My Life

I've been thinking a lot lately about faith.  Many anti-theists talk about how faith is such a bad thing.  I think that I would like to make a distinction between faith and dogma.  For the purpose of this post, I will stick to rather simple definitions.  I'm sure many theists and atheists alike will disagree on the definition, but these are those that I'm using.  "Faith" will mean "belief in something without evidence".  "Dogma" will mean "a principle which is accepted as incontrovertibly true". To me, faith is not in itself a dangerous thing.  It may often be silly.  However, it is often times relatively harmless.  It is harmful when it leads to dogma, or dogmatic thinking.  But just believing in something without knowing proof of it really isn't that harmful.  In the loosest interpretation of the word, I have faith in many things.  I have faith in medicine.  I have not taken the time to put in my due diligence to learn...

There are a lot of misconceptions about diabetes, and a lot of ignorance and misinformation.  Some people are unaware that there are two types of diabetes.  Some people are unaware of what the differences are between the two types. Type I diabetes is when the pancreas does not produce enough insulin to lower glucose levels in the blood.  This is typically a condition that a person is born with that is triggered by some illness or event.  It is an auto-immune illness.  Anyone who has this condition cannot be blamed for it.  Nothing that they did caused them to have it.  It is purely genetics. Type II diabetes is when the pancreas produces insulin but the muscle and fat cells in the body have become resistant to it, so that the insulin no longer does the job that it is supposed to do in the body.  This is also genetic, but not purely genetic.  Certain people are predisposed to getting this type of diabetes because of their genes.  Howe...

It's been a long and difficult process, but I think that at this point, I've weeded out most of the toxic people in my life, or they've weeded themselves out.  I've lost a lot of friends during the last three years.  And it has hurt a lot.  I hate saying goodbye to friends.  There are many people that I was rather attached to that are no longer a part of my life.  Some walked out of my life, and some I shut out of my life.  Just as treating a wound can be painful, so too can be the process of eliminating unpleasant people from one's life. But the thing is, I am much happier now.  I don't have the angst and conflict that I had when I first came out.  I don't have the constant arguments, trying to get people to understand that I'm still the same person.  I don't have to explain how being gay is different from contracting HIV.  The people who are in my life now accept me and love me, and I love and accept them.  I have many many new ...