Sup?: September 29, 2010

What’s up with me?

  • Today is is rainy and sort of chilly outside, but I’m in the library, where it feels like 90.
  • A lot of what is going on lately in my life has to do with my aspirations to enroll at a graduate school.
    • I have completed the easy parts of my grad school applications, the basic biographical stuff.
    • I still have to find people to write recommendations for me. I have a few prospects for people, but I feel awkward asking for them.
    • I have to write a statement of purpose for each of my potential graduate schools.
    • I still have to gather my official transcripts, the unofficials are in.
  • In my undergraduate world
    • Have to complete a sociology paper
    • Test is due on Friday in my Animal behavior class, I’m a little freaked about that, its the first one, and I don’t like the class that much
    • There is a quiz due on Sunday in Child Psychopathology
    • There is a quiz due on Sunday in History and Systems of Psychology
    • I have to manage to keep myself focused on all of my coursework to maintain my GPA for graduate school

RT: Status Thoughts

It really sucks that I can’t update my status simply by thinking it. Having to wait until I get to wifi or having to pull my phone out sucks and results in too many statuses at once.

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Send to Kindle

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Yet another old interest returning

I have not been serious about gardening, plant cultivation or anything of that sort in years, but now I find myself expecting delivery of 75 bare root strawberry plants in November, 2 blueberry bushes in December and 150 regular strawberry plants in February, as well as having an existing 5 Muscatine vines that will need tending to. Over the past few days I have been gathering what little information that exists on the topics that is freely available and trying to compile a good amount of it into a usable form. At present it is feeling a bit like a research paper, which is how I will likely approach getting this information together into a concise bit of information that might be useful to me and to others. The odd question I find myself wondering though is what format does the field of horticulture use for research papers? I suspect botany, being a division of biology would use MLA, but horticulture is a bit more bare bones, less biology and more “ground” work. The research paper theory would work better for this if I had a base for it, some question or main thesis to go against. All I know is I want to compile information that will result in the best berries from my plants and vines that I possibly can do.

I partially wonder if I am using this topic as a distraction from preparing paperwork for graduate school. Maybe it is, or maybe it is just an old interest getting new life again, now that I am once again prepared for such an interest. My head has been too filled with technology, philosophy and psychological theories lately. I need some diversion that is a little more grounded and a little more basic, and in some way puts me in touch with earth again. Academic thought is a wonderful place, but at the end of the day, its still just thought and all that can be done with it is think or write. Even art, photography and ceramics, has to much thinking involved. Things must have balance and must be framed just so. It is all very tiring and leaves me looking for fond memories of accomplishment without so much thought.

Faith, or Crisis Thereof

If this works out the way it’s supposed to, this will be my final post on the topic of religion (at least for this ranting period).

Over the past few weeks I have come into closer contact with religion than I have in a long time. From a conversation about indoctrination of youth with Chris to having a pleasant conversation with a pair of Mormon missionaries (yes, I mean it) to having an impassioned discussion about evolution vs. creationism in my History & Systems course (PSYC 400) it has been a busy few weeks for me in terms of philosophical and theological thoughts.

What do I believe? I don’t know.

I believe that organized religions try too hard to indoctrinate and to convert, but that isn’t exactly something substantial to build a religious platform on.  My childhood was not exactly filled with religion. My parents did not go to church and I never went to church. When filling out forms requiring a religious preference, I didn’t have enough time to think about it, I just bubbled N/A or anything the seemed benign (I think I used Baptist on an AP test once). I have never had a religious identity. If I were going to try to fit in, obviously I would pick some variant of Christianity and go with it, but somehow just picking a religion and going with it seems wrong. It seems immoral to declare myself something that I am not, and that I have not been able to form a belief in.

Most recently I have associated myself most closely with being Agnostic, because I can not resolve the concept of a God, but at the same time I am not willing to wholly reject the possibility. I can not resolve how the universe began. I suppose I believe it started with a compressed orb of matter and energy, which rapidly expanded. The belief exists without any explanation of how that matter and energy got there or in what material or construct that matter and energy were suspended. This inability to resolve these issues concerns me because I like for everything to make sense. This inability to resolve also means that in some way I need some type of faith, but I have difficulty selecting one because I do not know how to validate one with any sense of reliability.

Organized religion is probably the leading cause for why I have not done more research and talked more about my lack of a religion. I have no problem with any religion, but it is hard to embrace something when it feels like it is being forced on me, or worse, when people try to convert me while at the same time insult me because I do not happen to believe in their particular religion. With this type of response it is difficult to figure out anything about the religion, other than to get the feeling that I want nothing to do with a people that are that rabid in their beliefs. I am happy for people who have found something to believe in, but I do not think that anyone should ever have to deal with beliefs being thrust upon them.

I believe that the universe exists.
I believe that sentient beings should do no harm to each other.
I do not presently have a belief in "God”.

 

“What does God need with a space-ship?”

Vicious Christians

Tomorrow night is the deadline for the discussion board in my History and Systems class and things are heating up quite a bit. Below are some examples from the course discussion board about this week’s topic.

“Hopefully there is someone out here who is looking to find the thruth and uses this class,discussion board topic and/or the reading and begans to walk toward to right path.In addition I don’t have the stats as of right now but theCountry is getting worse as more and more people are Atheist, devil worshipers etc.”

It would seem that because I do not believe the same what that I do that I am suddenly a devil worshipper. I do not recognize any being, so why would I recognize a devil more than a God?

“Amen Girl, Great post…….. Those who fail to believe in God have little substance not to mention they have NO idea what they are missing. I agree we all have changed and that in itself is evolution. But God created us and know one to DATE has proven otherwise.”

Because I use my brain and look for logical evidence I lack substance, but these people who believe absolutely in a being who exists in the ether are absolutely substantial?

“Because they are scientist, they feel they have no need to believe in the supernatural or because science is considered the ultimate source of intellectual meaning, their pride gets in the way. “

I am agnostic because I am too proud of being scientifically minded to allow myself to believe in God?

"They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised”

Just a biblical quote, but it is aimed at anyone who believes in science. From the perspective of the Bible being created as a social engineering tool, to manipulate people into a belief system, it would make sense for there to be built-in safe-guards against thinking outside of the religion.

I personally will be really glad when this week is over so that the witch hunt can subside and I won’t have to feel like there are 24 spritzer bottles of holy water aimed in my general direction. I wish to co-exist with these people and have no need to judge their beliefs, only to respect the differing views, but yet they are all about the accusations and the conversion.

Religion, Again

Didn’t I just write a post about this topic? Yes, I seem to recall that I did.

This time the topic comes to me from the most unlikely of places, my History and Systems of Psychology course. The topic of the week for the discussion board is as follows:

Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was a direct challenge to the widely accepted church views on creation and evolution.What do you believe about evolution and creation? Discuss the history of Church/Science conflicts.

I expected when the discussion began that it would be a nice quiet discussion based on the facts at hand, as well as being relevant to the text and the material of the course. Instead, it has turned into an opportunity for the rabidly impassioned Christians of the course to pick up the flaming pitchforks. The first post on the topic started off citing scriptures and ended by accusing scientists of being “blind”, “not able to know what it is to be human” and “too prideful to see the truth”.  I am not usually the type to fall for responding to such a post, but this time I did. My response pointed out that there is no evidence of God, and that using creation itself as evidence was like proving the Earth is the center of the universe by pointing that the sun travels across the sky. I also pointed out a few logical issues with the person’s post such as her colorful use of ad hominem style argumentation.

So far I am the only person who has posted who has been on Darwin’s side of things, then again we agnostics have to defend each other, since no one else will. My opinion on the topic is that we cannot prove the existence of a divine being, and as such any theories that are based on the assumption that there is cannot be proven either. I feel that because of the fossil record and what we know of the way organisms develop that evolution is a much more likely explanation for existence. Religious groups seem to want to disprove or discredit evolution by stating that it relies on a series of “accidents” to create an intelligent being. The interesting thing about evolution is that it only requires one accident, the mixing of amino acids to form a few proteins, which can then chain together to form organisms. The rest of the process just requires a few hundred millennia to sort things out. The other argument that I have seen is that “everything” must have a creator. I like this one because it is sort of like my theory that “everything” must have a container. The flaw with this argument comes when you look at “God” itself, if God created creation, then who created God? Some sort of Uber-god? Maybe, but that’s just one step removed from the same problem again. So just like in my container theory, there is no solution, and the theory of the religious are once again invalidated due to an argument that ends up requiring an infinite number of adaptive explanations (due to the fact that every creator must have a creator).

Sometimes I believe that life would be easier if I did have the capacity to believe in the same things as everyone else, but unfortunately, my experiences do not allow me to have such faiths.

Google Apps Transition

A few days ago I was prompted in the Google Apps administration panel to transition my accounts to using the new system, which allows a Google Apps account to access everything that a normal Google account can, except for YouTube and a few services that no one cares about. I selected to push forward and move my 7 users across to the new system.

So far the annoying thing is obvious, there is no easy way to move things like Google Reader settings from the old account to the “new” apps account. Also, there is no mechanism for re-associating a Google Voice number with a different account. At the moment I have an additional number, and I’m trying to figure out what to do about it. Because of improvements since I got my original number with GrandCentral I was able to pick a number that has the last 7 digits the same as my current land-line, but in the 775 area code. The funny thing is that the new account is more “functional” than my old account, as it already knows all of the information from my GMail account. I still have to move a few of my settings though.

I love that things are available more universally now, but I wonder why this wasn’t done when Google Apps was created? It seems a little late in the game. Thankfully, they have created multiple-logins so we can switch between IDs more flexibly (especially those of us who have 1 on apps, 1 regular and a few from schools).