Biggest thing I learned my first year in the NFL is nobody gives a crap about what you did last week. The league is about what have you done for me now. That's the NFL. It's also our culture. So you keep working hard because that's the biggest truth about football. -- Andrew Luck Once upon a time, while arguing about a call with the referee during a game, coach Jerry Glanville famously claimed that the initials of the NFL really meant "Not For Long" rather than "National Football League" because a bad call could cost someone his job. And it's obviously true. The NFL Player's Association has estimated that the average length of a player's career is 3.5 years. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell replied: There is a little bit of a misrepresentation or a misunderstanding on that. Frequently, it is said that the average career is about 3.5 years. In fact, if a player makes an opening day roster, his career is very close to six years…If you are a first-round draft choice, the average career is close to nine years. That 3.5-year average is really a misrepresentation. What it adds is a lot of players who don’t make an NFL roster and it brings down the average. Only the best of the best football players make it into the NFL, and then mostly because of their God-given, natural athletic talent. However, the right to stay there must be earned every day, by preparation and hard work. … [Read more...]
To whom would an atheist pray?
I can understand how a person can become an atheist -- after all, in my book Divine Evolution, I described how I came to believe in God, after at least a decade of materialistic, apathetic agnosticism created by my advanced education. Like many atheists have done, I came to believe that much of what I learned in school conflicted with the "Young Earth Creationism" worldview to which I was indoctrinated at an early age, and so I discarded my previously held religious beliefs in favor of nothing. Strangely enough however, at any point during this period I now call my apathetic agnosticism, if you'd asked me if I believed in ghosts, my answer would have quickly been something along the lines of, "Absolutely. My friend's family owns a house that I'm sure is haunted, and I've been there many times. I have personally experienced ghosts." Personal experience can have a very powerful impact on someone's worldview, I can attest. At the same time, I would have equivocated on the same question asked about God and given a much different answer because of my lack of personal experience with God at that time. In retrospect, it now occurs to me that my acceptance of the "reality" of a supernatural ghost and simultaneous rejection of a supernatural God seems a bit silly. To be brutally honest though, I really wasn't putting a whole lot of thought into existential questions at that point in my life. Quite frankly, furthering my professional career and raising a family were much higher priorities for me. Rarely if ever did I go to church during that extended period of my … [Read more...]
The Pearl: 24 April 2015
Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. -- Carrie Fisher The line above is from actress Carrie Fisher's one-woman play titled Wishful Drinking. Superstar-famous due to her iconic role as Princess Leia in the Star Wars franchise, Fisher weathered the storm of dealing with personal addiction problems and mental health issues while under the intense media scrutiny typically accorded a Hollywood A-lister. She is an accomplished author as well as a famous actress -- Fisher's novel Postcards From the Edge was a bestseller, made into a movie. In Wishful Drinking, Fisher confronts the demons that have caused so much pain in her life with grace and humor, sharing with her audience the pain of her husband leaving her for another man, which led to her brief stay in a mental hospital. Near the end of her show Fisher said, "I heard someone say recently that many of us only seem to be able to find heaven by backing away from hell. And you know, while the place I've arrived at in my life isn't precisely everyone's idea of heaven, I could swear that sometimes, if I'm quiet...I can hear the angels sing." Fisher paused and then somewhat pragmatically added, "Either that, or I've f##ked up my medication." … [Read more...]
Can a Christian believe in ghosts?
My novel Secondhand Sight won the 2013 Reader's Favorite international book award for Fiction in the Horror category. However, the novel is not one that I'd recommend to everybody because the plot involves paranormal activity. Ghosts are treated as real entities in my book, because I believe they really exist. I do realize that not everyone believes in ghosts. It even seems that some of my Christian friends agree with my non-Christian friends about the subject of ghosts, even though they disagree about practically everything else. Most atheists reject the idea of ghosts because they don't believe any supernatural or paranormal phenomena is real. Yet I've had Christian friends also say they don't believe ghosts are really the spirits of dead people. They think ghosts are actually demons pretending to act like a dead human, presuming that we know how disembodied spirit should normally behave. Some of my Christian friends don't think there is a biblical basis for believing that ghosts are real, but they are mistaken. In my opinion, Christians should be open to the possibility that ghosts exist because of something that's in the Bible, words spoken by Jesus himself. Luke 24: 36-39 describes the first encounter that Jesus had with the disciples, after his crucifixion and resurrection. The New International Version Bible (NIV) reads: 36 While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be upon you." 37 They were startled and frightened, thinking they had seen a ghost. 38 He said to them, "Why are you troubled, … [Read more...]
On the formation of the universe, by C. W. Bobbitt
Unfortunately, I decided to begin my book Counterargument for God with my criticisms of Darwin and worked backward, instead of beginning with the Big Bang, the beginning of the universe and working forward. As a result, many atheist readers stopped reading before they reached my observations on the evidence for the Big Bang, because they couldn't accept the truth when I shed light on what I believe to be the obvious flaws in Darwin's theory of evolution. After reading my book and corresponding with me, professor C. W. Bobbitt was kind enough to allow his personal thoughts in regard to the existential questions to be published here on my website. He offered this excellent suggestion as he wrote, "I think it best to have you read and mull on it for a day or so. I will just mention a couple of things to pique your interest: visualize God commanding "nothing" to split into two universes of matter and anti-matter (some might think of this a right-handed and a left-handed system) with each flying away from the other to its pre-assigned space and each experiencing an initial behavior which we mortals call the Big Bang. Thus our universe comes into being in a way consistent with scientific thinking... after God initiates it." Without further ado, here are Professor Bobbitt's thoughts on the Big Bang theory. ON THE FORMATION OF THE UNIVERSE by C. W. Bobbitt We suppose that the universe had a beginning, that it came into being by an act of creation, that the creating agency was (is) God. As mortal men we seek to know how it came into being, how God performed this … [Read more...]
