Somewhere Better

Out of a lot of trial and error; after dead-end, after dead-end, after dead-end, I finally found my childhood friend.

So, without further ado, here he lies, beneath a grave marker here in town, a cemetery now overrun with debris and anthills, although, you can't really tell by the photo. It's Sarasota Memorial Park, and the *photo is something I found on "Find a Grave".

Robert "Bobby" Spegal was a childhood friend of mine back in my elementary school days, and in fact, we lived in the same neighborhood. And although he rode his bike to school and I walked, because I lived a bit closer, he passed me everyday as we both headed to Southside Elementary, the school that we kids in the neighborhood all attended.

One sunny day back in the early 70s, Bobby passed me on his way home from school, and little did I know, that would be the last time I'd ever see him. In a flash, that sunny Florida day suddenly turned very dark.

I got home that day, did my homework and chores, and then headed over to another friend's house. 'Strange as it may sound, I rarely if ever told "Billy" when I was heading over; it was just a ritual to hang out after school until around dinner time. This time, this day, something unusual happened, though, as Billy came running up to me as I approached his house, sobbing and in tears. He was trying to find the words, which came out, "Bobby Spegal's dead!" I said, "Whaaat?" Repeats, "Bobby's Spegal's dead!".

That little exchange sticks in my head to this day, as if I just heard it yesterday, despite that this was nearly four and a half decades ago.

Bobby, who rode East on Tuttle Ave., was passing in front of Billy's house, just as he did every day, but this time he would not make it home.

By the time I got to Billy's house, the ambulance had left with our school mate's lifeless, mangled body in the back. I know his body was mangled, since the other kids who came running up upon the gruesome scene had reported about it the next day. Billy didn't see Bobby's lifeless body because his mom understandably kept him in the yard during the whole ordeal. A retired Air Force officer was pulled over and detained, charged with DUI, and later on, charged with vehicular manslaughter. The man was 68 yrs old at the time, so I assume he died serving his 25 yrs without parole.

To set up the scene, Bobby was not on the right of way, but instead, riding against traffic on the sidewalk, which was about 6 or 7 feet away from Webber St., the street on which Bobby rode home every day. The driver, who was elderly, at least in comparison, was heading West on Webber, and he veered off and hit Bobby head on. While I never got the actual speed of the drunken man's vehicle, my guess, now, is that it was double the speed limit, since Bobby was hit so hard that his shoes never left the point of impact. He was literally knocked out of his shoes like something you'd see on a Saturday morning cartoon.

Bobby ended up in the bushes about a one street block away, my guess is about 30-40 yards from the point of impact. Killed instantly, of course. Nine years old. Seen 45 minutes earlier, now, gone forever.

Being nine years old, myself, I couldn't fathom what had just happened. It just didn't compute. I blocked the rest of the day out, and I couldn't even begin to tell anyone what sort of comfort or consoling was offered to me later that evening when my parents got wind of the horrendous incident.

As I grew up, I found that I could not just sweep the "why" part under the carpet. It's natural to want to know why bad things, despicably bad things, happen. The explanation I would get from my devout Christian, maternal grandparents was that Bobby was in a "better place". He was "in Heaven", presumably "at peace"



So, I tried this "A better place" stuff, because I was desperate for answers.

My initial reaction was, "Really?"....a better place??? Somewhere "better" than with his mother, the person who carried him in her womb for 9 months?? Somewhere "better" than playing catch with his Dad? Somewhere "better" than playing fetch with his dog? Somewhere "better" than watching TV with his siblings? Somewhere "better" than visiting his grandparents? Somewhere "better" than with his school mates? Oh, really?

I didn't buy it as a teenager, and needless to say, I don't buy it now. Christian explanations didn't make sense to me, even as a child, let alone, as an adult. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with attempting to buffer the harshness of reality. We're only human, and it's human nature to seek to minimize suffering, even if that means not being completely truthful with ourselves. The problem is not that I won't lie to myself; the problem is that I can't.

RIP Bobby.

Addendum:

My initial search wasn't to find my friend's grave site, but to find a living relative(if any)..e.g..mom, dad, siblings, etc., just to let them know that at least one of his former classmates hadn't forgotten him.

Five Facts

'Got tagged in something called "Five Facts", where you're supposed provide 5 facts about yourself, and then tag others. This will be a nice change-up from the usual Theist/Atheist stuff.

 So, here goes, in no particular order.....

1.  I played B flat clarinet in Concert band in Jr. High School, which required that I learn to read treble clef. After graduating, I dropped clarinet, taught myself electric bass and managed to eventually secure a position in a fairly well-know progressive-rock band. To this day I can't read bass clef, although, I know all the 7 church modes by memory.

2.  a 7' snake lives in my spare shower.

 

3. I like liver....calf, chicken, beef, goose, and mullet gizzards aren't too bad, either.

4. I co-parent two teen aged girls whose biological father left them and their mother when they were 2 and 3

5. I once prepared veal chops for George W. Bush and his friend, the Ambassador of Italy, the latter of whom lives about 1 hour north of me.

I'm going to forgo the tagging part, since the blogs that I visit I can pretty much count on one hand, so the people I'd tag are already tagged = /

Sauce for the Gander

One look around the atheist/theist blogosphere, and one thing becomes very clear: Atheists are seen as a great threat to moral values, a threat to society as a whole, and generally thought of as a bunch of big meanies whose sole purpose is to run around trying to persecute Christians.

I will now try to put a few things in perspective:

Okay, imagine a scenario where, at the end of every conversation I had with a Christian, I said something like......

"Well, you can deny the truth and believe there is a God all you want, but when it's all said and done, guess what....your body will attempt to inhale one last time, you'll gasp for oxygen, and that'll be it! Yes, and after that last breath, you can be sure that gases and fluids will start to accumulate in your lungs and other organs, and from there, it won't be long before post-mortem hypostasis sets in! That's right, your skin will turn blueish-purple and your once beautiful eyes will become discolored and cloudy! From there, you will pay a visit to the mortician, be cut open, have your organs removed and crammed back into your lifeless, blood stained carcass! Mark my words, Nature will have her way, you'll see! But don't worry, you won't even know that you died or had ever even lived! In a few generations, you'll be completely forgotten!!!! You'll be worm-food, and don't say I didn't warn you!"

Now, think about that. If I and all atheists made such remarks when the realization set in that we aren't going to change theist's minds with our arguments, no matter how sound those arguments may be, we would be seen as some pretty ugly, mean people(never mind for a minute that many of us are already seen that way).

And yet, most of you knew where this was going when it started, and you'd be right if you thought I was making a parallel reference to when Christians threaten atheists with their "Hell" doctrine. Sauce for the gander, anyone? And yes, I realize that many of today's liberal Christians don't believe in a literal "Hell"(thank goodness!), so, I'm mainly addressing the moderates and fundamentalists who do believe there's a literal place called "Hell", and in my experience, their defense would undoubtedly be something along the lines of..."Well, the truth hurts!", or "God is Just!", or "God can't tolerate sin!", and the like.

Well, news flash---atheists could just as easily use the same empty tactics and say.."The truth hurts!".

And if evidence matters at all, there's actually mounds of evidence that Christians and everyone else will suffer the fate that I described above, when in contrast, there's not one iota of evidence that we survive our physical deaths and go to a literal place called "Hell" or "Heaven", the former of which, of course, is a place where non-Christians will allegedly be kept alive and perpetually tormented with fire.

But yet, despite that whatever objective evidence we have that leans to side of human beings expiring in the same, natural way as every other living organism, we atheists still don't feel the need to pull this sort of scare tactic out. Why is that? Simple---because we don't need to. Our arguments stand on their own merits; we don't need to run around trying to frighten theists into seeing things our way.

That's pretty telling, if you ask me.

Knowledge Vs Belief

Breaking news: Christians know what the Bible says.

In other words, forget that "think" and "believe" junk; Christians don't merely think and believe that what the Bible says is true. No, they know it's true.

Okay, so, the problems are many, but let's begin here:

Even if Christians know what the Bible says, then, without committing the fallacy of begging the question, aka, a circular argument, can someone tell me how they know that the Bible is an accurate, infallible document? I mean, we can all sit here and claim to know what all sorts of things "say". For instance, we can all know what "Jack and the Beanstalk" says by reading the story, and we would more than likely all agree on what it says, provided that the story didn't inform our moral views or political views, because if that was the case, you can wager a lot of money that there wouldn't be any consensus on what it says. But that's for later.

An encounter with a believer awarded me the following response.....

“Christians do not merely think we know what the Bible says. Because we place such high value on it as God’s Holy Word, we study it; we employ methods, such as reading whole passages in context; we investigate possible interpretations then pray for insight for the correct interpretation.”

Okay, so, yes, Christians place such high value on the Bible as to believe it really is "God's Holy Word".

Nothing really new there, right? Right, we "get" that part.

Here's the part I don't "get": What about all of the parts of the Bible that are demonstrably false and that directly conflict with what we know today about how the world really works via modern scientific discovery??? For instance, we know that the earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around, but yet, the Bible "SAYS" the latter.

So, sure, I can look at it from the perspective that Christians might very well know what the Bible says, but then I guess they'd have to not mind looking in error about the position of the earth in relationship to the sun should they believe what the Bible "says".

And of course, that is just one of myriad scientific blunders found in "God's Holy Word". We know that "demons" don't cause mental illness; we know that the sun never "stood still"; we know that a domestic ass cannot speak Hebrew; we know that people cannot camp out in the digestive tract of a whale and live to tell about it. We know these things, just like we know that a boy never went gallivanting around the sky by shimmying up an over-grown beanstalk that reached into the clouds.

These are legends, and no matter how much "value" we place on legends, it will never make them true.

Next up is asking for insight as to what the Bible says, which, at face-value, you'd have to admit that this sort of looks like you don't really "know" what the Bible "says", after all.

But once more, let's put appearances aside and assume for sake of discussion that the "correct interpretation" can be gleaned by "praying".

Okay, done.

The first obvious question - well, at least to me it's a very obvious question - is why isn't there consensus on what the Bible "says", if insight and proper discernment is presumably given to all those who pray for it? What's going on, here? Does the receiver of these pleas for insight get a cheap thrill out of steering some of his followers in the right direction, while deliberately misleading others??? It seems perverted, at best. 'Definitely not convincing in my mind.

But here's the interesting part in all of this:  All of these difficulties seem to mysteriously vanish if one just entertains the notion that there is no receiver of "prayer". Think about it: If there was no "God" providing "insight" as to what the Bible really "says", we'd totally expect to see Christians divided on matters, and lo and behold, that's precisely what we see. If the Bible wasn't the "Holy Word of God", but instead, just the words of man, and on top that, ancient man, we'd totally expect to see numerous scientific blunders in it. And? Again, this is precisely what we see. 'Coincidence?

Open Questions to Christians

I'm one of those lunatic persons who doesn't limit his reading to only those views that support his own views.  I know, right? ::sigh:: Yes, it's true, dissenting views don't make me run the other way. I mean, if that were the case, I'd likely still be a believer, right?  So, yeah, I welcome dissenting views, because the truth has nothing to hide, after all.

So, making the rounds, a Christian blogger saw fit to ask why I was posting on a Christian blog, and he adds...

rather than saying something that adds to the conversations, you make inflammatory comments about Christianity. 

 This brings me to question #1:

Is it possible to express disagreement without being "inflammatory"? If "yes", what would an example of that look like? 

Another Christian writes.....

I must have hit a nerve. Even though I don’t agree with your thought on the subject, thank you for your opinion. God bless you.

Question #2 becomes:

Is it possible for an atheist to respond on a Christian blog and not come across as though a nerve was hit? If "yes", what would that look like. An example, please.

Christian 1 also remarked.....

Are you so unsatisfied with your traffic that you need to use other, more successful blogs to be heard? I’ve read your blog posts and am unimpressed by your sophistry, and yet I do not feel the urge to correct you.

It seems to me that if I was unsatisfied with my own traffic that I'd have tags on every post and would be hyper-linking all over kingdom come. As for my blog posts amounting to "sophistry", if that were really the case, I pointed out what a marvelous ministry tool it be for him to correct me. I mean, right? Yes, and even if he didn't produce arguments that had me running back to church, his attempt to correct me would, if nothing else, look like he had enough faith in his beliefs that he'd actually defend those beliefs. This looks good to those believers who may be having honest doubts. It would look good to those people who are currently in the shoes that I was once in.

But alas, atheists aren't the ones making excuses for why they "don't feel the urge" to respond to Christians, and as a former believer who carried honest doubt himself, this was something that played a role in my deconversion.

So, how about if women never "felt the urge" to respond to those who once said that women shouldn't vote? Where would they/we be?

 'Don't feel the urge? My a$$.