The long anticipated coastal kayak trip finally happened. Four of us met at Rialto Beach; we put into the Quillayute River and paddled out into the Pacific. There were rocky islands to see and to navigate around.

That day the winds were a little higher than anticipated, so right away the water was busy and somewhat chaotic. Later we estimated the waves were 5-6 feet. One of the guys who had been here before used the descriptive word “terrified” (although I’m not sure he was serious).

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I was stopped in the car, and another car was beside me. It was a gorgeous, bright, warm spring morning. There was a young person in the other car - slouched and bored. It looked as if they felt life was meaningless in that moment.

I was not bored because my day would be full of tasks and events. Did that make my life more meaningful? I wondered if even though my day would be busy, could it also be a spiritual day?

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I have wanted to see Oregon’s Crater Lake for some time. I signed up to do an organized bike ride on the rim road in September. However, Melanie will not be able to go because she will be back working at school in those busy first weeks. So, spur of the moment, we did a road trip to see it and added some other stops of interest.

Our first stop was the Maryhill Museum on a bluff overlooking the Columbia River. It is in a beautiful setting and has an unusual combination of artifacts. Very interesting.

On the way, we saw many, many wind turbines. I had not realized how many had been installed.

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Scientific Worldview - 2025 June

 

Atheism and materialism are really handicaps in science, because you restrict yourself to a very narrow set of causes and a very narrow way of looking at the world. [However] belief in God and recognition of his design in the universe is not only important for our personal understanding of reality, it can be very, very valuable for a working scientist.” - Michael Egnor

 

(Quote context and citations are in the note links).

 

Belief and Free Will - 2025 May

 

[Context: Even those who say there is no free will still expect others to behave in compliance with moral standards. They demand others be responsible and live up to accepted standards of behavior.

If our behaviors are deterministic this expectation is not logical. It only makes sense in the context of free will.]

 

Belief is not merely what you say you think, but belief is what you do. It's how you behave. A person who really did not believe in free will would have to stop living as if free will were true. ... So, the reality is that everybody believes in free will. - Michael Egnor

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Our universe happens to exist. Most people subscribe to the Big Bang model and its description of cosmological origin. In this, our universe began in the finite past, bursting into existence from a single point and expanding out to size.

All things naturally physical (including energy and matter), all physical laws of our universe, all space and even time itself did not exist without this initial singularity. Absent this singular event, nature itself did not exist. Therefore, since the event was not of nature, it was by definition super-natural. In the Big Bang model, the origin of the universe was supernatural.

Others believe the universe had an infinite past, always existing with its characteristic features. This view would seem to make the issue of origin disappear, but it does not.

In our physical world, real infinities are never actual because they are unable to exist. There cannot be an infinite quantity of things because there are a finite number of particles available in the universe. There cannot be an infinite number of events because then there would never be an event to start the event sequence. Infinities are mental concepts that physically impossible, and so infinity itself is supernatural.

However, we exist. Since an infinite past in our natural world is impossible, an infinitely old universe would also be supernatural.

Therefore, the existence of the universe through either the Big Bang or an infinite past is supernatural. Since most scientific lines of evidence point to the Big Bang, it is generally the preferred view.

So then, because our universe exists, everyone believes in at least one great miracle.

Mechanistic Causes

Since everything that begins to exist has a cause, the next great question is what was the cause of the Big Bang? We already know it was not natural (of our universe); however, it might still be a mechanistic cause. A huge issue that this cause must also explain is why our universe is constructed with hyper precision to support life.

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I was born into a Christian family. However, today my view on Christianity is not the same as it was when I was a child.

Often a person remains in the religious belief system they grew up in. If they do leave their belief system it may be for reasons that involve experience, rationales or evidence. I however am still a Christian, and it is because of evidence, reason and experience.

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Good News: Read all about it!

Find out about

• The Simple Good News
• values that you (and others) can choose that strengthen relationships
• how this makes sense of spiritual things that are otherwise confusing
• and please choose this way of living

This is an approach for living based on what Jesus taught and is pragmatically useful both for those that follow Jesus or for those that just admire him.

I'm Larry Grove, and my wife is Melanie. We have three adult sons and our family has continued to grow.

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