Merely Adequate

May 4, 2008

Iron Man

Dad and I went to see Iron Man today. It was freakin' awesome!

Posted by Mike at 9:44 PM | Comments (2)

Weekend Movie Update

Friday night Robyn and I watched The Nativity Story. It had some good acting and was mostly enjoyable, if a bit cheesy in parts.

Saturday afternoon Dad and I went to see Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay. It was silly fun, despite the fact that the premise could happen. How many innocent men are in Guantanamo just because they looked middle eastern and acted suspicious? I just ordered The Road to Guantanamo (2006) from the library, it is a docudrama which is the story of three British Muslims who spent 2 years in Guantanamo for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Saturday night Robyn and I watched The Lookout, which was a great film! Great writing, acting, music, and directing. We both really enjoyed it.

Posted by Mike at 8:37 AM | Comments (3)

April 27, 2008

Movie and Book update

I've decided to try to keep up with blogging about the movies, books and music in my life.

Let's see, last Friday Dad and I went to see The Forbidden Kingdom and both really enjoyed it. Bill and I went on Sunday to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which was very funny. Robyn and I usually watch a movie together over the phone on Saturday nights. Last week it was Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Askaban, which she had just finished reading and last night it was In The Land of Women. We enjoyed both movies.

I'm currently reading The Jesus Mysteries - Was the "original Jesus" a pagan god? It's very good so far. I already knew quite a bit of this, but it's good to have it all in one place and so enjoyably written.

Posted by Mike at 11:51 AM | Comments (3)

March 23, 2008

An old prayer...a new prayer

This is a prayer that I wrote many years ago and prayed daily at the beginning of each prayer time.

Addressed daily to Jesus:

I seek... Your will, Lord, Your humility, Your love for others, Your exposure of my sin, Your humility and your will, I can't pray these enough, Humility in all things, Everything I am capable of is only through you, Lord, Patience, Lord, while I seek your will, Your refining fire, Lord, Patience, Lord, Your will, Humility, Your walk, Lord, Humility in my love for others, Humility in my compassion and love for women, Humility, Humility, Humility in my anticipation of what you have in store for me, Lord, Humility in the work you give me, To give glory to you in all I do!! Humility in prayer, and my abilities, The ability to pray instead of tear down.
Lord, help me to continue to pray, to seek awareness of your presence in humility and by your power, even, and especially when I feel well and happy, for all my well being and feelings regarding well being are a result of you.

Amen.

Much of that is honorable, except for the whole I-can't-do-it-without-you-God part.

So my new prayer would be, as Legion Regalis put it here: What Comforts You In Times Of Trouble?, "a cry to all that is".

My Prayer - A cry to all that is

I seek...
To be humble,
To love others,
To harm none,
To make well thought out decisions,
To be accountable for my words and actions,
To better myself,
To be patient,
To be focused,
To seek truth in all I do,
To walk a path true to myself.
So let it be.

Edited to show that Legion Regalis was actually credited for the phrase "cry to all that is", not the whole 2nd prayer.

Posted by Mike at 6:59 PM | Comments (5)

February 29, 2008

Why I No Longer Consider Myself a Christian, or Even a Theist.

Sent by me as a letter to a bunch of people.

Dear Friends and Family,

This is one of the most difficult things I’ve ever written, as I know all of you will take this in different ways, and it may actually offend some of you, and this is definitely not my wish. If you are receiving this letter it is because you are someone who is important to me and I want to be honest with you about what I am thinking and feeling, and most importantly what I no longer believe and part of the reasons why. I know some of you will be shocked and even hurt buy this letter, and I assure you that is not my intention. That is one of the reasons this letter is so difficult to write. I wanted to write this letter because my faith was always so much a part of who I was to some people. My realization that I have never actually believed in God is something that it is important for me to share with you.

I no longer believe in God, the Father Almighty, or that he is Creator of heaven and earth, nor in Jesus Christ.

Jesus the man may or may not have existed, but I do not believe that he was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary.

I do not believe he descended into hell or that the third day He arose again from the dead.

I do not believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting, at least not in the biblical sense.

Yes, the above mostly came from the apostle’s creed, it seemed like a good way to get it all out of the way. I also do not believe that the bible is the word of God.

Do I absolutely know that God doesn’t exist? Of course not! I would have to be omniscient to declare such a thing, and I’m barely aware of my surroundings when I get wrapped up in something, I’m far from all seeing! Am I open to the idea of God? Sure! I respect one’s right to believe or disbelieve as one chooses. I guess the next part of this letter should explain why I don’t believe anymore.

I’ve been a Christian for more than 25 years, and a Bible believing biblical literalist for more than 15 of them. I used to read the Bible daily, I still do read it quite frequently, and no, not with a critical eye, but still seeking truth in it. I used to be quite the apologist, even to the point of my friends jokingly dubbing me the ninja theologian. One thing that was always lacking was a concrete feeling of God’s presence. I had lots of warm, tingly feelings that I attributed to God, but never anything real. There was never a single moment of my prayers where I felt like I was praying to anything more than the ceiling or the sky. Sure, I reasoned through a lot of problems with my internal dialogue, and sometimes things came to pass, but sometimes they didn’t. Yes, I know there are lots of arguments for why some prayers are answered and some or not. Trust me, I know most of them and probably even made up a few. You see, I always had to do repetitive things to make God seem more real to me. Constant prayer, surrounding myself with Christian music, going to Bible study and church, even putting scripture and faith words on my walls to keep the thought of God ever present in my mind. Even with all of these things, putting on the armor of God as Ephesians says to, I still never truly experienced the presence of God. Now I have acknowledged all of the arguments in my mind against God, particularly against the God of the Bible, but the biggest one, and the only one I will reveal in this letter is this: Why if God is the omnipotent, non temporally bound, omniscient creator of the universe do I have to practice all the time to make myself believe in him? I don’t have to do that to make me believe in any of you. Heck, I don’t have to do that to make myself believe in people I’ve never met!

I’ve been listening to Christian music while writing this; in fact I’ve been listening to it quite a bit recently. Some of it still moves me. God of Wonders gets me every time; I’ve been singing it for weeks. There Is A Redeemer is another one, especially Keith Green singing it. A proper singing of Holy, Holy, Holy or Be Thou My Vision can give me chills. I still get emotional thinking of Rosalyn Pratt’s version of Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee, I don’t have the recording anymore, but it was amazing. You see, it’s not that I want to run and hide from God, or that I want to not believe in him, it’s just that I don’t. I’m not writing this to try and convert anyone to my way of thinking. There was a time when I wanted to convert everyone to Christianity, but gradually my thinking changed over the years, thinking that God must be much bigger than any concept we could ever have of him, and certainly he could reach through the bounds of religion and touch anyone at any point in their life. I always believed that Jesus was the only way to heaven, just that he could meet people on their terms. The thing I was always ignoring, is that God was never tangible to me, at least not in the way other people are, or even inanimate objects. The warm fuzzies were, but I think even the most faithful would admit that emotion and feelings are not enough.

One of my best friends, and a receiver of this letter, told me a story once about a crisis of faith. Forgive me if I tell it wrong. He was looking out his bedroom window and spied a moth fluttering about across the street. He prayed, “God, if you are real, then make that moth fly over to my window.” Sure enough, the moth fluttered around quite a bit and gradually made it’s way across the street, right up to his window. I’ve been praying for years for God to please make himself more real to me, and at times I got the tingles, but I’ve gotten those from McDonald’s commercials too, and I certainly don’t worship the golden arches.

I don't know if this letter will come as a surprise to any of you. Maybe you could tell I was heading to this way of thinking, but I didn't really see it coming. I knew my thoughts were changing, but never thought they would end up here. At one time my faith in the Bible and Christianity was so strong, but even then I had awful questions and really feel that I was making excuses for God and the Bible. All of what I have written is open to discussion and I welcome any questions you may have. I will still attend church from time to time, and will gladly participate in any sort of gathering with religious or spiritual themes. I will not be taking communion out of respect for the practice. Most churches ask that you believe to partake and since I do not, I will not.

Lastly, I am not sad, depressed, angry, or in any other way distressed. Quite to the contrary, I am happy and feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my chest. I never had a miraculous, emotional conversion to Christianity, but this feeling may be what it’s like if you do. I feel like my eyes have been opened and now I can truly appreciate people for who they are and life and the world for what they are. I’m not going to run off and live a life of immoral debauchery. In fact some of the atheists I know are incredibly moral people and I respect them every bit as much as I do those who I previously called my brothers and sisters in Christ. As I reach the end of the letter I still have the urge to sign off with “God Bless” or some such thing, but that would be ridiculous given my lack of belief. I sincerely apologize if this letter causes you distress, but I had to write it, to be honest to both you and myself. This may seem like I came to this decision overnight, but I assure you it is the result of many years of study, prayer (unanswered), and meditation. I have no idea where my life's journey will take me. If a deity reveals him or herself to me I will not ignore them. I just know now that none have ever truly done so for me before.

Wishing you many blessings, regardless of their source.

Mike

For now Agnostic/Atheist

Sites I frequent:

http://www.ex-christian.net/index.php?

http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/manufall.html

http://ffrf.org/

http://www.beliefnet.com

Posted by Mike at 9:12 PM | Comments (9)

February 1, 2008

I went to the doctor on Wednesday

I went to the doctor on Wednesday and they called today with the results of my blood work. They said my sugar, cholesterol, liver and kidneys all looked great and I should just keep doing what I'm doing. I know I could still eat better and I really need to start doing more exercise than the walking I do at work, but it's nice to know that my sugar is back under control and that everything else is good too!

Posted by Mike at 10:50 AM | Comments (8)

January 28, 2008

HTC Touch Outlook Issue

This has nothing to do with any of my normal readers, but when I did a search for this subject I couldn't find the answer. Fortunately da.bell, and djwhitey over at sprintusers.com answered my question.

When using Windows Mobile and Microsoft Outlook Mobile on an HTC Touch, one may find that the email button on the HTC Home screen will cease to function. This can happen if you have a Micro SD Card inserted. The directory that Outlook places on it may become corrupted. It called inbox_something where something is a bunch of numbers and letters. It can be found at the root directory of your Micro SD Card. Delete this and do a soft reset. To avoid this in the future you can tell Outlook to not store attachments on the external card. This can be found under storage in Outlook's options.

Posted by Mike at 6:42 PM | Comments (4)