I Don't Know

Quick...

Adam and Eve or Evolution?

Big Bang or Creation?

How old is Earth?

Was there a "Noah's Flood"?

And the questions go on...

"Do you believe in God?"

"I am spiritual but not religious."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I believe in something but not what is in the Bible."

"Then you worship trees or Satan or something?"

"No, I believe in a God that is different than your God"

"Well then you aren't REALLY a Christian."

"...Um, yes, that is what I said. I am not religious but I have a set of beliefs."

"There is only one true God and he will show you the way. I will pray for you."

Good lord how many of these inane conversations do I have to have in my lifetime? Why is it so hard for

people to understand that not everyone believes as they do, and most of all, that you cannot put a label on everyone. I do not believe Christ was a Supernatural being, so I am not a Christian. I do not believe in worshiping trees so I am not a Pagan or Wiccan. I do believe in something but I don't know what, so that makes me neither Atheist nor agnostic. (Atheist meaning you have no belief in any supernatural being and Agnostic meaning you are not sure if you believe in any being or not, basically an Atheist in training).

And yes, those who know me know I do believe in paranormal forces. Just what they are I have no idea, but you CAN believe in something and not have ALL the answers, you just have to have some science to back it up. My belief in the paranormal is as science based as my non-belief in the Christian God.

I know there are others out there like me. We have no voice. We belong nowhere. We lead our own spiritual lives in private and try to gently talk around others because we do not want to lie, nor do we want to talk about it and be lectured, pitied, or condemned. For me, I would have to add that I respect other's religious belief and do not want to discuss it because it usually ends up with me using words like "blind" and "ignorant" and that is ugly and disrespectful to something that is an integral part of who they are.

Here is one to make your head spin. I believe, no I know that evolution exists..it is not a belief system, it is fact. Don't believe me?  Look at your dog. If you have a purebred dog you can be damn sure man genetically selected puppy after puppy to get Fido at your feet. This is a scientific fact, not a belief.

But the second part of that is where I lose people... I do not think humans came from apes nor do I believe the Adam and Eve story.

"Well what do you think happened then?"

"I don't know."

Everyone, repeat after me...I DO NOT KNOW.

Yes, you can doubt something, have no faith or belief in it and not be obligated to fill in the blank with something. I don't know is a perfectly honest and reasonable answer.

Why do I not believe we came from apes or in the Adam and Eve story? Science.  Adam and Eve; so many holes in that story, in that whole book, from a scientific perspective I can toss it out immediately.

Man not evolving from apes? Science as well. If you read more than a magazine article here and there about the science of archaeology you will see that the vast majority of what we "know" about pre-humans is basically made up. Fit the facts to the theory.  Find remnants of a fire with a bone  and instead of concluding simply that Neanderthal cooked their food, archaeologists are quick to set up a whole scenario  behind a glass case at the Smithsonian, complete with what they wore, how they looked, what their social structure was, who hunted or gathered what...all this from a bone in a fire huh? I don't buy it. I used to play a game

See the "wings" on this
 archaeopteryx  hoax fossil.

with a friend when I was in elementary school. One of us would pick up an object and the other had to create a whole, believable story around it to show how it ended up where she found it. that is what archaeologists do. There is nothing in the records or in existence of ANY species evolving into another. For example, there is no fossil record of that cross-over, that critical hybrid...the dinosaur with feathers (we thought we had that one in archaeopteryx but that turned out to be a hoax) proving dinosaurs turned into birds, and we do not have one showing an ape turning into a man. With all the fossils we have found, not one shows ANY species changing into another. and as soon as they find even one I am on board with species to species evolution)We thought we had a few times but they ended up being either hoaxes or mistakes. And if you look at it the other way, we have the shark and the alligator, creatures who have not evolved  in millions of years, so evolution is not an inevitability.

So how do I think humans and all other creature got here?

I don't know.

Science has not proven, to the best of its ability, that we came from apes or that birds came from dinosaur. Yes, there are many physical similarities that point to this, but the rabbit has the exact same eye structure we do, does that mean we came from rabbits?

This mode of thinking, which is basically "prove it to me" is why I also know the paranormal exists and why I do not rule out cryptids. Cryptids are mythological animals that actually do exist. Bigfoot is the most famous. When you are finished laughing, tales of a wild, bloodthirsty deer that hopped on its back 2 legs and carried its young in its stomach were reported sporadically by early Australian explorers but it wasn't until the 1770s that a dead one was found and taken to England for dissection. Now, of course, we all know of the kangaroo.  More recently, about a week ago it was reported what sailors called "The Kraken" and oceanographers call the Giant Squid was first filmed live in the black depths of the ocean. Previously, one would occasionally wash ashore but for a very long time there was no evidence for their existence at all. Or take  the coelacanth, thought to have been extinct for 66 million years, was caught in 1938. and Here is a list of the top 10 cryptids that we now know are real:

http://listverse.com/2010/08/13/top-10-cryptids-that-turned-out-to-be-real/

So if these, and many more can be real, and if you look closely at all the evidence for Sasquatch (meaning reading books by scientists not watching bigfoot shows on the Travel Channel) you will see there is a very good possibility these creatures exist. And this does not, in any way, conflict with science. It also does not mean I think every cryptid is real, but instead of dismissing it all I take each one individually, look at the evidence both for and against, and come to a conclusion as to whether or not the creature MIGHT exist. I cannot say it does, as no one has properly documented it to be a fact.

My interest in the paranormal is usually where people think they have stumped me, trying to equate it with

One of the oldest & still
unexplained ghost photos.

religion. For some, it is a religion, just like for some, science is a religion. All of this meaning that you hold tightly to a belief system,  regardless of the facts and evidence to the contrary and yes, scientists are guilty of this too and it makes for very bad science and fuels the fires for the Creationist Movement, but that is a book in and of itself.

Lets choose an aspect of the paranormal, one everyone is familiar with. Let's look at ghosts. What evidence is there that they exist. I am the one that said I will not accept it if there is no evidence. Well, there is the history. Ghosts have been seen for all of recorded history and almost always have the same traits. Anecdotal evidence usually is tossed out but when you have this much it cannot be ignored. We now have EVPs  which are recordings of supposed ghostly voices. Many of these are recorded under laboratory-like, strict conditions and there is no physical, electrical or mental explanation for them. I want to prove my hypothesis. Since so many people are computer savvy and can build so much in their own homes now, we have equipment that has shown ghostly activity is more prevalent near certain rock formations, near water, in places with certain histories, we have lots and lots of footage, both still and video (the most impressive being dated prior to the computer so it would be virtually tamper proof). There is so much evidence over so many hundreds of years that there has to be something there, you cannot just ignore this part of the human experience simply because you have not experienced it. I have never seen a kangaroo but I know they exist. Shouldn't I be saying "I don't know" you ask? Well yes, and I don't know, but that is why I do the research, so I can know what I suspect. I have seen a ghost, many ghosts, but I did not document it, I had no witnesses, so I need to research it, to find the answer, which may be totally wrong and ghosts do not exist but we are talking about my quest  here, not a call for a new religion or scientific paradigm. This affects no one but me, whereas science and religion affect billions of people, so they better have their facts straight.

So back to where we began.

God.

If we look at God and the Bible scientifically,  the ideas have more holes than a sieve. Sorry but it is a book of fables with a few historical facts regarding the existence of certain people and places that archaeologists have found, and therefore I accept. The rest of it? I simply cannot believe. I actually have tried my entire life to be Christian. I always thought life would be so much easier if I knew there was a better place to go when I died, that my good deeds were smiled upon by someone, that there was a heavenly father that loved me unconditionally, that had a plan for me, that protected me and heard my prayers. I can see why people hold on so tightly to their beliefs in the face of all contradiction. But you cannot MAKE yourself believe something and as much as I want to, I simply cannot.

Now I did say I am spiritual. What does that mean exactly?

I don't know.

I know what I feel. I know that too many coincidences have happened for me not to feel some of them were engineered somehow. I sometimes question whether or not something as complex as Earth, life, the universe...how could all of that just happen? what created the Big Bang, what was before it? I don't know. I have just enough personal experience to make me believe there is something else there but what it is, who it is, how it operates or even if it is, I don't know.

One thing I do know is that  I will never push either science or spirituality into a religious person's face, as some of them do to me. I will never start a war over spirituality as religion has done for millennium. I will never look down my nose at a person who "sins" and feel superior, or not buy a bum a hot dog because "I gave at church". My love for my fellow man, my caring for others, behaviors, my moral code is not driven by fear of eternal damnation or to seek the approval of some nebulous deity, it's because that is the person I want to be, regardless of who knows it.

So I want to make a deal with all religious people out there. If you do not try to convert me I will not insist you explain to me how you can be as intelligent as you are and still believe in the Bible.

Romanceland

Sometimes, just a simple question can be a loaded time bomb. Tonight I had to decided whether to pull the pin or leave that particular grenade alone.

I pulled the pin.

My lovely 17-year-old  is spending the end of the summer with us so she is here every night. She has been dating a boy that has caused her some angst; some his doing, some not.

While in her mis-matched jammies, towel turban over her wet head and toothbrush in hand, she turned and casually asked me, "When you and my dad were first going out, was he all romantic and attentive at first  and then stopped? Did he do less after a while but act like it was the world? Because that is what (boyfriend) is doing, is this normal?"

Yikes. That is a much bigger question than she realized. Do I tell her the truth, or do I lie to save her feelings? And if I do tell her the truth, how much of it do I explain? My answer turned out to be simple and the chicken's way out. "Yes, he did the same. He was very romantic at first but after a while it diminished greatly and now, like you are feeling, I miss it a bit. But Honey ALL relationships are like that, it is part of the evolution of an intimate relationship, it gets even better after this." And I went to bed.

Lame, lame, lame! That is all I could think of. I told her a half truth that could have made it worse, maybe better, but I did not get the soap box out like I wanted to.  I wanted to save her a lifetime of hurt and disappointment. I wanted to tell her every show,  every movie, every song, every myth, every love story is a lie geared to play to our yearnings for eternal romance. I call the whole mess of it Romanceland.  In Romanceland people fall in love quickly, deeply, romantically and then they get married and either it ends there, implying that it just keeps getting better, or keeps going and they hit a few rough spots after a couple of kids but they manage to rekindle that romance completely with one dinner, a few flashbacks, and its back to Romanceland.

Bull.

I wanted to sit her down and tell her the reality of it, to save her the disappointment and heartache that can

take from 10 years to a life time to never to realize...Romanceland is a lie.

When you date and the rush of chemicals in your body finally subsides, the romance will die down quite a bit, sometimes completely. If you have something real, it will mellow and deepen into a friendship that grows into love and keeps growing.  It will be a place where you feel you belong, where you can be you, where make-up doesn't matter. Where you are safe and happy and fulfilled and yet still a bit excited. Maybe not every day, but most of the time. Love needs to be nurtured and worked on all the time, a never ending project, but the outcome is a life, a family, roots, happiness, REAL happiness.

On the other hand, when the chemicals subside and you do not have that core intimacy, you part ways, the end. I f you are older and happen to have gotten married and/or have kids, it can be a heartbreaking, scar-making experience, so decide wisely.

The problem is that we are conditioned (and for women I believe a lot of it is just in out nature, sorry feminists) to believe that the romance stage IS the love, so when the romance wears off, we are no longer loved. How many times do you think the average person does this before they find real love? Think about this and realize that every time this happens it's like being told we are no longer loved or, therefore, loveable. To us, some invisible fatal flaw has been realized or shown itself and boom it is over, the love is gone. How many times does this happen before we give up on "love" and think we are damaged humans somehow and cannot be loved? How many people developed eating disorders, depression, even become suicidal, because they simply do not know what real love is and think Romanceland is 'It"?  (I know so many adults, especially men, my age who use every excuse in the book; I love being alone. Women are nuts. You ALWAYS get hurt so why bother. One even said it was too expensive to be in love! It is so transparent that they really are just too scared, too hurt to be rejected again. In the name of "freedom" they have built themselves a safe little cage).

How do I get through to a blossoming young woman that she is perfect as she is, that the romance part is the fun part, but it is not the real part, and that when it ends, that ending means no more than something has run its inevitable course? It does not means YOU are not good enough, the RELATIONSHIP was not good enough.

I wanted to tell her that outside of Romanceland you find the one person you can count on, the one person you love deeply, who loves and respects you as much as you do them. The one where the romance is really, truly felt from the heart. The person you care for so much you want to make little people with, and when those little people become too much and you find yourselves fighting and hating and your sex life and love life are gone, that you fight even harder and you MAKE it work. Unlike Romanceland, you do not fix it with a vacation to the Bahamas  and a bottle of wine, you fight within it. You talk, you cry, you love and hate until you come out of the other side of hell and you are stronger and better than ever as a couple. Then when the

kids grown up and leave you again meet this stranger you have made a life with for 30 years. The romance may come back, but this time it is between two people in real love, not people who met in Romanceland.

"You are not going to marry this boy" I so want to tell her. "You are probably going to break up before graduation" I wanted to prognosticate. The signs are all there, to those that have bought many tickets to Romanceland. "You will cry. You will feel lost,  like part of you is gone, but you will survive" I wanted to tell her. And if she is lucky, if she is wise and if she listens to me, she will buy another ticket to Romanceland and get her hand stamped on entry so she can return the next day, knowing that she will have to revisit it quite a few times in her life before she is finished with it. Ah, but with the right choice by her side Romanceland is child's play compared to what Real Life romance is like.

Until then, cry, I will be here. Listen to my advice. You won't, but try. Remember you are loveable to us and to boys. Love comes in many forms and yes, I do believe you are in love with him and he with you. But again, this is Romanceland, made of dreams and hopes and cardboard.

In a few years you will drive past Real Life and stop by for some lunch...and that is when the real fun begins.

...and I cant's wait t see you there.