I've been meaning to write this, but have delayed it.. I don't like to think about some of the contents within, which is why I have put it off for a while. I certainly hope that nobody holds any of this against me, and treat me like I'm crazy or wanting people to feel sorry for me. Not that I think anyone would, but I certainly don't want anyone to feel bad for me. That's not the point of me writing this. It's just part of my life and how I remember things going, which I think must be told to understand how I'm the only non christian in my family. So here it is.
By the time I was fifteen I had asked Jesus into my heart on several occasions. The reason why I had done it more than once was because I was told that I would feel an instant change. I felt nothing, except sad that I would burn in hell for eternity for wondering if the existence of Jesus and God were actually real. I would pray, never knowing if there was a creator out there that just ignored me. I believed in God and Jesus, judgment day, all that. But something just didn't add up to me. I was home schooled with christian material, it was so boring and I could smell the bullshit. One thing that I knew was an absurd claim, was the story about the tower of Babel. The claim was that people were building a tower to reach Heaven, and god destroyed it. They were saying that it may sound crazy, but it must not have been if god had to destroy it because he didn't want them going into heaven. I laughed and thought " These people are idiots. We fly space ships much higher than any building has or ever will be built." I don't think I'm such a smart person, I think that maybe there are just a lot of stupid people that really have no business trying to teach. My parents were angry with me, for not being such a good christian. I would stay out with my friends later than I was supposed to and tell them I was somewhere else. I would smoke cigs and weed. I would watch porn and got caught with it. I was just having some fun, and I don't regret any of that. One time my dad snapped at me, I suppose because I didn't take the "school" work seriously, because I would have fun, because I did question Gods existence and started to wonder why he would care if I wondered why he was real, after all, it's not obvious. I never fully stopped believing there was a god at that point for the simple reason of being misinformed of what evolution was. I suppose I was an agnostic. So one night after he screamed at me to get a flash light because I didn't hear him ask me in a normal tone of voice the first time, I got mad and slammed the door behind me as I went to his squad car to find it. He came right out there telling me to go inside and wait on his bed so he could have a "talk". His talks never consisted of him speaking much though, just spanking. I was fifteen, I hadn't been spanked since I was thirteen, for stealing. I wasn't about to take that shit from the man. I put my finger in his face and told him what I thought. He didn't say any thing back, he just turned me around real fast and slammed me against his squad car, put me in a choke hold then dragged me up the stairs and into the house. He choked slammed me and got on top of me to restrain me. My mom just sat there and watched. He told me to pack my shit, they're putting me up for adoption. I thought about spitting in his mouth as he spoke, but he also spoke often of knowing how to kill a person and get away with it. I wasn't about to get killed and have him make it look like he had to do it.
I had these neighbors that adopted these two children. These adopted kids were treated so horribly, told by there adopted parents that they were no good, god is disgusted with them, they were going to hell for their filthy mouths. These children were really good. Most kids I knew were good kids. But I never even heard these kids curse. These people had just adopted a couple of slaves though. Needless to say, me packing my shit and being put up for adoption sounded like it could turn out to be worse than the situation I was currently in. It certainly could have, but I look back now and think it may have been worth the risk. I was so shy then, I didn't know how to make new friends, and the ones I had were so important to me. I don't think they'll ever know how much I appreciated them. I loved them like most people would love their family. They were the closest thing I had that felt like family. I had just wished that I wasn't born. I couldn't think and feel the way I wanted to. Life just plain sucked, at home anyway.
About four months after I had turned sixteen, my parents decided to move from Plant City to Brandon. I was sad. I didn't know anybody in Brandon. I wasn't allowed to go to public school. After we moved, I saw very little of the people that I used to call my friends. I saw one sign on to aim sometimes and would try to talk. Pretty hard to get conversation out of any of them after I moved, I guess because I just didn't see them any more. I was always angry, I hated my father. I believe he may be the only person that I've ever hated. I thought that there was just another reason why I would be going to hell if the place were real. An after life sounded horrible to me whether I was going to heaven or hell, they both sounded like they sucked, just one was worst. I never liked church. I hated standing up and sitting down for some shitty music. The preachers message was usually one that I disagreed with. I totally disagreed with the message that women SHOULD be less privileged then men, that they should submit to us. That disgusted me. It all disgusted me. There was nothing that they taught of moral value. Heaven sounded a lot like church to me, sounded a lot like another version of hell. I hated God if he were real. What an ass hole. I didn't much care about what sins I committed, I was going to Hell. I thought about how great it would be if when I died, it would be just how it was before I was born. Nothing. Not conscious. No memory. Just done. But as good as it sounded to me, at the time I really had no reason to believed that life truly ends like that, instead of an after life.
After we lived in the new house, I took up weight lifting to occupy my time there. I weighed 120 pounds and was tired of being so weak and skinny. I gained thirty five pounds since a year after that. I was very lonely though. After I got bored with video games, I mostly just laid on the floor thinking about different ways I could kill myself. I would then think of ways that I may survive the attempted suicide because I may screw up, then thoughts of how much worse off my life would be if I lived and had brain damage or something would surface in my mind. This was between the time I was 17 to 18 that I depressed like this. I got used to not talking to people, or being around anyone. I let my facial hair grow over an inch long, my hair just got crazy looking, I was very pale, and I didn't bathe much just because I didn't care. I walked outside one day to listen to what my parents and neighbor were talking about. Another neighbors dog had ran into our yard, my neighbor caught him and called me over there. I went over there, and this really pretty neighbor girl that just moved across the street from Russia went to get the dog. I was caught by surprise. I looked like shit. I didnt know what to say to her, I hadn't talked to many people outside the house for months. I panicked and ran inside, I felt like such a coward. I was a coward though. I was right to feel like that. I would talk to myself a lot as well around that time. I tried a body building supplement some time in 2004. It worked. My squat went up ten pounds the first week, I had gained about ten pounds from it in a few weeks. But I didn't consume enough water, I'm not sure if that's really the reason or if the stuff was just dangerous, but my skin turned a yellowish color, the whites of my eyes turned yellow. I was having horrible nightmares, I hallucinated, I thought I could see ghosts. I was also talking to myself a lot. I thought I had been possessed from trying to use a Ouija board to talk to my dead grandfather, which didn't work by the way. I woke up during one of the nightmares I was having, my eyes were shaking everywhere and my muscles were spazzing. It was a seizure, but I had no idea. I thought maybe I was being sent a vision from God, or Satan. I stayed up for a week, afraid to go to sleep and go through that again, come to think of it I think that's when I thought I could see the ghosts. That was probably caused by sleep deprivation. I looked at the back of the bottle of the supplement I was taking and it said to consume six to eight glasses of water a day. I was probably drinking one. I through that stuff away, after a while I wasn't too scared to go to sleep, I never hallucinated again that I'm aware of either. I did continue to talk to myself, for a while. But I realized, there was no Demon inside of me, I was just fucking my body up.
I had joined the Navy in November of 2003 and left in May of 2004. I just wanted to move out of my parents house really bad, and the Navy would have paid for my school as well, even though I had no clue of what it is that I wanted to do. In boot camp I got the chance to explore my curiosity of other beliefs, I asked a Muslim what it was that he believed, I attended a Jewish service, as well as a catholic one. I asked the Mormons what their beliefs were. As far as I could tell, one had just as much of a chance as being as valid as the next. I didn't know what I should believe. Judaism interested me. I thought that maybe Jesus was just some cult leader, and the cult may have just grown into something really big. Thoughts of different cults and the false claims of magic powers came to mind. Adults grouped together and would believe what one man would say. I knew people were stupid a lot of the time. In boot camp, I got really sick. I lost thirty pounds in a month and a half. I got sick after we were given the injections of who knows what. One man received female hormones by mistake, he grew tits and his dick shrank. Another man had an allergic reaction to something and was paralyzed for a while, then he had to use a cane to walk. He was the same age as I was. Another man that was actually in my division, from what other recruits had told me once they joined me in the separation barracks, had died. He had a wisdom tooth pulled, and his gum wasn't sealed correctly. He bled out of his mouth onto his pillow every night. I knew about that. But hearing that he had died came as a shock to me. I wasn't getting better, I wasn't put on bed rest. I had lost my voice completely. I prayed to Jesus, the only one that I was used to praying to, that I would believe in him if I made it out and lived. I thought I was dying. I lived. I believed again. I got out okay.
I felt something though that I hadn't felt before. It felt good.I was happy. It could have been because I felt as though I had been given a second chance. I bought an xbox with my navy earnings and a bunch of games and movies. Then I got a job. The navy did the most good for me than anything. I thought it was God, or possibly Jesus. The idea I had that it may have just been a cult, I stopped thinking it. The feeling I had was proof to me that it was real. I started working out again, but had no energy to. So I tried a cycle of a pro hormone when that was legal, worked great, gained what I lost and more. I got back into reading work out magazines. I read an article in one of them.*
The article actually allowed me to understand evolution right after I read it. I also wanted to do this to myself. So in 2005 I took some college classes. It was a little expensive, and I didn't know what I wanted to do for sure, because I thought I may change my mind about wanting to be a genetic engineer. So I decided to look into other things, and if I still wanted to go to school by the time I was twenty four since I could get a government grant. I had a question about Christianity still. I did stop believing that it was fake because of what I suppose you would call a religious experience. The question I had seemed like it was important, I wanted to know why we could eat ham and Jews could not, the bible makes it rather clear in the old testament that you shouldn't. My mom just told me that Jesus changed it all. I wondered why, if God were perfect, he would need to change some things. I thought "wouldn't that mean he made a mistake?" That didn't make any damn sense to me, so I read the bible, I don't remember how much of the old testament I read, by now I know I have read the entire book. But I do remember reading the book of Mathew, and I noticed a contradiction MAT 27:45 My god My god, why hath though forsaken me. That was Jesus on the cross. A much different attitude then the other things I've heard about him saying. "'ve heard It is Finished" John 19:30 and "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." Luke 23:46.
It was such a different attitude that I felt I had made a mistake. I no longer felt that feeling that I had gotten in boot camp when I prayed. Let's face it, I was having some issues. I suppose the religious experience did help me mentally though. It did bring me up when I was down, I'll give it that. But there was nothing supernatural that had happened. I've already had different experiences in consciousness due to pot, going crazy, the bodybuilding supplement that was giving me seizures. Why couldn't that have just been some chemical that I was causing to be released that was making me feel that way? Of course it could have been, and it was. I still believed in God at that point, but was skeptical. But this time, I wasn't in emotional distress. I could look at my questions with a calm mind. I wanted to know , who was God? How did it all get here? I saw a special on the history channel about ancient astronauts. The idea that aliens visited earth and people worshiped them as gods. Made sense to me. The most technological thing people have seen was a spear, seeing aliens would surely make them seem like gods. But I still wondered how everything got here. I thought the answer as to whether god was real or not was just simply an unanswerable question. But then I caught a show on the science channel called "cosmos". That was the most fascinating show I have ever seen in my life. It made me think about the universes more. I thought if God never had needed to be made, then why not just say this about the universe. It certainly makes more sense to have a universe to exist forever, evolve, whatever, that to have some guy just float around in space having never been born. I felt rather stupid after figuring it out, it was so simple.
After having ceased believing in the last little tid bit of superstition that I did, which was God. I realized that meant I was an atheist. I never told anybody in my family, but I did let them know in subtle ways. I wasn't going to pretend I believed something that I didn't, I'm not a liar. I would just say things like " uhh huh" when they would start talking to me about the bible and stuff. My family did get pushy with the Christianity much more on me directly when they realized I no longer believed. My mom acted like I got up in front of the church and lied to everyone when I said I got saved, then got baptized. But I was twelve, and I told her that I did ask for Jesus to come into my heart, and I thought I must have been saved since I asked to be so many times. I moved to Texas for a while and came back, they thought I must have just gone through some phase I guess. They probably just thought that I stopped believing because of some issues, maybe they thought I never really stopped believing. They wanted to push their weird beliefs that were just passed down on to them from their parents onto them, but they wanted to hear no part of what I think. I have much more to believe in than stories.I have things that make sense to believe in. I have honesty with myself and others, and I believe in nature. And that is so much more beautiful then some stories people came up with.
*BOSTON - Somewhere in Germany is a baby Superman, born in Berlin with bulging arm and leg muscles. Not yet 5, he can hold seven-pound weights with arms extended, something many adults cannot do. He has muscles twice the size of other kids his age and half their body fat.
DNA testing showed why: The boy has a genetic mutation that boosts muscle growth.
The discovery, reported in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, represents the first documented human case of such a mutation.Many scientists believe the find could eventually lead to drugs for treating people with muscular dystrophy and other muscle-destroying conditions. And athletes would almost surely want to get their hands on such a drug and use it like steroids to bulk up.
The boy’s mutant DNA segment was found to block production of a protein called myostatin that limits muscle growth. The news comes seven years after researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore created buff “mighty mice” by “turning off” the gene that directs cells to produce myostatin.“Now we can say that myostatin acts the same way in humans as in animals,” said the boy’s physician, Dr. Markus Schuelke, a professor in the child neurology department at Charite/University Medical Center Berlin. “We can apply that knowledge to humans, including trial therapies for muscular dystrophy.”
Given the huge potential market for such drugs, researchers at universities and pharmaceutical companies already are trying to find a way to limit the amount and activity of myostatin in the body. Wyeth has just begun human tests of a genetically engineered antibody designed to neutralize myostatin.
Dr. Lou Kunkel, director of the genomics program at Boston Children’s Hospital and professor of pediatrics and genetics at Harvard Medical School, said success is possible within several years.
“Just decreasing this protein by 20, 30, 50 percent can have a profound effect on muscle bulk,” said Kunkel, who is among the doctors participating in the Wyeth research.
Slow wasting process
Muscular dystrophy is the world’s most common genetic disease. There is no cure and the most common form, Duchenne’s, usually kills before adulthood. The few treatments being tried to slow its progression have serious side effects.
Muscle wasting also is common in the elderly and patients with diseases such as cancer and AIDS.
“If you could find a way to block myostatin activity, you might slow the wasting process,” said Dr. Se-Jin Lee, the Johns Hopkins professor whose team created the “mighty mice.”
Lee said he believes a myostatin blocker also could suppress fat accumulation and thus thwart the development of diabetes. Lee and Johns Hopkins would receive royalties for any myostatin-blocking drug made by Wyeth.
Dr. Eric Hoffman, director of Children’s National Medical Center’s Research Center for Genetic Medicine, said he believes a muscular dystrophy cure will be found, but he is unsure whether it will be a myostatin-blocking drug, another treatment or a combination, because about a dozen genes have some effect on muscles.
He said a mystotatin-blocking drug could help other groups of people, including astronauts and others who lose muscle mass during long stints in zero gravity or when immobilized by illness or a broken limb.
Eventual health problems?
Researchers would not disclose the German boy’s identity but said he was born to a somewhat muscular mother, a 24-year-old former professional sprinter. Her brother and three other close male relatives all were unusually strong, with one of them a construction worker able to unload heavy curbstones by hand.
In the mother, one copy of the gene is mutated and the other is normal; the boy has two mutated copies. One almost definitely came from his father, but no information about him has been disclosed. The mutation is very rare in people.
The boy is healthy now, but doctors worry he could eventually suffer heart or other health problems.
In the past few years, scientists have seen great potential in myostatin-blocking strategies.
Internet marketers have been hawking “myostatin-blocking” supplements to bodybuilders, though doctors say the products are useless and perhaps dangerous.
Some researchers are trying to turn off the myostatin gene in chickens to produce more meat per bird. And several breeds of cattle have natural variations in the gene that, aided by selective breeding, give them far more muscle and less fat than other steer.
By the time I was fifteen I had asked Jesus into my heart on several occasions. The reason why I had done it more than once was because I was told that I would feel an instant change. I felt nothing, except sad that I would burn in hell for eternity for wondering if the existence of Jesus and God were actually real. I would pray, never knowing if there was a creator out there that just ignored me. I believed in God and Jesus, judgment day, all that. But something just didn't add up to me. I was home schooled with christian material, it was so boring and I could smell the bullshit. One thing that I knew was an absurd claim, was the story about the tower of Babel. The claim was that people were building a tower to reach Heaven, and god destroyed it. They were saying that it may sound crazy, but it must not have been if god had to destroy it because he didn't want them going into heaven. I laughed and thought " These people are idiots. We fly space ships much higher than any building has or ever will be built." I don't think I'm such a smart person, I think that maybe there are just a lot of stupid people that really have no business trying to teach. My parents were angry with me, for not being such a good christian. I would stay out with my friends later than I was supposed to and tell them I was somewhere else. I would smoke cigs and weed. I would watch porn and got caught with it. I was just having some fun, and I don't regret any of that. One time my dad snapped at me, I suppose because I didn't take the "school" work seriously, because I would have fun, because I did question Gods existence and started to wonder why he would care if I wondered why he was real, after all, it's not obvious. I never fully stopped believing there was a god at that point for the simple reason of being misinformed of what evolution was. I suppose I was an agnostic. So one night after he screamed at me to get a flash light because I didn't hear him ask me in a normal tone of voice the first time, I got mad and slammed the door behind me as I went to his squad car to find it. He came right out there telling me to go inside and wait on his bed so he could have a "talk". His talks never consisted of him speaking much though, just spanking. I was fifteen, I hadn't been spanked since I was thirteen, for stealing. I wasn't about to take that shit from the man. I put my finger in his face and told him what I thought. He didn't say any thing back, he just turned me around real fast and slammed me against his squad car, put me in a choke hold then dragged me up the stairs and into the house. He choked slammed me and got on top of me to restrain me. My mom just sat there and watched. He told me to pack my shit, they're putting me up for adoption. I thought about spitting in his mouth as he spoke, but he also spoke often of knowing how to kill a person and get away with it. I wasn't about to get killed and have him make it look like he had to do it.
I had these neighbors that adopted these two children. These adopted kids were treated so horribly, told by there adopted parents that they were no good, god is disgusted with them, they were going to hell for their filthy mouths. These children were really good. Most kids I knew were good kids. But I never even heard these kids curse. These people had just adopted a couple of slaves though. Needless to say, me packing my shit and being put up for adoption sounded like it could turn out to be worse than the situation I was currently in. It certainly could have, but I look back now and think it may have been worth the risk. I was so shy then, I didn't know how to make new friends, and the ones I had were so important to me. I don't think they'll ever know how much I appreciated them. I loved them like most people would love their family. They were the closest thing I had that felt like family. I had just wished that I wasn't born. I couldn't think and feel the way I wanted to. Life just plain sucked, at home anyway.
About four months after I had turned sixteen, my parents decided to move from Plant City to Brandon. I was sad. I didn't know anybody in Brandon. I wasn't allowed to go to public school. After we moved, I saw very little of the people that I used to call my friends. I saw one sign on to aim sometimes and would try to talk. Pretty hard to get conversation out of any of them after I moved, I guess because I just didn't see them any more. I was always angry, I hated my father. I believe he may be the only person that I've ever hated. I thought that there was just another reason why I would be going to hell if the place were real. An after life sounded horrible to me whether I was going to heaven or hell, they both sounded like they sucked, just one was worst. I never liked church. I hated standing up and sitting down for some shitty music. The preachers message was usually one that I disagreed with. I totally disagreed with the message that women SHOULD be less privileged then men, that they should submit to us. That disgusted me. It all disgusted me. There was nothing that they taught of moral value. Heaven sounded a lot like church to me, sounded a lot like another version of hell. I hated God if he were real. What an ass hole. I didn't much care about what sins I committed, I was going to Hell. I thought about how great it would be if when I died, it would be just how it was before I was born. Nothing. Not conscious. No memory. Just done. But as good as it sounded to me, at the time I really had no reason to believed that life truly ends like that, instead of an after life.
After we lived in the new house, I took up weight lifting to occupy my time there. I weighed 120 pounds and was tired of being so weak and skinny. I gained thirty five pounds since a year after that. I was very lonely though. After I got bored with video games, I mostly just laid on the floor thinking about different ways I could kill myself. I would then think of ways that I may survive the attempted suicide because I may screw up, then thoughts of how much worse off my life would be if I lived and had brain damage or something would surface in my mind. This was between the time I was 17 to 18 that I depressed like this. I got used to not talking to people, or being around anyone. I let my facial hair grow over an inch long, my hair just got crazy looking, I was very pale, and I didn't bathe much just because I didn't care. I walked outside one day to listen to what my parents and neighbor were talking about. Another neighbors dog had ran into our yard, my neighbor caught him and called me over there. I went over there, and this really pretty neighbor girl that just moved across the street from Russia went to get the dog. I was caught by surprise. I looked like shit. I didnt know what to say to her, I hadn't talked to many people outside the house for months. I panicked and ran inside, I felt like such a coward. I was a coward though. I was right to feel like that. I would talk to myself a lot as well around that time. I tried a body building supplement some time in 2004. It worked. My squat went up ten pounds the first week, I had gained about ten pounds from it in a few weeks. But I didn't consume enough water, I'm not sure if that's really the reason or if the stuff was just dangerous, but my skin turned a yellowish color, the whites of my eyes turned yellow. I was having horrible nightmares, I hallucinated, I thought I could see ghosts. I was also talking to myself a lot. I thought I had been possessed from trying to use a Ouija board to talk to my dead grandfather, which didn't work by the way. I woke up during one of the nightmares I was having, my eyes were shaking everywhere and my muscles were spazzing. It was a seizure, but I had no idea. I thought maybe I was being sent a vision from God, or Satan. I stayed up for a week, afraid to go to sleep and go through that again, come to think of it I think that's when I thought I could see the ghosts. That was probably caused by sleep deprivation. I looked at the back of the bottle of the supplement I was taking and it said to consume six to eight glasses of water a day. I was probably drinking one. I through that stuff away, after a while I wasn't too scared to go to sleep, I never hallucinated again that I'm aware of either. I did continue to talk to myself, for a while. But I realized, there was no Demon inside of me, I was just fucking my body up.
I had joined the Navy in November of 2003 and left in May of 2004. I just wanted to move out of my parents house really bad, and the Navy would have paid for my school as well, even though I had no clue of what it is that I wanted to do. In boot camp I got the chance to explore my curiosity of other beliefs, I asked a Muslim what it was that he believed, I attended a Jewish service, as well as a catholic one. I asked the Mormons what their beliefs were. As far as I could tell, one had just as much of a chance as being as valid as the next. I didn't know what I should believe. Judaism interested me. I thought that maybe Jesus was just some cult leader, and the cult may have just grown into something really big. Thoughts of different cults and the false claims of magic powers came to mind. Adults grouped together and would believe what one man would say. I knew people were stupid a lot of the time. In boot camp, I got really sick. I lost thirty pounds in a month and a half. I got sick after we were given the injections of who knows what. One man received female hormones by mistake, he grew tits and his dick shrank. Another man had an allergic reaction to something and was paralyzed for a while, then he had to use a cane to walk. He was the same age as I was. Another man that was actually in my division, from what other recruits had told me once they joined me in the separation barracks, had died. He had a wisdom tooth pulled, and his gum wasn't sealed correctly. He bled out of his mouth onto his pillow every night. I knew about that. But hearing that he had died came as a shock to me. I wasn't getting better, I wasn't put on bed rest. I had lost my voice completely. I prayed to Jesus, the only one that I was used to praying to, that I would believe in him if I made it out and lived. I thought I was dying. I lived. I believed again. I got out okay.
I felt something though that I hadn't felt before. It felt good.I was happy. It could have been because I felt as though I had been given a second chance. I bought an xbox with my navy earnings and a bunch of games and movies. Then I got a job. The navy did the most good for me than anything. I thought it was God, or possibly Jesus. The idea I had that it may have just been a cult, I stopped thinking it. The feeling I had was proof to me that it was real. I started working out again, but had no energy to. So I tried a cycle of a pro hormone when that was legal, worked great, gained what I lost and more. I got back into reading work out magazines. I read an article in one of them.*
The article actually allowed me to understand evolution right after I read it. I also wanted to do this to myself. So in 2005 I took some college classes. It was a little expensive, and I didn't know what I wanted to do for sure, because I thought I may change my mind about wanting to be a genetic engineer. So I decided to look into other things, and if I still wanted to go to school by the time I was twenty four since I could get a government grant. I had a question about Christianity still. I did stop believing that it was fake because of what I suppose you would call a religious experience. The question I had seemed like it was important, I wanted to know why we could eat ham and Jews could not, the bible makes it rather clear in the old testament that you shouldn't. My mom just told me that Jesus changed it all. I wondered why, if God were perfect, he would need to change some things. I thought "wouldn't that mean he made a mistake?" That didn't make any damn sense to me, so I read the bible, I don't remember how much of the old testament I read, by now I know I have read the entire book. But I do remember reading the book of Mathew, and I noticed a contradiction MAT 27:45 My god My god, why hath though forsaken me. That was Jesus on the cross. A much different attitude then the other things I've heard about him saying. "'ve heard It is Finished" John 19:30 and "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." Luke 23:46.
It was such a different attitude that I felt I had made a mistake. I no longer felt that feeling that I had gotten in boot camp when I prayed. Let's face it, I was having some issues. I suppose the religious experience did help me mentally though. It did bring me up when I was down, I'll give it that. But there was nothing supernatural that had happened. I've already had different experiences in consciousness due to pot, going crazy, the bodybuilding supplement that was giving me seizures. Why couldn't that have just been some chemical that I was causing to be released that was making me feel that way? Of course it could have been, and it was. I still believed in God at that point, but was skeptical. But this time, I wasn't in emotional distress. I could look at my questions with a calm mind. I wanted to know , who was God? How did it all get here? I saw a special on the history channel about ancient astronauts. The idea that aliens visited earth and people worshiped them as gods. Made sense to me. The most technological thing people have seen was a spear, seeing aliens would surely make them seem like gods. But I still wondered how everything got here. I thought the answer as to whether god was real or not was just simply an unanswerable question. But then I caught a show on the science channel called "cosmos". That was the most fascinating show I have ever seen in my life. It made me think about the universes more. I thought if God never had needed to be made, then why not just say this about the universe. It certainly makes more sense to have a universe to exist forever, evolve, whatever, that to have some guy just float around in space having never been born. I felt rather stupid after figuring it out, it was so simple.
After having ceased believing in the last little tid bit of superstition that I did, which was God. I realized that meant I was an atheist. I never told anybody in my family, but I did let them know in subtle ways. I wasn't going to pretend I believed something that I didn't, I'm not a liar. I would just say things like " uhh huh" when they would start talking to me about the bible and stuff. My family did get pushy with the Christianity much more on me directly when they realized I no longer believed. My mom acted like I got up in front of the church and lied to everyone when I said I got saved, then got baptized. But I was twelve, and I told her that I did ask for Jesus to come into my heart, and I thought I must have been saved since I asked to be so many times. I moved to Texas for a while and came back, they thought I must have just gone through some phase I guess. They probably just thought that I stopped believing because of some issues, maybe they thought I never really stopped believing. They wanted to push their weird beliefs that were just passed down on to them from their parents onto them, but they wanted to hear no part of what I think. I have much more to believe in than stories.I have things that make sense to believe in. I have honesty with myself and others, and I believe in nature. And that is so much more beautiful then some stories people came up with.
*BOSTON - Somewhere in Germany is a baby Superman, born in Berlin with bulging arm and leg muscles. Not yet 5, he can hold seven-pound weights with arms extended, something many adults cannot do. He has muscles twice the size of other kids his age and half their body fat.
DNA testing showed why: The boy has a genetic mutation that boosts muscle growth.
The discovery, reported in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, represents the first documented human case of such a mutation.Many scientists believe the find could eventually lead to drugs for treating people with muscular dystrophy and other muscle-destroying conditions. And athletes would almost surely want to get their hands on such a drug and use it like steroids to bulk up.
The boy’s mutant DNA segment was found to block production of a protein called myostatin that limits muscle growth. The news comes seven years after researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore created buff “mighty mice” by “turning off” the gene that directs cells to produce myostatin.“Now we can say that myostatin acts the same way in humans as in animals,” said the boy’s physician, Dr. Markus Schuelke, a professor in the child neurology department at Charite/University Medical Center Berlin. “We can apply that knowledge to humans, including trial therapies for muscular dystrophy.”
Given the huge potential market for such drugs, researchers at universities and pharmaceutical companies already are trying to find a way to limit the amount and activity of myostatin in the body. Wyeth has just begun human tests of a genetically engineered antibody designed to neutralize myostatin.
Dr. Lou Kunkel, director of the genomics program at Boston Children’s Hospital and professor of pediatrics and genetics at Harvard Medical School, said success is possible within several years.
“Just decreasing this protein by 20, 30, 50 percent can have a profound effect on muscle bulk,” said Kunkel, who is among the doctors participating in the Wyeth research.
Slow wasting process
Muscular dystrophy is the world’s most common genetic disease. There is no cure and the most common form, Duchenne’s, usually kills before adulthood. The few treatments being tried to slow its progression have serious side effects.
Muscle wasting also is common in the elderly and patients with diseases such as cancer and AIDS.
“If you could find a way to block myostatin activity, you might slow the wasting process,” said Dr. Se-Jin Lee, the Johns Hopkins professor whose team created the “mighty mice.”
Lee said he believes a myostatin blocker also could suppress fat accumulation and thus thwart the development of diabetes. Lee and Johns Hopkins would receive royalties for any myostatin-blocking drug made by Wyeth.
Dr. Eric Hoffman, director of Children’s National Medical Center’s Research Center for Genetic Medicine, said he believes a muscular dystrophy cure will be found, but he is unsure whether it will be a myostatin-blocking drug, another treatment or a combination, because about a dozen genes have some effect on muscles.
He said a mystotatin-blocking drug could help other groups of people, including astronauts and others who lose muscle mass during long stints in zero gravity or when immobilized by illness or a broken limb.
Eventual health problems?
Researchers would not disclose the German boy’s identity but said he was born to a somewhat muscular mother, a 24-year-old former professional sprinter. Her brother and three other close male relatives all were unusually strong, with one of them a construction worker able to unload heavy curbstones by hand.
In the mother, one copy of the gene is mutated and the other is normal; the boy has two mutated copies. One almost definitely came from his father, but no information about him has been disclosed. The mutation is very rare in people.
The boy is healthy now, but doctors worry he could eventually suffer heart or other health problems.
In the past few years, scientists have seen great potential in myostatin-blocking strategies.
Internet marketers have been hawking “myostatin-blocking” supplements to bodybuilders, though doctors say the products are useless and perhaps dangerous.
Some researchers are trying to turn off the myostatin gene in chickens to produce more meat per bird. And several breeds of cattle have natural variations in the gene that, aided by selective breeding, give them far more muscle and less fat than other steer.
