Wednesday, April 23, 2008

When every judgment seems to smack of doom

"Nanci" ~ Toad the Wet Sprocket

Random thoughts from the past day or so. I have a headache (that, plus my tendency to ramble), so I don't know that I'll get to all of them, but I'll try.

On the drive home today, I saw two vehicles with the Superman symbol on the back. Weird.
But I also had the radio on scan (not uncommon) and one of the stations was playing Five For Fighting's "Superman (It's Not Easy)". Weirder!

Every morning on the way in to work, I listen to 97.1 because they have the "Early Morning Poll", in which they ask a trivia question, people call, guess the answer, win prizes. Yesterday the question was, "This is reported every 3 minutes, worldwide."

The answer turned out to be "UFO Sightings". [eyebrow]

I googled the phrase 'every 3 minutes worldwide' a few minutes ago (before typing this entry up, actually) and I didn't see anything about UFOs in my brief glancing at the results. I did, however, see two or three sites claiming that a child is killed on the road every three minutes. Yikes. I guess that's a lot more depressing for a radio show to report in the morning than UFO sightings. (Oh, and when I googled 'every 3 minutes worldwide ufo', I turned up plenty of sites that reported that, yes, there are supposedly over 70,000 a year. So, there ya go.)
Anyway. I know I've seen plenty of stuff in the sky that I couldn't identify, which is the technical definition of UFO. I doubt highly that any of the objects I saw were flying saucers, though.
I open it to the fair readers: Had any UFO sightings? And do you think they were alien crafts? Do you think that flying saucers are real and/or are aliens?

Personally, I don't really believe that there's anything to the whole UFO-abduction/greys walk among us/X-Files were telling the truth debacle, but, just like proof of god, or free will, or ghosts, there's no knowing absolutely 100% either way.
Actually, as I sit here typing this up, and my head keeps pounding, I start to think, "no. I can say that there is no God. That there is no free will. And that ghosts do not exist." Because, looking at those things logically, you can see that they're just silly.

Of course, as I typed that, my brain said, "Yes, and think of all the things in life that defy logic." (Although, um. What?) [Good hell. I am like the definition of 'indecisive'.]

Whatever. The point is, people will believe whatever they want to believe.

Moving on...

Tomorrow is going to be a very busy day. It's "Take Your Child(ren) To Work Day", so, Saren, Harper, and I will go to work for about half the day. Then, sometime after lunch, we'll leave in order to attend the Henderson Homeschoolers Day at Bounce U for a few hours. (With Steph and Irina as well). And then that night, Lost returns! (At 10pm!)
It's a good thing that it's a blog-free day. It'll give me stuff to talk about on Friday. Heh.

We got Disc 4 of Season 4 of Buffy today. I'm shocked - shocked! - that the last episode on there is This Year's Girl. That means Who Are You (part 2 of the 2-parter) is on the next disc. That's just some bone-headed scheduling there.

At work today someone asked me what "kosher" meant. My best guess -not being Jewish and all - was that it had to deal with food and how it was prepared? Something about how the animal is killed or something? I don't really know, but the point is that that's another strike against religion in my book. I don't want to be told what I can and can not eat. I guess if I ever do decide to convert to some religion or 'nother, that that will be among my guidelines: "Must not have rules regarding eating".

Also at work today, the topic of the Mayan calendar came up. 12/21/12, baby!! But, as we get closer to that day (4.5 years and counting!), and after doing a little more looking into the matter, I really dont' think that anything will come of that day. (Um. Apart from the zombiepocalypse, of course.) But it is still a cool date, no matter what happens.

Holy crap. I'm starving! I think that's my cue to Publish Post!

5 comments:

Amy said...

"The point is, people will believe whatever they want to believe."

Not always.

Incidentally, when I was a youngster, it was still "Take Your Daughter To Work Day." Woo, I predate ... something. The third wave, I guess?

Anonymous said...

I'm curious what you mean by "there is no free will". It would seem odd to pair atheism (yay) with a belief in total predestination. But then you might mean something else. So I'm curious if you care to elaborate.

I'm a total Scully. UFOs can make for great storytelling but I don't believe in it at all. (This doesn't mean I don't believe there can be life on other worlds, because logically it seems there must be. I just don't buy that they keep making visits while leaving no evidence and no one notices except a couple hillbillies in West Virginia.)

I've actually thought, for some time, that if atheism was ever outlawed and I had to pick some religion to join or die, I'd totally become a Jew. Mainly because Judaism encourages questioning of, well, almost everything, and most major religions emphatically do not. So I find it less doctrinnaire. Needless to say, I wouldn't be Orthodox or Hasidic..

-Kirk

P@ said...

Kirk,
I'm with ya on the alien thing. I know in my heart of hearts that there *must* be life elsewhere in the Universe. The place is just too damn big for there not to be, ya know? Now, whether it's life that would be recognizable as "intelligent" or not remains to be seen. But I doubt that we have another civilization visiting us. That's just... no. (I am willing to consider, though, that some of the unexplained UFO sightings could be us. From the future? From another dimension? From another universe? From some top-secret government experiments? Take your pick.)

As for the free will thing... I've been hinting at that for a while now, because the idea is pretty new to me, and it's been simmering in my brain, wanting to come out as a blog post. Give me a few days, and I suspect I'll finally break my silence and lay it all out. (I'd do it here, but this comment is already a gabillion words long...)
Bottom line is, I believe that the universe is deterministic, but that doesn't mean that there has to be a god that is controlling it. There is no free will - everything is going to happen as it's going to happen - but there's also no god laying it all out. So, no conflict (that I see) in atheism and predetermination.

Amy (if you've read this far) - could you elaborate on what you mean by "Not always"? Don't people have to believe what they want to believe by definition?

Amy said...

Pat - To answer what you said, I don't think that people believe what they believe just because they want to. I also don't think that people always want to believe what they believe. Sometimes you'd rather believe in an alternative, but there is no alternative, you know?

CosmicAvatar said...

The free will thing is a poser. I feel I have the power to change the small things (and maybe that could change the big things too - isn't that what quantum butterflies are all about?), but the best things happen when I just relax and let them do so. I'm a big believer in Fate and karma.

(Also, I'm really annoyed that someone came up with an idea of a film based on 12/12/12 before I could get my books out. OK, finish my books. Which I never did. Oh, well. I still have dinosaurs and Really Big Guns to play with.)