Getting started.

Dear Readers,

I have never written a blog before. I don't know if anyone will find this blog interesting, but even if its only value is to organize my thoughts, it seems worth trying. I do not know how long I can do this, but now seems a good time to try.

When starting such a monumental undertaking as a search for Jehovah, I start with where my search began. I attend worship services with a specific group of believers, but I will not name them (at least now). I do not accept everything they believe as a matter of doctrine, and it would give a false impression of myself and that group to tie us together without some good explanations.

The first thing I come to was the role of faith. As a philosophical base, everything I know is by faith. I think we all should meander in the mazes of thinking about whether we really exist, what we are, and how we know these things. I speculated very early in my life. that my family was part of an experiment. I wondered whether my interactions with the world outside my family was an unreal play, with everything scripted and staged by someone (or something) that wanted to see how a little boy would behave under these controlled conditions. Trips to the grocery store meant people had to have been called first and told to be on the road, or in the store, or somewhere that would convince me that this was reality. But the dark secret my family held was that this was unreal, and I was being sent onto a stage in each of these encounters. The Why was not nearly as interesting to a daydreaming little boy as the concept of something so vast and captivating. Is that person on the sidewalk supposed to be there? Is that car coming over the centerline to provoke a reaction from me?

Of course, daydreams like this naturally occur in some form (if this be insanity, at least we all participate). Little kids are a world unto themselves, and when introduced to the big world, they first want to comprehend it in way such that they are still the center of the world. Little girls dream of being a princess, little boys become pretend kings of the world or maybe president. The dreamer is contemplating a world where the comforts of the crib are enforced on the scarier unknowns of the real world. But the logic of my little daydream cannot be refuted. Every "proof" that this is the real world can be answered: it is only staging. People dying? Just stage acting. The Holocaust? Well, I really didn't see that, and neither did you. Those pictures are staged. No argument can trump this simple"view" of reality.

But of course, in real life we throw off all such doubt because survival requires it. Consider a problem that is sometimes batted around offices and break rooms: A meteor is on a direct line to impact Earth. Due to its great speed and its track from seemingly empty space, first knowledge was three days from impact, in the American Midwest. It is of such size that impact will leave nuclear winter over the entire surface of Earth, with dust in the atmosphere to block 80% of sunlight, for at least 10 years. The astronomer who made the find comes to you at the White House and gives you the information. The White House Science Advisor confirms the calculations and observation with out involving anyone else. Essentially three people know that all human life will end two days from now. Do you announce it generally? Do you give other governments a tip, so they can prepare for the riots and civil unrest that must come (information this juicy cannot be confidential when more than the original three persons are involved)? Or do you limit the information to the three persons and isolate them so that no leaks or statements can occur? Do you have the internal strength to watch puny struggles for 48 hours, waiting for the impact to speak for itself?

First, all of this is not information: it is faith. You could learn calculus and how to operate a telescope. But not in two days. So your decision must be made on faith. Furthermore. you have unshakable faith that objects will always move in accordance with observed data when explained by human mathematics. We all do. So, by faith, you "know" the meteor will impact exactly the same way you know the sun will rise tomorrow. (Hebrews 11:1-Now faith...is the evidence of things not seen.)

What benefit comes of announcing the impact? Almost nothing. Two days of preparations will not move the meteor; no umbrella will shelter us from it, no greenhouse will sustain any life from the winter that will descend after the impact. Some wild ideas of underground nuclear powered farms abound in science fiction, but no human government has had this foresight in the face of budgets that are never large enough. In day-to-day life, we firmly believe, without stating it, that no change will occur that will require drastic preparation.

The only benefit from announcing the impending impact is to give humans a chance to make peace with their Deity. But the law of nonpreparation applies here too. If life has been lived without concern for one's God, how will the large knowledge and practice base (much more than learning calculus) be acquired in only two days?

Against that uncertain benefit, weigh the panic, riots, wars and other forms of destruction that such an announcement would generate. If our faith in the men and sciences that predict an impact should somehow be wrong, damage to innocents and the destruction of the social fabric that would occur following such an announcement would likely be only slightly less catastrophic than an actual impact. If such information can be kept confidential, expect the government to not give full and truthful information to the country in such a situation.

Well, this is much longer than I planned. Our lives are filled with faith. I want, in the course of this blog, to scrutinize my faiths very carefully, identify what I accept on faith, decide if it is important or trifling in the grand scheme of things, and coonsider why do I accept that on faith.

I am trying not to use this blog as a Bible thumper. Maybe some of my thoughts track with other people's journeys, or maybe someone else has gone through this and wants to give something of their conclusions to people reading this (I think this is that kind of blog). Regardless, have a good day.