Over My Head (blog assignment for week 24 #3)

So...5 reflective blog posts in response to our reading and thinking.  Well, I'm not sure if this is exactly what Mrs. Bell meant, but this is a response to my reading.


I read the excerpt from the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and I did not understand remember half of it.  I thought the beginning was good; the stuff with the boy was interesting and a good way to get started.  But ya know, when these writer's start using all these big words and long sentences it kind goes in one ear and out the other: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."  Uhhh...can you repeat that?  OK, so I like simplicity, in writing at least.  That's why I write my blog as if I was talking to someone.  I like reading stuff like that, it's easy to understand.  So yeah, I would never be able to read this God Delusion book.  I wouldn't understand it and it would be so boring.  


There were a few parts I found interesting.  Like when Carl Sagan was quoted talking about his 'little god'.  Oh, and I never knew Einstein was an atheist before I read this passage.  I thought that was strange.  How could a guy as bright as Einstein who understood science so well not see the evidence of a god?  How could he look at all the complicated science stuff and not recognize that it was created by a higher being?  But anyway, that's not really the point.
Yeah, that's all I have to say about that.


So, my whole point is that I dislike these books and such that seem to address more 'sophisticated' people and that if you want to capture my interest, keep it fairly simple.  I'm not sure if this is rally what I was supposed to do, but this is what I had to think about this passage.

2010 Winter Olympics Vancouver

I don't know who any of these people are.

Except that this is the lady who won the free-style women's mogul skiing thing. 

And Apolo Anton Ohno and JR Celski are in this picture.

And this is the Chinese couple who did really well and have been skating together for 18 years.

P.S. Mr. Harris... (blog assignment for week 24 #2)(take 2)

Continuing from my previous post about Sam Harris' book Letter to a Christian Nation and branching off with a different line of thoughts.

Okay, so Mr. Harris says that any cell in your body has the potential of becoming a human and that when you scratch your nose, you have "committed a holocaust of potential human beings."  Well, I say that there is a major difference between the cells that make up your body and a human blastocyst.  First of all, a normal body cell must be tampered with before it actually has the potential to become a human.  A cell on you nose will just sit there until you scratch it off or it dies or whatever.  A blastocyst on the other hand will grow on it's own and, unless something goes wrong, it will become a human being.  It doesn't need any help, other than what it naturally receives from it's mother.  This is the way God designed humans.  It's natural.  It's normal.  It will happen with being tampered with.  Therefore, a human blastocyst has so much more potential of becoming a living being than a cell on your nose for instance.

Also, Mr. Harris address the fact that there are more cells in a fly's brain than there are in a human blastocyst and that therefore, we should be more concerned with killing a fly than a blastocyst.  Well, I say that since a blastocyst has the potential of becoming a living, breathing human being, it should be valued so much more than a fly.  Living, breathing human being have souls, flies do not.  If a blastocyst is going to become a human, it is going to have a soul.  Whether is has a soul already, I don't know (only God really does know) but what I know is that is will have a soul.  To kill it is destroying it's chance to have life, not only in this life, but also the next life.  After a fly dies, it does not achieve eternal life (either in heaven of hell) so why would anyone care whether they killed it or not?  A blastocyst will have a soul, therefore, it should be allowed the chance to live.

Hey Devil - tobyMac

She dialed him about 6:00 pm
She checked her hair in the mirror
And she stepped through the door like this
Three flights down
And she's out on the streets
Walking brick sidewalks lined in grey concrete

He saw her coming from a few blocks away
Red scarf in the wind as it started to rain a bit
Shuffled down the boulevard
Cut me like a deck of cards
I thought you had me
You thought that you had me

But hey, Devil, go on
Get your junk out of here
I don't need you
I don't need you
Hey, Devil, go on
Get your junk out of here
I don't need you
So move on

I stepped to it like I knew what I was doing
I'm a moth
You're the flame
Never knew you'd be my ruin
In the blink of an eye
Element of surprise
Got my feet on the earth
But my face to the sky

Shuffled down the boulevard
Cut me like a deck of cards
I thought you had me
You thought you had me
Now the plot is thickening
Pushing deep under my skin
I thought you had me
You that that you had me 


But hey, Devil, go on
Get your junk out of here
I don't need you
I don't need you
Hey, Devil, go on
Get your junk out of here
I don't need you
So move on 


But hey, Devil, go on
Get your junk out of here
I don't need you
I don't need you
Hey, Devil, go on
Get your junk out of here
I don't need you
So move on

You're a beauty and A beast
You're the pressure never cease
You're the straight other side
And they say you never sleep


But hey, Devil, go on
Get your junk out of here
I don't need you
I don't need you
Hey, Devil, go on
Get your junk out of here
I don't need you
So move on 

P.S. Mr. Harris... (blog assignment for week 24 #2)

Here's the beginning to my next post about the audio excerpt from Sam Harris' book Letter to a Christian Nation.

But I'll finish it later because I really should work on my research paper.

Letter to Mr. Harris (blog assignment for week 24 #1)

Wow, we're finally assigned to blog again for AP English!  I'm doing next week's work this week because I will be on a missions trip in Honduras with my youth group next week.  I'm sure I'll have tons of stories and lots of pictures!  So you can expect a few posts when I get back. :)


Anyway,  Mr. Harris...I listened to your clip from Letter to a Christian Nation and had a few thoughts.  First of all, the way you addressed your audience (which was Christians in the United States) was very straight forward.  It was almost like the you was talking to me directly and accusing me personally of disrupting stem cell research.  You made assumptions when talking to  'me': "Your beliefs about the human soul are, at this very moment, prolonging the scarcely endurable misery of tens of millions of human beings."  I personally never stated my beliefs to anyone.  By addressing Christians in general, you placed me in a category that I'm not even a part of.  "You believe that life starts at the moment of conception."  I don't think all Christians believe this; I'm sure that they all don't.  I'm not even sure what I believe--I haven't really thought about it before.  "You believe that there are souls in each of these blastocysts and the interests of one soul...cannot trump the interests of another soul."  Once again, this is an assumption.  Mr. Harris, you are assuming that since 'we' don't support stem cell research, 'we' believe once soul can't trump another.  But I think there are exceptions.  "We should throw immense resources into stem cell research and we should do so immediately."  Well, that's your opinion, Mr. Harris; I want to see your credibility.  So far you have just stated your views and beliefs.  I want to know that you are supported in this idea and it isn't just you who's saying this.  "Because of what Christians like yourself believe about souls, we are not doing this."  This made me feel like, "oh yeah! Christians do have some authority after all!"  'Cause so often it feels like Christians are the minority and the government makes decisions without us and throws aside our opinions.  But now Christian's are the majority and 'we're' stopping stem cell research.  (Does anyone else think that's kinda cool?)


So, Mr. Harris, I disagree with the assumptions you make and how you generalize what Christians believe about stem cell research.  However, I will address the claims you made about stem cell research later.