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Well, I laid down about an hour ago and apparently I have too much stuff going through my head to go to sleep, so I figured I'd do a brain dump on the blog saying how thankful I am for all the Lord's blessings and give it another shot at some shut-eye. I also thought about staying up till midnight to buy an iPad for our Squadron Basket Party – I don't know if I'm going to go with Best Buy's $45 off deal or see what Apple presents when the clock strikes 12…
I had an amazing dinner with my amazing wife, and my amazing two sons, as well as my amazing sister-in-law who did an amazing job cleaning up! Now that I've ruined the word “amazing" for the rest of the blog, I'll stop adding superlatives… Maria had the great idea of writing down what we are thankful for on a little piece of paper and rolling them up in rolls and cooking them. It turned out well and only Gideon bit into a piece of paper. He also bit into a big turkey leg which was fun to watch, even though we really need to train him to eat better (sorry my iPhone was down stairs charging so I didn't catch the image of him eating the drumstick as big as his head). Although the games looked like they were good ones, I didn't watch much football because we got rid of TV while in Oki and the internet site I bought a lifetime subscription to watch sports online last year got shut down by the government earlier this year (I don't think I'm getting a refund.) We settled for movies and I stayed up to watch the end of the last Transformers movie.
I also didn't post something I'm thankful for every hour on the hour like I did last year on Facebook – mostly because I was just too lazy, and also because I didn't want to spend that much time on Facebook… However I did comment on a few posts, one was mine about the Target workers not wanting their Thanksgiving to be ruined. Maybe I'll do a blog post on that tomorrow. The other was the search for life on other planets that someone else posted, and this one I'll share after I sign off.
I've got 15 minutes more to be thankful, so I think I'm going to look at this passage in the Glo Bible app and write in my prayer journal. And because this is a Thanksgiving post, and for reasons I can't adequately articulate at the moment, Thanksgiving is synomous with Turkey so here's a photo of one that looked almost as good as ours:
Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving, and check out my wife's blog for more on ours!
peace,
Adam
PS: Here's the FB Thread, it's going to make this post really long, but it's one of the good ones:
It started with this, which is a CNN video called “is there life beyond earth"
A lady I don't know said: 0_0 this is amazing , how lovely, what a beauty ! It reminds me of my fav movie, At the edge of the universe ♥. I had seen this movie tons of times and I watch videos like this millions of times, there's a lot out there but is not the same seen it with just the eyes then seen it you the heart 🙂 and I don't think all of this was made with an explosion!
I then wrote the comment: I saw that on TV last night and the answer is yes! There is life beyond Earth – its called a New Heavens and New Earth, and only those who believe in the True Life Giver will ever see it… Any search to find other life simply reveals a rejection of Him who breathed life into me.
Another gentleman: If intelligent life, or any life, is found, how would it change your worldview?
Then the original poster wrote: Should it change it? Would it be inconceivable that God would create life around the universe?
He then addressed the first lady saying: I don't think the Big Bang is really something we can question. The real question is what/who caused the Big Bang? The Big Bang is awfully consistent with the Genesis account of God speaking things into existence.
I followed with a rather long comment: the question of whether it would change your worldview is an interesting one, and probably fun to use in striking up a conversation with an atheist; but it's also a dangerous one. Anytime we start moving towards the logic and reasoning of the lost, we have to be careful that we don't stray too far from Scripture. The question of whether God would create life around the universe could tend to diminish the clear purpose of why He created us. See the 8th Psalm to help focus your vision on that.
The theory that we could possibly not be the only ones, need answer to the fact that there is no evidence we aren't the only ones, just like the theory of evolution must answer to the fact that no evidence has been found of missing links between “kinds" – those creatures that can reproduce together… of which 2 – male and female boarded the ark when God wiped out the rest of creation because of sin.
Finally, what if the Genesis account did not contain any bang's? after all there wasn't anyone with ears to hear it till the 6th day… and no creature with ears till just before that. an interesting study would be to search for the “Big Bang's" in scripture… there's a few in Revelation…
and the original writer said: Wow, Adam. I think I'll just step back and let (friends name omitted) step in on some of your assertions. That is, if he feels like engaging someone other than me for a while…
The friend who I deleted the name of said: you have to admit, it would require some creative theology to account for other sentient life, should it be found. Would they have souls? Would you be obligated to share the gosple? Of course it would not apply to them, as they were not sons and daugthers of Adam and Eve. Perhaps their kind never suffered a Fall. Would interaction with mankind, even remotely, bring sin into their otherwise sinless worlds? I feel a religious themed science fiction story coming on! Adam, just to cage my gyro – how old is the Earth?
And the last comment (so far) by me was this long explanation (which I'll probably email to one of my friends at my squadron who scoffs whenever this subject is brought up: This is a fun discussion that I've had with many, and to avoid going where it goes with most people, I'll provide you three options for my answer, and I'm pretty sure it'll be obvious which one I choose… Here we go:
1) If macro evolution was required to get where we are today then the earth is billions of years old (2.4 is the number in text books I think) 2) also similar to #1: If carbon dating is accurate as well as other methods of dating which assume a constant, such as decay or rate of change in sediment or erosion, then the millions and billions of years are reinforced, but it's just a range maybe 1 to 4 billion years and the universe much much much older- since it takes a while for all of the nothing to come together and explode to form everything.
Finally, #3: If we use the Bible (though rejected in academia has shown itself to be historically and scientifically accurate) then we add up the recorded genealogies (which is where most people give up their one year Bible reading plans) as well as the Genesis account of the flood, understanding how fast erosion and sediment can happen (e.g. Mount St. Helens and the recent hurricane in the North East) as a factor of velocity and pressure inversely proportional to time; while measuring the near constant rate of growth of things such as deserts and underwater coral reefs (the Sahara and Great Barrier specifically) as well as noting ice core samples are insufficient to measure years because they only show hot and cold periods which some years could have more of than others… Then we conclude that the earth – as it is -probably started 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.
But this all matters little in the grand scheme of life because questions of individual purpose and overall meaning (although affected by an understanding of origin) are much more worthy of introspective exploration and study.
Don't rush to reply with a comment, I deliberately made this long because it's all I have to say on the matter, and probably wont recheck this thread… There's tons of resources out there – “evidence" on both sides… But ultimately each person has to CHOOSE what they want to BELIEVE and evidence can't convince someone who holds their beliefs with conviction.
and there you have it… my longest post so far! thanks for staying with me!!!