Reason and the Greatest Commandment
2021 Sep 30In Matthew 22:34-40, Jesus teaches that the greatest commandment is to love God. He also taught that the next greatest was to love your neighbor as yourself. There are several aspects of this that are fascinating.
End of the long hot summer
2021 Sep 26This summer was the hottest I can remember in this area.
Our neighbors have grapes growing along their back fence. The vine has grown all the way over atop our fence and climbs up our flowering plum tree. I trim it to manage it, but it produces decent grapes so I keep it around. Yesterday we picked the grapes and made juice, and my! it is tasty. All that sun counted towards sugar and flavor. I got four quarts and a pint. Maybe I'll make jelly.
2021 Family Vacation
2021 Sep 6For a few years I have been making a tradition for our family of renting a large house and bringing everybody together there for a few days. Last year we stayed at a place on an arm of Hammersley Inlet (Puget Sound salt water). In most years we have changed locations, but this particular place was ideal for many of the things we all enjoy. So, we went back there again.
I brought my kayaks and went out every day. A paddleboard, paddleboat and canoe were available for us to use. Elias explored the tidelands and collected crabs to look at. The kitchen was large and convenient for group meals. The hot tub was enjoyable for soaking. The large living room sectional was comfy for everybody to hang around on.
Kayak Adventures, High and Low
2021 Jul 20On the holiday weekend I went on a kayaking trip that had more adventure than I’ve had in a long time. We were a group of 2 guys and 5 gals. The good news was that everybody survived although we lost two people.
The float plan was to kayak from Washington Park in Anacortes to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island. We would have ebb current down Rosario Strait. The tide would change while we were south of Lopez. Then by the time we got to Cattle Pass between Lopez and San Juan Islands, we would have flood current up to Friday Harbor. It was a long trip and the currents would help a lot.
The complication was that there were winds up to about 15 mi/hr out of the west. This meant that there was a lot of fetch up the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the rollers out of the Strait had become quite big. Also initially the current was against the wind - which made them even bigger.
Kayak loop I-90 and 520
2021 Jun 14Yesterday it was a nice rainy day so I went out kayaking on Lake Washington. I put in at Enatai Beach Park underneath I-90. The water seemed surprisingly warm already for the year.
There was a family on the beach with a dog in the water and a tennis ball. They also had a very happy little girl (about 1st grade age) swimming near the dog. She was wearing all her clothes, her rain jacket and her boots!
I paddled over to talk with them. When I asked the girl if she was having fun, the answer was an enthusiastic “Yes”. The mom then asked (with good humor), did I want to take her? (Take the girl on a boat ride or off her hands? Not sure. Obviously the girl was a real character and sometimes a challenge! :-)
Following God, Across Time
2021 Jun 12In broad strokes, the first part of the Bible (the OT, Old Testament) is the story of God bringing a single people, a nation, to himself. And the second half of the Bible (the NT, New Testament) is the story of God bringing the rest of all peoples to himself.
Did that mean before the NT, that God did not bring people other than this one nation of Israel to himself? Certainly not.
God and Personal Pronouns
2021 Jun 6Personal pronouns in our culture have become a bit of a hot issue. This issue has become related to how we talk about God.
New material
2021 May 21A bunch of material has been added at this update:
And in the blog:
Book: Return of the God Hypothesis
2021 May 20I have read Steven Meyer’s new book Return of the God Hypothesis. This book is very well written and well-reasoned, dealing with arguments of biology and cosmology regarding naturalism vs theism in origins. It is thorough, and it ably stands up to the best competitors.
The question posed by this book is “What actually caused life, the universe , and its fine tuning to arise?” The book argues that the best explanation is a transcendent purposive creative intelligence.
Avoid Spiritual Complexity
2021 May 9Our pastor started going over an early Christian book Against Heresies by a guy named Irenaeus. He wrote about a lot of ideas at that time that were going astray of what Jesus had taught.
One of these is what is called Gnostisism (from gnosis in Greek meaning knowledge). The idea was that once you learned hidden knowledge, you were no longer spiritually powerless.
Kayaking through the Ballard Locks
2021 Apr 24I did a kayak trip today from Ballard through the locks to the Puget Sound. The locks are always an interesting experience. Normally there are a lot of people walking through the park that are watching us from above, but with COVID, the lock gardens have been closed to the public. This has been the only way to go into that space at this time.
Going out, I shared the lock with a single sailboat.
A Story of Larry
2021 Apr 1My mom has been writing stories about our personal family history for a while. It is an unusual history and I agree with her that the younger ones in the family should know about it.
Her latest stories were about her own children, about me and my two younger sisters. About how and where we grew up.
She asked that we print them up for our grandchildren. At first I was reluctant to dive in because (of course) I had my own things going on. But after getting into the story, I realized it was good. I also have done my own writing about these things, so the idea became easy to run with.
After editing, I added it to the website: The Story of Larry
Science is Limited
2021 Mar 28Science is a fantastic human endeavor. It has enabled us to know our world better and make a better life for many, many people. However, I don't think that science can solve everything because science is limited.
According to the National Academy of Sciences, “The statements of science must invoke only natural things and processes.”
I see this as a statement that confirms science is limited. And I will show several of these limitations:
- Science depends on non-science for its existence.
- Science tells us constrained truth.
- Science is unable to give us answers about many things.
- Science seems disallowed from using certain sources of truth.
Replacement Plumbing
2021 Mar 14Last weekend Andrew and I replaced the water plumbing in his house. The supply lines were galvanized steel and internal rust was restricting the water flow.
His house was built almost a hundred years ago. I could see that some additional plumbing work had been done since that time. However, we tore out and completely replaced all the supply and most of the drain water lines. (Day 1)
Austin helped Andrew and I on this first day, so it was very enjoyable to work together as a team on this project.
Unexpected Roof Consequences
2021 Feb 14We got our snow this weekend. A foot deep in some places.
However, there is a consequence I had not expected when we had our roof re-done last year. Our new roof is slippery metal and the snow slides off.
Snow in California
2021 Feb 6My sister is in a mountainous area of California where they recently had snow.
Reasonable Beliefs
2021 Jan 21We all believe many things:
- I believe that science does a good job of leading to true explanations of what happens in the material world (the natural world). This is especially true for science that can be repeatably verified by experiment.
- I believe there are true things that are immaterial but real. These things are not part of the physical world because they are not based in matter or energy. These can include mathematics, philosophy, and spiritual things.