Well, today officially ended break. Sadness.
I got up and went to the early service of church this morning. I sat with Mom and dad. After the service I saw the Vandekoppels and talked with Kelley for a few seconds. Probably about 17. Then Kimmy and I went home. During this time she and I discussed some theology that we've been separately pondering for a while. The thought that I've been considering is that there is a certain rationale for God's existence that I really do not like. When people use the argument that God must exist because there are things science has yet to answer, I just kind of cringe. Like people saying that because scientists haven't yet explained how the universe began, then God must exist. I dislike this because if scientists did discover how the universe began, then either your logic has become flawed or you have to change the premise of your argument, neither of which put you in a very good position. For instance, 200 years ago scientists were just discovering atoms but had not yet grasped their contents or make-up. But the lack of scientific knowledge didn't make God any bigger to compensate for scientific deficiency. So I don't believe that we should use God as an answer to things that science has yet to discover. Because if science ever does answer those things, then the "God created it" answer holds nothing. Now, don't go away thinking that I'm suggesting that God didn't create everything. I don't ever believe in using "God" as a solution to a question I can't answer. My answer to the beginning of the universe? "God has created a natural order that humans have not yet fully discovered. But I'm pretty excited to see what scientists are able to discover of God's handiwork."
The other thing we talked about (in continuation of the God-science controversy conversation) was how evolution fits into the Bible. Kimmy and I don't really like disregarding science simply because it seems to contradict the Bible. The Bible isn't a science book. If there is something scientifically wrong the Bible... ok. That's fine. The Bible is a narrative about a loving God who wants to be with us (the created) forever. Try to use the Bible for something else and you're going to run into problems. So I have no problem accepting evolution as an explanation to how life began. I think that God has the capacity to create everything in six literal days. In fact, I believe in a big enough God that if he wanted to create everything in an infinitesimal amount of time that cannot be measured... he could. But I personally believe that God made a set of rules that allow creation to move naturally without him having to move every piece. Like a Rube Goldberg machine: God set everything up in the beginning so that when he hit the big "GO!" button, things had the ability to move without necessitating his intervention at every step. Not eliminating the need for God, just eliminating the need for him to move every single piece along the way. Anyhow, I think that God set up a natural order that allows for change. So something that Kimmy's capstone class discussed was that if you allow for the condition of evolution into creation, it is imperative that certain things in the creation story be taken as a metaphor and not literally. Things like the 7 days, Adam and Eve, and the fall. This is a lot to consider if those three things have always been literal interpretations for you. But consider this (in brief): the 7 days could be 7 areas of creation that may or may not have occurred sequentially; Adam and Even could be a metaphor for the final stage in evolution where the created being finally had consciousness and reasoning skills like you and I do (unlike animals); the fall (in light of everything being gradual) becomes a process (for instance, an animal killing a family member for survival becomes murder when humans do it). But the beauty of this is when you consider that God stated that creation "was good." Since God is not restricted to any state of time, that means that (in this theory) "it was good" is actually a reference to our state of perfection once we enter heaven.
There was a lot more, but those are the main ideas.
Anyhow, I had to go back to school. So I left around 11, stopped to get gas and a Full Throttle, then headed off to Muncie. Apparently my auto-pilot misguided me though, because I got lost in thought and forgot that I was going south from Findlay and not north from I-70. But I got it all figured out and made it home. I stopped at Aldi and Wal-mart on my way back for groceries. When I got back I unloaded my car and had Timbo come over to work on finance. I only had number 6 left and we worked on that for a long time. I tried to explain number 2, but it's a complicated problem and I just couldn't think of a good way to explain it. So we moved on to number 6. It took us a long time to figure out what we were supposed to do and there were many calculations, even a little bit of matrix algebra. But we got an answer that works. After I'd had dinner and Timbo went home David called me to discuss some of the answers for the homework for both life con and finance. When I was done talking with him I answered some emails, cleaned up my spreadsheet for life con, then re-wrote my answers for finance. I'm probably going to need to show my work to some of my classmates, so hopefully it all makes sense.
My laundry is taking forever, but I think it's about done. So I'm going to bed now. Good night!
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