Olympics are over

So the Winter Olympics have ended once more. It was special to be living in the host country, but I guess it didn't make much difference in my overall Olympic experience.

When I first heard about Canada's "Own the Podium" initiative, I was skeptical about Canada's chances of winning the most medals. Canada has a relatively low population, and no matter how much money we pump into our Olympic program, we can't buy talented athletes. The USA consistently dominates Olympic medal counts, and would be very tough to beat.

So during the Olympics when criticism of "Own the Podium" got more vocal, I don't think my opinion changed much. The Canadian athletes weren't doing worse than I'd expected. Yes, I'd hoped we could win the most medals and I figured we would do better than in most Olympics, but winning the most medals always seemed unlikely.

Then Canada won the most gold medals of any country. Not only that, we won more gold medals than any country ever has in the Winter Olympics. That surprised me. When you consider how Canada didn't win any gold medals the last time we hosted the Winter Olympics (and the time we hosted the Summer Olympics for that matter), this is an even bigger accomplishment.

Congratulations to all of our athletes, whether you won gold, silver, bronze, or a participant ribbon. (Or do they give out participant ribbons in the Olympics?)

God's revelation

Following up on my previous posts about ideas I've rejected (religious ideas in particular), I'd like to write about an idea I was raised with that I haven't rejected--the idea that God really has revealed himself to people, through prophets, the Bible, etc.

While this idea can be used to turn religion into a controlling, oppressive thing, misuse doesn't mean the idea itself is wrong. The idea of natural theology (that our ideas about God can just be based on what we perceive) is attractive, but it has its own problems. It's so subjective. Personally, I think God's characteristics are not obvious from looking at the world around us. If they were, there would be a lot less variation in the world's religions. If God actually has revealed something about himself to people, those things that he revealed would be much more accurate and beneficial than anything we could figure out ourselves.

That leaves us with a glaring question: how do we know what God has revealed and what's just made up by people? Or can faith somehow transcend this question? Is there some way we can have a devoted faith without knowing for sure, intellectually, that God revealed certain things?