A New World View

In my Perspectives on Death & Dying class on Wednesday night, we were talking about the notion of God. A lot of this was simply a logic game based on assumptions of a God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and all-loving. The concept of evil had a lot to do with whether such a combination was truly possible. My professor claimed it came down to how you define the three assumptions. Things like whether omniscient means knowing everything from the past and future or only all of the present and past. I beg to differ with his logic. I did not bother bringing it up in class for two reasons. First off, I never like getting into these discussions in a class rarely is the other person in the argument capable of putting together a proper argument. Secondly, he already had preconceived notions about everything. If you say something different than he is used to hearing, he will adapt it to something similar that he has an argument for.

Anyways, a portion of this discussion was a mentioning of two main themes in the Bible. The theme for the Old Testament was a notion of creation while the New Testament is characterized by love. Cool. The popular topic during our discussion was the idea of freedom. The idea to create something. Supposedly, God made us in his image by allowing us to create things as he did. This took form in free will and our ability to perform bad (not good, but not necessarily evil) choices. This broke down into why an all-loving God would allow us to make poor choices knowing their results. I guess if he does not know the future, he does not know the outcome, but how smart do you have to be to figure out the consequences for various things, particularly when you know everything, and I do mean everything, that has ever happened?

The purpose of this was trying to determine why an all-loving God would allow evil to persist. The topic which spurred the whole discussion was Alzheimer's. My thinking this whole time was following the idea that from creation we got the independence to choose, or create, our own suffering and pain. This was supposed to be from the good, all-loving nature of God. What if it simply came out of the fact that the ability to create is the greatest power? God had the power to create and made us in his image by allowing us the power to create. With said power, we chose to create these vague notions of good and evil which have been discussed over the millennia. Maybe we also created the concept of omnipotence and omniscience. That being said, if one has the ability to create anything, include other powers, then in theory, they are omnipotent. This comes from the ability to create the power to be omnipotent or to create the ability to be omniscient.

I extrapolated the idea of creation being the only thing in the beginning. If this is the case, then we created good and evil. It carries over then to examine what else we might have created. One thing that came to mind were the ways in which we define success, fairness, justice. Almost all of our abstract ideas suddenly need to be reconsidered. In the new light, it comes down to an individual deciding which ones he likes or dislikes, which ones to keep and which to throw away. Personally, I feel honesty, respect, and cooperation become the dominant factors. Humankind has made it to where it is because we work together better than any species on this planet. We could fight amongst ourselves trying to gain something over our rival, but ultimately we end up with less because the struggle is costly to everyone involved.

Out Cold...

Well so much for writing a lot of new posts over break. It turns out that ultimately when I go on break, I resort to my baser instincts. These most notably include lots of videogames. I think I played approximately sixty hours of videogames last week alone. The first week of break was consumed in going back home to deal with Christmas stuff. I am not a big fan of Christmas, but I do not mind getting caught up in the family traditions. These included making gingerbread cookies as well as waking up at 6am on Christmas morning to open presents. I honestly do not remember the last time I woke up that early in the morning for anything unless it was last year's Christmas.

The next week of break consisted of Christmas wrap-up before returning to Cedar Falls. Once in Cedar Falls, I spent a couple days working on hammering out a few minor issues with my server. New Year's was a quiet party at our place with a handful of friends who were in the area. Forutnately, Jess lives close enough she was able to come spend a couple days here to run a workout, celebrate New Year's, feed her fish, and see me! I probably should not neglect the hours spent watching college football. Afterall, it was bowl season and they went rather well for me. Iowa won in dominating fashion while Texas won close with Colt McCoy showing why he is one of the most amazing college athletes. To top it off, Tim Tebow showed what he is made of in a Florida victory over Oklahoma in the National Championship. Each matched my hopes as well as expectations almost beautifully.

Then came last week. During the fall semester, I had hardly played any first-person shooter (FPS) videogames. Since I bought my PS3 back in February 2007, these have been one of my primary hobbies. It also turned out that a tournament for Resistance 2 (R2) was starting with over $50,000 in prizes. The exciting part about this tournament was the lack of an entry fee. So KOR put together two teams. The four most experienced in R2 were put on the first team while we rounded up what was left for the second team. We found ourselves a bit short-handed due to eligibility requirements restricting the tournament to U.S. residents of 17 years or older in age. I was appointed to head up this second team. This resulted in the need for me to get some familiarity with the game. After the ridiculous hours of gameplay, I managed to work off the FPS rust as well as learn R2. That pretty much sums up my break.