So, my brain can't help but want to calculate the probabilities around me so that I can make educated decisions about my life. If something crosses my mind to be calculated I can't stop thinking about it until I've run some type of analysis. One of my more anal characteristics is calculating grades and scores needed to attain a certain desired grade. Then, as with most aspects of my life I can't help sharing this information with the people around me no matter how much this information may be of no importance to them or in fact may even irritate them.
Tonight, a thought crossed my mind about my living expenses. I calculated just my living expenses, not taking into account my tuition bill which rings in at about $22,000 a semester. Beyond this I established that I've spent about $3500 in four months (though I will qualify that $720 was spent on a rabies vaccination). Calculating out for a wage that would be required to support this type of spending I would need to make about $8.50 an hour and work 40 hours a week. This was devastating! How can I, to whom so much has been given, consume so much of the pie myself? Where is my human charity when people in other countries are starving and would just be happy to have a small portion of what I have? How can I afford to spend money on luxuries when all humans are equal and yet we do not drink from the same cup?
What I can't control in my current situation is the rent and utility bills. The overhead for these expenses comes in at about $360/month currently. This puts the daily expenditures which cannot be avoided at about $12/day. This leaves me with $2060; $515/month; $17/day which is elective spending. The IRS sets as its national standard for one person households spending of $526/month which includes food, housekeeping supplies, apparel, personal care products and services. How can I be living so dangerously close to the governments expected spending allowance? A government that is in debt way beyond its means to recover is accurately predicting the amount of money that I use to live on. This is too much. I need to find a way to cut my spending dramatically.
Still there is only so much I can control. I have not gone out to eat once in my time in Manhattan, excluding my first meal with my mother and aunt when we pulled into town and the dinner that my pastor treated Sarah and I to a couple of weeks ago. Additionally, as a vet student I require certain books to learn and these are far from inexpensive. In fact, my total book expenditures for the fall semester totaled $500. Along with the rabies vaccine these necessary purchases took up a third of my total expenditures and 60% of my elective spending. Considering the other $840 I spent in the last four months I calculate that I spent $7/day on food, gas and other life necessities. Looking at this number in the country in which I live and considering that the IRS expects that one person households will spend close to $9/day on food alone I do not feel completely dismayed with this number, but I would still like to reduce it if possible.
My largest spending problem is that stemming from my schooling, which is very difficult to control. I could consider removing myself from this program in order that I could reduce my spending, but this would in the long run likely have a more negative effect, as I could potentially make a much greater difference in the world with this education. It all comes down to my willingness to sacrifice some of my need for frugality here for the hope that I will be better able to have a wider spread impact later. However, I hope this lavish living will not lead me to dismiss my conservative nature and that I would be ready to pick up my desired values when at all possible. The thing to remember is that this money will all have to be paid back with interest someday. SPEND WISELY!
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Belief
Belief in something is common to the human condition. One can not know for certain all the answers. No matter how deep we try to dig man will never be able to uncover all of life's secretes, let alone those of the universe. When considering the existence of man one asks himself, where did life originate. Some claim that millions of years ago life evolved on a planet filled with water and land. While this in and of itself is hardly fathomable given the statistical probability of such events occurring in random succession as to produce this organism, there is yet more problem to this notion.
Going back to the existence of the earth. Say there happens to be a planet that arose from a "BIG BANG," where did the stuff to create this matter come from? Matter: the substance or substances of which any physical object consists or is composed; something that occupies space-dictionary.com. And the space itself, how does that exist? There exist molecules and atoms and electrons and preons and quarks and quantum foam. All these things scream of design. From where would they come from if not created? To say that something came from nothing is impossible, lest we throw away the very foundations of our scientific knowledge including the First Law of Thermodynamics- Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Thus for the earth to exist without a creator is non-sequitur.
Furthermore, taking the theory that the earth has always been in existence we should now expect that it would be dead considering the Second Law of Thermodynamics-the law of entropy. And before laying claim to the argument that the earth is only part way through her journey to the grave, consider that macroevolution, as claimed by Darwinists to occur, itself does not follow with this law as material would become more complex rather than simpler. And though it is possible for random atomic collisions to occasionally lead to the formation of a molecule, this molecule will never stick around long enough for thousands of other molecules to form around it and organize into a cell. Considering the leap of FAITH required for one to Believe that a cell was formed under these conditions, it takes considerably more faith to believe that somehow this cell was able to reproduce before its death and somehow lead to multi-celled organisms and so on.
It is truly laughable for anyone to consider that he can know truth about these events, and no amount of scientific inquiry is ever going to change this fact. It is simply not possible to make wild statements that preclude that any other position is impossible with any degree of credibility. There would be no debate if such knowledge was possible. Therefore, I urge you that if you find solace in the belief that evolution lead to the existence of human beings you are not believing in a truth but in a theology, of which God is removed from a place of worship and replaced with lowly man. In this one can not call himself an atheist, for though he precludes the religions in which he is subservient to another, he finds himself in a religion of which he is the god, believing that random events lead to his existence, touting him importance. With this I ask you to consider the first temptation and the first sin. The serpent asked Eve to eat of the fruit of the tree of good and evil with the lure that she would become like God. Does it not strike you as odd that this same temptation, to make oneself on the same level as God, and thus diminish His significance, is the basic ploy of the theory of evolution?
THINK!
Going back to the existence of the earth. Say there happens to be a planet that arose from a "BIG BANG," where did the stuff to create this matter come from? Matter: the substance or substances of which any physical object consists or is composed; something that occupies space-dictionary.com. And the space itself, how does that exist? There exist molecules and atoms and electrons and preons and quarks and quantum foam. All these things scream of design. From where would they come from if not created? To say that something came from nothing is impossible, lest we throw away the very foundations of our scientific knowledge including the First Law of Thermodynamics- Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Thus for the earth to exist without a creator is non-sequitur.
Furthermore, taking the theory that the earth has always been in existence we should now expect that it would be dead considering the Second Law of Thermodynamics-the law of entropy. And before laying claim to the argument that the earth is only part way through her journey to the grave, consider that macroevolution, as claimed by Darwinists to occur, itself does not follow with this law as material would become more complex rather than simpler. And though it is possible for random atomic collisions to occasionally lead to the formation of a molecule, this molecule will never stick around long enough for thousands of other molecules to form around it and organize into a cell. Considering the leap of FAITH required for one to Believe that a cell was formed under these conditions, it takes considerably more faith to believe that somehow this cell was able to reproduce before its death and somehow lead to multi-celled organisms and so on.
It is truly laughable for anyone to consider that he can know truth about these events, and no amount of scientific inquiry is ever going to change this fact. It is simply not possible to make wild statements that preclude that any other position is impossible with any degree of credibility. There would be no debate if such knowledge was possible. Therefore, I urge you that if you find solace in the belief that evolution lead to the existence of human beings you are not believing in a truth but in a theology, of which God is removed from a place of worship and replaced with lowly man. In this one can not call himself an atheist, for though he precludes the religions in which he is subservient to another, he finds himself in a religion of which he is the god, believing that random events lead to his existence, touting him importance. With this I ask you to consider the first temptation and the first sin. The serpent asked Eve to eat of the fruit of the tree of good and evil with the lure that she would become like God. Does it not strike you as odd that this same temptation, to make oneself on the same level as God, and thus diminish His significance, is the basic ploy of the theory of evolution?
THINK!
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