In addition to blogging my life on this medium, I also wanted to use it to post things I've pondered over the years. From politics to religion to everyday things. I never really sat down and done it though. Until now.

One of the things I have thought about a great deal is God and his relationship to me, and in this case how I can reconcile my strong faith with my strong scientific sense. Let me say it wasn't easy. When I was young, the idea of Christianity was this nebulous notion that I never bothered to pinpoint. My mother was Christian, my dad was Catholic Christian, but I didn't know what that meant exactly. We believed in God, we followed the 10 Commandments, but other than that I had no clue.

It was in high school that I became fascinated with science. Evolution made sense to me, as well as all the other sciences that come from it. As much as I didn't want to admit it, I did really well in Biology. I started the foundation of my scientific mind's growth during these years. And even though I still did not know what Christians were, I joined a Christian outreach group that tried to build a place for kids to hang out after school. It seemed like the right thing to do, and I helped them out quite a bit, and I even made friends with their son, who was only a couple years younger than me.

It was then I learned that not everyone accepted evolution. We were talking about my classes and I noticed one of their booklets talked about how dinosaurs perished in the great Noachian flood. I explained that I disagreed with this because it didn't fit current scientific fact. They tried to persuade me that I was wrong and that evolution was hocus pocus, meant to confuse me from the path of Jesus. I mostly shrugged off their comments and didn't want to argue with people I considered friends. The next day, when I walked into the Christian outreach center, the family all started making monkey noises and the mom was hanging on a railing by her one arm. I was stunned. Then I became angry. I took one last look at them, noted how ridiculous they looked, and walked out. The son ran out after me and tried to apologize and I told him that I never wanted to come back. And I never did. That day I decided that if that's what Christians were like, I didn't want to be one. I was embarrassed, and angry that they would mock my beliefs, something I never did to them.

From that day forward I became more aware of the sizable "Christian" population in my school. These people took every moment to argue in Biology or Earth Science class to argue for a young Earth. I got into arguments with them, frustrated at their blindness and sometimes stupidity. And I was glad to leave them behind.

In college I really started to come back though. My uncle and my father were instrumental in this, as well as a few friends in my science classes who were also Christian but also understood how science fit into it. I was grateful to learn that not all Christians were like the idiots from my high school. I learned that science is only something we use to find out how God did it. Science is the how and the what, and my faith is the why.

Nowadays I can debate fairly well when I have time to research a topic. I have Goob to thank for starting this training and my critical thinking classes that followed. One of my favorite topics I like to engage with my father is whether or not science can prove that God exists. Since my Dad suffers from a lifetime of goofiness and of taking things he has read at face value instead of the grain(or tablespoon) of salt that he should, it is hard to believe some of the claims he makes. He says that many astronomers and physicists can see where God leaves His fingerprint, and that things are too complex to have been just a natural process. I agree to a point on the complexity issue, but if God is beyond our reality and understanding then how can we use science as a tool to find Him if science is grounded in our physical existence? More to the point, God wants our faith.

Faith is the belief in something that has no proof. If we were to use science to prove God exists, then it wouldn't be faith anymore, it would be fact. To prove that God exists would compel humanity to accept God instead of choosing Him. What good is giving free will to someone who knows they have no choice? God is beyond our reality, so we cannot use our reality to prove his existence.

On that same note, I got into an argument about a phrase I used on a forum. "If you don't believe in God you will believe in anything." I was duped into the argument because once I replied the atheists came down on my like a feeding frenzy. I knew the argument was a waste of time, so I didn't bother replying to the attacks. The phrase was regarding this new Global Warming religion that's been growing of late. Humans are wired to believe in a higher being, and if it isn't God then they will make something up to fill the void. I was told that the Global Warming followers were no different than Christians who follow an imaginary friend. I wanted to point out that the big difference is that my beliefs are based on believing in something that has no proof, while the Global Warming group bases their beliefs on lies and pseudo-science. It took me a while to conceptualize that thought, but by the time I did the thread was old, the frenzy over and I didn't want to argue with my friends.

So there you have it, my first full rant of the blog. I hope it brings up as many discussion points as the day I switched to the Atkins diet!