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So I was picking up Olga from school and taking her to golf this afternoon, when I realized that my gas gauge was on "empty". So we stop at a gas station. For some weird reason the pump didn't seem to want to pump any gas in the car, and Olga was running late so I just took her to golf before figuring out how to work the pump. So then I headed to the closest gas station to the golf course and I ran out of gas about a hundred meters away from the gas station. I was able to cruise right into the gas station and pull up right to the pump. Now whatchu know about THAT precision, baby?
I've been told many times that since we can't prove the fact that God doesn't exist, I'd at least have to be agnostic. The word "agnostic" comes from Greek - "a" = "without" and "gnosis" = "knowledge". It seems like no one knows for a fact whether or not exists, so being agnostic, would make sense. Here are my thoughts on the subject.
When someone claims something exists, it's on them to provide evidence for it's existance. What if I told you there's little yoddling hamsters inhabiting Saturn. That would certainly go against modern understanding of how hamsters are. We know that hamsters can neither yoddle nor exist on Saturn. That would be enough proof for me to conclude that there are no yoddling hamsters on Saturn. But hey, they might be out there. You can go take pictures of Saturn and see no hamsters, and I'll tell you the hamsters weren't out when you were taking the pictures. You can go to Saturn and not see the yoddling hamsters and I'll tell you you just didn't see them. Am I agnostic to existence of yoddling hamsters on Saturn?
The point is that if one really wants to, they could argue existence of pretty much anything. Hell, at least we all know what hamsters are. Saying there's God is a bit like saying, "well... there's something, somewhere, with some properties that made everything". The burden of proof is on people who claim that to provide evidence.
So since there's absolutely no scientific evidence of God's existence, at this point God's existence is a non-issue to me. To me, God is up there with unicorns, Santa Clause, and the yoddling hamsters on Saturn. All of them go against the modern scientific understanding of the world, and that's enough for me to say that none of them exist.
So I went street performing last night. Barry counted the money this morning, and we learnt that someone gave me a hundred dollar bill!
When I street perform I usually go out for about 2 hours. I usually get a little bit of change, a lot of 1 dollar bills, eight to ten $5 bills, and one or two tens or twenties if I'm lucky.
Last night I got a hundred. I wonder if the person just made a mistake and pulled the wrong bill out of the wallet. I mean you'd have to like someone quite a bit for you to want to give them $100. I wish I would have seen the person, so I could look at them and see if I could figure out their motives.
Either way, a hundred bucks is a hundred bucks. I'm liking this street performing thing.
Many christians have often attempted to use Pascal's Wager to explain to me why I should believe in God. As a matter of fact, I've seen some variations of it in some of the comments posted on this blog. To those unaware, here's how Pascal's Wager is usually presented by Christians:
"If you don't believe that God exists, you risk going to hell, and don't have a chance at gaining anything from that belief. If you do believe in God, you do not risk anything, and have a chance of going to heaven in case if God does actually exist."
Pascal's Wager has very many flaws. I will go into a couple of them, and attempt to explain how Pascal's Wager is in no way an argument for believing in any particular God.
Pascal's Wager only assumes two possibilities: "Christian God exists" and "Christian God doesn't exist". As a matter of fact there's equal amounts of evidence for pretty much all different religions' Gods' existance - none. So which God are you going to believe? What if I believe in Christian God only to die and find out that in fact there's a God that takes everybody who believes in Christian God and throws them to hell?
The other flaw is that in order to truely believe in something, a person would have to actually be convinced of that. A human being can't believe in something just because it'll benefit him/her to do so. What if there was an empty glass jar in front of you, and you could see right through it. Then I came up to you and told you that if you believed there were cookies in that jar, I'll give you a new car. Now you might be able to convince me you believe there are cookies in that jar, but you couldn't actually believe in it. Would you be able to convince someone who's supposedly all knowing of something like that? Not if they're all-knowing you wouldn't. So sure, you can go to church and say the prayers, but if you aren't convinced of God's existance, you're only pretending to believe in him and any God who knows what he's doing would see right through that.
There's many more flaws to Pascal's Wager, and though it might seem like a fairly good argument for belief in God at first, it doesn't really stand up to the test of reason and logic
It's about time I posted something juggling related. After every WJF I set a few juggling goals for the next WJF. To be able to do a 5 club 540, 7733 with crotch throws, 2 rounds of 966 with 7 balls and over 20 catches of 7 clubs in my WJF routines this year were my goals that I set for myself last year.
I've already thought of quite a few new things that I'm going to be working on this year. But then I thought it wouldn't hurt if I asked my fans for suggestions. So what would you like to see me work on this year?
Please post on here some juggling moves that you think would be cool for me to do and I'll consider working on them. I can't promise working on all of the moves posted, but if somebody has an idea that I think is really cool, I will most definitely have it mastered by the next WJF.
Haven't posted in a while. There's no way I'll be able to address all of the comments on all of my blog entries, though I do read them all. One of the comments on my last entry made me think about something, and I figured I'd make an entire new blog entry about that.
The comment was by an anonymous person and it was talking about how I feel like whatever I think is right. Many times in my life when I've gotten in arguments with people I've been told how I always feel like whatever I think is right.
Yes, I do feel like whatever I think is right, and I expect everyone who's in their right mind to think whatever they think is right. I don't see anything at all wrong with that. Only a person with some kind of split personality disorder would think whatever they think is right, is not right.
I also do realize that whatever I think is right MIGHT not be right. Everyone's thoughts are interpretations of information they gather. As more information comes in, I would expect a reasonable person's views of what's right to adjust to fit the new information.
So, the bottomline is that I do feel what I think is right, I do realize what I think is right might not be right, and what I think is right changes as I learn more about the world.
I'm an atheist. A lot of times when I tell people that, they assume I must be some kind of horrible person with no morals. Some have even tried to attribute morality to something God originated. Whether I'm a horrible person or not, is not really up to me to determine, however, I'd like to say a few things on morality as it relates to atheism.
There are two strange (false) arguments that I've encountered that are morality and atheism related:
1. Most people have the same general God-originated sense of what's good and what's bad.
2. If you're an atheist, you have no incentive to be a good person, because you're not afraid of God.
First argument stems from the observation that similar moral guidelines are in use all around the world. Since environments people are brought up in are quite different in different places around the world, some people conclude that people's moral guidelines aren't put in place by their upbringing, but by God.
The problem is that there are plenty of murderers and rapists who consider themselves good people. A lot of murderers feel like their murders are justified. Take kamikazees for example. They all feel like God will reward (!) them for their murders. I have to say their moral guidelines are quite different from mine.
In general though people do have similar understanding of what's good and what's bad. Why is that attributed to God? It's much easier to live your life if you are a good person. If you're good to people, most people will be good to you. If you're not, most people won't be good to you. Being a good person is in everyone's self-interest. Why does God have to be involved here?
Which brings me to that second (false) statement:
2. If you're an atheist, you have no incentive to be a good person, because you're not afraid of God.
Here's how I feel about this. Though I don't think God exists and I'm not afraid of God, there are plenty of incentives for me to be a good person. As I said, it's much easier to live your life if people perceive you as a good person. Being a good person is usually the easiest way to have people perceive you as a good person.
Why is it that some words are labelled "bad words"? That's what they tell us when we are little - "That's a BAD WORD!" That makes no sense to me. It's not words that are good or bad, it's what you're trying to communicate via those words. There are no bad words as far as I'm concerned. There are bad thoughts, bad intentions.
I don't understand people who substitute words that they think are bad for words that they think are acceptable. For example some people say "gosh darn it" to avoid saying "god damn it" or "freaking" to avoid saying "fucking". Now what exactly is the difference between you saying "gosh darn it" and "god damn it"? Both of those sayings communicate the same thoughts and emotions. So why exactly is "gosh darn it" better than "god damn it"?
What I don't understand is why are we taught not to say bad words? Do we want everyone to sugarcoat what they're trying to say? I can understand attempting to teach people not to hurt each other's feelings, but it's not bad words that hurt our feelings. It's what we communicate through those words. Would it hurt you more if someone told you you're "extremely unpleasant to look at" or if someone told you you were "fucking ugly"?
I believe word choices are often irrelevant to how much one's feelings are hurt. So why are we encouraging people not to use bad words as opposed to encouraging people to be considerate towards other people's feelings?
Haven't had a chance to post on here, since Olga and I were at the WJF convention for the last week. It was pretty awesome. Both Olga and I had a great time. I'm sure she'll post about it. I'm going to go ahead and tell you about my WJF3 experience.
Olga and I flew to Las Vegas on Sunday night, about 2 days before the convention. Kristian, Thomas, Markus Furtner, Toby and of course Jason were already there. We all stayed at Jason's. Wes showed up the next day and we all practiced together and did a little demo of what we do at a Boys and Girls club. That was pretty cool. The kids seemed to dig it and we got our first chance to run through our competition routines. We did another demo at a different Boys and Girls club on Tuesday. Wes got soooo much better. It was awesome. I love watching Wes juggle. We also did a couple of photoshoots on Tuesday. Then somehow someone heard me compliment a girl on her "sweet bazoongas" on the phone, that quickly spread amongst my friends and their friends and I never heard the end of that.
The convention started on Wednesday. Because all of the juggling I had to do at the convention, I didn't get to hang out much with anybody, really. But it was a cool convention regardless. Went through prelims for everything I tried out for on Wednesday.
On thursday I came very close to missing my own workshop. I was supposed to teach a workshop at noon, and I ended up talking to the "sweet bazoongas" girl till like 5 am the night before. Woke up like 10 minutes before the workshop was supposed to start. Was only about 5 minutes late in the end. Went through my main competition prelims later that day.
Had my ball, club and team exhibitions on Friday. That went awesome except for the fact that I hurt my right hand pretty badly. It got kinda bruised. Still bothers me a little. Oh, well. Olga and I seemed to have gotten since we last seriously practiced like a year and a half ago. We got a 6 up 360 out of 10, 10 and 11 club ultimates and 10 clubs backtoback and backtofront fairly easily. That was somewhat amusing.
Had my first batch of final competitions on Saturday. Didn't like the format of challenge competitions. We all only had one shot at each challenge. Won the 7 ball isolated endurance (beating Dietz!), 7 club isolated endurace, 5 club low 360s, 3 club low 720s. Had my next batch of competitions that evening. Won club endurance with a clean run of 170 catches with 7 clubs, won freestyle competitions for 5 (3 stage 1080) and 7 balls (5 up 360 into (8x 6)*) and for 3 (behind the back juggling) and 5 clubs (5 up 180 into over-and-back). Got second in ball endurance. That was pretty sweet. Not only did I do pretty well in all of the club events, but also beat Dietz with balls a couple of times. I was quite proud of that.
Did my main event competitions on Sunday. Went through my ball routine with only 2 drops, which was nice. The routine included among other things 4 rounds of 97531, 5 up (6x 4)* 360, 5 ball 2 stage 720, 5 ball high-mid-low shower, 6 ball shower and 966. Pretty hard routine, especially considering it's only my first year doing balls. Of course Thomas did a harder routine with only one drop and won the ball competition. I got second. Then came the club competition. Though Thomas went through his club routine cleanly, his routine wasn't that hard. It included a qualify of 6 clubs, a 5 up 360 and a variety of 4 club moves. I went through my routine with 2 drops. It was, in my opinion, the hardest club routine I've ever seen anyone do. It included among other things a 3 up 540 out of 5 clubs, 744 into 753, a 5 up 360 into (6x 4)*, 7733 with crotch throws, a long (over a qualify) run of 7 clubs. At that point I was positive I was going to win, so I went to warm up with Olga for our team competition. Then when they announced the score, it turned out that somehow Thomas beat me. I spoke to the judges and Jason and apparently Thomas won due to some kind of glitch in the scoring system that gave him a ridiculous amount of points for some fairly easy 4 club connections. Also, my last combo was completed after I ran out of my 3 minutes, and didn't count towards my score. Either way, it seemed like both Jason and the judges along with most other people watching the competition thought I should have won. But hey, I shouldn't have won last year. So I guess it's all good. I'm quite happy with how I did at the convention, and I did make pretty good money for how I did. Oh, Olga and I won teams too. Beating three other teams I think.
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