Minority? Really? WARNING: THIS IS A RANT

Ok, so today I'm doing something a little different. I'm giving you homework.

Read this article

And now, I discuss.
Atheists and agnostics claim to be the poor, suffering minority in our political system.

While I do agree that most politicians claim to be religious, this is for 2 main reasons:
1. The upper class is statistically more religious than the lower class
2. Surveys have shown that people, even atheists, typically want people with a sense of religious morality to have power in our country

Now, this is certainly not to say that the legislation of the U.S., with the exception of President Bush, in the past 10 years has been AT ALL religious.
In this article they claim that they have no say in politics, but postmodernism has made any sense of the absolute truth of morality disappear from our methods of foreign policy or our laws at home.
Abortion has political support. Weapons are a SIGNIFICANT portion of our tax burden. The education system has been forced by legislature to prohibit Christian and Mormon practices, although not Islam practices, because we don't want to be racist.

Also, almost anything scientific, which comes under the consideration of law - such as stem cell research, abortion, evolution, and many more things, are expected to be a completely different realm from the church. A scientist who is also a Christian has no authority.

And look at the author's reasoning for wanting this political power:
Because he says religious people condemn him to hell every time he meets them.

This article is not a cry out from political oppression, it is a rally for mockery of Christianity.
They say that there is a 15% group of people who are non-religious, but I say that's a lie. That's probably just the 15 ACTIVE percent. The people who intentionally propagate atheism as "realistic" and who vote for the removal of spirit from life. There are probably as few as 15% or less active religious people with political power. The rest may IDENTIFY themselves as religious, but in reality they are APATHETIC and still vote as if they were non-religious because their faith isn't real!

Even more proof is in the article itself. While attempting to say that non-religious people are legitimate voters, he proves that he does not care about that, but just wants to vindicate his own beliefs with lines such as "for the love of God, stop ignoring us" and "if God forbid, [the non-religious] should ever fight back and forcefully present their opinions, they are often considered rude and offensive." Aside from the fact that neither of those statements are true, they are sardonic and catatonic.

This just aids me in the belief that atheism is not a pattern of thought or a way of life; it is a rebellion. These are not people who care about asserting that there is no God, they care about asserting their own authority.

Man, that made me mad.

Here's a question, though. What is the Christian response to this kind of animosity?

The Work Lens

I finally finished one giant paper to find out that I have another one similar to it due in a week. It's still a ways off but man my classes give me no time to detox after a blow like that. I worked on that thing probably 20 hours in the last week.

Human abilities are often very contingent on our ability to focus and concentrate. If I spent 4 hours doing unfocused work, it's not even as good as 1 hour of focused work. I am so unfocused now that I realized that I had forgotten to submit my paper online, which I am now doing.

But focus and concentration does not necessarily mean that our mind is wholly consumed in the process.

In my Christian Education class, we recently discussed that the way to tell if you have truly learned something is to be able to do it competently and unconsciously. The example he used was playing an instrument. A master of an instrument plays music out of habit and with excellent muscle memory. He focuses by remembering what he did in the past instinctively.

So, in the same way, I focus my work by instinctively honing in on what I am doing, and then just let the work flow out.
It all sounds very kung fu, I know.

But, I think there's something to be said for it.
Where else would we come up with phrases like "He loses himself in his work," or "hatred consumed him."
Out of those habits, we develop skill (even though hatred is not a skill) and with skill we develop diligence.

All that to say that it's really hard to force myself to sit down and write a paper. But if I instead think of it as applying my focus unconsciously, it sounds a little better.

I basically have to trick myself into doing homework, but I'm good at it once I do.

The Odds Part 2

My thinking got me thinking:
Where does luck come from anyways?
The obvious answer is God, but how many of us actually operate on that belief?
I played Yahtzee with Evan and Tellie a few weeks ago, and I in no way believed that the outcome of my Yahtzee game had all that much to do with God.

But God even controls the roll of the dice. Every molecule moves under his observation.

So all of the gambling debt in the world, all of the lost Yahtzee games (I got butchered) and all of the short ends of the stick are known to God.

Did you know that the disciples believed that dice (or casting lots in their case) revealed the will of God?
They cast lots to decide who would take the place of Judas the Betrayer among the 12. (Acts 1:12-26)
They prayed about it, picked 2 candidates, and threw some old school dice.
They knew that God really could speak through that because he controls everything.
Man, that's the kind of faith I aspire to.