Happy Late Night, Sweet Baby,
Not a lot to report today, just hunkering down to stay out of the cold and wind. Still went on my walk, though. Can't miss that, wind or no wind. Lots of tree branches down all over the place. It's supposed to stop by tomorrow afternoon, thank goodness. No movie tonight; I was just reading my books : "The Orchard" by Charles Grant, which has one of the scariest sequences I have ever read (takes place in a darkened movie theater), and my main book at the moment, "Genesis, Creation and Early Man" by Father Seraphim Rose, of the Orthodox Christian Church. Orthodox should be distinguished from Fundamentalist in a number of ways, most significantly in the way the Orthodox Church adheres strictly to the Patristic teachings of the early Church Fathers. The idea behind Orthodoxy is to not stray from the words and teachings of the Apostles, who were actually present with Christ. They were actual witnesses.
The other big difference is the rigorous intellectual analysis of the Biblical material as it relates to the question of creation. Fundamentalist churches tend to.........well, to be polite, they do not rigorously analyse anything from an intellectual standpoint. What they do instead is just interpret the Bible according to their feelings about the world, and in doing so they create the "version" of Christianity that seems so hateful to many people, myself included.
I was never a "Bible" person, and I'm still not, really, because you have chapters in it like Exodus, in which "God" (more likely Yaweh, a physical being but not really God) is presented as a psychotic tyrant.
I won't go on a Biblical Tirade, and I am no Biblical scholar, but as I did begin to peruse the Bible in my 30s, I realised I was a believer in the New Testament, rather than the whole thing. Which is not to say there isn't some history in the Old Testament. It's just that when you get to the New, that's when Jesus appears, and He is the Real Deal. His words, truths and ideas simply cannot be disputed.
In other words, besides being the Son Of God, He was also the Ultimate Intellectual Thinker. And I like that.
And that's what drew me to this book. I am not an Orthodox Christian, nor a member of any denomination as I have stated before. If anything, I am closest to being Catholic, as my Mom was. But I don't belong to a denomination. I simply just believe in Jesus Christ, because of His words, works, truths and ideas.
I am always attracted by intellectual rigor, and also, I was raised as an Acolyte (altar boy) in the Espiscopal Church when I was five years old. So the feeling has been in me since I was a child.
But back to the book: why am I a Creationist?
Because the Theory Of Evolution stems from Naturalism, the idea that we cannot see, hear, touch or otherwise perceive God with any of our five senses, therefore, it is not logical that God exists. Naturalism says that we can only believe in God, and for the Natural Scientists (like Charles Darwin), that's not good enough. Belief is not good enough when compared to what science can show us, about Nature and the World. And so, using science, they came up with the most preposterous theory I have ever heard of in my life.
And that is The Theory Of Evolution, which states that everything began in a Primordial Soup, which is a fair enough start. But then it goes on to postulate that molecules began to bond - at random, with no rhyme or reason (because there is no God), and eventually the molecules became plants. And at some point another strain of molecules - again totally at random - became fish. And then fish became frogs and such........until finally there were monkeys, which became Man.
And all totally at random, with only the struggle for survival (of the fittest) as a motivating factor.
Excuse me while I laugh my head off.
The Theory Of Evolution totally excludes the enormity of Human Consciousness, the sheer enormity, in which the Soul is felt inside each person, in which profound emotion is felt, in which music is felt as a language of the deepest connection, and in which the ultimate question of "Why", as in why are we here?, is never far from the surface........
Yeah, tell me again that we are here because of a random collection of molecules.
So I won't go on a tirade, and I am not a Fundamentalist Christian, or even an Orthodox one. I am just a person who believes in Jesus Christ, and in some form of Creationism, because The Theory Of Evolution is a joke. I don't see how anyone can "believe in it".
And thus, because I am always on an intellectual quest for Why We Are Here, and How We Came To Be Here, I ordered this book when it was recommended to me on Amazon, and I must say that, 200 pages in, I am blowing my mind. It's not just a lot of re-interpreted Biblical hogwash, but a strict and intellectually rigorous examination of, so far, The Book Of Genesis.
I'm always in search of answers, SB. And so I don't mind saying I'm a Creationist, as a general term, meaning I am not tied down to any particular version of Creationism, and certainly not to any Fundamentalist version.
Anyhow, that's my reading material at the moment. And also The Final Report On The Bombing Of The Alfred P. Murrah Building, or the OKC Bombing for short. It's as big a deal as 9/11, and I have been studying it all year, in various books.
Well, that's all I know for tonight.
I hope your day was good. I see that Sarah & Co. are on their way back from their tour, and again, I think it's great to see all the success everyone is having, both you and your friends, as you have all moved on from school years to the present. Super cool, I say. And it's gonna keep getting better!
See you in the morning. I Love You. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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