Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Sample of chapter 9 (small snippet)


Below is a snippet of the book "No Argument for God" available at Amazon (you can click the link of the book to the right) where right now it is only $9!  

THE FIRST TIME I SAW DOUBLE DUTCH, I had no idea what I was
witnessing . Imagine jumping rope on steroids: two people wave
two long ropes in circles, each one in different directions, alter-
nating so that when one rope is going down, the other is coming
up . Oh, and there is a person or group of people jumping inside
these ropes . They don’t just jump rope, though, they sing, dance,
do somersaults and flips . Forget all the gymnastics; just jumping
rope with two alternating ropes requires insane amounts of bal-
ance, coordination and daring . I consider myself pretty athletic,
so when I saw it, I wanted to try it . How hard could it be?
I shouldn’t have asked . The girls holding the ropes tried to be
patient as I kept tripping over the ropes . After four or five unsuc-
cessful tries, I asked one of them for some advice . You would have
thought that I had asked her the atomic weight of Beryllium . She
was completely clueless on how to help me . After struggling with
a few thoughts, the girl shrugged her shoulders and said some-
thing about just having to “feel it .”
Not really sure what to do with “feeling it,” I applied all my
mental abilities to figuring this thing out while another girl
jumped . At some point I felt like I had studied enough and was
ready to try it again . Slightly bouncing my knees in the rhythm
and trying to convince myself that I had this, I ran straight in like
a bull charging a combine .
It was all calculation and no feeling . There is something about
Double Dutch that you just have to get in order to do it  .  .  . and I
didn’t get it . You can’t think your way into it, you have to know
it before you know it .
What I don’t understand about Double Dutch, I do understand
about faith . “Knowing before you know” is the same principle at
work in faith and it is why faith and reason are so consistently at
odds . Simply put, faith requires acceptance before proof, and rea-
son requires proof before acceptance . Both reason and faith have
bouncers telling you to leave what you have at the door . In order
to enter reason, you need to trust only in what you see . In order
to enter faith, you need to trust in what you cannot see . Reason
is linear; faith is circular .
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This is just the beginning of the chapter - it gets better!  Stop back on Friday for another snippet!

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