Behold, The Power of Oregon!
Posted on July 24th, 2006 by catalyst into the Uncategorized category
Two recent articles were printed in the Washington Post that discuss Oregon and it's affect on a person's religion.
The first article that caught my attention was written by a woman who decided to become a Wiccan after spending an afternoon at the Oregon Coast. Money quote:
One summer's afternoon, visiting the Oregon coast, I found myself having an unexpected moment of clarity. I stood at a rocky shore with the ocean spray against my cheeks and the sun beaming down, glorious in its intensity. A chant rose from my throat only to be lost in the sound of breaking waves. It was the earth that seemed to speak to me, filling me with a peace I seemed to have lost.
The second article discusses how an atheist scientist came to know God after reading C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity and hiking in the Oregon Cascades. Money quote:
He realized that as a scientist, "you're not supposed to decide something is true until you've looked at the data. And yet I had become an atheist without ever looking at the evidence whether God exists or not."
He began looking and early in the process read Lewis's "Mere Christianity."
"In the very first chapter," he said, "all my arguments about the irrationality of faith lay in ruins."
Yet he was besieged by doubts during two years of struggle and study. Finally, he went hiking in Oregon's Cascade Mountains. One morning, he said, "I fell on my knees and asked Christ to be my lord and savior. And he has been there ever since, the past 28 years, as the rock on which I stand."
So what 's the moral to these two stories:
Stay away from the Oregon Coast that freezing water will turn you into a witch.
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July 24th, 2006 at 6:50 am
Two of my favorite places to go for a walk, and I feel closer to God at both. I can appreciate the experience and it is human nature to want to attribute it to something. But rather than admit to a loving Creator, people settle for an impersonal spirit that offers them no real hope. I find that sad and disappointing.
This weekend, I was watching the Simpsons and the Family Guy, and both shows contained strong elements of criticizing the idea of Creationism. In spite of my uncontrollable laughter, I couldn’t help but also be sad that Christians set themselves up to be a mockery by completely denying the evidence of scientific discovery rather than trying reconcile the two.
There was a recent incident where Stephen Hawking and the Pope went toe-to-toe on the topic and there’s a good article here:
click me
The money quote:
July 24th, 2006 at 7:32 am
Last time I vacationed on the Oregon coast, in Oceanside, I had a God moment … north of the beach was a bluff, and during a moment of quiet reflection, I heard the thundering voice of God, and was sore afraid … “Jesus Christ” I cried … turned out to be a USAF Warthog on maneuvers, flying low, and broke around the bluff with a sudden deafening explosion of sound.
Bought and tried to fly a kite; the stiff wind crushed it like a bug, and so for the rest of our vacation, me and the kids flew our ‘crumpled wad’.
The God message to me there? Stay home, and spend your vacation money on a hot tub.
July 24th, 2006 at 7:35 am
FICM,
I’m gonna have to disagree with you on your distrust in the Creation. I have found nothing in any scientific evidence which disagrees with the biblical account of Creation. Now, the hypotheses drawn from that evidence will quite often fly in the face of Genesis, but you have to ask yourself what the presuppositions of the scientists making those theories are. The scientific community today is the temple of the “religious humanists” and if you don’t belive me, check out the Humanist Manifesto from 1933. Scientists are taught that the earth is a certain age and then build experiments that lead back to their original hypothesis. I’m not looking to get into an argument over this (since I’ve spent too much time in that dance in the past), but I will only challenge you to question the mechanism of evolution. Specifically, evolution requires the spontaneous increase of genetic information which is at complete odds with the entropy we observe in everything in the world (with observing being the first step in the scientific method).
I was in the “reconcile science with the Bible” camp myself even through college, but I cannot remain there anymore. Whether that makes me laughable to society or not…
July 24th, 2006 at 7:56 am
Peter,
I never said I denied the Creationist point of view. I was pointing out that Christians sometimes blindly reject science simply because they can’t get their heads around how both the Bible and Science can both be true. The Church has a long history of persecuting good science and having to later repent and concede that the two can coexist. My own personal take is that those things that are still unreconciled are only so because we don’t yet understand the Science and/or the Bible well enough to have both make sense. And I will concede that there are some things which may never be fully understood or reconciled, and I’m not certain that everything can be explained through Science.
Do I believe that there is a God who created the Universe? Yes. Is there a Scientific method for determining that? No. Does that shake my confidence in Science? No. Do I believe in a literal seven days of Creation? Maybe. Do I believe in the possibility that the historical record of the Bible that concerns the origins of the Universe may be full of gaps? Maybe. Does that shake my belief in Jesus and what He has done for me? Definitely not! EVen if I could fully comprehend the origins of the Universe and exactly how it went down, would it change my faith? It would probably only strengthen it. I don’t fear Scientific discovery in that sense, and I think that is how I am different than a lot of Christians who have a violent reaction to teaching anything other than a strict literal interpretation of Genesis. And I think they are somewhat deserving of ridicule for exploiting the situation as an excuse to flaunt their moral superiority or for politicial gains. More often than not, this just displays their ignorance and comes across as prejudice and judgment. Who will listen to the Gospel when supersitition and ignorance seem to be prerequisites for accepting it?
July 24th, 2006 at 8:10 am
It’s a simple point, but have you ever noticed a subtle wording in Genesis?
To all the animals God made, He said “fill the earth” (Genesis 1:22 KJV); but to man, God said “replenish the earth” (Genesis 1:28 KJV).
RE-plenish? That word is used only when something has existed before and became depleted.
Looks like the intersection of science / archaeology and creation to me.
July 24th, 2006 at 8:44 am
Could also be a drunk monk translating late at night.
July 24th, 2006 at 8:51 am
Hey, I resent that!
Take it back! 
July 24th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
very striking Idea of a Post.
One god of many forms… like my play dough was for about two years… -_-
it is fine for society to chop god into pieces called, The Word, PHD, Science, Linguistics, music, sacrifice, worship, Koran, ect but isn’t god and everything we see all derived from one source?
Are we that source?
The god that created the source that created the atmosphere we live in must enjoy us trying to figure it out.
Should we try and should we be willing to die trying?
July 25th, 2006 at 8:50 am
I had a friend in high school who got saved by watching worms on a sidewalk. Only God.
KM
August 4th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
Hey, I got saved with Princess written on my butt and rainbow tennis shoes on! Uh, don’t ask…
August 4th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
I hope yer a chick.
August 4th, 2006 at 7:15 pm
Yep, a cute one too!
August 4th, 2006 at 7:29 pm
I’m old - born ugly. The only thing written on my butt was by the doctor who delivered me: “Bottles go in other end”.
August 4th, 2006 at 8:22 pm
Even an ugly man
Could kiss your lips
As if they were his to demand of
Or his to destroy like a lover of a demon.
-Even An Ugly Man Lyrics
The world is NOT full of beautiful people – that’s a fact.
There are many men and women who are on the hideous side of normal. But that doesn’t make them bad or unmarriable! No - many ugly people have other traits that make up for their lack of good looks – personality, charisma, dependability, caring and MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY.
These traits add beauty to otherwise excessively overweight, fat, deformed and revoltingly ugly people. A beauty you can enjoy while sipping champagne on an exclusive a sun kissed beach.