Admitting Doubt

Preface/Disclaimer: I have written various versions of this post at least four different times. It doesn’t say exactly what I hoped it would as well as I hoped it would, but it is at least a start. I’m pretty sure that, if I were to rewrite it again in a week, I would say some things differently, but hopefully you can understand my main point.

I’ve seen this posted on Facebook a few times:

I understand the point. I get it. I know what you are saying—it is impossible to KNOW that your religious beliefs are correct. After all, we have no proof of what happens after death. We are physically incapable of observing the supernatural. We cannot begin to experience the past or the future. You’re saying that some things are unknowable.

I’d like to think that all of us who were raised in religious families or espouse ourselves to a particular belief system have thought through that particular conundrum. I don’t put any stock in someone’s faith who hasn’t questioned its validity at some point. Unless you have experienced some form of internal faith conflict, your opinions are probably not held deeply or defensibly. We have all realized that most religions are mutually exclusive and passed down from generation to generation and most of us have questioned these teachings.

In my mind there are only five possible conclusions to this inner struggle:

1. My religion is right- So, now affirmed in your faith, you continue on in your belief…until your next moment of doubt when you repeat this process.

2. Another religion is right- So you espouse this new (or at least different) belief system…until your next moment of doubt when you repeat this process.

3. All religions are equally valid- So you go on practicing, or not practicing, whatever religious system fancies you for the moment trusting that the god that is somehow represented by all of them knows your true heart and intent…until your next moment of doubt when you repeat this process.

I’m going to interject a little commentary on this one- This is the worst of all the solutions because, in an attempt to examine the facts logically, logic is somehow completely dismissed from the process. The idea that all religious systems can please a single god is contradictory in itself as many religions are mutually exclusive and their key tenets state specifically that the others are wrong. In fact, it is the primary, stated objective of most religions to convert unbelievers and proselytize other believers.

4. There is no god- Convinced that there is no supernatural being who cares or interferes in the affairs of humanity, you choose to base your life on pragmatism and the scientific method (rough description of humanism)…until your next moment of doubt when you repeat this process.

5. The answer is unknowable- You decide that it is impossible to know which answer is correct. If you come to this conclusion, you will need to choose to live according to the basic principles of one of the four previous conclusions. While you are not entirely certain that it is correct, you must at least have some sort of ethical and moral code…until your next moment of doubt when you repeat this process.

After examining the options, I feel that the people who made this meme are right. In a world demanding tangible evidence, the complete truth about the supernatural is unprovable at best. At worst, you could say it is completely unknowable. All of us, at various levels, live according to option #5. It is as impossible to prove that there is a god as it is to prove there is not a god. We have not been able to prove what we believe so we live according to a specific belief system that we feel is most likely to be correct.

I have no problem with this way of living—the honest seeker. My problem is with the cynic. The one who knows what is right (or at least what is most likely to be truth) and still chooses to live differently on a chance that it may be false. This person chooses comfort over conviction. This person seeks to undermine other belief systems without claiming to have an answer. This person posts religious memes meant to enrage others on social media sites.

I’m not enraged. I’m saying you’re right. And I hope you’ll become more right as you continue to search for truth.

 

Having the Right vs. Being Right

Here’s a tip…

I love local news.

Waitress fired after posting picture of snarky minister’s receipt.

When I saw the story this statement that I have heard many times popped into my head:
Just because you have the right to do something doesn’t mean it is right to do it.

 

• The minister had the right to ignore the restaurant’s policy of adding 18% gratuity to large parties.
• The minister had the right to write the comment.
• The minister had the right to compare her gifts to God to her gifts the wait staff.
• The waitress had the right to publicly post a picture of the receipt.
• The minister had the right to call the restaurant and complain about the employees reaction.
• The restaurant had the right to fire the waitress.

The last one is the only right that I will defend as right.

What do you think, was anyone right in this situation?

 

The Presidential Debate According to My Kids

Yesterday afternoon I told Sammie (8) and Jack (6) about the Presidential debate. I said that the two guys who want to be President will be talking on TV so that we will know who we want to vote for. They were really excited about it so I told them they could stay up a little bit later than normal to watch some of it.

I purposely did not tell Sammie or Jack anything about the candidates other than their names and that Barack Obama is the President right now and that Mitt Romney wants us to vote for him instead. Here is some of the conversation that happened while our kids sat in their pajamas watching the candidates square off:

9:05
Jack: Is that President Rosenbaum?
Me: Obama. It’s President Obama.
Jack: But that’s him, right?

9:07
Jack: Hey! I understood something! He said he wanted to get more money by making something low! Right, dad?

9:11
Jack: Can we decide who we want tonight?
Me: You can decide anytime you want but we can’t vote until November.
Jack: Oh. Is the vote on TV?
Me: No, we go to a special place and there is a computer that we push the button for the guy we want to be President. You aren’t old enough to vote but you can go with me if you want.
Jack: That sounds like a pretty boring place for kids.

9:16
Jack: I think I’m going for Obama
Me: Why is that?
Jack: Well, he is already the President so he already knows how to do it. Besides, the other guy wants to give us more jobs.
Sammie: But Obama wants us to pay more. Wait. Is that what raise tax means?
Jack (emphatically): But the other guy wants to give us more jobs!
Sammie: But not everyone has a job. I think he wants everyone to have a job so they get paid.
Jack (offended): Well I hope he doesn’t give me one.

9:20
Sammie: Dad, who are you going for?
Jack: He doesn’t know!
Sammie: I’m just asking! Dad, who are you going for?
Jack: He doesn’t know yet because he hasn’t heard everything they are saying because you won’t be quiet!

9:24
Jack: Alright! Romney is keeping PBS Kids! Did you hear that Sammie? He likes Big Bird!
Sammie: Whew! I hope the President won’t get rid of PBS Kids.

9:40
Both kids were laying down staring glassy-eyed at the TV.
Me: Alright, it’s time to go to bed.
Sammie: I really don’t understand what they are saying.
Jack: Dad, will you tell me what they say in the morning? Not everything, just the words I know.

 

Un-Occupy WalMart

We need to exhume Sam Walton, wrap his entire body in copper wire, then re-bury him and replace his tombstone with a strong magnet. That way we can conduct electricity as he continuously rolls over in his grave.

Seriously, do you think Sam Walton, founder of WalMart, would be pleased at the reputation of his retail giant? Do you think that he dreamed of starting a company that would be known for low prices and an awful shopping experience? Do you think he would be proud of the way people avoid his store if at all possible?

I used to think it was just my local WalMart that had this reputation, but I found that if you start talking about it everyone has their story…and it usually ends with “I only go there when I have to.” Here’s my criteria for when I go to WalMart:

1. When I really need to save some money and the savings will be substantial.
2. When no other store offering a particular product is open.
3. At extreme hours when no one else is there.

The problem is that WalMart knows its clientele. It knows they are low to lower middle class citizens who have no choice but to shop at the place offering the lowest prices. They know that their customers will still be there even if they have only 4 registers open. They know their customers can’t afford to go somewhere else that won’t make them wait over thirty minutes before they push their carts full of now-thawed frozen goods out of the men’s clothing department and into the actual line. They know they won’t lose customers if every empty parking spot is filled with abandoned shopping carts. And don’t get me started on carts that roll straight or have round wheels.

I’m sure Sam Walton didn’t visualize a store whose customers dread shopping. So why doesn’t WalMart change? It could if it cared to.

The McDonald’s closest to my house has, for as long as I can remember, been known for poor service. They are slow, rude, and inaccurate. If I want a Quarter Pounder with Cheese I will drive three miles to a different McDonald’s knowing that I will be home earlier than if I would have gone to the McD’s 500 yards away. At least I did until about a year ago. A new manager took over last fall and started training his employees to be respectful to the customers. They listen to your order and get it right. They work hard to make sure your order is ready quickly. If there is a problem they apologize and fix it. A business can change its reputation and regain customers who have shunned them.

When are you going to change, WalMart?

Better question- When are enough people going to decide that saving a few bucks on groceries isn’t worth the hassle so WalMart will notice?

 

Up in Smoke

A nine-minute, stress-relieving, daily walk home from work can turn into a 15 minute test of patience—just add a five and seven year old.

Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying, I love spending the time with my kids, but there are only so many times I can say “Hurry up”, “stay out of the street”, “put that down”, or “let that car go by” before I feel like the walk is some sort of parenting boot camp designed to increase my ability to contain insurgents. Despite the added stress, most days that I walk them home from school I really enjoy myself as I learn a lot about their lives and the things that they find interesting. Here are a few things I never would have known without these conversations:

• Dogs without tails are Dobermans
• Squirrels without tails are Doberman squirrels
• Rusty nails used to be worms but they died and dried up…not necessarily in that order
• China and Japan are almost the same because they make fans
• People don’t have tails so we are Dobermans

That was all yesterday.

Somewhere in all of that conversation Jack found time to fall behind about a hundred yards so Sammie and I stopped on the corner to wait for him to catch up. Sammie pointed to something on the ground and said “What’s that?” I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary and had to have her point it out three times before I stopped overlooking the unrecognized object—a cigarette butt.

My seven year old daughter didn’t recognize a cigarette when she saw one. I asked if she had ever seen anyone smoke a cigarette and she replied “In a movie once…101 Dalmatians.” That was certainly not the reality when I was seven. In 1988 cigarettes were everywhere and smoking was part of society. Every time we went out to eat we had to specify whether we wanted to inhale someone else’s smoke or not. The cigarette lighter in the car still had a picture of a cigarette on it and an ash tray underneath it. Billboards still showed pictures of cowboys lighting up. I knew all about smoking when I was seven.

Times have changed, haven’t they? Public smoking is almost as rare as a busy signal. Here’s the interesting part, the number of smokers hasn’t really decreased all that much since I was a kid (25.5% in 1990 vs. 20.8% in 2007) but the public attitude toward it certainly has. It seems that society is trying to hide these human pollution factories away from the mainstream public and to keep them and their poisonous emissions quarantined from the general population. It’s working. My daughter knows they exist only because of an animated film that was made back before we locked them in the closet.

Don’t misread this post as a call to action or a fight against the evils of nicotine because it is merely social commentary. A conversation with my little girl made me think through some interesting questions:

• Could public perception wipe out the tobacco industry?
• Are children less likely to smoke now because it isn’t accepted publicly?
• Couldn’t smoking (and similar vices) be eradicated completely in one generation?

 

Yo!

Start with the number 10 and subtract the number of yo-yo tricks you know how to do. That’s approximately how cool you are on a scale of 0-10.

I score -2. Does adding a flip at the end of Rock the Baby count as a different trick? -3!

I don’t mean to brag, but I really had way too much time on my hands in junior high. I also had a dad who found a Duncan display in Toys-R-Us and remembered the good old days when he was too cool for middle school. Apparently, yo-yo ability isn’t passed down genetically but in plastic packaging and official Yomega trick books. That’s right, he gave me one of those too.

I have owned several different yo-yos in my life: Duncan Imperial, Duncan Butterfly, Duncan Wheel, Yomega Brain, and my personal favorite, a Yomega Fireball. So when I saw a kid at church walk by flinging a Butterfly (that may be the coolest phrase ever used to describe something associated with uncoolness), I suddenly knew exactly how my dad felt when he passed that display in Toys-R-Us. I knew this was my time to shine. All of those hours by myself in 8th grade were about to pay off as I made a life-changing difference in this boy’s existence.

But I played it cool. I refrained from jumping straight into “Wanna see the Eifel Tower?” and simply said “It looks like you’re getting pretty good with that thing.” He then showed me Around the World and slept the yo-yo for a few seconds before I asked “Mind if I give it a try?” Here was my set list:

• a few Forward Passes to test the string tightness
• Rock the Baby (with the flip)
• Walk the Dog
• Kick Around the Corner
• Eifel Tower (really not difficult but always impressive)
• Hand the tool of my trade back to the boy along with the knowledge that he could one day be as awesome as me. And if I saw real amazement, maybe I’d even add an encouraging word about enjoying what you do no matter what others think.

My plan went really well until I flung the Butterfly (didn’t sound as cool past tense) toward the ground into a sleep so that I could perform a Kick Around the Corner when the Duncan split. One half went left, the other right, and I was left holding a tangled string. I apologized for my clumsiness, helped the boy gather up the pieces to his yo-yo, put it back together, and sheepishly thanked him for letting me play with his toy. I decided to skip the “see? we’re not all dorks” life lesson.

Instead of teaching I re-learned a few things that I already knew:

• Yo-yo tricks aren’t any cooler at 30 than 13
• Trying to impress people usually has the opposite effect
• My useless talent isn’t going to suddenly become valuable
• They just don’t make yo-yos like they used to

I’m off to find other ways to use the phrase “flinging a butterfly.”

 

Man Up and Be a Manly Man, Man

“I am a man!”

Yelling that at someone is a little more effective when your voice doesn’t crack on the last word. It’s a little more effective when you are taller than your 5’3” mom. It’s a little more effective when you know how to use a razor. It’s a little more effective when the waitress hasn’t just handed you a kid’s menu.

That was me when I was 13. I turned thirty this past September and I still haven’t stopped trying to pretend I am tougher than I really am. I still think I have something to prove. For some reason I still think that someone is going to take away my Man Card if I don’t live up to some ridiculous expectations of manliness (which should definitely be spelled with a y rather than that sissy i).

Here are a few things I am going to stop pretending I know more about than I actually do:

Grilling- Ok, I admit it. I can’t ever figure out how much lighter fluid is the right amount or how long you should actually wait before throwing some form of red meat over the charcoals. Wow, it feels good to get that off my chest. While I’m confessing, yeah, I’ve Googled it.

Wings- I like wings. I really like wings. But I’ve got to confess that I have severely over-played my love for sauce-covered fried chicken parts because wings are considered a manly food. The implied spiciness, the meat still on a bone, the association with football, and the risk of salmonella from undercooked chicken…buffalo wings have it all. You even get to talk down girly foods like celery while eating. I’m convinced that the celery is served alongside a plate of wings just to make the wings look even manlier in comparison—the way Apple used a guy with huge hands to make their iPhone look smaller.

Guns- Here’s a good way to pretend you know a lot about a subject that you know very little about. Stick to the one thing you actually understand. For me and weaponry this is what I’ve learned by playing the old 007 games on Play Station. Here’s how that goes…

Friend: I just got a new CheyTac Intervention m200! (or any other gun that I wouldn’t know even existed had I not just Googled “best gun in the world”)
Me: Wow, that sounds great! That reminds me, did you see that thing on the news the other day where the guys broke into the liquor store with a PK7, an assault rifle, an SMG 45 sub machine gun, and a GL 40 grenade launcher? Crazy stuff!

Cars- I gave up pretending I knew anything about cars a long time ago, but I still find myself diagnosing my own mechanical problems like I have any sort of clue. “Yeah, the check engine light was on but I’m pretty sure it’s just the ignition coil misfiring because I have a faulty O₂ sensor in the fourth cylinder of the radiator hose vacuum…either that or the flux capacitor.”

Mixed Martial Arts- I like to see someone get beat up as much as the next guy (unless, of course, that next guy is Chuck Norris, but I think it’s a pretty safe assumption that we are pretty far apart on the guy scale), but I have never gotten into mixed martial arts. I find myself contributing to a lot of conversations with “Oh, man, UFC 138 was last night! I completely missed it.” or “Hey, what happened to Kimbo Slice?” or “I saw this one clip on YouTube where…”

A few questions for you:

• Men, what do you know very little about but pretend to in order to look manlier?
• Ladies, is there a female equivalent of this?
• Men, why don’t we ever call out a guy who is doing this?

 

Valentines’ Day: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I have this theory that most of the negatives associated with events or even people are directly related to what makes them great. The Super Bowl is the most hyped sports event of the year and that makes it really exciting. It also detracts from the real event and places undue attention onto the parties, celebrities, and corporate sponsors. Ever meet someone who is really good with people? When they make mistakes, it’s usually trying to make someone happy. Our best opens the door for our worst.

Holidays are the absolute epitome of this concept. There’s the generosity/greed on Christmas, the thankfulness/overeating on Thanksgiving, the fireworks/burn victims on Independence Day, and whatever they do to counter the white shoe thing on Labor Day. Valentine’s Day is no exception. Here is a list of traditions ranked (using <3s, or course) by how destructive they could be.

Cards (negative potential- <3)
“Yes, I bought into Hallmark’s plot to take over the world by inventing their own holiday.”

Flowers (negative potential- <3 <3)
“I love you enough to give you a gardening project. Water these daily and trim the stems or they will die…just like our relationship if you don’t put in more effort.”

Candy (negative potential- <3 <3 <3)
“I love you and I will still love you when you are 40 pounds heavier…which will be about this time tomorrow.”

Plush Animal (negative potential- <3 <3 <3 <3)
“I love you but would rather you spend time with this inanimate bear. He’s probably just as good of a conversationalist.”

Facebook Shout-Out (negative potential- <3 <3 <3 <3 <3)
“I am so in love with my Valentine, ____________. He is the best thing that could ever happen to me and I can’t imagine my life without him.”

Last year I placed this simple request on twitter and facebook:

After reading through facebook today, I’m convinced we need a “barf” emoticon. We have 364 days. The clock is ticking.

Don’t be surprised if you see this below your Facebook shout-out tomorrow.

:O~_D

You’ve been warned.

 

My Grinch list

I’ve always admired the Grinch. First of all, every other green character I’ve ever seen is an outstanding example of intelligence and class. Kermit the frog, Yoda, I could go on… Actually I can’t. Those are the only two examples I can think of. Hmmm…I thought there would be more…

The Grinch had good reason to act the way he did. Obviously there was the cardiological problem associated with his undersized heart and the fact that the Whos really were way too cheerful. I mean they were annoyingly cheerful. I would willingly move to a longer line at Wal-Mart if I found myself behind someone as cheery as your average Who buying his yearly supply of roast beast. Besides, those Whoville beasts probably volunteered to be roasted. Ridiculously cheerful little twerps.

The Grinch’s most admirable characteristic was the way he made up his mind to do something and cooked up an unbelievably imaginative scheme to accomplish it. It was so imaginative that he pretended to be somebody imaginary! He used the Whos strength, their undying belief in Christmas, against them. The Grinch was a tremendous strategist.

I know a lot of people feel sympathy for the dog, but you shouldn’t. That powerful pup pulled a huge sleigh all the way up that steep incline. We should be admiring the strict diet and exercise regimen the Grinch obviously designed for him rather than saying he was cruel. The Grinch should be a spokesthing for PETA after training that dog and interrupting the beast roasting.

I also believe that the Grinch’s cause was worthy of our praise—he was removing all of the things he hated about Christmas from the holiday. If he had been at the World Cup, he would have owned every vuvuzela within earshot. Since the Whos were more obsessed with loud carols than tooting their own horn, the Grinch focused on ridding Christmas of its more obnoxious aspects. With the Grinch as my inspiration, here is my list of Christmas traditions to confiscate if I can ever think up a brilliant enough strategy. I’m calling it my Grinch List.

Egg Nog- I don’t hate egg nog, but I don’t love it either, and I definitely don’t understand why people go crazy over it this time of year. If a beverage isn’t good enough to drink in February, I’m not paying $12 for a quart of it in December.

Mistletoe- I’m not completely sure on all the details about where the kissing tradition came from, but I’m pretty sure the story starts this way: “There once was a very poor boy. In fact, he was so poor that he couldn’t afford chloroform…”

Hallmark Commercials- Does Hallmark still make movies? Or did they finally realize that they can squeeze the same number of tears out of a woman with a 60 second advertisement and sell just as many overpriced cards? I would like to shake the guy’s hand who came up with that marketing strategy…then give him a 5 second head start before I chase after him with a baseball bat.

The Open Hearts Collection- While we’re on the subject of bad commercials, have you seen Jane Seymour’s collection for Kay Jewelers? This is by far the most inappropriate jewelry I’ve ever seen. I can’t be the only one who thinks it looks…ummm…it looks like…uhhh…it’s just awkward.

This Year’s Song- Every year there is one song that gets played and played and played until you realize it will be in your head long after that guy down the street finally takes down his icicle lights. It’s always the most annoying song you can possible imagine. Past winners have included Santa Baby, All I Want for Christmas is You, Christmas Shoes, and Last Christmas. I will be raising funds to create Men in Black-style mind erasers if anything by Justin Beiber gets that much Christmas airtime.

Don’t look at me like I just shot Santa Claus. You know you have one, too. What’s on your Grinch list?

 

It’s Been Ten Years

I’m pretty sure that the reality of September 11, 2001 still hasn’t sunk in for me. I don’t feel like I’ve processed the information. I still feel like I’m missing something despite doing the things that every other American has done in an attempt to come to grips with the senseless loss of life in an attack on American soil:

Ten years ago I watched anxiously as we tried to sort out all of the details and worked out a strategy to defend ourselves. I remember my confusion during the worry-laden phone calls with my parents and the prayer meetings at Southeastern FWB College. I hated Bin Ladin and Al-Qaeda. I remember the lump in my throat the first time I saw a jet fly overhead after the attacks. I bought an NYPD t-shirt and put an American flag on the back of my car.

As the years have gone by I have been a part of memorial services and visited ground zero. I have watched numerous documentaries, read article after article, and heard so many conspiracy theories about what really happened that, although I have more details, I am more confused today than I ever have been about how something like that could happen. I have never fully comprehended the number of human lives that were lost that day.

I do know that heroes have been revealed–from police officers and firefighters to passengers on planes and contractors who volunteered to help with reconstruction. I know that I have never seen our country more unified than it was when we decided to go to war and never more divided when we started pulling troops out. I know that I appreciate our military and their families more than I did before the attacks.

What I have not done is relive the emotion of that day. At least I hadn’t until I found the September 11 Television Archive. Remembering how a normal day with planned-programming, allergy medication commercials, and weather reports suddenly became the most tragic day of my lifetime brought it flooding back. The shock, disbelief, anger, sadness, fear, and confusion welled up inside as I watched, in real time, the World Trade Center towers burn and collapse. I realized that I haven’t been able to process the information because I haven’t combined the facts and the emotion.

Ten years ago, most of us forced ourselves to turn off strong emotional responses as we directed our energies into showing strong resolve and coming together as a nation. As the facts have been revealed, I have remembered the tragic events as numbers and timelines, buildings and planes, heroes and villains without consciously remembering the strong feelings I initially experienced. Watching the newscasts with all of that information already firmly in place tied it together for me.

I realized that the reason I haven’t connected my emotional response with the facts is that I was personally affected very little. This year I’m remembering that many American’s lives were altered greatly. They lost loved ones and saw their family members risk their lives to respond. I’m taking a little more time to remember my distress during what felt like a very personal attack because I’m sure those who were affected most still feel those emotions. I remember…and I feel.