An Apology to the Neighborhood

I want to publicly apologize to my neighborhood but I just can't bring myself to pick up dog poo. I am coming out of the closet. One day I even faked bending over to pick it up when a car was driving by. I just can't take it anymore. I have to come clean. Am I going to get a fine for this? If so I am calling the ACLU.

Who came up with this idea anyway? I mean, come on - walking around with a bag of poo. And then there is that humiliating feeling of stooping over to grab it with the plastic bag. Icky. It was probably some crazy environmentalist who has it all backwards.

Think about it. We are only adding to the landfill with millions of plastic bags filled with dog poo. Where's the outrage? Where's Obama? Seriously, I never see anyone using a paper bag (now there's a million dollar idea). It's always a plastic one. Wouldn't it be more natural to let it lie there and fertilize? I am no biologist but I think, "Yes, YES!". That makes more sense.

That does it. I am going green. I herby declare that you will not see me around the neighborhood with a sack of doo. Go green & let it lie. This is the new slogan of the Mission Dog Blog.

Sorry neighbors but I am going do my part to save the planet. Luckily for you my dog only weighs 10 pounds. If you have a Great Dane good luck applying for this program.

Simply "Naive" Questions About Evolution and My Shoulder

1) How can something as complex as the human shoulder evolve over an enormous expanse of time and allow survival of a species whose survival is predicated upon the use of a fully functioning shoulder? i.e. How does a species that needs a functioning shoulder in order to use arms and hands (taking out of the equation the necessarily chance evolution of arms, hands, fingers, blood, vessels to transport blood, heart, organs, cartilage, bone, marrow, muscles, joints, cells, and all the things that make up the human body that I have no knowledge of) to build, plow, plant, gather, hunt, hold, nurture, mold, shape, feed and eat survive?

2) Where are the intermediary forms (missing links) in the fossil record? Doesn't it stand to reason that evolving biological life on this planet would leave at least one proven fossil example of partially evolved creatures?

3) Can anyone explain the mind boggling complexity of a single cell and where that cell came from?

These are only a few of my "naive" questions.

"You're Naive"

So, Michael thinks I'm naive (see comment on Don't Play Sports & I Just Can't Make the Evolutionary Leap). I love it! Well everyone (all 2 people who read this blog), welcome to middle school. This is precisely what happens when people are unwilling to engage in an educated dialogue. This is precisely what happens when people adhere strictly to their doctrines without question. Let's be fair. This happens on both sides of the spectrum: from those who cling to the doctrine of Darwinism just because they don't believe in God - to those who believe in God just because "the Bible tells me so."

I would prefer it if Mike told me why he thought I was missing the mark rather than dismissing me as naive. But the issue Michael seems to be dealing with here is that he has no idea how something as complex as the human body could possibly evolve and survive while it was evolving. So, he resorts to name calling or dismissing the questions and the person in favor of his doctrine. He simply can't deal with the gaping holes in Darwinism and the thousands of unanswered questions about evolution. He is not willing to dialogue. So, what does he do? He chooses to silence or ridicule those with whom he disagrees. Most of the time this is done out of fear of what might actually be discovered.

But what is truly sad is that we can't have a dialogue that might be productive. We aren't aloud to ask questions without being vilified and the old adage that "no question is a dumb question" isn't true. And if this isn't true it means that all learning and discovery must stop.

What's interesting is that at this very moment a major documentary called "Expelled" is hitting the big screen and it discusses the very issue Michael has unwittingly raised by his comment. The issue is that Darwinists are unwilling to dialogue about the problems with their religion and theories and because they are unwilling to dialogue they are doing everything in their power to silence the dialogue, the questions and especially the people who ask the questions. The tactics are the same and they are scary.

What are people afraid of? Are we so afraid of finding the truth that we have devolved (thanks Devo-an 80's rock band for those who don't know) to middle schoolish name calling? Sad.

Of course, I could have completely misread the comment and Michael might have really been talking about my naivety concerning women and sports (which was all tongue and cheek). And if that is the case I agree with him. I admit it. When it comes to women, I am a bit naive. Peace.

Explore the Expelled Movie here. And please remember that the movie is about the issue of silencing free speech and those we don't agree with.

Don't Play Sports & I Just Can't Make the Evolutionary Leap

Okay. Here is my advice for all the machismo people out there - don't play sports. Take up reading or playing music or drawing or gardening or investing. Yes - all the things that I (you think now) thought were too sissy when I was younger. Besides, girls dig all this stuff anyway. They could care less if you are a sweaty beast who can hit a little round thing or tackle another guy like you're tackling some animal to catch your supper. I have come to realize this doesn't impress them one bit. But it took my 41 years, a bad knee and 2 bad shoulders to realize it.

I just finished having an MRI on both my shoulders the other day. You know this really big machine that resembles a white coffin, invokes claustrophobia and tortures you with deafening noises you never heard before for 2 hours. So, now I'm doing a little rehab for some partial tears in my shoulderous musculous joint of the deltoidious facitous thing (I think that's what the Doc called it) to avoid surgery.

Then I ask him about my knee and he says, after looking at the x-ray, "Well, you're looking at total joint replacement in about 15 years. But don't worry, I predict that they will be able to grow back cartilage by that time due to stem cell research. So, stop running on the tread mill." I say, "Thanks Doc, I'll just have a bad knee and I'll get fat. That will help."

So, were all the macho years of baseball, soccer, football, lifting worth it? Since it hurts so much today, I think you know the answer.

Back to the MRI. First of all, I have no idea how the doctor knew what he was looking at as he was explaining it to me but there is a lot of stuff inside my body. I mean bones and muscles and tendons and ligaments and cartilage and fluid and organs and veins and blood and cells, etc. I always thought it was one piece of tape-like substance that held my arm to my shoulder. Wow. I was way off. It's complex.

This got me to thinking (imagine the little thinking bubble)...how in the world could all this happen in stages or by chance? It just doesn't add up to me. I mean, if I was somehow evolving and let's say I was just a body (not to mention all the organs that would have needed to evolve perfectly and necessarily for life to function) and was growing an arm but I was missing all the myriad of tendons and cartilage and ligaments and muscles, and veins and arteries, etc. how is that supposed to work? Let's say only a few things grew properly, I would have this floppy appendage growing from my body that was quite useless. How would I eat - you know, get food from anywhere to my mouth? I guess when I reproduced (this isn't so simple either) then the idea must be that the next generation realized that that last part didn't work out so it grew one with a few more tendons or muscles or whatever? Call me naive but it's really confusing to me. It would be a miracle that anything survived on this planet. Ever. How can a whole that is made up of so many millions or billions of parts become a whole if the parts weren't all there in the first place?

Sorry, I am just not smart enough to make the evolutionary leap. Oh yeah, forget about the sports thing - it hurts later in life and girls could really care less. In other words, you're not impressing anyone. Well, it's the truth.

Carpet is Very Very Important to Church

I worked in a fairly large mainline denominational church as the youth pastor (sorry - I mean youth director b/c I was not ordained so I really couldn't serve any "pastoral" purpose) and we decided to throw this coffee house and invite some local bands and have some people read their poetry, etc. Blah, Blah, Blah. The cool thing was that it was totally the students' idea. I just went along for the ride.

So, they trick the place out (isn't that what the kids are saying these days or was that the 80's) and work their tails off all day. They go to garage sales to get retro furniture, candles, etc. Blah, Blah, Blah. They invite all their friends.

Well, Saturday night rolls around and the youth center is packed - 250+ kids show up and a good, clean time was had by all. The cool thing is that 90% of these kids never stepped foot into a church before.

I arrive Monday morning to the church (still sleepy from the long weekend) and I get called into the administrator's office at the behest of the pastor, at the behest of the trustees. Also, sitting there is my immediate supervisor. I quickly realized that this was not an impromptu award ceremony for me due to the fact that more new people visited the church Saturday night than did all year.

Rather, it was a tongue lashing about the coffee and the wax that got spilled on the new carpet and the garage sale furniture piled in the corner of the youth center. I have to admit - I was mad. "You mean to tell me that you prefer clean carpet over hundreds of high school students hanging around the church." To my dismay, I realized that clean carpet wins every time.

Needless to say, I learned a valuable lesson that day. You can never underestimate the value of new carpet in the Kingdom of God. Many a soul has been won as a result of it. I have tried to keep this mantra close to my heart. In fact, I think I will go write it on the inside cover of my Bible. Is that allowed?

Anyway, I feel really stupid because I just learned the other day that you can actually clean carpet. This picture proves it. I wish I would of known that back then but what did I know I was just a youth pastor (I'm sorry. I mean youth director).