Ramblings of Eric: Part Something

I've had a lot of steak and caffeine tonight, so its time for another late night crazy blog from Eric.

I'm in Wisconsin this week for training. Its boring. I won't talk about that anymore.

What I will talk about is my coworkers. They are awesome. Just take my boss for example: In addition to who knows how many pitchers of beer, yesterday I had a shot of goldschlager and a jager bomb with my boss. Let me repeat that: with my boss! How awesome is that? Let me tell you it was pretty awesome.

And not just my boss. The entire group up here was so laid back and cool to hang out with. Except for that woman who said I look like a guy from Duran Duran. I wasn't sure if I should be flattered or insulted because I have no idea what anyone in that band looks like. I'm still not sure; It depends which band member she is talking about and whether she meant Duran Duran today or 20 years ago I guess:)

I think I only marginally embarrassed myself playing darts. It would have been worse but my the co-drinking buddy was on the other team and could barely hit the board most of the time.

Ok, so on to the good ramblings about life, the universe and everything (42!). Lets spin the wheel of rambling:

Ok, looks like philosophy: Now all we need is a topic. I'm going with....um....lets see...something relevant...nothing...ok...something interesting...hmmm...nothing...ok, something at all?? Ah there it is!

Do you ever stop and think about faith? Not just faith in God. I mean, faith in everything. I really believe that China is a real place. Same for the Soviet Union, Guam, Japan, and every other country of the world that I have never seen or visited. I believe people when they tell me that the speed of light really is a constant no matter how fast the source or destination are moving, despite the fact that this is completely non-intuitive. And I accept without any proof that my cells contain a jumble of chemicals in a tightly wound string that is the same in every cell but somehow account for all the different organs in my body.

Why?

Why can I accept all of this without any evidence and yet we cannot just accept a God? I guess you might argue that the difference is that if I wanted to, I could check all of the above (ok maybe the speed of light thing would be tough, but with a plane ticket and an atomic clock I could probably convince myself). I can go to China and look around and think, "yea, this is here where they said it would be. Look at all the people! You all talk like that? Fun!". I'm sure there is no way I could check out God.

Lets think about it another way: No one over the age of 12 believes in Unicorns right? OK, lets say that I claimed that Unicorns exist. You might say something, "I've never seen one. No one I know has ever seen one. No one on the planet has ever seen one. So they don't exist". We would naturally assume that the burden of proof was on me because I am making a claim. But what about in the negative case? Say I brought up Unicorns in the first place by claiming they don't exist. Who is the burden on now? Still on the one claiming they exist? Maybe. Maybe not.

This is why I think a lot of folks (myself included) believe that Atheism is just as much a belief system as is belief in Heaven. You have to state as an axiom that God does not exist, because proving a negative is always going to be impossible ("I've looked everywhere, and I cannot find God." "Oh really, did you look everywhere at once? Did you check behind the sofa?"). Its the same with stating unicorns don't exist. They don't of course, but I'm stating that as an axiom. No proof. I can't prove it. I can't prove there really is no God. Maybe there is. Maybe the Bible is 100% accurate and all this evolution stuff is just non-sense. Maybe Joseph Smith really was a prophet. Maybe the correct answer is Mormon. Maybe, Maybe, Maybe. Who knows...