No Coincidences

Tag: religion

  • Why we REALLY don’t Drink Coffee

    Why we REALLY don’t Drink Coffee

    Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints abstain from tea and coffee, along with other drinks and substances. We refer to this as the “Word of Wisdom.“

    The question often comes up, “Why don’t you drink coffee?” This seems to be the one that really hangs people up. Abstain from cocaine? Makes sense. Alcohol? People can see it. COFFEE?!?!?!!?! People are befuddled.

    This isn’t an easy question to answer, but I wanted to write my thoughts on it. The REAL reason we don’t drink coffee.

    Do we not drink tea and coffee because it makes us healthier? Do we avoid coffee because it’s addictive? Do we avoid coffee for our body’s health?

    Maybe.

    Is that the primary reason we don’t drink coffee?

    NO.

    Why do we pay tithing?

    Why do we partake of the sacrament on Sunday?

    Why do we avoid going to the store or other activities on Sunday?

    Why do we do any number of things the world finds peculiar?

    It’s because we have made covenants with God to obey His commandments. That’s it. That’s why we do what we do. To be obedient to God.

    Maybe it makes us healthier, maybe keeping the sabbath holy renews our spirits, maybe not swearing keeps our minds clean, maybe tithing brings us blessings. But are any of these maybes the real reason we do anything? It shouldn’t be.

    We do these things because we love the Lord and have covenanted to follow Him. End of story. The world might call it restrictive, but from my personal experience, it is the EXACT opposite. It is freedom.

  • Ignorance and Spontaneous Generation

    Ignorance and Spontaneous Generation

    Do you know what spontaneous generation is?

    Spontaneous generation is the outdated idea that living organisms can spontaneously come from other living organisms. For example, it used to be believed that a horse was how bees were created. People used to observe that a horse would die, and bees would “spontaneously generate” from the corpse. Crazy huh? Of course, now we know better. I wrote the below for a discussion post in my Science 301 class, Understanding Formal Processes.

    The once prevalent fallacy of spontaneous generation goes to show that we can be extremely wrong about simple and obvious things by relying on what our eyes tell us. When I initially started reading about spontaneous generation in Bondeson’s book, The Feejee Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History, I could hardly believe that spontaneous generation was debated into the 1800s (Bondeson, 2014, p. 248). As I thought about it more, though, I understood how this theory took hold of observable logic and persisted for so long. An animal decays in the sun and maggots appear. Where did they come from? An obvious conclusion was the decaying flesh of the animal created the maggots.

    Scientific progress is filled with examples of people being sure of something that ends up being absurd. The relationship between observable scientific knowledge and the scientific method is that as the scientific method is improved upon, meaning, as theories and ways of experimenting on those theories improve, scientific knowledge grows in proportion. It’s interesting to note what Herman van Booerhave said of the brilliant mathematician Girolamo Cardano, that he was exceptional when correct in his theories but, “When he advocated erroneous theories, he surpassed them all in folly” (Bondeson, 2014, p. 197).

    Often, we see how outlandish proposed experiments can become. Take Paracelsus’s proposed experiment to create a human being by mixing excrements, semen, broth, and nutritious fluids (Bondeson, 2014, p. 196). While seemingly absurd, scientists have always been ridiculed for outlandish theories, and those theories only go the direction of proven or disproven by what Paracelsus proposed: an experiment. Even the most outlandish experiment using the scientific method is an improvement on assumptions based solely on simple observations.

    When I was in 7th grade my science teacher gave us a very simple assignment. The assignment was to take something, anything that we could test, and observe each day, make a hypothesis, then keep the data and see if our assumption was correct. Many of my classmates repeated a couple simple observations. I wanted to be more creative. I chose to check the thermostat in my home each day and monitor the fluctuations in temperature. My hypothesis was that as it got hotter outside during the summer, the temperature would go up in my home. This seemed an obvious assumption to a 7th grader.

    I was shocked when I learned, from checking the temperature every morning, that it was 72 degrees in my home every morning, no matter what. My hypothesis was foiled by the scientific progress of a simple thermostat. A device I always assumed to simply tell the temperature, I learned, was actually monitoring the temperature and turning on cool air as it got hot, or hot air as it got cool, to always keep our home at a consistent temperature. I learned from this how something that can seem obvious can be so wrong when ignorance exists. The ignorance here was a 7th grader who didn’t yet understand the simple workings of the things around him. We see in society every day how detrimental ignorance is. Ignorance exists in science, religion, everywhere around us. As we experiment and try new theories, our ignorance is lessened as we come to better understand the world around us.

    What seems so ridiculous now, spontaneous generation was an obvious observation given the tools available to science at the time. In a world that debates all things spiritual – the after-life, the soul, and all things we can’t see – science ridicules theories that can’t be proven. Because science can’t prove the existence of the soul, it says there is no soul. Like those who could observe that maggots spontaneously appeared but couldn’t know how because they didn’t have the tools and capacity to do so, one day all things we still don’t understand will be proven. This includes premortal existence, the soul, spirits, resurrection, and the after-life.

    There’s this secular belief that spiritual things inherently non-scientific. Those with faith understand that one day all these spiritual concepts will be proven through scientific methods. It will all be so clear to us one day, when our eyes are opened and we are given additional knowledge and understanding. What a day for science that day will be.

  • Purpose and What Did You Eat Last Week

    Purpose and What Did You Eat Last Week

    I recently did a meditation that I couldn’t get myself into, I disagreed so much with the premise. I can usually go with the flow with any guided meditation, at least the ones I’ve done. Often the guided meditations lead to spiritual thoughts. This meditation led to a spiritual thought, but not in the normal way.

    The voice leading the meditation stated, basically, that we are on this big rock floating through space. None of us know why we’re here or what the true purpose of all this is. The meditation continued advising to set that aside for a moment and focus on your breathing, etc.

    I stopped right there. In my mind I thought, but I do know why I’m here, I do know the purpose of all this. I couldn’t get behind the premise. It’s a common theme of my writing. Where we come from, why we’re here, where we’re going. It hit me that 99% of people listening to that meditation probably don’t bat an eye at that statement. Most people probably gloss right over it like, “Yeah, I don’t know what the meaning of all this is.” That makes me sad.

    I just started a new book that talks about the temporal nature of this life and how silly it is to one, not believe in the things we can’t see, and two, put so much stock into the things we can see, even though they’re so temporary.

    The book asked what I ate 2 weeks ago. I had no idea. It made an interesting point. Food and water are the most critical thing to our survival. We can’t survive without them. Yet, what did you eat 2 weeks ago? You don’t even remember. What about the car that you love then 8 years later is a clunker. Or the house you cherish but inevitably becomes dirty, beat up, and cluttered with other stuff that is inconsequential. The book talked about how much stock we put into these things.

    How many of us consider why we’re here or where we’re going? How many in the world live in complete ignorance, not wanting to consider these great questions? It amazes me.

    We can’t see or describe heartache, fear, doubt, love, the wind, and yet they exist. Faith exists. Our soul exists. Eternity exists. God exists. These are the things that matter. I wish our society could spend a little less time with a Netflix special they won’t remember a year from now and consider more the purpose of this life. 

    The purpose of this life is God’s plan to make us stronger, better, and more like Him. We knew God before we came here. We will remember Him when we leave here. This life is so important. Not for food, or water, or cars, or homes, or Netflix, but for the faith we build, the experiences we go through, and the families and relationships we cultivate. I wish this is something we could all remember more.

  • Destruction of Christ

    Destruction of Christ

    While looking at the cover picture for this post, an obvious realization came to me.

    Look closely at that picture. What do you see?

    The top of the picture is glorious. You can faintly make out a being in that bright light, coming out of the clouds.

    It was the bottom of the picture that caught my attention. One word comes to mind: desolation.

    It hit me why desolation and pain and suffering and death and starvation and destruction must happen to the people on this Earth before Christ’s Second Coming. People on earth are so stubborn and prideful. We wouldn’t accept Christ if He came out of the sky right now. With Netflix, food, water, and our comfortable lives, if we saw Him come straight out of the clouds as a bright star, we would be fascinated for as long as we’re fascinated with anything that hits the news.

    Many would deny it as some sort of special effects stunt put on by the media.

    Do you realize last year the government came out and said UFOs exist?

    The collective reaction of Earth seemed to be, “cool.”

    How long would Christ’s coming fascinate us if it happened tomorrow? A week? A year? A day? Then it would become old news and we’d move on. Seriously. Seems ridiculous? I think it’s true. 

    Destruction will make people humble themselves and accept Christ when He comes. It will make some people realize man isn’t great at governing a planet and we need some help from something, anything. For those opposed to God and religion, what happens before the Second Coming may even make them concede we need help from the divine. The destruction of Earth that will come in the last days (these days) will hopefully lead to many realizing Satan’s principles (which now run the world) are destructive. Greed, envy, anger, jealousy, deceit, lust, and revenge cannot run a fruitful society.

    The destruction will make people realize they need Jesus Christ. We see it now, today. No one thinks they need Christ in their life. No one cares about God. We’re comfortable. Life is good.

    What happens when life isn’t as comfortable? People turn to God.

    Life will get drastically less “good” before His coming. Many will cry about how it is unfair and how could a loving God let this happen to us? We let this happen to us. Our choices will lead us to that point.

    What is the being in the top of that picture coming to do? What will Jesus Christ be coming to the earth to do? Look at the bottom of the picture again. When the Earth is destroyed, all our comforts and idols that we relied so heavily on gone, when that time comes, He will be coming to heal. He will be coming to fix what is broken. Who can deny we are broken?

    While the destruction of the Second Coming can be a frightening topic, for the faithful it will be a bittersweet time to rejoice. While destruction happens around us, we can have faith and confidence that God is keeping all His promises to us, His children.

    When that time comes, as fear grips the Earth, we can have joy amidst the world’s uncertainty. We will know our Savior is coming. We will know we can rely on Him. We will know, as long as we put our faith and trust in Him, all will work out for our benefit and for His glory.

    As the world falls deeper and deeper into turmoil, what a comfort that is.

  • Craftiness of the Devil

    Sometimes I marvel at how sneaky that doggon devil is.

    One example is how kids are bombarded by inappropriate images. The most childish of cell phone games are interrupted by scantily clad cartoon (or real) women. It’s the craziest thing.

    Another example occurred to me recently.

    When I try to search for the rating of a movie, it often takes me 4 or 5 searches to find out if it’s R, PG-13, etc. I always get the Rotten Tomatoes rating!

    This, of course, is the product of a bigger issue. That issue is all the garbage that exists in the media.

    The LDS church has a cultural policy that I’m not interested in looking into the history of. That “policy” for lack of a better word (“suggestion” or “guidance” may be better words), is to not watch Rated R movies.

    Growing up, I HATED this rule, and pretty immediately rebelled against it. It may have been the first LDS thing I rebelled against, actually. Remember, I’m the kid who dumped out my mom’s Coke because it had caffeine and was against the Word of Wisdom, or so I thought. I’ve been watching Rated R movies for as long as I can remember. I distinctly remember watching Chucky Halloween night when I was under 8 years old. It was made for TV, but still not meant for a 6-year-old.

    That is where my point is leading. Made for TV murderous doll OK because it’s TV-MA?

    For as long as I live I will never forget the movie I watched that made me decide I was done with Rated R movies. That movie was The Hateful Eight. I will say no more about that. Luckily for me, Beth came to a similar conclusion from her own movie. Her movie was Hereditary. We concluded around the same time that we were done with rated R movies for very different and yet oddly similar reasons.

    They made us feel icky.

    That’s what I remember about the Hateful Eight. I finish all movies I watch. I treat movies the same way I treat books. If you start it, you finish it. I was watching Hateful Eight when Beth came over (before we were married). I finished this scene. I left with Beth for whatever we had planned. I remember not being able to get this grotesque, gross, vile stuff out of my mind. I felt sick to my stomach. I felt dark. I felt dirty. I finally asked myself, why am I doing this to myself? I don’t have to finish the movie. I didn’t finish the movie. It was the last rated R movie I “watched.” That was 2017 or 2018.

    Has it been easy cutting out rated R movies? Nope (some of you will get that reference). There are inevitably movies I want to see sooo bad, but they’re rated R. This has led to discussions with friends. I’ll hear things like, “Well it only swears this many times and the violence and sex isn’t that bad.” My thinking is, you draw a line and you stick to it. End of story. But by the way, pretty much every movie is rated R. So this change has led to basically watching 95% less movies. A fortunate side effect.

    If you doubt that, check movies in theatres right now. You might find a couple that aren’t rated R. They’re either cartoons or Marvel, and even that is changing.

    So here’s my even bigger point about the craftiness of the devil.

    That guidance to not watch rated R movies was never about rated R movies. It was about what we consume and let enter our minds. I’ll never get that image from Hateful Eight out of my mind, but it taught me something, and it made me grow. It made me learn what I do and don’t want to enter in through the light of my body (Matthew 6:22-23).

    So you cut out rated R movies. But what about TV MA? What about murder dramas? What about all this media out there? Where do you draw the line? I’ve started cutting out TV shows mid-season. Remember, me, the person who tries to finish whatever I start. I was really into (a stupid show) Love Craft County. Then it got bizarre and disgusting. I stopped. I’ve never watched Game of Thrones. My favorite show ever is Breaking Bad. How do we figure it out?

    My point is, you can’t even search and find out if a movie is rated R anymore. The devil is crafty. We consume more and more trash more and more often. I say this as someone who also consumes trash.

    And what’s happening around us? You look up and your 13-year-old brother has seen something like 150,000 violent acts depicted in media. How crazy is that? Is that OK? Do we really have to wonder about depression and all this crap kids are dealing with? It’s insane.

    The devil is crafty. He blurs the line everywhere we turn. It’s so much harder to protect ourselves. He never stops working.

    I don’t know how to conclude this so I’ll just say, I took a step by cutting out rated R movies. I’ve been happy with that decision, even though I’ve probably had to miss out on some good movies. I think I’m better for it though.

    *Posting this years after writing it and on one hand I’m proud of my continued commitment to avoid rated R movies. On the other hand, I’m disappointed with my continued viewing of TV-MA material. But I’m also proud of the overall amount of television I’ve cut out of my life. There’s just not enough time to watch TV anymore.

    So I’m proud and I’m disappointed. But that’s life. God knows our efforts and He knows I’m trying. I’m not meant to be perfect in this life, though I’ll try, and fail. That’s why I’m grateful for Jesus Christ.

    The devil seeks us. We need to be hyper-vigilant to make sure we stay on the side we want to be on. Every day is a battle.