Sunday Night

Where to begin?

It has been a little while since I blogged last. I still need to finish my religious debate on one of the other posts; I'll get to that eventually.

Since I blogged last, I got into some colleges. You can read about it here. I'm still waiting to hear from Harvard's financial aid office. I check everyday when I get home from school. It will be nice just to be locked in for sure where I'm going.

School is wrapping up, though I have some theatre work I'm stressing about. Hopefully everything will get done. We'll see.

I'm so ready to just take exams. We get out of school May 2 to take IB exams. We have exams throughout the month of May.

This summer should be a blast. I want to get a job. I'm also going to visit my grandmother in Pennsylvania and go on an Alaskan cruise! My sister will be at the Governor's Honors Program for most of the summer, so I'll miss her.

Prom was last night. I'm still tired from how late we stayed up after prom - 5am. Before prom we took pictures at St. Joseph's and ate dinner at Libby's house. The food was delectable. I need to remember to pay Libby for the food. Prom was at the Goodwill Center this year which wasn't too bad. My only complaint is that the dance floor could have been a little bigger; girls kept complaining about people stepping on their toes. My sister had someone step on her toe with stilettos and it bled some. Lead out was fine. I didn't fall. The after prom party was nice. There was a camp fire and we slept in tents in someone's backyard. It was a relief not to be hosting the party this year.

I should probably go to sleep. Night all.

Life is going well

We got to the second day at state this weekend, which we haven't done since my freshman year. That means we're tied for third in the state with another team. It was a lot of fun. I always love the people on our mock trial team and this year was no exception. It is kind of a relief now that it is over. I'm going to have more free time.

I can't decide whether I think I'll do mock trial in college or not. Speaking of college, I got into Middlebury the other day. It was another early write. It was exciting. I came home and there it was in the mail box. It was the first acceptance letter that I got to open for myself. I had an interview at Middlebury. I really just want to know where I am going, so I can fall in love with whatever school it is that I'm going to go to. I feel like I have to hold back a little bit now, so I can think about it rationally, when I see what schools I get into.

The Post came out Friday, so I'm finally done with that one - that's a relief. I have a week until spring break. Everyone is going to write one story this week, so that should put us in a good place for the next paper. When I hook up the The Central Post computer, I'll post some of the pages.

I have a prom date and she asked me! It was wonderful. Prom looks like it is going to be cool this year.

I took a nap and then I went to the gym today, so I'm just in a really amazing mood. Life is good.

Check list

This is more for me to be able to relieve some stress by writing what I need to accomplish this week, than for you.

Monday night: Work on the newspaper, French oral commentary rough draft, historical investigation work, email Williams about preview.

Tuesday: Edit proofs of the paper in journalism, Teen Board meeting, work on the newspaper, procrastinate by reading about the election results.

Wednesday: Submit the newspaper, oral commentary in English, sleep, conference call for Students for Barack Obama.

Thursday: Mock trial, prepare for literary meet, plan what to send to GSPA competition, sleep a lot

Friday: Literary competition, send off GSPA stuff

Saturday and beyond: Do nothing and be a lazy senior. ~crosses fingers~ ... doubtful. Oh and I need to find a prom date, but I'm pretty sure that will just work itself out. Things always seem to.

P.S. Still stressed out, but whatever. This week will end and with it everything will be accomplished, or not, either way it will be over. Wow, I'm tired. Just got to make it to the weekend.

Must work now!

Atheism

Alright, as I'm sure many of you know, I wrote a column about what it was like being an atheist that was published on Dec. 25 in the Telegraph. Since that time, mention of my atheism has appeared in some comments on this blog and sometimes on the comments on the Telegraph's website.

As to the comments on my blog:

1) Senator Obama's church is not racist.
2) I wrote my column knowing that it was going to run on Christmas day. I didn't get to choose the day; it was assigned to me. When I realized when it was going to run, I wanted it to address Christmas from the perspective of an atheist. It made sense that it ran on Christmas day as it was about Christmas.
3) My column was about how Christmas shouldn't exclusively be about celebrating Christ's birth and I don't think I ever complained about people saying Merry Christmas.
4) I'm going to address why I'm an atheist after this list.
5) People talk about their religious views all the time. It is a serious conversation topic in our society and it makes sense that a teenager would want to flesh out his or her religious views to better understand them. I mentioned the fact that I am an atheist because it was highly relevant to the column. Isn't there a prayer on every letter to the editor page in the Telegraph? Why don't you complain about that?
6) Personal attacks get you nowhere.


What exactly do I believe?
Wikipedia has a nice little entry that explains the terms I am going to use, so check that out if you don't know what I mean when I say strong atheism and weak atheism.

Overall I am a weak atheist - I am not confident that every possible definition of a god is in error, but I do not believe that any god exists. Weak atheism takes a neutral position. Some people would call that agnosticism, agnostic atheism, or, as I'm calling it here, weak atheism.

But in the context of specific and defined gods, I am often times a strong atheist. I cannot claim to have considered every possible iteration of a god and therefore do not claim to be a strong atheist in all circumstances, but I can consider specific examples. For example I do not believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn. By the very definition of the Invisible Pink Unicorn it would be impossible to disprove her existence. Thus it is clear that some burden must be placed on the person who claims the existence of something to prove it is real, otherwise every logical and reasonable person would be forced to concede that they do not actively disbelieve in the Invisible Pink Unicorn. So by the same token, I believe that the god described in The Bible is non-existent.

Besides the fact that weak atheism is the neutral position, there are other reasons that I have not embraced a belief in any particularly deity. I don't feel that the belief in a god would give me any better understand of the universe or its creation. I do not emotionally believe in any god. There is no evidence as to the existence of a god.

Hopefully that answers some of the questions people had. Feel free to leave comments with questions about my views. I'm happy to constructively debate religion. I look forward to the debate.