Hi Al. I’m an European scientist, raised Christian, but the clergy in Nl, Be and Fr are so uninspiring that I lost interest. In addition the RC clergy has a habit to preach water, while drinking wine themselves. So I quit and I saw many others do the same. (And some 30 years later I was quite rudely corrected to serve the Lord in a way nobody believes, except my wife, who saw it happen.)
Hi Jan You did not mention the area of science you specialized in, but you seem to fit the pattern of my European colleagues who were in ‘computer-aided drug design’. They felt strongly motivated by the hope that their efforts would help alleviate human suffering and pain, and they were given little or no inspiration from the churches they attended. My experience in the U.S.was slightly different. Amongst the several R.C. parishes to which we belonged there were five young priests who delivered inspiring and timely homilies. All five have left the priesthood to become husbands and fathers! There are woefully few ministers who have the ability and grasp of Scripture to make it relevant to today’s youth who are lost if deprived of their I-phones. Hopefully BioLogos can help.
Al Leo
Hi Albert. I studied mechanical engineering and specialized in energy supply. I did that aside a full time job as designer in the heating industry, and in 5 years, while the average student needed over 7 years. The day after the last exam I got a job as process engineer and before I had received my Master certificate I became responsible for the design and working of a power plant that was being built in the Middle East. A few years later I switched to the IT sector, where my small team was the only team that delivered error free software within the planned time and budget. I stayed there until retirement. I’m a workaholic, I dislike inconsistencies and I never ever give up.
It is logical that a religion has rules about sexuality, because it concerns the creation of new life. Forbidding sexuality outside marriage is wise as it prevents single mothers, broken marriages and spreading of diseases. Forbidding sexuality for priests is unwise as it condemns to loneliness, it blocks the possibility to choose an inspiring and reliable partner for support and advice, it forbids to have the pleasures and happiness resulting from a marriage and having children, and it denies the drive to procreate. In addition the R.C. Organization seems too often more busy with office politics than following Jesus. Add the scandals on child abuse…
Have a look at www.bethel.nl, choose “mediaspeler”, choose “ochtenddiensten”, view some services. What appeals is the music, the welcome to visitors, the invitation to shake hands with the people sitting near you, how reverend Orlando Bottenbley explains the Bible. And at the same time there are several other activities elsewhere in the building, from babysitting for babies to special services for teenagers. Maybe you know someone who can translate for you. This church is the fastest growing church in Nl. In addition there are special weekends for young people, etceteras.
Biologos could help, but … Think back how you were and what you thought and felt at the age of 12 or 16 and read the discussions on Biologos from that position.
Young people want something new and things that give them visions and make them dream of something better.
What is wrong with proving that we have an immortal soul instead of those abstract discussions?
Impossible??? Can you prove that it is impossible?
Greetings Jan
@BradKramer Hi Brad, I accept your challenge, but do not expect that anyone will believe my story.
I have an exceptional brain
Are babies able to think? No, say most, their brain is not yet sufficient developed. I don’t know, say the others. Nobody said Yes, except me.
I’m born in summer. My oldest memory goes back to a time when I was still unable to sit without support. We were eating the evening meal, it was already dark outside and I wondered why it was dark, and there was not yet an advent wreath hanging from the ceiling. So I was less than five month old. For reasons that are not important here I refused to learn to talk and to walk. I did not know words, yet I understood clearly everything that was said to me. According to my parents it lasted until long after my second birthday before I started to talk and walk. And although I can think in words I still think primarily without words. It is more efficient and much faster. I call it the language of the soul and I cannot express how it works.
Later I did an I.Q. test at an institute for an advice what to study. The others there did two or three tests. I got test after test for almost two hours and time and again another man in a white coat opened the door of the test room and looked at me from there some time as if I was some kind of strange insect. The advice was that I should do a technical study at university level. A second test, some ten years later for a job, went a bit different. After the second test the man came with a third test and a stopwatch, said “Start” and after some time he snatched the form away. I got the job and a few months later I met him again and asked my score. His told me that had been testing people for more than 30 years, that he had never had anyone with such a high score, that my tests were error free, that I gave the answers faster than he could read the questions, that my I.Q. was unmeasurable, “beyond the scale, where numbers have lost their meaning. But what has happened with the other half of your brain?”.
When I was 45 years old, I went to a neurologist. I told him that I could not control my brain, it was running wild like a two-seater with a 24 cylinder motor. He ordered an EEG, which could only be done in a hospital in a large city some 30 km away. When he got the result, he demanded it to be redone in his presence. When it was done I heard him mumble “unbelievable” and later he told me that I had the EEG of a teenager, one third my age. He had never seen such earlier and regretted that he could do nothing for me. Much later I found a solution. I knew already how to switch my ears off. That allows me to sleep or to concentrate on a problem without hearing anything. I don’t hear people talk, nor a thunderstorm. I learned to switch my brain off in a similar way.
There were also a number of strange events.
At the age of 18 years I was on bicycle on my way through a city when suddenly my bicycle turned off in a side street. Flabbergasted I took the next street in my original direction and then, after a short distance, I was shown part of my future. I thought it was nonsense and rejected it, but could not forget it and 29 years later it happened exactly as shown and it changed my life completely.
Some thirty years ago I was on a Friday traveling by train to a client and suddenly I knew with absolute certainty that a deceased man was lying in the field left of me and that the man wanted to be found. I considered phoning the police, but knowing their habits, I knew that I would be arrested and put in jail until at least Monday afternoon if the man was killed. That did not fit with it progress meeting with my client, so I did nothing and on Monday its was on the radio that a dead man had been found there.
In March 1993 I suddenly woke up in the middle of the night and felt the presence of a deceased woman before the bed. We had been dear friends 35 years earlier and she wanted to know what had become of me. Within a small fraction of time, before I had come to my senses and had spoken to her, she was gone.
A few years later around 23.00 h in the evening I was watching TV, my wife was ill and had gone early to bed, and suddenly a deceased man was aside the TV in front of me. At the same time I knew who he was, the neighbor of someone I knew very well, and that he wanted his body to be found, and within a second he was gone. So I tried to phone his neighbor, but his neighbor was not at home that night and the next day I was informed that my visitor had died at the estimated time of 23.00 hour after having a brain stroke.
In Mai 2003 I woke up in the middle of the night and “saw” through floors, walls an the roof a woman coming in, high up in the air, approaching our house and then bending off to left and disappearing behind the rock wall there. I knew immediately her first name, but did not know who she was. She only wanted to see the place where I lived. Several years later it dawned to me who she was.
March 30, 2007, at 21.00 h. I woke up from nine hours narcosis in a delicious soft and warm bed, feeling happy that I had survived and was out of danger. A few minutes later I heard an alarm from the corridor, some rushing people and then a reanimation. After some time it became clear that the reanimation failed and then I felt suddenly being attacked by something eerie, creepy and extremely frightful. I have no words for it. It was the most frightening experience in my whole life. I succeeded to phone my wife, she had contact with a large prayer team and after a short time the attack disappeared.
We always had a preference to have our holidays in France and were thinking to buy a house there.
We found a house that we liked and suddenly everything started moving at high speed. My wife told someone that we wanted to sell our Dutch house and a few days later it was sold at the top price we wanted without needing an agent. We wanted to buy a small apartment in the same town, there was a waiting list with 12 people before us for those apartments and someone offered us an apartment bypassing the list. My wife wished to move earlier than planned, so we did and moved out only days before the traffic in the region was restricted because of the outbreak of foot and mouth disease. And so on.
Once living in France, we discovered that we had a special couple a neighbor. We tried to keep distance but they simply walked in and interfered. One day the man took me apart, said that they were Gothic and demanded that we joined in. I asked what that meant and he told me that they held satanic services in our backyard. I told in that we would not join in and then they declared war on us. That included physical attacks, throwing daily fecal matter in our swimming pool, attacks on our guests, murder attempts, anything. It lasted many years before before finally a higher DA interfered and took care of the matter by jailing our neighbors and cleaning up the local police. At the same time we were somehow herded to a Baptist church in the Netherlands. Someone noticed that we had special problems, started asking us questions and arranged the help we needed. We became members of the church and were baptized. Our neighbors are condemned, are no longer allowed to come here. they try to sell their house and started a new war, now between themselves.
My wife had been Christian all her life. I was R.C. because my parents were R.C. I had left that faith long ago. I became Baptist at old age. It has become clear to me how we have been used by our Lord as pawn in His chess game.
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