite a marvel, but the Universe ain't nothing to scoff at either.