I <3 The Winslow.

I had a dream this morning before I woke up that was interesting. I think it's telling me that I miss the culture that surrounded the church I used to go to, regardless of what I think of the actual religion.

In the dream, I was traveling with someone (in the dream it was someone I knew, but now that I've been awake a little bit, I can't remember). We were somewhere in the Balkans, probably Serbia, and we were wandering through some sort of festival. I saw some kolo dancing occurring, and headed over. As is typical to happen in dreams, my mom was suddenly there and encouraging me to get involved with her. Suddenly our whole line of dancers were filled with ladies from St. George (the church I used to go to as a child) and we were dancing. As my dreams like to mimic life at the most annoying times, I was actually rusty and horrible at the kolo dancing because it's been years since I've tried at all.

I do actually kind of miss the kolo though, as on high holidays we'd usually clear the chairs and tables out of the downstairs hall at St. George, and sometimes we'd even get a live band to play, and we'd start dancing. We'd get a mix of the little kids, the old ladies, and everyone in between. The basic concept behind kolo is simple, but the faster you go, the more kicks you add and basically the crazier the line leader is, the harder it gets. While I did grumble about it when I used to go to summer camp, I do now miss that we'd get kolo lessions all week before the end of week talent show where each set of boy and girl dorms would do a different kolo, and they'd dress us up with "traditional" costumes. I mostly add the quotes as the costumes they had looked a little stylized to me. They never fit me right as I was always the tallest girl in my dorm and they'd try to keep each dorm in the same style costume.

St. George is (I believe it's still there, though there was talk for a while of shutting down and donating whatever money resulted in the sale to a lasting piece of another church in the area) a Serbian Orthodox Christian Church. I fully consider it the reason why I am agnostic instead of atheist, as the church and the orthodox Christianity didn't actually offend me like a lot of the churches that get press time in the US papers. If I hadn't had an example of a church that wasn't bad and horribly hypocritical, I'm sure I would have come out atheist.

It probably also helps that my Kum was one of the priests at St. George. He and the priest he served with left St. George about the time my parents stopped taking me and my brother regularly, and I still don't know what happened to cause them to leave, but they've got a beautiful monastery near here and I really should attempt to mend that relationship and see my Kum again, as he and I were really close when I was young. He's certainly the reason I know what I do about religion, despite being agnostic, and he's probably partially responsible for my love of books, as he's sent me so many over various birthdays and Christmases.

I really should have paid more attention to the names of people who went to the church I did growing up. Picking out Serbian names for Veta's background would be easier if I knew people who had been given these names, instead of simply having to go by the look of the name in the latin alphabet and basing pronounciation upon what a baby namer website says. I suppose if I dug a little, I could find my old summer camp manual and actually write the names out in the cyrillic alphabet just to see what they look like. I'm not sure if it's worth that much effort, most of the names I'm picking are for minor players, ghouls, kine and kindred who either disappear from Veta's life quickly or are killed in the great hunter attack that resulted in the final death of her sire, and her second animal trait.

I am so looking forward to having money again soon, I need a bookshelf so that all my various reference materials are within quick and easy reach again.

Okay, a thought occurred to me while I was in the shower just now. Why, other than the assumption that the Bible is word for word fact, and human ego, does Creationism have to mean that evolutionary theory is false?

To make it clear why I'm dismissing the "Bible is word for word fact" issue, I will simply state that I have encountered enough evidence that satisfies my belief that the Bible has been edited and amended many times, and therefore even if it could have been at one point in time reality based truth, that it is nothing more than a manipulated and amended metaphor now. I do not have the evidence on hand to prove or disprove this, so for the sake of this entry, just pretend you agree with me, and if pressed, we can revisit this issue later.

The reason why I do not feel that creationism has to not include evolution is that I find it entirely possible that this higher power the creationists are always going on about could create this evolutionary mechanism, and simply seeded our planet with the starting blocks that lead to humanity and everything else on the planet. This would allow Him to sit back and watch his end goal develop over time. So, the only thing that tells me this can not be true is human ego.

Human ego feels that it is the most important thing ever, so in order to nurture that need to be the center of the universe, it claims that a higher power it believes to exist would create humanity directly in His own image. It's more of a challenge to create something, which turns into something else, which turns into something else, etc, which eventually turns into your end goal. So with all this evidence that evolution exists, why cling to the belief that it's wrong? Why not instead perhaps accept that God chose to go the more challenging route of starting the seeds of life upon our planet, then sitting back and watching them develop?

The excuses made in the Bible, as to why God doesn't directly punish us or manipulate our lives for being horrible sinners, is that He likes to sit back, watch us come to our own conclusions, and learn from our mistakes, instead of having our hand held every step of the way. So why can't this extend further? Why couldn't He have simply started the planet going, then sat back to watch and see if His programming of the seeds of life He left would lead to the end result we assume would be humanity? Even that assumption is egotistical of our species. It's entirely possibly this higher power started life rolling on our little planet for a different species entirely. Maybe He was seeking Dolphins, Mice, or even Mosquitoes?

At any rate, can anyone provide me with a reason that doesn't include Human ego, or some variation of "The Bible should be taken literally" to tell me why Creationism has to not include Evolutionary theory? Also, for the record, this entry is not a claim to agree with Creationism, but simply a random mental wandering wondering why the Creationists don't do the smart thing and justify proven scientific theory with their belief system, instead of simply fighting tooth and nail against it and making themselves look like stupid asses.