Oh please, you know what I'm talking about. The girl that tells you to be honest about everything you know will not be able to take it when you tell her she isn't looking her best or that dress doesn't look amazing on her. The guy that says to you "I'm doing bad aren't I?" you know is expecting you to flatter him by saying he's doing pretty good or not bad when really he's doing terrible at something. The people you talk to everyday you ask how they're doing when in truth you don't care one bit AND when they ask you back you robotically respond "good" because you couldn't bare to tell them anything more or anything out of the ordinary.
I've come to the realization that we live in a world devoid of truth, where white lies rule. Who cares about what is honest right as long as the wall of deceit keeps me satisfied and feeling good. It's like the Matrix. Enough said.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Monday, July 23, 2007
I hate debating...
I hate debating for two reasons. Firstly, I'm no good at it. Debating requires one to have a good hold of the topic being argued and to be able to spit out facts and arguments about said topic with little to no time to think. What goes on inside my head when I'm trying to form an argument or a rebuttal and I'm pressed for time? Well, it's indescribable, but if it could be put into words it might be something like this:
AS:OIHWR(*@H@I&GJFN!P)(($&%P@!)!(YWIDE)@(YEISHOULDBETHINKING@*
(Y$*#@N)P(SIFD#RIUH)($J(ICANTDOTHIS_)(@HRE#&)*UMMMM(*$HTP($#W*H*)
)(#$HR*$(HT)$MAYBE#)(R*Y#HPRHGH##(RU@QPOI#CRAP
Instead of orderly thinking it through, my brain spends 3/6 of it's power in a jumbled mess panicking and 2/6 thinking about what it's going to be like when I wind up without something to say. And that 1/6 that's working correctly, well, that's generally not enough.
But to hate something because I'm bad at it is not reason enough. I also despise debating because it leads almost always among my friends and peers to large and heated arguments that end up going in circles. They aren't productive and they aren't very enlightening, but instead are just very loud and sometimes hurtful. It doesn't mean anything to me to tell somebody what my thoughts are when they won't listen. Trust me, in an argument everybody has a defensive wall up that blocks all things everyone else says except to throw it back at them.
If debating could be done productively and non-threateningly, I would enjoy it a lot more and probably would seek more to develop my skills at it. However I think I'll stick to argumentative writing. This brings me to a topic I "discussed" recently with my friends Griffin and Mike in the car the other day.
It seems that no matter what idea is being debated or discussed or argued or whatever, it always leads to the origin of the world. This is because moral issues for me are decided strictly based on my faith, thus all debates as some might say become "religious" debates. But this is fair ground, though many people would say otherwise. The reason it is fair is because religion (though the correct term is faith) is a basis for moral and ethical decisions, and I feel it is a greater basis than ones own personal understanding that is derived from nothing but his/her own heart and experience. But this ends of creating a whole other debate entirely (which is why many wish to say faith must be kept out of the equation). If the person's faith is true, than the moral issue is decided in their favor, but if it is not, than that person's view is in the wrong. How does one prove that faith to be true or not? Many would choose to push science over it, and what better area to ask about than the one which is least understood: the world's beginning.
I don't know why debates always stem to the beginning of the universe, for I believe that evolution's greatest flaw is in its explanation of the beginning. There are two ideas one can believe: either something came out of nothing, or something was always there to create everything else. Most modern day evolutionists and creationists believe the same thing, that the beginning did not start with nothing, but rather there was some force or thing that was eternally existent that happened to start all this. For creationists, it is God. For evolutionists, it is matter or energy of some sort. Either way, it means something was always there.
When I look at everything around us in this world alone, let alone the hundreds of billions of planets and galaxies and what not, it just blows my mind. How could all of this just have happened? "Very simply," you might say, "it just did." OK, that's fine, but why all this? When I look at the sun rise, when I watch shooting stars on a clear night, when I go running and look at the trees and plants, when I admire my pets and the wildlife I see when I hunt or fish, I can't believe this was all just an accident. You see, I'm a very logical person, and what makes sense to me is the thing I am most willing to accept. And I've studied evolution just as much as I have creation, and the odds weigh heavily in favor of creation. I can't begin to understand how so many people go through life thinking we were just a result of some process. How are we the only ones with a true civilization, if all the other animals are so close to us? How come we are the only ones with feelings, that act with morality rather than on survival like the rest of science? Why? It can't be explained with science alone. Why do we love? Why do we invent? Why do we do things for recreation? Why do we have all this stuff, all this creation? Because it was all created, that's why. It was designed and put to together by someone. It wasn't all just a result of some random chance that came about by ever-existing laws. If it was, who decided the laws? Where did the matter come from. If we look at science first, we always will disprove ourselves. Something can't come from nothing and something can't just eternally exist. But if we look at God first and then fit science around it, that makes sense and there is no disproving it. God was always there. Period. If we can accept that there is a being that is above time and created time, then we shouldn't have trouble believing in the science that he created. So many scientists/evolutionists look at the world through scientific glasses, maybe not "no-God" glasses, but scientific ones. They say that science disproves God and thus God can't exist. Well, God is not under the laws of science, in fact He made them and started them. Just because we see the laws in effect here doesn't mean that everything is bound by them, especially not an all-powerful being. Sometimes I think people just don't want to accept that there is something greater than them at work here, because it makes so much sense to me.
Many will say that the idea of an all powerful being is an easy escape, is too simple a theory, and that it's easily just made up. Well, think of it this way. The idea of God has been around long before the idea of evolution. Some say that we were intelligent enough to think beyond that, but I say that people thought simplistically and logically. They didn't fool themselves by thinking "God is too simple an idea to be true". Instead, they found a rational explanation for the world and followed it. Now there are many gods that have been thought up, and not all of them are real, in fact there is only one God in truth. But this God, unlike many others, did not come up out of thin air. God had put in place since the beginning of time events where He would show himself to people and perform unimaginable wonders and miracles, all the way until the death of Jesus. Afterwards, His miracles would only be in written form, with evidence written down through God by men in the form of the Bible. This book proves God's existent, if only one can believe that it is true. However, the problem now lies with believing that the Bible is true, for if the Bible is true than God is, but if it is all just a bunch of stories and tales, than perhaps God isn't.
An analysis of the validity of the Bible I perhaps will write sometime in the future, but for now I shall end my rant. I love to debate in the literal form, as long as the discussion does not become an offensive argument.
As a small addition to this post I shall also add that I purchased the PC game "Company of Heroes" today, the first game purchase I've made in quite a long time. I find it to be one of the most realistic and interesting RTS (real-time-strategy) games I've ever played, especially since I've never played a modern day RTS (WWII). It doesn't have 12 or more civilizations and technology trees like Age of Empires II (it has two, Axis and Allied), but what is does have is balanced and used incredibly well and makes for endless hours of replay-ability. I can't go into details, but probably one of my favorite parts of the game is the realism in terrain destruction. If you shoot a building with a rocket, it wil blow a hole in the building or window, whether or not the building has sustained enough damage to collapse. If you shoot a mortar at a tank and it hits, the tank will explode and leave a fried tank carcass on the battlefield to hide behind and use as an obstacle. If it misses, it will blow a hole in the ground for your men or a gun emplacement to to take cover. All of this plus insane graphics and detail that even my nice graphics card can't run at top settings makes it stunning to watch (even if it's your men getting the crap blown out of them). Not to mention the fact that the game has a huge single player mode, an online or LAN capable multiplayer, and even a standard game generator with customizable options for countless single player skirmishes. If anything is a distraction for me right now, it's this game.
AS:OIHWR(*@H@I&GJFN!P)(($&%P@!)!(YWIDE)@(YEISHOULDBETHINKING@*
(Y$*#@N)P(SIFD#RIUH)($J(ICANTDOTHIS_)(@HRE#&)*UMMMM(*$HTP($#W*H*)
)(#$HR*$(HT)$MAYBE#)(R*Y#HPRHGH##(RU@QPOI#CRAP
Instead of orderly thinking it through, my brain spends 3/6 of it's power in a jumbled mess panicking and 2/6 thinking about what it's going to be like when I wind up without something to say. And that 1/6 that's working correctly, well, that's generally not enough.
But to hate something because I'm bad at it is not reason enough. I also despise debating because it leads almost always among my friends and peers to large and heated arguments that end up going in circles. They aren't productive and they aren't very enlightening, but instead are just very loud and sometimes hurtful. It doesn't mean anything to me to tell somebody what my thoughts are when they won't listen. Trust me, in an argument everybody has a defensive wall up that blocks all things everyone else says except to throw it back at them.
If debating could be done productively and non-threateningly, I would enjoy it a lot more and probably would seek more to develop my skills at it. However I think I'll stick to argumentative writing. This brings me to a topic I "discussed" recently with my friends Griffin and Mike in the car the other day.
It seems that no matter what idea is being debated or discussed or argued or whatever, it always leads to the origin of the world. This is because moral issues for me are decided strictly based on my faith, thus all debates as some might say become "religious" debates. But this is fair ground, though many people would say otherwise. The reason it is fair is because religion (though the correct term is faith) is a basis for moral and ethical decisions, and I feel it is a greater basis than ones own personal understanding that is derived from nothing but his/her own heart and experience. But this ends of creating a whole other debate entirely (which is why many wish to say faith must be kept out of the equation). If the person's faith is true, than the moral issue is decided in their favor, but if it is not, than that person's view is in the wrong. How does one prove that faith to be true or not? Many would choose to push science over it, and what better area to ask about than the one which is least understood: the world's beginning.
I don't know why debates always stem to the beginning of the universe, for I believe that evolution's greatest flaw is in its explanation of the beginning. There are two ideas one can believe: either something came out of nothing, or something was always there to create everything else. Most modern day evolutionists and creationists believe the same thing, that the beginning did not start with nothing, but rather there was some force or thing that was eternally existent that happened to start all this. For creationists, it is God. For evolutionists, it is matter or energy of some sort. Either way, it means something was always there.
When I look at everything around us in this world alone, let alone the hundreds of billions of planets and galaxies and what not, it just blows my mind. How could all of this just have happened? "Very simply," you might say, "it just did." OK, that's fine, but why all this? When I look at the sun rise, when I watch shooting stars on a clear night, when I go running and look at the trees and plants, when I admire my pets and the wildlife I see when I hunt or fish, I can't believe this was all just an accident. You see, I'm a very logical person, and what makes sense to me is the thing I am most willing to accept. And I've studied evolution just as much as I have creation, and the odds weigh heavily in favor of creation. I can't begin to understand how so many people go through life thinking we were just a result of some process. How are we the only ones with a true civilization, if all the other animals are so close to us? How come we are the only ones with feelings, that act with morality rather than on survival like the rest of science? Why? It can't be explained with science alone. Why do we love? Why do we invent? Why do we do things for recreation? Why do we have all this stuff, all this creation? Because it was all created, that's why. It was designed and put to together by someone. It wasn't all just a result of some random chance that came about by ever-existing laws. If it was, who decided the laws? Where did the matter come from. If we look at science first, we always will disprove ourselves. Something can't come from nothing and something can't just eternally exist. But if we look at God first and then fit science around it, that makes sense and there is no disproving it. God was always there. Period. If we can accept that there is a being that is above time and created time, then we shouldn't have trouble believing in the science that he created. So many scientists/evolutionists look at the world through scientific glasses, maybe not "no-God" glasses, but scientific ones. They say that science disproves God and thus God can't exist. Well, God is not under the laws of science, in fact He made them and started them. Just because we see the laws in effect here doesn't mean that everything is bound by them, especially not an all-powerful being. Sometimes I think people just don't want to accept that there is something greater than them at work here, because it makes so much sense to me.
Many will say that the idea of an all powerful being is an easy escape, is too simple a theory, and that it's easily just made up. Well, think of it this way. The idea of God has been around long before the idea of evolution. Some say that we were intelligent enough to think beyond that, but I say that people thought simplistically and logically. They didn't fool themselves by thinking "God is too simple an idea to be true". Instead, they found a rational explanation for the world and followed it. Now there are many gods that have been thought up, and not all of them are real, in fact there is only one God in truth. But this God, unlike many others, did not come up out of thin air. God had put in place since the beginning of time events where He would show himself to people and perform unimaginable wonders and miracles, all the way until the death of Jesus. Afterwards, His miracles would only be in written form, with evidence written down through God by men in the form of the Bible. This book proves God's existent, if only one can believe that it is true. However, the problem now lies with believing that the Bible is true, for if the Bible is true than God is, but if it is all just a bunch of stories and tales, than perhaps God isn't.
An analysis of the validity of the Bible I perhaps will write sometime in the future, but for now I shall end my rant. I love to debate in the literal form, as long as the discussion does not become an offensive argument.
As a small addition to this post I shall also add that I purchased the PC game "Company of Heroes" today, the first game purchase I've made in quite a long time. I find it to be one of the most realistic and interesting RTS (real-time-strategy) games I've ever played, especially since I've never played a modern day RTS (WWII). It doesn't have 12 or more civilizations and technology trees like Age of Empires II (it has two, Axis and Allied), but what is does have is balanced and used incredibly well and makes for endless hours of replay-ability. I can't go into details, but probably one of my favorite parts of the game is the realism in terrain destruction. If you shoot a building with a rocket, it wil blow a hole in the building or window, whether or not the building has sustained enough damage to collapse. If you shoot a mortar at a tank and it hits, the tank will explode and leave a fried tank carcass on the battlefield to hide behind and use as an obstacle. If it misses, it will blow a hole in the ground for your men or a gun emplacement to to take cover. All of this plus insane graphics and detail that even my nice graphics card can't run at top settings makes it stunning to watch (even if it's your men getting the crap blown out of them). Not to mention the fact that the game has a huge single player mode, an online or LAN capable multiplayer, and even a standard game generator with customizable options for countless single player skirmishes. If anything is a distraction for me right now, it's this game.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Summer Preview
When I walked into summer preview I didn't quite know what was going to happen. I didn't know if I would find many people to talk to, as I remember many times me going to a college visit and finding nobody willing to come up and talk without invitation. The last thing I want is to go into orientation knowing nobody.
But the thing is, we have something my parents never had or even a few generations before us never had. Facebook has provided a way to meet and chat with tons of people going to the same college. I had chatted quite a bit on this site, but that didn't change my attitude. It's one thing to chat online, another completely to meet them in person. I found ways to think of how seeing them on Facebook could make the conversations even more awkward than meeting for the first time.
Fortunately for me, I'm not half as bad at making conversation as I used to be. Two people (best friends actually) I recognized on Facebook and pretty much instantly found a connection with. Long story short I almost spent too much time with them, but I did push myself to make casual friendships and acquaintances with others. What I found most amazing was the number of card games we played that night and the tolerance all of them had for learning them. I was pleasantly surprised by the whole weekend.
A weekend of meeting knew people doesn't come without its awkward moments however. I remember one conversation I fell into when walking out of Alexander Dining Hall.
Girl: "I KNOW YOU FROM FACEBOOK! *points finger at me*"
Dave: "Uh... yeah that's me." *walks over* "I'm Dave, what's your name?"
Girl: "Hanna, but every I know calls me Anna. Yeah I definitely remember you from facebook."
Dave: "Yeah, I've posted a lot on the Class of 2011 group. I think I remember seeing you there."
Hanna: "Yep. You live near here?" *turns to girl she previously was talking to* "Yeah, everybody says I'm really cute."
Dave: "No, actually."
Hanna: "WHAT!! YOU DON'T THINK I'M CUTE?! EVRYBODY THINKS I'M CUTE!
Dave: "No, I um..."
Hanna: "HOW CAN YOU RESIST THIS FACE?" *makes a cute face*
Dave: "That's not what I meant..."
Hanna: "I'm not friends gonna be friends with you anymore Dave."
Enough said... I never quite lived that down, even though she was only being half serious. I guess some people think it's funny or "cute" (hehe) but I take things too seriously sometimes and frankly don't quite know how to react in those situations. Live and learn I guess.
As for roommates, I came in looking to become good friends with someone and choose to room with them. Turns out I ended up just wanting to leave it up to chance or fate rather. I had an offer or two for roommates, but I didn't know enough to commit like that. I found there's plenty of people to meet that I wouldn't mind rooming with and I figure I want to see how they match me up with the preference form. Plus, I want the option of rooming with a person in the honors program. So yeah...
All in all I thought it was a great time. A few too many generalized lectures, but overall really surpassed my doubtful expectations. Now I can't wait to get to Geneva in the fall.
But the thing is, we have something my parents never had or even a few generations before us never had. Facebook has provided a way to meet and chat with tons of people going to the same college. I had chatted quite a bit on this site, but that didn't change my attitude. It's one thing to chat online, another completely to meet them in person. I found ways to think of how seeing them on Facebook could make the conversations even more awkward than meeting for the first time.
Fortunately for me, I'm not half as bad at making conversation as I used to be. Two people (best friends actually) I recognized on Facebook and pretty much instantly found a connection with. Long story short I almost spent too much time with them, but I did push myself to make casual friendships and acquaintances with others. What I found most amazing was the number of card games we played that night and the tolerance all of them had for learning them. I was pleasantly surprised by the whole weekend.
A weekend of meeting knew people doesn't come without its awkward moments however. I remember one conversation I fell into when walking out of Alexander Dining Hall.
Girl: "I KNOW YOU FROM FACEBOOK! *points finger at me*"
Dave: "Uh... yeah that's me." *walks over* "I'm Dave, what's your name?"
Girl: "Hanna, but every I know calls me Anna. Yeah I definitely remember you from facebook."
Dave: "Yeah, I've posted a lot on the Class of 2011 group. I think I remember seeing you there."
Hanna: "Yep. You live near here?" *turns to girl she previously was talking to* "Yeah, everybody says I'm really cute."
Dave: "No, actually."
Hanna: "WHAT!! YOU DON'T THINK I'M CUTE?! EVRYBODY THINKS I'M CUTE!
Dave: "No, I um..."
Hanna: "HOW CAN YOU RESIST THIS FACE?" *makes a cute face*
Dave: "That's not what I meant..."
Hanna: "I'm not friends gonna be friends with you anymore Dave."
Enough said... I never quite lived that down, even though she was only being half serious. I guess some people think it's funny or "cute" (hehe) but I take things too seriously sometimes and frankly don't quite know how to react in those situations. Live and learn I guess.
As for roommates, I came in looking to become good friends with someone and choose to room with them. Turns out I ended up just wanting to leave it up to chance or fate rather. I had an offer or two for roommates, but I didn't know enough to commit like that. I found there's plenty of people to meet that I wouldn't mind rooming with and I figure I want to see how they match me up with the preference form. Plus, I want the option of rooming with a person in the honors program. So yeah...
All in all I thought it was a great time. A few too many generalized lectures, but overall really surpassed my doubtful expectations. Now I can't wait to get to Geneva in the fall.
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