Observations

About a year ago, some dude whom no one had previously heard of named Morgan Spurlock released his documentary about the dangers of fast food (particularly Mickey D's) Super Size Me. Spurlock's documentary followed him through a rather hellish thirty days, in which he restricted himself to eat nothing but McDonald's food (well, we all know this already. I'm just saying it because).
Bleagh.
The results were pretty predictable. Spurlock's health went off the high dive, and by the time the thirty days were up, he was in a, well...pretty bad state. He escaped death, and that's the important thing, but his escape was pretty narrow. On top of this, and pretty obviously, he gained a lot of weight.
Sprinkled in with footage of his ordeal, Spurlock included numerous little snippets exposing various nasty parts of the fast food industry, and what it does to people. Combine this information with Spurlock's disastrous health by the end of the documentary, and you had a pretty damning case against fast food.
And after this damning evidence was released, what happened?
Not much, it seems. All that really happened was that McDonald's removed the Super Size option on their fries, and began to offer some more healthy foods, which no one really eats anyway. I mean, what kid would choose apple slices over fries? Yeah (oh, and, as Spurlock said in the video release of Super Size Me, McDonald's didn't seem to have fully repented of it's ways, as it also launched, along with it's health foods, the fat'n'grease crammed McGriddle sandwich).
Anyway, point is, Spurlock's documentary doesn't appear to have cured America of it's fast food craving. This isn't a failure on his part, as Super Size Me was well made and presented a powerful case against fast food. But I doubt anyone was really converted from eating fast food by it. It maybe only strenghtened the resolve of those who were staying away from it in the first place.
My point? I just seemed to realize something rather sad about the world. It's hard to gain converts to anything. No matter how powerful your evidence, no matter how convincing your case, people don't listen if they don't want to. We keep eating fast food, some of us often, some of us occasionally, even though we know it's wreaking cardiovascular havoc. People still resist what is true, (whether that truth be obvious or harder to find) if it disagrees with whatever habits, worldviews, or beliefs are stuck in their heads. Unfortunate.
However, there's always hope. Keep plugging, Morgan; you might convert us someday.

In case you were wondering...

...this place looks like I got into the Crayola factory (at least, the section where they make all the blue stuff) because I've been fiddling with the template (duh). Hopefully when I'm done, this'll look a bit better.
Hopefully.

My Summas, Part 3: The Bible

In my last post, I showed some evidence that supported the idea of an intelligent Creator, namely, God. 'Course, all (or most, in any case) religions base their faith on this belief. If I'm trying to prove the truth of Christianity, though, we want to take this a step further: The Bible. There are numerous proofs that support the Bible as accurate. Here are a few:

• Prophecies: The Bible is full of prophecies, especially the Old Testament, and most, if not all of these prophecies have happened as prohesied. An example, of course, is Jesus. As many as 300 Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled by Jesus. The OT said that the Messiah would work miracles, and Jesus did that, numerous times, in front of thousands of witnesses. It also gave many descriptions of the Messiah's death, saying He would be peirced through the hands and feet, He would be betrayed to His death by a friend, and His legs would not be broken (something that was commonly done during crucifixions to speed up the victim's death, if you didn't know that already), among others, all of which happened to Jesus. Last, and maybe most importantly, it was prophesied that the Messiah would rise from the dead, which Jesus did, and appeared to as many as 500 people, after having most definitely died.
  
• Another example of Biblical prophecy fulfilled is (or "was", actually) the great country of Edom. It was an immensly powerful country, but also very evil. Numerous prophecies were made about it's eventual destruction, and between 400-500 B.C. (about a century after the last prophecy about it had been made), it was taken over by other Arab groups, who, in turn, were overthrown by people called the Nabataeans, who were overthrown by the Romans, and this tedious chain of let's-nab-Edom-and-lose-it-again events continued until about the 12th century A.D., when the Crusaders built a castle there. After they left, Edom was pretty much dead, until it was rediscovered by a Swiss traveler in 1812.
• Textual evidence: Lotsanlotsanlots of manuscripts documenting both the Old and New Testaments exist. These manuscripts were written by people of numerous different races, cultures, and languages, yet they all seem to be in agreement. Some do disagree on minor details, such as spelling of names, or numbers of things (such as the amount of soldiers in an army), but nothing of significance. The New Testament alone is documented by over 20,000 manuscripts, making it the most reliable "document of antiquity", that is, a document written before the invention of the printing press.
  
• Early Christians were, as we all know, persecuted for their faith, mainly by Romans and some of the Jews. If the New Testament writings were false, you can bet that these two groups would have dug up a lot of evidence against it to bring the spread of Christianity to a grinding halt. No such proof exists, though.
  

There is more evidence that supports the truth of the Bible, (or at least debunks arguments often used against it), but there's some for you. The information in this post was stolen from here--as if you didn't figure that out already by following the links above.

My Summas, Part 2: God

I am pretty surprised that Atheists exist at all, at least, I'm surprised that Type 1 Atheists exist (see my last post for my definition of a "Type 1 Atheist"). This is because the logic that makes the case for the existence of a Creator is, to me, very simple and very hard to argue. It is this:
Ask an Atheist where the Universe came from, and they may well tell you something to the effect of "It started as a tiny ball of extremely densely packed matter, which spontaneously exploded at some point in pre-time. The exploded matter went swirling around and around, until it eventually settled into planets, galxies, stars, and the like." Or they may simply say "The Big Bang," and keep a long story short. Now, if you want to stay on their case, you will then ask them "But where did that ball come from?" They may answer to the effect of: "Well, it probably came around from a previous universe. See, scientists think that the universe has been going through a cycle, where it explodes, then compresses into a ball again, explodes, then compresses, explodes, compresses, in a never-ending cycle. Our universe is part of that cycle." Or, they may simply say "The Big Bang 'n' Crunch Cycle," and keep a long story short.
Now, whether that is true, whether the Big Bang really happened, and whether our universe will eventually collapse on itself, may be true. I don't know, and that's not the point here. The point is that, with those replies, we still don't get a satisfactory answer. Why? Well, at the risk of stating the obvious, I'll plow ahead:
Our universe is swarming with cycles. Planets cycle around their suns, the tides cycle in and out, living things cycle with birth, reproduction, and death...almost everything goes around and around. However, these cycles all had to start somewhere. Even though they can (theoretically) go on forever, they didn't exist forever. Same rules apply to the supposed "Big Bang 'n' Crunch Cycle". Something else had to start the cycle; something else had to make that little marble of matter, so it could explode and start everything else off, because, as we all know, it's physically impossible to make something out of nothing. But waaaaay, waaaay back, that has to be what happened, because, as we all know, it's physically impossible for something to have just existed forever. So, how can this irritating little paradox be resolved? One word:
God.
God, because He can make something out of nothing, and He has existed forever.
So, to make a long story short: There has to have been an intelligent Creator of the Universe, because, quite simply, nothing else is possible.

My Summas*, Part I: The 3 Atheists

The next few posts I will be making will be about why I am Christian, why I believe it is right, and other various thoughts concerning religion and whatnot.
This first post is considering the causes of Atheism and its different forms. In my last post, I had an excerpt from a sermon made by a priest who was speculating that Atheism is caused by not so much a disbelief in God, but a dislike. That may be the case, but I think denial of God may be caused by three other things; therefore, there are three different kinds of Atheists.

• The first kind of Atheist is the type who doesn't believe in God and religion simply because he doesn't think the existence of a God follows reason. His Atheism is purely based on intellectual reasons. In my opinion, this kind of Atheist is the least common because, as I want to show in following posts, anyone who was letting his intellect--and intellect alone--dictate what he believed in would realize the existence of a God is perfectly logical.
• The second kind rejects the ideas of religion and God because it won't allow for his kind of lifestyle. This is more common, in my opinion, especially in today's society. Practicing a religion takes away something many of us hold dear, that is, the freedom to do whatever we want. Religion dictates what is right and what is wrong, and Atheist #2 doesn't want to listen to that. Someone who is addicted to smoking doesn't like seeing those "Tobacco smokes you" billboards, because they shake a finger at his lifestyle. Religion does the same to Atheist #2, and he doesn't like it. In other words, this Atheist's reasons for being Atheist are more psychologically based than intellectually based (though #2 may use #1's arguments to make it look like he is, in fact, a #1).
  
• The third, last, and possibly most common Atheist is the "don't know don't care" type. This Atheist never really gave any serious thought to religion, and honestly doesn't care about it. He may live a lifestyle that wouln't be allowed by religion, but that's not the key factor here, as he really doesn't realize what he's doing is forbidden. He just thinks going to church every morning is a pain in the butt, and things like that are largely what makes him an Atheist. Most of these Atheists were probably raised with some religious background, but when they went off to college and were no longer in need of their parents to tell them what to do, to haul them out of bed on Sundays, brush their hair, and plunk them in a pew for a (in their humble opinion) &@#$ boring hour, they dropped the whole "religion thing" like a hot potato and ran off to do....whatever. Something else. Many baptized Catholics, Christians, etc. are, in fact, Athiests (or will be when they hit 18) for these reasons.
  

And that concludes the first part of my "Summas". Thank you for reading.

*That title, by the way, is not meant to suggest that I think these posts will be in any way comparable with St. Thomas Aquinas' works of theological genius. They won't be. I'm using the word "Summas" here to, I dunno, mean something of religious meaning/significance/etc.