The Truth of Rational Thought

To my friend

2010-03-19T23:51:00.004-04:00

This is a post to a friend of mine from facebook (who shall remain nameless). I thought I'd write it here, just in case somebody else might enjoy it.

God would not be a good king. Here's why. He doesn't exist! It's hard to have a ruler, when that ruler is fake and made up. I know many of you think he is real, but the fact remains that you have nothing to substantiate that idea, no one does.

Seriously though, here's why.

Let's say hypothetically, that there is a god, and that god is the god of christianity (new testament version). He is love, he is good, etc...
If this god is love, then he also must be hate, by definition. One cannot have love without hate, because the two ideas are opposite sides of the same coin. Just as hot is to cold, tall is to short, etc... so love is to hate. One without the comparative other causes the one to have no substance. If everything was hot, then how would we know hotness. It is only through comparison that we can differentiate. So it goes with love and hate. So, if god is love but necessarily also hate, then he does not, cannot love everyone. He has to hate somebody. The question is, who does this god hate?
As a king, this god would not be benevolent to all, only to those he loved. Some people would be screwed. As Lincoln said " you can fool some of the people all of the time, you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time". Indeed, this god as king would be no different than most other monarchs that have at some point ruled nations. Now, of course to me, this is completely sensible, because the christian idea of god is so transparently man-made. God resembles us, not the other way 'round.
The founding fathers were intent upon eradicating monarchistic rule. The very basis of the political system put in place by them was done so with the intention of escaping divine right tyranny. The furthest thing from their minds was that the new country would be wholly saturated with knee-bowing christians. Why else would they have included a clause in the bill of rights regarding the freedom of religion? Such a provision was constructed precisely so that a governmental administration COULD NOT proclaim an official religion to the people of the country. Personally, I wish it had been a clause stating freedom FROM religion, but that's neither here nor there.
The current commander-in-chief is apparently not to the liking of many people out there (including my friend). I often wonder how much of the consternation is due to the person or the ideas. I hold the thought that such demagoguery and vice-versa, idolatry (George W. for instance) is a very dangerous practice to make regular use of. I did vote for our current president, and I like some of his ideas, but I certainly do not think for an instant that he has been divinely placed in the position he is in. Nor do I think that W. was the tool of Satan (who certainly doesn't exist). It's true, everyone is entitled to their opinion, I don't begrudge anyone that, I hope no one will begrudge me mine. The political system we have in place is so much better than one which would place a fictional invisible sky-daddy ruler in charge of what is closing in on 7 billion people, many of whom would die before they would ever falsely confess a belief in said deity. The idea that a divine monarchy ruled by the christian god would be the best possible political construct for America and the world is more than ludicrous, it is saddening. That being said, that's all I have to say on the matter. Pleasant night all.

Update

2009-10-15T23:03:00.002-04:00

I haven't written anything in a while and there's a reason. I have recently returned to school to pursue my doctorate in trombone performance. Because of this, I have had precious little time to devote to thinking of and writing on subjects for this blog. I apologize, and I hope to find some time to return to it in the near future, but for the time being I am ensconced in academia. Stay tuned though, because part three is hovering off in the distance, that part being On Location, where we think we are as opposed to where we physically are.

On Time, Space and Being, part two

2009-08-23T21:25:00.000-04:00

The last blog post was about how we misinterpret time, it's flow and our existence through that flow. Having established that we do not exist within the confines of time as we think we do, and therefore our ideas about god and the religions that surround him/her/etc... must be mere constructions, we can now turn to the second part of the discussion, matter.
Matter exists. Unlike time, it is a physicality. We are made of matter, the earth, the stars, every molecule and quark is a form of matter. Matter is the stuff, when we talk of stuff. It is easy for us to live our lives knowing this never really giving the issue much thought, but as we do with time and it's flow, when we glance over the underlying structure of matter, we allow ourselves to construct strange pseudo-realities that, while based on the taken-for-granted underlayment of material structure, are nonetheless leaps and bounds outside of sensibilty. I am of course talking about the ideas that we are immortal, that our physical bodies can be ressurected, and go to live, after we die mind you, in a place called heaven, or hell, depending. So let's look a bit closer at that which you and I take for granted in our everyday lives, our bodies.

We can start with our bodies in general. On the surface, they seem to be a marvel of intelligent design. We have all that we need. Fingers for grasping, hands for support and extending the fingers, arms for balance and extention. Toes for precision balance, feet for gross balance, legs for upright stance. A skeleton for internal organ protection and motor movement. Organs for their various functions. You get the point. Our bodies are in an assemblage which allows us the maximum environmental involvement at the macro-level, by having the various organs work in consort with each other. However, our organs and body parts are themselves made of smaller things, without which none would be able to operate, much less provide the services they do. Let's descend to the cellular level. Each of our body parts is composed of a multitude of cells. Each of these cells is tiny, microscopic, invisible to the unaided eye, but there nonetheless. Together, they work in tandem to perform particular functions such as digestion (within the stomach and intestinal lengths), oxygenation (within the circulatory and respiratory systems, via lung cells absorbing oxygen and then transferring it to the red blood cells which co-mingle in the capillaries inside the lungs) and immunization (within the lymph nodes, and white blood cells which help to disengage foreign pathogens and infectants). Each performs it's duty if you will, albeit unbeknownst to itself. A cell has no brain, no thoughts, no ideas. It performs a function that is integral to body as a whole, but that on it's own would be a useless gesture. Our bodies would not live without cells, but the same can not be said for cells. There are many examples of single-celled organisms (yes that is a direct quote from 7th grade biology class, thank you Ms. Pedersen :-)) Cells don't require a larger host organism to operate, but those particular cells in our bodies do a much larger work when combined together. This does not mean the cells in our bodies are more complex necessarily than those single-celled organisms, just more finely-tuned to do particular things. Our bodies are similar to an ant colony in this sense. A colony delegates tasks to individual sections, which when combined together will benefit the whole colony. Of course, cells themselves are comprised of smaller entities, namely molecules.
Since our cells do not have individual brains, then it stands to reason that individual molecules also lack them (especially considering a brain is an organ comprised of cells, which are in turn composed of molecules). Molecules make up everything larger than themselves. Up until now, we have been reducing gross matter to ever smaller constituents. At the molecular level we begin to see matter for what it really is. Molecules are the last step we take before we encounter that which comprises all in the universe we know of. Molecules make up cells (again, thanks to 7th grade biology) but they also make up everything else; water, rocks, air, fire. Although we are bodies, we are more primitively organs, and before that we are cells, and before that we are molecules. So in this sense we are no more than that which surrounds us, living or not (we will come back to what we are).
I'd like to return for a moment to the level of our bodies and discuss solidity. Feel your arm. Go ahead, feel it, touch it. Does your hand go through your arm? No of course not. Why not? Because your arm is covered in skin, filled with bone and muscle. It is solid. So is the chair you are sitting in while reading this, right? Well, I can't push right through my arm with my finger, so there is a bit of solidity involved here, but what about the cellular level. Cellular walls are readily punctured, this is how infection occurs. And since we are made of cells, aren't we not as solid as we think we are? How about the molecular level? Well, molecules are comprised of atoms, which are the singular manifestations of the elements which make up all of the matter in the universe. These atoms are in constant flux, meaning they bombard each other constantly, knocking some molecules awry and replacing the displaced atoms with themselves, thus changing the molecule itself. Molecules are atoms attached to each other via electron-compatability. This means that two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom will attach together because the number of electrons balances and leaves a stable molecular configuration. There is a lot of space in between the specific atoms of a molecule. Molecules are mostly made of empty space; electrons orbiting the nucleus, which is made of protons and neutrons. The molecules which make up the chair you are sitting in disallow you from falling through them by repelling you (specifically the molecules of the cells in the skin which covers your butt). The solidity you feel is simply the electro-magnetic repulsion from billions of molecules pushing against each other.
Just as review, because we descended pretty quickly there: Molecules are made of atoms, atoms are made of protons, neutrons and electrons. Each descent takes us an order of magnitude smaller. While there is very little solid space inside a molecule, there is even less solidity inside an atom. Almost 99% of an atom is empty space. And whatever taken-up space there is so little as to be almost non-existant. And it doesn't stop there. Protons and neutrons are themselves composed of smaller particles (elementary particles) called quarks. Electrons are themselves elementary particles and are thus not composed of quarks. The space between quarks is even more ridiculously wide-spread. The only thing holding protons together are gluons (these are force-carrying particles, which transmit the strong nuclear force, which is what holds the protons and neutrons together). We are made of organs and there is space between these organs. Our organs are made of cells and there is even more space between these cells. Our cells are made of molecules, of which the space between widens fantastically. Our molecules are made of atoms which are held together by the stability created between the balanced number of electrons (nothing else), and the space between the atoms in a molecule is also immense. Our atoms are composed of protons, neutrons and electrons, where 99% of the space is empty. Our protons and neutrons are made of quarks, which are also almost completely empty.
On the sub-atomic level, we are comprised more than 99% of empty space! I'll say that again. On the sub-atomic level, on top of which all other components of ourselves are built, we are mostly empty space. This is as reductionist as you can get. reduce everything down to the most basic level and there is really nothing there, well almost.
As in the earlier post about time, this true nature of matter and how we are composed, makes it easy to see that all of humanity's endeavors are constructed as a house of cards. From politics, to religion, everything we think, we think from an assumptive standpoint. Since this particular blog is meant to derail religion, let's stay there. Religion says we are more than are parts. There is something that is non-physical about us. Religion would say of my deconstruction above that it is valid but irrelevant, because that which makes us is not part of the physical world, but rather the supernatural one. This is a stance that can be easily taken when one looks no further than the conglomeration which is our natural physical body. Like a person who listens to a piece of music and finds more than just the note patterns, the religious person looks at his/her body and finds more to it than what is there.
This can be done because the religious person assumes that the consort that the body works inside of is something that is greater than what the individual parts would be capable of. The complexity we see at our level is assumed to be an impossibilty for smaller much simpler component parts. This is the moment of truth, for it is here that the assumption leads some astray. The assumption is this: Complexity cannot arise out of simplicity. This is wrong. Complexity is the result of the layering and interweaving of simplicity. It can and only does arise from simplicity. Elementary particles are just that, the most fundamental constituent odf the known universe. when combined, they create a slightly more complex entity, the atom. There is no intelligence governing this intermingling, it is simply random in nature. But remember it is the intermingling that is random, not the coagulation. When combinations are made, it is because the combination is more stable than either previous singularity (not in the sense of the big-bang singularity). So the combination is purposeful, the purpose being a more stable configuration.
when simple atoms combine to form slightly more complex molecules, the process of intermingling is random but again the connection eventually made is not, nor is it intelligent. There is no decision made, nor recognition made that stability has been achieved. It is only that there are stable configurations and there are unstable configurations, those which are unstable break apart for obvious reasons and those which are stable stay together for obvious reasons.
When atoms combine to form molecules, they combine in a multitude of ways, one of which is DNA. The DNA molecule is a stable molecule, one which is also self-replicating. It is only a molecule, but by copying itself, it quickly gives rise to larger, more complex colonies which we call cells, which then give rise to our organs, also many times more complex, and so on. The complexity which we see sits atop the simplicity we can't. This blindness, which existed for millenia before the advent of molecular discovery and study, is what allowed religions to so fervently take hold of the human mind. Religion only exists as a remnant of the ignorance humankind lived with for so long. It serves no purpose beyond artificial comfort and dread. It lies as a testament to the need for further inquiry into the foundations of our world, because without this inquiry, assumptive practices can and most likely will destroy us. Next up, Location.

On Time, Space and Being: Part 1, Time

2009-07-09T16:27:00.000-04:00

We are. We are here. We are here now.
We are made of stuff. Our stuffiness is called matter; bodies down to organs, down to cells, down to molecules, down to atoms, down to sub-atomic particles such as quarks, electrons, muons. We are capable of recognizing our stuffiness due in large part to the very stuffiness itself. Our brain is made of the stuff the nebulae in interstellar space is, albeit organized in a different fashion. Matter exists, and we know it, because we are it.
We are centrally localized in a particular spot, so far as we can tell in the everyday. We are on a planet, we are on land, we are on a continent, we are within a country, within a state, within a county, within a town, within our house, within a room, within the boundaries of our skin, within the boundaries of our cells, within the boundaries of our molecules, atoms and sub-atomic particles. We are somewhere.
We are here now. We were not always here. We will not always be here. The things around us are here now, but have not always been here, nor will they always be here. We float along the river of time, entering at a point and departing sometime after our initial appearance. Time flows, and we flow with it, for a while.
If there are truths to base our lives around, surely they are these three, our knowledge of our substantive corporeality, our existential longevity, and ourselves. We know of these things, inherently, and are supremely sure of them. We feel their truth in our bones. They are esoteric and philosophic topics of interest, as well as the basis for how we humans have and continue to direct the course of our lives. Although simple statements, We are, We are here, We are here now, they betray a much larger mountain of introspection buried beneath the mundaneness of everyday life. It is this mountain of concealed and camouflaged cognition that has tantalized philosophers and the devout for nearly all of our recorded history as the various worldwide religions and philosophical traditions have attempted to dig out some of this (these) mountaintops. Science, particularly cosmology, astrophysics, and quantum physics have been continuously attempting to systematically uncover progressively more and more of the psychologically sub-terrainean mountain of information regarding "matter", and the same have been toiling tirelessly to reveal a bit more of the peak of time and it's seeming flow. For the everyday person, matter and time are taken for granted. They are there, and we know it. We know it, and so there are no really overwhelming reasons for us to think about them in more subtle detail. But a closer look can be an interesting endeavor.
For one thing, all three realms of thought overlap each other (actually there are four, if you include cognition along with time, matter and location). Our constituent matter can be descended down to the sub-atomic level, where it can collide with our perceptions of physical locality, something that can also be descended to the sub-atomic level. These two can then collide, within the physical parameters of our brains, with the flow of time and our over-arching ability to conceptualize them at the micro-level, in manners to be expounded upon later. The concepts are inter-related, and although or perhaps because, their inter-relations exist at the micro, atomic, or even sub-atomic levels, the consequences of these relationships tend to be regarded as unrelated and wholly different from each other, for our macro-level selves. I think it is this unfortunate division that has indirectly given rise to the plethora of religious practices and thoughts throughout the world today. The apparent distance between those phenomenon which are related to each other at the micro level and the everyday consequences of the interaction of those phenomenon at the macro level has given humankind a kind of panacea, a veil of misunderstanding, through which we have created fantastical mythologies, ones that bear no resemblance to the tiny world which allowed their birth. To be fair, philosophy has thrived at this macro-level division as well, but so far as I can tell, religion has subsumed philosophy in the realm of dangerous activity, so it is with this in mind that I'd like to point out a few things with regards to our everyday experiences, and how we take them for granted when shaping our personal lives. Let's start with time.
As we all know, time has a knack for flowing (Or flying if you have a young child). It goes from the past, to the future, with a stop in between for what we call the present. The future has not yet happened. It is a place we can only assume will happen. The past is over and done with, never to happen again. It is a place we can only remember, but not visit. We cannot experience time's flow as it is represented by the past or the future. We either have already experienced it in the case of the past, or we have not yet experienced it in the case of the future. We have three representations of time of which we are currently aware (perhaps there is some other representation we do not yet know about). The first two, past and future, are unavailable to us, which leaves us with the only option remaining, the stopping point in between the past and future. We have the present. The past is an arena in which we can remember what has already happened to us, no matter if we are humans, cats, or a meteorite (the arena remains unchanged) and the future is an arena of time in which events have not yet happened. We do not "remember" the future, it is an arena unchanged, as it has yet to occur. So what arena does the present represent, or better yet when exactly is the present?
Time is divisible, compartmental. If we look at a sign as we are driving down the road, it takes us a few seconds to "live" that moment of seeing the sign. We are "presently" seeing the sign. The few seconds it takes us to see the sign, recognize that it is a sign, written in a language which we speak, locate it in comparison to it's surroundings and it's proximity to us, are about as fast as we can process that amount of information into "seeing" the sign. In this experience, we have compartmentalized the moment into a small increment of time, quick enough so that we take in the necessary amount of information, but slow enough so that we can also process it into the moment of experience. Although we break up time's flow into manageable increments, the increments are only manageable because we need them to be, they are only as such to us, and us alone. We manage our own limited capabilities of time-flow recognition. Time can be divided into much smaller increments than what we can process, namely seconds. Unfortunately, breaking time into smaller increments of measurement is of little use to us in our everyday experiences, but the possibility of doing so in no way places a restriction onto time itself. We are restricted in how small an increment of time we can reasonably process. Its division is of no consequence to time itself.
For example, if we see the sign for three seconds, we are also seeing it for 3,000 milliseconds. Subtract the last 2,997 milliseconds from our experience. What if we only saw the sign for 3 milliseconds? What if we were capable of processing all the information described above in only 3 milliseconds? Then 99.997 % of our 3-second experience of the present would actually be considered the future, having not yet happened. Time has not been altered in this scenario, only the length of measurement we make changes. Interestingly, in this anecdote, our moment of the present has been reduced, meaning the present moment had gotten smaller, while the future has become a bit more distant, sort-of. Well, what if our experience lasted not for 3 milliseconds but 3 nanoseconds (3 billionth's of a second)? Now, 99.999999997 % of our three-second "live" experience is not the present, it is the future. Again, the present moment has lost some of its foothold, yielding a portion of itself to the future-yet-to-come. Indeed, the present doesn't last very long in this scenario. Presence (the present) can be pushed farther back into what we previously were counting as the past. It can be shaved down into an even smaller portion than a nanosecond, however. We need not stop at the boundary of a billionth of a second, how about a billionth of a billionth of a second, or more (or would it be less)? The present can continuously be pushed back away from the threshold of the future into a smaller and smaller increment, always approaching but never reaching infinity. However small we slice time's current presence, that infinitely small moment passes ever so quickly and changes from being the present to the past. The moment no longer exists once it passes, and the smaller we compress our moment of present, the quicker the past takes over. As I said before, time has no qualms about being measured in the smallest of increments; it will flow continuously regardless of how we, or anything, measures its flow. There are no restrictions on time; only we who experience time's flow have limitations placed upon us.

If we simultaneously no longer have the past and we do not yet have the future, and the present moment can be viewed as an infinitely small increment of time's flow, then the question must (and has been) asked " When is it that we actually exist?” We don't exist in the future, only our potential for existence hovers off in the distance. We don't exist in the past, excepting only what remains in our memory. We only can exist in the present moment, but as we now know, the present is, or at least can be, infinitely small in duration? Since time is measured as past, present and future and we don't seem to exist in any of the states, as they have been laid out, it could be said that we don't really exist at all. Of course we don't see it that way. Since I am writing this blog, I must exist. I know I don't exist in the past or the future, and the present, however small, is all that is left, it is here that I must exist. Even though the past and future are not my existential abode, they both, nonetheless exert a considerable effort onto my very small present existence. The past is the more powerful of the two. Through memory, I can adjust my behaviors to accommodate a more happily led life. The past governs the future, and the future, in the form of assumptions-based on past experiences is my map to my destination of a fulfilled life. We may exist in the present, but it is the past and future, which make our existence possible.
Eckhart Tolle's "The power of now" implores us to live in the moment, to forget the past, and not concern ourselves with the future. This is, as the preceding section outlines, clearly not possible. We can experience life only through our past memories and our future expectations. Since I am here to write this, I am pulling on my past thoughts, be they ever so recent, and I am also projecting my assumptive existence into a future I have no assurance will come.
If we are forward looking in our stance, then we must look to what may or may not occur or be set in motion which will be of the most benefit to us. If we are backwards looking, then we must remember those events and decisions, which were good for us as a species and also those, which resulted in negative consequences for us. Certainly, we are both forward and backward looking, and what a good thing that is for us. To be able to remember and project is a very valuable skill. It allows us to evaluate and to risk our lives. On the one hand, the evaluative process, which can take place in the blink of an eye, offers a measure of protection from psychological disappointment and physical endangerment. On the other hand the risk-taking permission allows for possible advancement beyond our current place. The two abilities allow us to plan and reminisce. They allow us to daydream and enjoy our lives. Without these abilities, we would not have love, empathy, or even consciousness. This is because we do not live at the quantum level of time. We don't experience life on the nanosecond level, or even the millisecond level. For example, sound waves travel at 340.29 meters per second. Humans cannot distinguish separate sounds if they are emanating from a source less than 35 feet away. 65 milliseconds between sound utterances is about all the length of time we humans can ever hope to be able to distinguish. If the sound instances occur within a smaller range of time, the sounds will not sound separate to us, as they will not sound separate to us if they emanate from less than 35 feet away. We simply cannot do any better than this. Other animals can do much better than us. Dogs, Whales, and bats are much more advanced in their sense of hearing than we are, and are more testaments to the nature of sound being non-contingent on our sensing it. Our life experiences being on the level of time recognition that they are makes our assumptions about the greater world around us suspect. In this respect, I submit that while our everyday methods and practices for measuring the flow of time, and it's three manifestations may indeed be supportive of them, the general tenets of the major worldwide religions, and by consequence, the religions themselves are contradicted by time's elusive nature.
It is safe to say that in each of the major religions around the globe, one of the main ideas is that that god exists outside of time, or within time, or both. And in some cases, god is said to have created time when he created everything else. Before creation, there was no time, as the teachings go. It is also safe to say that any of these descriptions of god's timely whereabouts, have no real bearing on us. For some of the religions, god's ability to manipulate time according to his wishes, say to stop the sun for an entire day, is certainly important, for it is, to the adherents, just one more thing they can point to say that god is real and involved in their lives. Good for them. However, such a proclamation lends no aid to those who wish to ponder time itself. Since god can exist outside of time, but we cannot, our need for a clear understanding of our existence within time's flow has no need for a god, since he can presumably go in and out of one of the few things we are unable to circumvent.
I have no intention of claiming our misunderstanding of time, as it truly exists (as opposed to how it seems to exist to us), is a complete refutation of god's existence. This is not necessary. What is necessary is to use our discussion from above to analyze the existence of religion. Granted, the various religions are wholly centered on a god, and so it might seem unsavory to examine them from a different standpoint, but let's give it a try anyway.
Since we know our past experiences, which no longer exist except in our memory, indelibly play a major role in the determination of our future courses of action, it is a small step to see that in our everyday lives, a religious tenet, which we might adopt, is one that must be based upon an earlier iteration. We don't reinvent the golden rule every billionth of a nanosecond of our entire lives, although argument could be made to say that’s exactly what we are really doing; however, it seems a pretty safe bet that our memory is supporting us when we say we must "turn the other cheek" and so on. While religious texts primarily have stated the same basic literature over time (I say basically, because as Bart Erhmann made very clear in his New York Times bestseller Misquoting Jesus, the bible for one has been changed many times over the centuries), they are all based on some earlier version, even if the version was oral and not textual. Just as we move from present to past in a flash when we are constantly "seeing" a traffic sign, our present moment(s) of religious understanding pass into the past incoherently quickly. If a computer were capable of mapping every single nanosecond of human thought since our emergence from the savannah, and our branching off from the chimpanzee/bonobo line, the same would be able to trace a clear pathway of the evolution of mankind's religious propensity. God could be seen emerging from the philosophical primordial ooze. Of course no computer exists which can do such a thing and thus this is impossible, but just as biological evolution needs no gapless record to indicate what actually took place, neither do we need a complete psychological DNA strand, call it a RPM strand (Religious Propensity Meme) in order to track religion's rise to power. We can simply look backwards through time, we can accept the past-based future, and work in reverse. From today's evangelical, we can move to puritanical, to prophetical, to Mesopotamian, to iron age, to great ape-hood. From today's hellfire and brimstone, we can devolve to the Salem witch trials, to the "demon-possessed", to the sacrificial goats, to mummification for travel into the afterlife, to the erection of monoliths, to thunder strikes being a psychological terror, to our incapability towards esoteria, being mainly concerned with finding food enough to survive, and mates enough to prolong the family line. these steps are large in spanse. They leap from one era of religious practice back to a much earlier era, but we can do much better in our thought exercise. We can imagine living life now, with all of the silly religious notions civilization possesses, and we can move back a nanosecond. Doing this will reveal no discernable difference between the present and the slightly earlier past. we can keep doing this over and over again, until we see the first slight change (mutation) in the religious thoughts (see we don't need a super computer afterall, we can just use our supercomputer brains). Again, we move back incrementally to the next slight change, and again, and again. As we regress, we can see how more and more primitive our religious ideas are. We can also coorelate their development with our own physical and mental development. In our regression, the less cognitive we are at a given moment, the more primitive our religious ideas. If we continue all the way back to our living in trees along with our great ape cousins, we will encounter every concievable micro-mutation in our religious thoughts. We can see the evolution of how we think today about god, morality, and all that accompanies them. These are a series of small steps backwards, based on the knowledge that we do not experience time, as it truly exists. We instead expand time into manageable sections, and in doing so skip over all of the infinitely small intermediate steps our evolution takes. When we skip over these steps, we very easily build pillars of what we think is the "truth". To paraphrase a biblical account, for purposes of illustration Jesus said, "the foolish man builds his house upon the sand, but the wise man builds his house upon a rock". We are foolish when we assume our understanding of time's flow is the one to which religion can hang it's hat of validation on. We miss a great deal in time-delay. The very idea that the supernatural exists is one that, unbeknownst to most, is balanced very precariously on the edge of collapse. Collapse will come at the hands of time's true nature, and our coming to recognize it. So much for Time, the next blog will be on Matter. Til next Time....

On prayer again

2009-06-28T15:14:00.003-04:00

In my previous post On Prayer, I discussed how the answer of no to prayer is evidence enough to show it's ineffectiveness. I'd like to expound a bit on this. There are two reasons to pray. One reason is because you want to either ask god for something or give him praise. This first reason is the subject of my previous post, and I focused my attentions in that post on debunking this reason; however, there is a second reason to pray and that is to affect some type of change in your surroundings, perhaps your personal life, or perhaps the lives of either friends and family or even lives of complete strangers, such as the president of the united states. There is a little bleed-over to the first reason here, in that if you are praying for a change in your surroundings i.e. 2nd reason, then you are possibly asking god for something i.e. 1st reason. I say possibly because it is not an automatic thing to be asking for something when you are wishing for something. You can pray that change will come around (wishing) but you can also literally ask god to bring about the change (asking). Both ways are considered prayer and so there is enough distinction in my mind between the two that I've decided to split them up this way. Now, a reason for explaining god's choice to answer no to a prayer was offered in response to my earlier blog. The reason was this: prayer is always about god's over-arching will to be served out. As in Jesus' prayer of "Let this cup pass from me, but not mine but thy will be done". God has veto power over the prayers offered to him. His will, will be completed first and foremost in this point-of-view. As an atheist who has no belief in god nor prayer, this idea is perfectly fine with me, yet it is also perfectly fine for the christian. How can this be? I'll tell you.
My point about prayer is that it simply does not work the way it is purported to work. The christian-minded argument offered above is poignant in how clearly it supports my argument. Jesus said "ask anything in my name and it will be done to you". Jesus is god (not really, but you know what I'm saying). Jesus also said "not my will but yours", so in his human-form, Jesus is slightly less than god. If God's will is to be done over our prayers, then prayer is ineffective. It can offer no change to the course of actions god has decided to embark upon, as is meant when God's WILL is referred to. There is no point in praying to a god whose will may or may not coincide with our wants and desires. If a prayer is offered up for the healing of cancer, and the cancer goes into remittance or even goes away completely, you can rest assured that was god's plan all along. He had no need for you to pray, asking him to heal the cancer. Your wish and god's will simply coincided with each other, and as a result it looked like god answered your particular prayer. but that is clearly not what happened. God's will just happened to be for the same course of action and happenstance that your prayers were asking for. Your prayer was no more effective than if you had asked for nothing. Infact it was completely In-effective. God's mind was made up well before you ever uttered a single, solitary plea.
Now, If you offered up a prayer for the healing of cancer and the cancer was not healed, again your prayer was ineffective because it got vetoed by god's over-arching will to allow the cancer to continue eating away your body. In this case your prayer did not coincide with god's will and so it went unanswered (in your mind). There is no difference in a prayer seeming to be answered and one that is seeming to be unanswered. In either case, prayer is a pointless exercise. Prayer is commonly viewed as an active agent in the determining of life's course, but clearly in the argument of" god's will be done", prayer simply cannot induce a change in the environment through the workings of an outside source such as god.
Prayer can be an active agent, in a manner of speaking, if the act of prayer is such that it awakens an internal source for a solution. If it makes one feel up to inducing the change themselves, then prayer becomes an active agent. Psychologically, prayer can be quite a panacea. It can buoy the mind and spirit (physically amounting to the same thing). It can prod someone to begin to search for solutions to the problems they are grappling with, as in the non-biblical adage "God helps those who help themselves". In this case, prayer can offer solace to the sufferers, and a clear-minded path towards absolvement of life's travails. But notice there is no need for god in this scenario. The prayer(s) are not actually being lifted to heaven and heard by the ears and heart of god, who then intervenes on behalf of the praying person. No, god is irrelevant in this type of prayer, other than playing the role of another well-ingrained panacea. It is the person doing the praying who is refreshed by the act and then able to pull him/herself up by their bootstraps to begin the work of solving or at least getting around their problem. In this manner and only in this manner can prayer be a useful tool. To think that praying can actually make a god change his mind about how your life will proceed, is to be naive at best, and it also violates the idea that god's will must be served above all else.
More than anything else, prayer is one of those things that can never be proven or disproven, because it simply exists within our minds. It's kind of like saying there's no such thing as liking something or there is definitely a such thing as non-memory. Ideas are just that, ideas. If the idea allows for the lessening of suffering, then it is a good idea, but only if it does so universally. If it lessens the suffering of some at the expense of others, then it is not a good idea. Religion falls squarely within this category. If prayer helps some psychologically, but not others, then is it a good idea to hold onto as a pillar of having faith? I would say not, because of the very fact that it is so many things to so many different people, but across all spectrums it supports religions which do not always exist for the universal betterment of mankind. The act of prayer may hold some benefit for mankind, but not within it's current light as seen by many christians. And while it may not by itself be evidence enough against the existence of god, it surely doesn't help the christian's cause.

On Prayer

2009-05-13T09:51:00.006-04:00

Why do people pray? What is prayer? What is a person doing when they are praying? Does prayer succeed? Does it fail? Or both? Or neither?

Friends and family (Christian) have been saying (typing) to me recently, that they are praying that I will come back to god. The have told me that Jesus can fix my headaches, and that wherever two or more are gathered.... so I'm being prayed for. I am glad that people respond in such a way when they hear of my interpretedly spiritual decrepitude. It makes me feel good knowing that there are people who feel afraid for me, because of the life path I am on. I am not gladdened that these people think I am wrong and headed for trouble, that part actually saddens me, and so I return the favor to them by feeling bad that they are so happily misguided. I am happy that these people are concerned with my well-being. That is a nice thing to have, outside concern. My family is the most concerned, obviously, and I have known that for a while. Even though I have thought my way through my beliefs to a conclusion, they seem to think that (because of their beliefs) if they pray to god hard enough or long enough, he will cause me to see the error of my ways, and return to the fold. They have been and are praying for me to be saved (again). They love me, and are afraid for me. They think I have chosen poorly (as though there were ever a choice to be voluntarily made) and as a consequence I will be going to hell. I'm not sure if every member of my family thinks this part about hell. I am simply basing my assumptions on my knowledge that most of them have stagnated in their religious stance for the past 30 years. To be fair, perhaps some of them have softened on the whole lake of fire business, but I really don't think so.

In earlier blog posts I have discussed the fear factor involved in religion, and nowhere does this element seem more clearly illustrated than in the conviction my family has about the need for their prayers for my soul.

I am an adult. I will never return to being a child. I am also A-theist. I will never try to believe in god again. I don't know there is no god, just as I don't know that I will wake up tomorrow. I do however have reason to trust that I will wake up. I take care of my body, I am nowhere near the end of my average male life expectancy and I have no debilitating diseases or chronic syndromes. These are some of the reasons how I can trust that I most likely will wake up tomorrow, alive and well. I don't have to pray that I will wake up; I just rely on the reasons I have squirreled away to come through once again for me. However, I have no reason to trust that there is a god. For all practical purposes, god has always been an invisibility. He no longer walks in the cool evening breeze amongst the flora and fauna of the garden as he did according to the author of the book of genesis. We (no one) has ever seen god. No one has ever heard god, no one has tasted him, touched him or smelled him. The only thing people have ever been able to do about god is think about him. There is no argument to be made about the physical existence of god. He simply has not been here. Which is why we have to "Believe" in him in the first place. If he were here, then belief would be a redundancy. We don't "believe" in gravity, we experience it. We don't "believe" in viruses, we experience their flourish (unpleasantly to say the least). We have never physically experienced god so we have to " believe" in him or not. Having no physical reasons to think god exists, I also have no reasons to think that prayers to him will either succeed or fail. I'll get back to the whole success or failure thin in a moment, but for the time being understand my family and to a lesser extent friends think otherwise.

To them the belief in god, en-masse, is itself a reason to believe he exists. Because the vast majority of all humans who are living or have ever lived, have also believed in some sort of supernatural creator/overseer being, my folks say he must exist, indeed no doubt in their minds about his existence is warranted in light of this fact. Superficially, this is a reasonable position to take, superficially. Everyone believes the sun will burn you if you stay out in it too long with no protection, but how many of us have ever seen an ultraviolet light photon (I say photon not ray, because this is the smallest amount of light that exists). None of us have ever seen one without the aid of a spectrometer, but there's the rub. With the aid of a spectrometer, we can see one (or billions). With the aid of a telescope we can see the rings of Saturn, something the New Testament authors could not do. The problem with such thinking is that there have been many issues over the millennia that have been believed by the vast majority of living folks, the most obvious example being the earth being flat, that have been outright wrong. Just because everybody thinks something, doesn't make it true. If the claim is ridiculous, like the claim made by Copernicus that the earth was not at the center of the universe, then either the claimant must be exiled or the claim itself must be meticulously investigated. Luckily for us, Copernicus' claim was validated, as were Newton's, Einstein's and Planck's. But, at this point we have to ask, well "why do people think something is true if it's possible for it to be untrue?". What do you think? My thoughts are:

1. There are varying degrees of human intellect, governed by genetics and environment, which give rise to varying degrees of depth of insight about metaphysical issues, such as the existence of god i.e. some people are smarter than others, or at least have proven to be so far, and as such have been able to delve deeper than most into philosophical questions.

2. Most people are of average intelligence and have little to no interest in asking deep questions, they simply want to live life.

3. Many "truths" about the big questions were formulated by people living pre-dark ages, pre-enlightenment, in fact just post-iron Age.

4. Those who have subsequently dug into the big questions have perpetuated for most everyone else the "truth" about life.

5. Curiosity didn't kill the cat, it made the cat realize it wasn't a cat, it was a bulldozer.

6. Time has ingrained in the minds of most people, incomplete data sets about the world, sets gathered by folks woefully unaware of much important but unattainable information (germs, molecules, radiation, neuroplasticity, geological deposits, the speed of light and it's inviolability, etc...).

7. The longer intellectual apathy remains, the more difficult it is to replace with new information.

There are many other reasonings I have about why people think untrue things, even in the blinding light of their untruth, but for now I'll go on to prayer. Prayer is something that many people hang their religious hat on as being evidence of god. So I ask, what is the purpose of prayer? When someone prays, they are asking for something from their god. If they are not asking for something then they are not praying, but praising. You can either ask god for something or tell him he's great, that's about it. So when people pray they are asking for something. The point of prayer is to receive something. It doesn't matter what, just something. You can pray for anything you mind can come up with. You can pray for impossibilities, like the destruction in a supernova of our own sun next week, or trivialities like your awaking the next day to find that you are happy again. or you can pray for things in the middle of these two extremes, things like your dog's leg will get healed from the fracture he sustained, or you'll find a job soon, or the weather will cooperate while you're on vacation. There are varying degrees of difficulty about prayer request subject matter, some are more improbable than others. but the thing about prayers that seems to get glossed over is that while we all (well I used to pray) pray so that our prayers succeed (I know of no one who deliberately prays for their requests to be denied) and result in our getting what we are praying for, they most often fail miserably. Adherents of prayer never seem to accept this reality. They do however have an endless supply of excuses for why things didn't turn out the way they wanted; things like " god works in mysterious ways, or sometimes the answer is no" and so on.
The things is, prayer is designed to work for our benefit. It does nothing for god. According to the religious, god owns everything, so for him to give stuff away is not the same as it is to parents down here. For us, the joy of giving our kids stuff can be precisely attributed to the fact that we have a limited supply of such stuff, and although we may get a little smug about ourselves and how hard we had to work to get this stuff, we do know that our kids will enjoy it even if only for a brief time. The sacrifice we made, does make us feel good, since we did it on behalf of our kids, and it was truly a sacrifice. So when we pray for something to happen, or to be given or granted, and it doesn't happen, those prayers have in fact failed, haven't they? For something to fail, effort must be made. With prayer, no effort is made, so no failure can take place. If god is capable of answering prayers, and all the Christians I know believe so, then he is incumbent to do so. Since it is obvious that prayers are regularly unsuccessful, then it stands to reason that there is no god up there, hearing those prayers at all.
A familiar refrain comes to mind now, one that harkens back to the earlier stated " sometimes the answer is no" that is, " Just because we don't get what we think we might want when we pray, doesn't mean god hasn't heard our prayer. It just means that god has something different (and the implication here is better) in mind for us. This is why many prayers go unanswered". I respond to this by asking that you think about this situation: A person who has contracted the Ebola virus by simply living in a region of the world that this virus thrives (Eastern Rift Valley, Congo) prays to the Christian god for healing for themselves. This person dies within two weeks, after suffering through ever-increasing agony as his internal organs are rapidly liquefied. he progressively gets worse, eventually coughing up the lining of his stomach, which is now purely black. The disease destroys his body exponentially, but everyday he prays for healing. His body not only is destroyed but it becomes a harbinger of the deadly virus, which turns him into an Ebola factory. Simply simply breathing it in can spread the virus, and so our praying victim's body is now a spreader as well. His prayers are not answered. He dies. So the question is, what greater purpose did god intend for this person, such that he had to endure the utmost agony prior to his premature death? We as a society gained no more information about how to prevent this disease through his infection, we did not suffer a global epidemic because efforts WERE made to contain the virus (mind you the man was not praying that god would spread the word about the virus, he just wanted to not die). Obviously the man suffered and died, so his immediate prayer was unsuccessful. I have no guess as to what possibly better or more valuable answer god could have been delaying for this man. By the way, if you'd like to read a real author's account of this incident, which did actually take place, read Douglas Preston's The Hot Zone. Also, I'd recommend reading Dr. Bart Ehrmann's great expose on the problem of suffering, God's Problem, how the Bible fails to answer our most important question; why we suffer.
For prayer to work, there has to be someone or something on the other end. We have no idea if there is, so at best prayer is wishful thinking, EVEN IF WE GET WHAT WANT. There is no way to verify that prayers have been answered because there is only an open dial tone at the other end. Inexplicable healings of cancer do not point to god's existence or the efficacy of prayer. They point to inadequacies of our understanding of pathogens. God has no interest in our knowing more about diseases and how to prevent them, and subsequently god's children don't have any real interest in knowing more about this stuff either; they are content with wishing on a star. By praying for respite, Christians and (other praying folk) are testifying to their own willful and preferred ignorance of the real causes of suffering in the world. A great website to make you think is www.whywontgodhealamputees.com The basic premise of this website is god has never regrown an amputees limb, ever. How is that to be explained outside of the familiar responses of mysterium and "quit arguing with me". Prayer doesn't work, because it can't work without god. God simply doesn't exist. If you think he does, you are mistaken. You might be comforted by the thought that there is something more than ourselves watching out for us, but that doesn't make it so. You might also be comforted by the thought that your prayers will be answered, but you are mistaken. Even if the outcome you hope for eventually comes to fruition, you will have no reason to authoritatively say it was because you prayed for it. I know my friends and family are distraught that I am no longer of their faith, but for them to think that by praying that my mind will be changed/opened/ softened or whatever is simply to misunderstand the person I am. There is no way I could ever believe in a god now. I see too clearly how he is creation of ourselves. If you are reading this, and you are one of the ones praying for my salvation, thanks, but no thanks. Why don't you instead go for a walk in nature, or help feed a hungry person, or teach some child to read, something, anything that would be constructive. While I appreciate the concern, you should know that no amount of prayer for me would/could never work, because your prayer's are unheard by anyone but you.

My Deconversion

2009-05-10T11:00:00.006-04:00

When I was growing up, I was taught that I was a Christian. I went to church with my family every Sunday morning and Sunday night. All of my friends were also taught they were Christians, and they also went to church with their families every Sunday morning and Sunday night. For a good while we even went on Wednesday nights as well. We weren't Baptists, or Episcopalian, or Catholics. My family attended Pentecostal churches. There were people speaking in tongues, people prophesying, dancing in the aisles, and so forth. Sometimes church services would go for three hours or more. I went to Sunday school before church as well. We'd get there at 9:00 a.m. and sometimes not get out of there until close to 1:00 p.m. I didn't really like going to church, but as a kid I didn't have much choice in the matter. My parents were going and did what they did, cause I was a kid. This is not to say, there weren't things about church going I didn't enjoy. I did look forward to seeing my best friends. But mainly so that we could have fun goofing off together in Sunday school and in between Sunday school and the regular church service. During the service we didn't get to screw around much, because important things were going on. God-worship was taking place, so we knew better. But we would still try and screw around long distance. My family would sit on one side of the sanctuary and my friends would be sitting somewhere else. My friends and I would certainly try and make eye contact with each other, and sometimes we'd be able to access some inside joke through our own made-up sign language and the laughing would ensue, which of course led to the inevitable parental reprimand of SSSHHHH!! I rarely paid attention in church, as I suppose most kids don't, but there were times as I grew older that some things would perk-up my ears. I went to three different churches as a kid. The first was a sort of non-denominational, evangelical, Pentecostal church. My family stopped going there when my sibling became a teenager and I was probably 11 or twelve. We then moved to a more fundamentalist church that was a bit closer to our house. I know we left our old church because of some political controversy within the church administration, but I don't really remember what went on. For one thing I was really to young to give a rip, other than I knew that I was going to have to make new "Church" friends. This is why we left, but I still don't know why we started going to the new church, but I do know it was about this time that I started to hear things that made me pay at least a modicum of attention in the service. Once we moved to the new church, we really didn't go to Sunday school much anymore, again I don't know why, but decisions were made, and Sunday school sort of faded into the past. As I said, this new church was very Pentecostal, especially the music potion of the service. But the preacher (she was a preacher not a pastor) was also very hell-fire and brimstone. It was this stuff that started getting my attention. Up till this point I had never really been told of all the horrors of hell that awaited me when I died. It was mainly doing unto others and Jesus healed the sick, and Noah took two of every animal on the ark, and all that business, kid stuff, if you will. But now I was a preteen, and was capable of understanding consequences. So at our new church I sat up and took notice whenever the preacher would single out the youth of the church (not the kids, but the Youth, which definitely included me) as being particularly susceptible to the wiles of life of sin. And it seemed like the preacher was always singling us out, you see, the youth all sat together in one section of the sanctuary, away from our parents (for the first time). She would (the preacher was a red-headed lady, not that being red-headed matters, but it's just something I remember) look directly at us and speak directly to us about how Satan wanted to corrupt our minds and lives, and he was (at that very moment) waging a WAR against our sanctity. To me it was clear that I must have been losing this battle, because as a preteen, I was just becoming aware of my ideas about good and evil. Up till then I was really concerned with how many transformers I might collect come next Christmas. But now I was being confronted with a call-to-arms for battle with the father of lies, who was supremely intent on destroying me eternally. Every Sunday. I remember leaving church feeling sad and rather despondent about my prospects of success against Satan’s legions. Over time, I actually began to feel myself a lost cause, because sometimes in church when I was supposed to be glorying in god's presence, I would literally shiver (not from being cold). Chills would run up my spine momentarily, and at that point I would think to myself, Satan is attacking me with all he can. I would redouble my efforts. I would shut my eyes tighter, I would lift my hands higher in the air, and I would talk gibberish a little more gibberishy or faster. At this point I had been told I should be speaking in tongues, as that is one of the gifts of the spirit, and so I did this at every service, thinking that I was learning the ropes of spiritual battle. Granted, I never thought I was actually speaking some extinct language, but maybe it was a language that had never existed outside of heaven, or maybe god could understand it, even if I couldn't, or maybe just making the effort was enough, I don't know. The point was I always felt discomfort at this new church. Ironically, it was about this time that I noticed for the first time a really pretty girl. Though, she was much older than I was, and had a boyfriend (the preacher's son no less, and I swear I'm not making this up), ahh... unrequited love...., I did look forward to seeing her every Sunday, and was supremely disappointed on those Sundays when she was not there for whatever reason. For some reason, we did not attend this church for more than a few years and then we moved on to another church, one which was actually farther from our home than the very first church we went to. If I remember correctly, the impetus for this change was again political controversy, but of what nature, I'm sure I never knew. Nevertheless, my sibling had made some new friends at high school and really wanted to go check out the church they went to, they were so cool. So as it turns out, we did just that. In addition, our old church music minister, who was one of the highlights of the church (great piano player) had moved to this new church as well. Now, I personally was hoping at this point that the new church would be more like the first church I remember, and not so much like the last church. It actually ended up being about halfway between the two. Although the services themselves were about as long and as athletic, the pastor (he was a pastor not a preacher) was a bit less hell-fire and brimstone, but to be sure, that stuff was definitely still a big part of the experience. I was in high school now, so I was particularly aware of the females surrounding me at church. This is important because, I found that if I wanted to impress the ladies, I had better show some reverence before god. My thinking was " These girls are gung-ho Christians. If I become gung-ho as well, that might be my in with one of them". And so I embarked upon my phase of radical Christianity. Mind you, at this point it had less to do with my dread of the afterlife fate that surely awaited my sinning persona, as it did with my here-and-now predicament of landing a foxy lady. I had had a few "girlfriends" in middle school, if that's what you'd like to call them, but I had had many more unrequited crushes than actual girls, during that time. I was however, supremely aware of my Casanova guy friends who were always hooked up with the finest girls in school. I was JEALOUS! I wanted a hot girlfriend now. So, I figured this was my path to amour, being all Churchy. What's more, I think every guy that went to this new church of mine was doing the same thing I was. Maybe not, but I suspect as much. Anywho... I'm not sure my devious and not-so-clever plan actually worked. After a year-long pursuit, I did get a girlfriend for a summer out of the deal, and she was hot. But the summer fling didn't last, even all summer, she hooked with a new guy at our school before the summer was even out, HUSSY :-) but that is neither here nor there. The real point of all of this is, I approached religious conviction with ulterior motives in mind. It was a means to an end, in this case the end being success in love. I did not really think about the tenets of the particular faith I was being fed. All I knew was that there were hot girls there and I wanted in on some of that. At my previous church, I had unbeknownst to me, developed a pretty healthy personality aspect of self-loathing. I remember in late 1987, the preacher at this other church told the congregation that a mathematician had calculated that Jesus' return was going to happen on either September 11,12,or 13 of 1988. I was petrified at this news. I figured, I'm screwed, I've only got a year left (not even that) and I'm only thirteen years old. I'm not gonna get to learn how to drive a car, I'm never gonna get laid, no getting married, having kids, none of that. The world is going to end and I'm fucked. of course that guy was wrong, and when those days came and went, I felt relieved and also a bit perplexed. I think this was the very first time I asked a question about Christianity’s truth. I figured, " Jesus didn't come back, but he said he was going to, so why has it taken so long, why hasn't he come back yet? I remember thinking the world was probably as bad as it was ever going to get, so what was the holdup.
For a while I was convinced I was the Antichrist. The shivers I would get in church made me think I was somehow naturally averse to the Christian teachings. I would get the heebie-jeebies in church, but nowhere else (this is actually not true, I got the shivers in school too, I just selectively forgot those times). I just knew I was going to turn out to be the Antichrist. It always seemed to me that if I wished one thing, the opposite would happen, good or bad. I think this contributed to my confusion over my supernatural apocalyptic role, in some way. During my middle school years, I learned from church that I was going to go to hell, most likely, because Satan wanted me. I never really learned that god wanted me much though. I know, I know, god loved me enough to save me from sin through his son's crucifixion and all that. but that happened 2,000 years ago, according to my middle church (the really Pentecostal one) Satan was after me right then and there, as soon as I walked out the building I was going to be under attack. As they say, there's no time like the present, and to me Satan was going full-tilt and god was resting on his laurels. I figured I had no chance, thus I came to think I might be the antichrist. Believe it or not, this thought persisted with me in a much hidden and subdued sort of way until after high school. I buried my worry, but it was always there. My rebellious stage in high school was probably due in part to this deep-seated paranoia, that and I was an adolescent, chock-full-of-hormones, guy. All throughout high school, I went to this new church, although it eventually became just my church. the girls were certainly a huge attraction (pun intended) but I was also drawn to wanting to be like the cool older guys there as well. I went through a copycat phase, where I wanted to play all the same instruments as this one guy who was about 7 years older than me. The church had a band which played for the music portion of the service each Sunday, and so I joined, thinking I could boost my coolness factor by doing so. I unwisely thought I could single-handedly buck the band nerd moniker and effectively be the salvation of all instrumentalists worldwide. To this day it has yet to work, we are all still nerds. I also wanted a low rider diesel truck, because one of the guys at church had one and everyone kinda thought he was cool because of it. I desperately wanted to be cool.
There are times when I was moved at church. The Easter services were usually moving to me. The church would put on a cantata (not in the liturgical sense) and usually have someone dress up as Jesus carrying his cross, with a crown of thorns, bloody, up to Golgotha (where he was crucified). Then the troop would act out the crucifixion itself complete with the big hammer, accompanied by thunderous booms for effect, and big-ass railroad spikes as nails. it was always a tear-jerky moment. Suffering is never a happy time. I would cling to these memories during the rest of the year in order to prop up my faint faith. If for no other reason than to maintain the facade of devoutness for the girls, I honestly tried to feel like a Christian as often as I remembered to do so, which wasn't very often (usually there was hot girl near me). But the thing is, I never really felt like a Christian, at least not in the ways I saw on display around me. When I would hear someone give some tongue-infested prophecy, I would feel uncomfortable. I was always a little nervous if someone spoke out in tongues during the service and nobody would come forward to "interpret" it. I was uncomfortable and also a little sniggerish. I would sometimes smile a bit to myself if this happened. I knew those tongue-speakers were full of it then. Now, I tried my hand at the tongue-speaking for a good long time, but I never really thought I was supposed to be doing it. It was more like wind sprints on the baseball team for me. The running had little to do with playing the game, but they did force us to get a bit of exercise. The situation was similar to my speaking in tongues, I knew I'd never really be in the prophesying game so-to-speak, but I practiced the skill nonetheless. but these moments in church where no interpretation would follow the Swahili being spouted, I finally figured it out, everyone was making it up. Then I realized nobody was speaking a real language, it was all just gibberish, not gibberish-sounding to the ignorant, just plain old gibberish. I think I lost a bit of ability to be a Faither around this time.
After high school, I went to college. For a year, I lived at home and went to junior college. I had stopped going to church by now, placing myself instead with the church of drinking beer and hanging out with new college friends. I didn't give much thought to the Christianity of my youth, but it was still there. I spent my time drinking, working, studying trombone, trying to get laid, and so forth. It was at work that I met my wife (future) who come to find out was going to be a nun before she met me, heh, heh, heh.... That's right ladies, she gave up celibacy for a life with me. Seriously, she was a devoted fairly new Christian, having come to her faith within a few years of our meeting. I fell into the old trap of false fronting in order to keep the girl. She was hot, I was lucky, and I didn't want to screw it up, so I hopped back into the world of Christianity after a brief albeit immensely relief0laden hiatus. We got married very quickly and moved away to start college together. Away from family, friends. It was just we, in a new town surrounded by a huge state university (The Florida State University to be precise). It was here that I was exposed to the history of my childhood religion in ways I was never afforded while actually involved in it. The world of music illuminates religion(s) in ways most people would never think of. To most, music is background sound to a worship service, but not to all. I won't lecture on music theory or history here, but suffice it to say, my studying music made me view religion (my religion) much differently and much less reverently as I had once purported to do. This being said, I still tried to be a Christian, not a good Christian, just a Christian, but it never stuck to me, like a religion ought to. We played children's church leaders for a little while, I tried coordinating the music at our Assembly of God church for a while, none of it worked well. I was (still am) a fairly defensive kind of guy. I don't like being affronted by anyone, especially if I think that person knows considerably less about a particular topic than me. Because of this, I didn't really fit with the whole church leader role, and so I gave it up. But truth be known, I was only playing at being such a thing, my heart was never in it, and I think it showed. I started thinking about philosophical issues during my time at FSU. Economics, Politics, but curiously enough not other religions. I wanted to hang on to my inherited conservatism and so I jumped on the impeach Clinton bandwagon, I later recanted. I even would have voted for W. in 2000 if I had been registered in Pennsylvania, which is where we moved to go to graduate school. But I found myself leaning ever so slightly to the left while in graduate school in Philadelphia. I also found myself, as did my wife, not caring about going to church anymore. We tried a few in Philly, but didn't like any of them so we just stopped trying after a few attempts. During Graduate school, I started reading non-stop. Mainly fiction. I plowed through every Stephen King novel he wrote and published and I could get from Half.com for $1.00 or less. I have quite the collection now. Grisham, Clancy, Crighton, Tolkien, etc... I read a lot, and of course I studied and practiced my horn too. I'm sure my adopted practice of reading played a part in my deconversion. there's nothing like reading the printed word to make a person think, about anything. Television requires nothing, movies nothing, watching a baseball game nothing. Of course no one is prohibited from thinking whilst participating in one of these activities, but there is no requirement implied. On the other hand, thinking is requisite while reading. Even though I was reading fictional stories my mind was beginning to formulate some ideas about myself. We lived in Philly for almost two years before moving away to Michigan for work. It was in Michigan that I finally gave up trying to be a Christian altogether.
I have mentioned how as a kid I was never really inclined to be all that devout. I did however glean a great deal of information about Christianity. The virgin birth, the walking on water, the resurrection, the money lenders in the temple, etc... I knew the New Testament stories. I had absorbed them over time, and they are still with me, but I certainly was no budding biblical scholar. I have read the entire bible once, completely. I have read a lot of the parts that are essential to any amateur Christian many times more. When I was trying to a Christian I hardly ever thought about the bible, but ironically, as an apostate, I have thought about the bible and it's stories a great deal more.
A few years ago, I decided to start writing down in a notepad what my real true thoughts about life and religion were. I began in 2002 with a great deal of personal despair. I had thoughts that god was either evil or non-existent. I was hurt over personal disappointments in life and I found the god I had tried to believe in to be the most readily available scapegoat. Fortunately this did not last long, I realized after a while the only way I could divert my life around these disappointments was to figure the route myself. My blame of god dissipated, but it also sowed real doubt in god's existence. I continued to write down my thoughts. Things like " the stories in the bible were written by men, not god; 2003", "creation did not happen, evolution did; 2003", and "god does not exist; 2004". It's important to note the dates. I had begun to write these thoughts of mine down years before I had ever heard of the "New Atheists". Not once in my life had I picked up a book criticizing religion at this point. I had however moved from Stephen king to Stephen hawking, and other similar books. probably one of the single most eye-opening books I've ever read, Hawking's " A brief history of time" was the nail in the coffin which had been buried years before. It taught me that nothing from religion is as cool as the universe itself. In 2007, after I had been effectively an atheist for a few years, I came across a you tube video of a guy named Sam Harris giving a lecture in Toronto on religious fallacies. I had never heard of the guy, but I was intrigued nonetheless. After watching the whole hour presentation I was floored. I had just heard someone else saying the exact things I had been thinking and privately writing down for nearly two years. I had no idea there were other people who thought as similarly as I did. I grew up thinking that atheists were as bad as Satan worshippers. Now being one, I knew better, but it was refreshing to know the network of freethinking individuals out in the world. I have read both of Harris' books, and I follow his blog. I have since read many other free thought books, some I agree with, and some I don't wholly. My abandonment of Christianity has led me to philosophy, and I have read a great deal of philosophy in the last few years. It also allowed me to explore cosmology and particle physics (on an amateur scale). I have many more widely-spread interests now than I ever did as a Christian- poser. My blog posts explain my position on the various tenets of Christianity so I won’t replay them here. Having written this, I'm glad. I've put it off for a while, but it was nice to go back in time for a while. I know I've never been a Christian, despite the efforts of my childhood church. Although I did try for a long time, for various reasons. I understand why people resort to religion. For some it comforts, for others it is a tether to hang onto in an otherwise tumultuous life, for still others it is a way to lift themselves over their fellow humans. But the thing is, none of those reasons matter, because in the end, religion is an idea. Ideas are only ideas until they are realized. There is no possible realization of religion until we die, and at that point it's too late to get anything out of it, which is why heaven and hell were invented. The ideas that religion itself stakes claims to, morality, ethics, and the like are certainly realizable, but the thing is, they aren't religion's ideas, they are mankind's. And at the risk of becoming a bit tautological (circular) religion is also an idea of mankind. Humanity has no need for religion, it has come up with it's own ideas about ethics and morality. Religion has usurped these ideas and gathered them under its umbrella, when really they are the same types of ideas as religion itself. if religion spawned only good in the world, then that would be great, but it does not. Nothing does. And how is that? Because everything we concern ourselves with, global warming, overpopulation, nationalism, religious freedom, everything has two sides, affirming and opposing. Religion is man-made because it has both sides of the coin. This is probably the most telling aspect of religion's origins, but there are others. I am not a Christian, anymore. Maybe one day, you won't be either.

On John 3:16

2009-03-18T08:17:00.000-04:00

" For god so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believed on him should not perish, but have ever lasting life" John 3:16. Most famous verse in the bible. The hallmark of the christian contention that god is love, that the news of the gospel is "good news" and that we are sinners "saved" by grace. On the surface, this verse certainly seems like the definition of altruistic mercy, but just as in life, all that glitters is not gold. There are many,many things we encounter in life that seem to be one thing, but upon closer inspection and longevity of exposure actually turn out to be the opposite. Pitbulls seem to be great dogs until the day they kill a child for no apparent reason. When we sit in a chair,it seems as though our derry-air is in contact with the seat surface,when in reality, what we feel is the miniscule repulsion of trillions and trillions of atoms pushing us away from the their surface. It seems as though we snap opur fingers and we see, hear and decide to do this all at the same moment, but actually the decision to snapthe fingers happens before the act, and we see our fingers snap before we hear them snap. Our mind is a clever mechanism, capable of editing what is offered to us for observation into a false, but seemingly true narrative of observed events.
The christian's contention is that faith is what replaces evidence. The atheist's contention (which is coincidentally mine) is that any extraordinary claim, such as a god existing, must be supported by extraordinary evidence, faith is only circular. This verse states " that whosoever believes on him...." This seems to be a supportive statement of the faith side of things, yes? but let's look closer, shall we...

For god "SO" loved the world. The author could have said " For god loved the world". He did not. By inserting the word "SO" into the sentence he introduced an element of standard of comparison, which is a form of evidence. God didn't just simply love the world. There was a very high degree of affection that god had for the world, high enough to warrant the sacrifice of his son on its behalf (as is evidenced by the use of the word so), as opposed to a very low degree of affection for the world, which would not have warranted such a sacrifice. Using standards of comparison is what we animals do. We weigh the benefits and detriments associated with the options available to us, and use our deterministic brains to guide our behavioral choices. It is a completely natural (nonsupernatural) process. If god SO loved the world that he blah, blah, blah... then god himself was doing the same thing that we lowly animals do all the time. He weighed the benefits and detriments associated with his choices and chose accordingly. He decided to love the world not unconditionally mind you, but to such a degree that his love level would be enough to allow mankind a justified return to grace. Not very godly, not very godly at all. SO this first portion of the verse reveals that the most highly-touted verse in scripture pointing to the wonder of god and the greatness of his love for us, actually is evidence against god being god. Else, why would he need to "SO" love the world, in order to save us. It is easy to see however how a human author of such a story could think that such a wording of a verse would seem to be foolproof in it's evocational ability, but that would be because we humans are nothing but the smartest animals. It has been trial and error all along. I've yet to figure out why religious folks seem to be so averse to the trial and error process. How is it that religious folks need someone who is not going to screw up and learn something by doing so. And how do they come to think that such a scenario is even possible. What makes them think a god existing is even possible? I am getting off track.

We've examined the first part of the verse, so let's continue with the second part.
" that he gave his only begotten son".
Some christians I know argue that evidence does exist for belief in god. It is just evidence that we do not understand, we cannot understand, because god works in mysterious ways. I submit that this part of the verse contradicts such a statement. Infact all of the bible's memorable verses do exactly what this verse does; they frame the sentiment in a context we CAN understand, in this case, love for a child. If god's ways are so mysterious, then how is that the bible ended up being written in such a way that we can understand? Death we understand. Love we understand. Jealousy we understand. Retribution we understand. Justice we understand. Fairness and unfairness we understand. All of these affects are how the bible frames it's messages of life-assurance. This verse is no exception. The author offers as evidence of the level of god's love, the fact that he willingly sacrificed his son, on our behalf. This is a form of evidence, albeit one that is severely deficient in it's degree of verifiable truth. By including the word "So" in the first part of the verse, the author's hands were tied. They had to include some evidence to illustrate the level of love implied by the word "So". So doesn't this give credence to the christian's point? NO. They say simlutaneously, that god's plans are unknowable, because we as humans cannot understand god, but if god were intent on hiding his true nature from us, then why bother giving us a book full of feeble attempts to explain the heavenly nature of he and his minions in words and phrases we are overtly aware of, and completely capable of understanding; love, death, etc...?
Such a book, to those who read it a lot, is both credible evidence for the existence and wonder of god, and impossible for mankind to fully understand, as it is from the unknowable, unfathomable mind of god. This is self-reinforcing logic, and also bull-corn.

Christian : "I'm right, because I understand it, and you're wrong because you don't. The things I don't understand are still true, it's just that I'm not meant to understand them cause I'm not god, and the things I do understand, I can because god has chosen to reveal them to me".

God: " I'm right because I wrote the book, see it says so right here. You're wrong because you can't understand my plans because you are not me, see it says so right here." Bullox!

Enough of the second part, onto the third:
"That whosoever believed on him". This part is self-contradictory to the earlier part of the verse that said that god so loved the WORLD. If god's affection were for the entire world, then this part is unneccessary. Because this section of the verse is included, it makes clear that the verse was authored by a human being. It is riddles with elements of psychological bullying, jealousy, and low self-esteem. Only those who freely choose to believe the verse says the truth, will reap the benefits of exhibiting such faith, all others can literally go to hell. This is not love for the world at large, it is pedantic, juvenile, short-lived and ultimately disingenuous affection for the population that most resembles the author in mindset. Those of like mind will follow suit more easily. Independant thinkers represent more work for the clergy to bring into the fold and thus they quickly become not worth the effort. Infact, this verse reveals that god's affection surely does not extend to the entire world, and furthermore that he could never have intended to extend such affection out to the entire world, all because of the clause included, the catch in the deal... you have to believe.

And so we come to the final part of this awesome verse:
"Would not perish, but have everlasting life." Reward for good behavior. Another example of a context which we lowly humans can fully understand. We know what it is like to receive a reward for good behavior, and what better reward than to be able to live forever, pain-free? But, doesn't logic tell us that if something is the truth it must exist wholly independant of any type of influence. Math is math, It doesn't matter if it is cold outside, or if your mother-in-law is a bitch, 2+2 =4. Math is independant of human concerns. Belief in god however, is intricately tied up with humanity. Infact without humanity, god would be unnecessary. If god actually existed, then the belief we obviously are capable of harboring, should need no reward (such as ever lasting life) attached to it, precisely because of the inimitable truth of it, kinda like math. The truth of the concept would be the truth, and we would recognizeit as such even without the reward, kinda like math. As parents, we bribe our kids all the time, because they won't do what we ask of them otherwise. They are too busy playing to sit down at the table and eat, or wash their hands, or pick up their toys. So I can hear the christian saying right now, that we are like children to god, and he attached the reward of everlasting life so that we would be more inclined to do what he asked of us, knowing that what he was asking of us was in our best interest, even if we did not know it. Yes, that seems to be what we do with our children, but it is not. Picking up toys, eating dinner at the time we have designated, etc... are all things that are in our (parental) best interests, not the children's. A kid will eat when they are hungry, if they break a toy, they will quickly adopt a new one. parents are the ones who want things to be a certain way, and we try our best to instill these ways onto our children, and there is nothing wrong with that, as long as we acknowledge that in reality it is primarily for our benefit that we do such things. God, who doesn't exist, has rewards attached to belief in him, because, the authors and perpetuators of religion know that without such rewards, belief in god becomes a very hard sell indeed. This reveals the falsity of god's existence more than anything else. Because the author included the reward in the verse it reveals that this verse was authored by not an omnipotent god, but a person who was not very sharp in psychology, which makes sense if you consider when the words were probably written.
John 3:16 is not what it seems. It is not an appeal to discard evidence in lieu of belief, it is instead a wholehearted validation of the reliance we all have on evidence. In this case the evidence is not for god's existence but rather for the human authorship of this verse and indeed the entire bible. It shows that god had to wratchet up his level of affection for us to get us back home, it also shows that christians do indeed rely on evidence to "believe" in their premises; evidence like god giving his son, see that shows he loved us so much, he gave his son up....
It also shows that he didn't love the whole world, only the part that loved him back.
It also shows that god was not confident enough in the veracity of his omnipotence, so much that he felt it neccessary to sweeten the deal by attaching immortality to it.
Truth is truth, regardless of how many people believe it. The attempt to sway the populace into his corner, with the offer of immortality is all the evidence I'll ever need to know that god is a figment of the imagination, and nothing else.

Evangelicals are the worst people in the world

2009-02-27T00:45:00.003-05:00

I know, I know, the title is terrible and mean-spirited, but they are horrible. I just finished watching the movie "Jesus Camp". A friend had recommended it to me a year or so ago, and I saw it tonight at the movie store and decided to rent it, thinking I would be laughing my ass off. For the first two scenes or so, I was. But very soon I realized the film was not a comedy, but rather a tragedy, or maybe a horror, I haven't decided yet.
It is a film, very well made by the way, about the evangelical demographic in America, and how the adults of this demographic are "teaching" their children to literally pray for America to be "revived" and to "return" to being a christian nation. I have never wanted to live in another country more than I do right now; however, I have also never wanted to offer resistance to lunacy more than I do right now either, and it would be hard to justify criticism of a certain populace within this country if I no longer were in this country.
I am so sad for the children in this movie. These kids have bought the evangelical bullshit message hook, line and sinker, and they think (as do their parents) that they "decided" on this position of their own accord, through the diligent efforts of both their parents and the pastor of a christian children's camp, to willfully indoctrinate them into thinking the things they now have no choice but to think. I mean the parents really believe they have raised their kids to "choose" to be evangelical christians. These are preteen kids, kids who joyfully and willingly preach to other kids, put on puppet shows about how the world is going to end just as soon as enough people pray for jesus to come back and think they have supernatural abilities such as jibber-jabbering literally in blatherous nonsense (which they call speaking in tongues, mind you, the sounds they make (as do their parents) are NOT long-deceased languages or even remnants of languages, they are just nonsense vocables), being able to prophecy (mind you, the prophecies these kids give are always given in the most vague and generalized manner, exactly like astrologers give their "readings", and never are they checked up on later to verify their accuracy) and "discerning of spirits", whatever the hell that means (the little girl who claimed she had this "gift" also clearly had no idea what the hell such a set of words were possibly referring to, you could see it on her face and hear it in her voice). The kids go to a camp in North Dakota for, I guess a week, and get preached to every night about sin and the punishment that accompanies it. The "pastor" lady even consciously picks a graphic of the word death (the wage of sin according to Romans 6:23) that has, what she described as, dripping blood falling off the letters of the word. I mean she actually typed the word, and then purposefully chose the bloody font for this particular slide in her powerpoint show she was preparing for the kids to see that evening. The kids were psychologically beaten up with the idea that if they had ever been or were currently being "phony" in their claims to "righteousness" that their hypocrisy was in need of being cleansed, literally. She had those kids come up and hold their hands out so that she could pour water from a water bottle over them to "wash" the kids' hands clean of the sin of hypocrisy. Needless to say, but I'll be damned if I'm not going to say it anyway, these kids were in tears at these sessions, and they clearly wanted to be. That is what has incensed me so much. These poor children, only a little older than my own son, were bawling over their sinfulness, how bad they were as people, and the adults were not only allowing this to take place, they were actually CAUSING it to take place. The had not only hoodwinked their kids into thinking they were terrible people, but they had, even worse, taught their kids that by recognizing their own horridness, they could then be "fixed" if only they prayed real hard for god to "forgive" them. And so, these kids weren't crying because they were afraid, they were crying because they were happy. They had a way out of going to hell. These were tears of unbridled relief and subsequent gratitude. I absolutely hate the practice of ridicule in education, and the evangelical contingent in this country is absolutely mired in it.
First: Get them to believe they are going to burn in hell for forever, just because they were born. Make them think that through no fault of their own, they have to suffer the worst tortures imaginable, eternally.
Second: Get them to accept this fate through constant reminders of their innate sinfulness, until they have no mind to analyze the validity of such an accusation.
Third: Tell them that they can escape this fate, if they do the religious thing i.e. Verbally "accept" jesus as their lord and saviour, and confess their sins to everyone who will listen, so that their humiliation will be complete, and they will have no ability to "choose" otherwise.
Fourth: Get them to go and tell everyone they know the exact things they themselves have been inexcusably exposed to, so that they become "warriors of christ".

PEER PRESSURE!!!!!

And I'm not talking about teenagers here who struggle with the decisions brought on by peer pressure, decisions like "should I or should I not", or "I know better but all my friends are doing it so maybe I should to". Teens can analyze for themselves, even though most do not, they at least have the ability to. No, these are 9, 10, and 11 year olds. Kids who will adopt whatever behavior they are asked to adopt, if there is a clear reason to do so. Evangelical adults are bullying their children into corrosive and destructive mindlessness, and they think this is an acceptable child-rearing technique. Indoctrination is TERRIBLE!!!! it's inexcusable and should be a criminal offense. All it does is disengage the victim from the process of critical thinking. No 11 year old should think they are capable of preaching, to anyone, about anything. They are not experts at anything yet, except for howto be a kid. For crying out loud, 11 year olds can't drive a car, they can't vote, they can't drink alcoholic beverages, or smoke. They are disallowed these, for one simple reason, they are not cognitively developed enough to be able to understand all the ramifications and responsibilities of these behaviors. So how in the world do the evangelical parents of this country think that although their kids can't do all the above mentioned activities, they can and should be poisoning other equally impressionable kids with unsubstantiated nonsense like they do in this movie? I would like to shoot these parents, or better yet, go back in time and sterilize them.
They have these kids actually touching buildings and praying that jesus (even though he is rather inconveniently dead, and has been so for thousands of years, if he ever existed at all, which is questionable) will cause the planned parenthood clinic housed within to close down. These kids have been lit with a flame of ignorance and sympathy for the unborn by their parents. They can't possibly be educated enough on both sides of the debate to be able to say, as the children they are, that they are pro-life. They claim to be pro-life, because they have only seen the side of abortion that the churches show. The inflammatory side, the one with all the dead babies, and the little plastic fetuses that look just like a tiny baby, etc... they have not seen the other side, enough to weigh for themselves the data and decide on their own. Their parents think certain things, and then choose to indoctrinate their kids in a similar vein.
This movie touched on a lot of subjects of which I am well aware, having grown up in an evangelical christian home. Creationism vs evolution, abortion, national christianity, the end times, the need for constant repentance and the ultimate need for salvation. All of these are topics which have driven me away from the ridiculousness of christianity. You could see the fear in these kids eyes, and felt the resonation of memory, having been bombarded on a bi-weekly basis with these toxins for nigh on twelve of the most impressionable years of my life. And that is the basis for the whole sham, as I have written about in some of my earlier blogs. FEAR. There is an assumption that there is a continuation of our life in some capacity after we die, and that capacity is directly determined by our choices and activities while we are alive now. This assumption comes from the fact that we feel like we are conscious beings, and that our consciousness is a manifestation of an invisible greater world of spirituality, one which we cannot see. Based on this assumption of spirituality, christians assign a place of good or ill to our post-life selves. It is this heaven and hell that outlines the real basis for the fundamentals of the christian faith. Christians don't fear hell,because they've chosen the right path. They also "know" that non-christians have everything to fear because they have not chosen the right path. They have constructed this farcical fantasy world, which is wholly dependant on fear, and in doing so have ensured that those who are exposed to it have to choose one way or the other. It is all based on the false assumption that we go somewhere after our deaths. Once that assumed foundation is forged, the good vs evil scenario is as valid a scenario as any other, and it is the one christians hang their hat on. But the foundation is false, and consequently the structures built upon it, such as the christian faith, are also. Even for those religions or spiritual people out there that are not of the christian faith, the fundamental assumption that we are transcendent of our corporeal selves, is not true. How do I know, because I am not a child, and I no longer have to fear the boogeyman of death. I and my wife have taught our son that when living things, like people die, they turn back into dirt, over time. He is four and thinks that is really cool. When he is older, more capable of abstract thought, he will inevitably come to us with the familiar questions of what happens to "us" when we die. Thankfully, I know our answers will remain unchanged. We are not filling him with bullshit, and I am so glad that I was able to jettison all the bullshit I injested in my youth. But I still feel like vomiting after having watched that putrid filth tonight.

Another fatal flaw

2009-02-22T23:22:00.006-05:00

Recently, a reader friend made the observation that, in their opinion, the primary focus of my blog posts seem to be centered around the old testament god, and not so much the new testament christian one; so, here's one for those who share this sentiment (although in my own defence, I have always felt my criticisms were really directed towards the new testament side of things, but nevertheless).

In the new testament, god supposedly sent his son to pay for the sins of mankind by dying in our place (John 3:16). Also in the new testament, god and his "son" are purported to be different incarnations of the same being (Matthew 1:22-23). Jesus calls himself god, or at least he leads his disciples through indirect implication to call him as such (Matthew 16: 13-20). Additionally, lest anyone forget, god is also supposed to be omniscient, he knows everything. Now, it seems to me, that since god and jesus were the same being, this must mean that logically, jesus was also omniscient. If we are to believe the bible's teachings, jesus must have known ahead of time that he was going to be killed, as he was really god and all that. Infact, he did know ahead of time (Matthew 16:21, 17:22-23, 20:17-19). This is afterall, the "good news" isn't it, that there was someone to offer a reprieve for us from god's wrath. Additionally, jesus knew he would be resurrected ahead of time (Matthew 26:64). So here's the rub, if jesus, being the omniscient being he supposedly was, knew he was going to be killed ahead of time, then the sacrifice would have actually been a sacrifice, but unfortunately he also knew he would be resurrected ahead of time. HE KNEW HE WAS GOING TO BE RESURRECTED BEFORE HE EVEN DIED. This is not sacrificial in the least, infact it completely destroys all semblance of a sacrifice being made. It's only sacrificial if the act itself is horrible and simultaneously altruistic. It is in the unspeakableness of the act that the sacrifice is made. If I throw myself in front of a moving car, pushing a mother and her baby out of the way, but I do so knowing I will not be harmed in any way, then I have made no sacrifice at all. Infact I have only done what anyone with my particular power should do. If I am invincible, then, if afforded the opportunity to save someone, I should do so without a second thought, and people should have an understandable expectation of me to do so. I hesitate to say people would have a right to expect me to do such a thing, but an expectation of me to do so, seeing as how I am invincible and all, is not out of reason .
Jesus knew he was going to be resurrected after he died, so the sacrifice not a sacrifice. He did not actually die, he died and came back to life. A real sacrifice would have been if he had died and never came back to life, butstayed in hell on behalf of all sinners for all of eternity. I mean that's the punishment for humanity if we reject the "lamb of god". We won't get a three-day pass in hell (which is a place that really doesn't exist, see my other blog posts or visit www. godvsthebible.com), so why do christians think jesus spending three days down there is enough to satisfy god almighty? The afterlife for jesus, be it ever so short, was not part of the sacrifice, the death was it. It was in jesus' dying, that supposedly god's wrath against us lowly humans evaporated. It doesn't say " For god so loved the world that he temporarily gave his only begotten son (three days maximum and then he took him back) blah,blah,blah... No, the death was what mattered. If he was resurrected then the death was not truly death to begin with, and this point really becomes clear when we see that jesus knew he was coming back anyway before he ever took a nail in the ol' slapmaster. The "good news" is retarded. The god of the old and new testament was a sheister, which really means the men who concoted him, the history of mankind which concoted him over thousands and thousands of years were sheisters, and not very good ones at that. There wasno resurrection, there was no sacrifice, furthermore, there wasnever any need for one, because god simply doesn't exist. God's laws are not laws, they are fabrications of the collective mind of humanity, which is why they make absolutely no sense. I'll give the bible this though, it does imply that man can never understand god. That is absolutely true, but not because god is some unknowable being; rather it is because god is no longer needed; whereas when he was invented, or rather they were invented, god was sorely needed. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of all invention, and at one point, humanity needed to invent god, because we were too intelligent to sit idly by without some explanation of ourselves, and yet we were still too incapable of learning what the world really was. Happily we are no longer as incapable, but apparently we have collectively decided that our intelligence and our thirst for an explanation is now a moot point, because god and religion have been around for so long, we might as well keep them.
Logic tells us the story of jesus' sacrificial death and victorious resurrection is false. It is one thing to believe in something without evidence to support it, it is another thing entirely to completely disregard evidence which clearly contradicts a particular premise, just because you aren't comfortable giving up your belief in the false. I understand that belief in Christ gives many, many people comfort, but not for one instance does that mass comfort make the story itself real. Mass delusions have existed in the past, and a few mega-mass delusions are still around today. Still, I know that this entire blog post will have no effect on the willfully blinded. They will continue to wallow in the slop of religion, lapping it up happily, all the while begging for more putrid filth (which they are convinced is 5 star cuisine) to be dumped into their sty. They will also continue to believe that the arabs are heathens and wrong and that they are christians, and are consequently right. Problem is every religion is wrong, no matter how right it might seem. Open your eyes folks, the emperor is just plain naked.

The Ten Commandments?

2009-02-04T09:34:00.005-05:00

The ten commandments. Everyone, mostly, has heard of these. Controversies have abounded about their postings in federal court houses throughout the country. Also, schools have petitioned for the right to display them in publically funded schools. many people regard them as the rules for living. Mandates of morality. God's injunctions upon us lowly sinners, designed to help us live the life he wants us to live. There are ten of them. Ten of the most moral, ethical thought-provoking and good laws, right?

Well, except there are actually two sets of these commandments. That's right, two seperate sets, housing some repeated commandements, and other completely different ones. So my question(s) are for the devout, bible-believing christian.

1. Did you realize the bible has two versions of the ten commandments?

Ex. 20:3 - You shall have no other gods before me

Ex. 20:4 - You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven or on the earth or in the waters below

Ex. 20:7 - You shall not misuse the name of the lord your god

Ex. 20:8 - Remember the sabbathday by keeping it holy

Ex. 20:12 - Honor your father and mother

Ex. 20:13 - You shall not murder

Ex. 20:14 - You shall not commit adultery

Ex. 20:15 - You shall not steal

Ex. 20:16 - You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor (Lie)

Ex. 20:17 - You shall not covet your neighbors house, wife, servants, livestock, or any other belongings (paraphrased)

These are taken from the Life Application Study Bible, New International Version puublished by Zondervan on pages 137-138

Good so far, right? We all know these commandments very well. But, before we get to the second set, let's look at the first set a bit more closely.

1. You shall have no other gods before me.

Isn't god supposed to be the only god, all others aren't really gods. How would the only god that exists think it necessary to issue these life-messages to his most prized creation, while simultaneously saying there are no gods but him, and that we should lift no other gods higher than him? Which is it? Are there other gods, or aren't there? If god is the only one, Commandment number one is pointless. Because it is obviously there for us to read, then there can be only a few reasons for it:

a. We made them up (we meaning the ancient arabs of a few millenia ago)

b. God really isn't the only one in town, he is competeing for our allegiance with a myriad of other, also invisible, evidence-lacking deities.

c. God is kinda stupid, as he is portrayed in the bible.

My vote is obviously for reason number 1, we made these laws up, which would explain why the first is so petty in nature.

2. You shall not make for yourself any idols

How is this moral? How is a statue an idol, but a cross is not? Any symbolic thing is something that on some level worshipers are worshiping, be it cross, multi-armed elephant statuette, or intergalactic space-traveller talisman. All are stand-ins for the real object of worship, and since the god of the big three has been consistently absent, allowing only symbols to remain behind him (shroud of turin, the cross, the crown of thorns, etc...) he himself is an idol. Humanity possesses only objects associated with the creator of all things, even the idea of god is a possession. Again, the idol worship was something born of fairly non-sophisticated thinking, something religious folk would not want to attach to their god. We made this one up too, and not very well.

3. You shall not misuse the name of the lord. Goddamn it! There I did it, no punishment though. This is just a silly law. How is it even possible that the supposed creator of everything in existence would give a rip about the particular vernacular vehicles his favorite creations used in life. It's not like teaching a kid to not swear. Parents do this for the benefit of the child, not their own. God's commandment to abstain from taking his name in vain is the ultimate example of his very own vanity (though I should say our own vanity). This is about as far from a moral precept as one could get when trying to come up the most important social laws. We made this one up too, who else but insecure, power-hungry, miscreants would say something so playground-oriented was a great law? We are so petty, but we don't have to be.

4. Remember the sabbath by keeping it holy. How exactly is a calendar day that is not even universally recognized as such supposed to be involved with the massive issue of morality? Christians say the world was created in six days and that god rested on the seventh day, but they don't tell us whether that seventh day was a thursday or a sunday. We have established, WE have established that sunday is the day of worship, except that catholics recognize saturday as the day to worship. it is an arbitrary assignment, just as the whole idea of a sabbath day itself is arbitrary and silly. there is no moral behind such a stupid commandment, only control measures designed to instill fear into those who are to be controlled. Why would we need to remember something so important as a sabbath day, wouldn't anyone under the yolk of supernatural control be able to remember something like that without the need for a commandment like that? Couldn't god have used that space for a more moral commandment, like say, don't rape anyone? Guess what folks, we made this one up too. It's so obvious, because it's such a childish thing to require.

5. Honor you father and mother. Okay, now we're at the morality side of things. This is a good one. We should respect those who gave birth to us, but I think mostly that we do this without turning to the bible each time the thought of parental honoring pops into our mind. Point being, while this a good rule to live by, there is no reason to ascribe it's origin to god. Children, by and large love their parents, especially when they are children. I know my son thinks the world of both me and his mother. You can see it in his eyes, when we are playing. He has never consulted the bible on this issue, yet he still loves us more than anyone on the planet. The commandment is honor your parents,not love your parents. To me, this speaks not to the children of the world but the adolescents, those who are most likely to willingly disobey their parents. So what reason would an omniscient god have to include a provisional commandment for the adolescents of the world? Aren't the ten comm. supposed to be for everyone. A bit shortsighted, if you ask me, and again shortsightedness on god's part is not an association religions are comfortable with. However, shortsightedness on the part of men (and women) is something we all recognize. Painfully obvious, we aren't very good at writing morally absolute laws.

6. You shall not murder. Sounds good to me. I don't want to be killed, so what would make me think anyone else wants me to kill them? Except that we do it all the time, war is state sanctioned-murder. There is no other word for it. War requires death at the hands of an intentional being. Warriors set out for the purpose of taking the lives of as many intended victims as possible. We all labor under the belief that life is sacred. But not all life, only life that conducts itself as we see fit. Animals have no sanction within this mindset, yet they are as alive as we are. Death elicits thoughts of fear in most people, not because of the pain which might be involved, but because we have no idea what actually happens to "us" after we die, but we assume there will still be an "us" at that point. Where does this assumption come from. What makes us think we are more than our bodies? Our minds? The fact that we can think? Murder, taking someone else's life prematurely, is an immorality only because we think so much of ourselves, but an immorality it is, nonetheless, and rightfully so. Are we to believe that prior to Moses decending from Mt. Sinai with those tablets that mankind had no qualms about killing each other (ironically, this is probably the case, at least in our very early ancestry, when we first came down out of the trees)? I'm sure the week before god's gift to mankind, the whole of the world's population was not slaughtering each other willy-nilly. Point being, Murder is an immorality to humans, because we are mortal, and as such are very aware of the opposite state of being, that of not being alive. We were aware of this unpleasantness well before moses brought the words of god to the hebrews. We did not need god to point out to us that murder is something we should avoid, afterall we are the mortal ones, not him. What would god know about death, he is supposedly the beggining and the end, here before us and here after, so what the hell, why should we give a shit what an immortal being says about the ending of life. Again folks, moral though it may be, we decided to include this one in the commandments, not god, god doesn't exist.

7. You shall not commit adultery. Ahh, the first of the many biblical reprimands on sex. The moral issue at hand here is not lying to the one you promised your life to. It has nothing to do with sticking a penis in a vagina, whether or not those two reproductive organs have bodies attached to them which possess a piece of paper stating said bodies are legally allowed to practice such enjoyable hobbies. This one could have been saved for the later one about covetousness, or atleast rolled into it, because the lie is the real immorality. The sex is just that sex, animals do it, hell most animals committ adultery as a rule. Ever heard of the alpha male? There's a reason why all the smaller lions practice fighting with each other. So they can one day fight off the head of the pride and take over all the newly available lionesses. Seems to me an omniscient being would have known that adultery is an issue of lying, not sex, just as covetousness is also an issue of lying, and such a great being would have known to roll those into one big don't lie commandment, freeing up a space for a commandment like say, don't abuse children. I can however see very clearly how a society which degraded the value of women such as we see in the bible could easily come up with that whole sex is bad, you should be punished severely for ever thinking it is more than the most sacred thing, thus including it in a set of timeless social rules. man how can anyone think the ten commandments are anything but manmade?

8. You shall not steal. Good, I agree. But as in the murder one a few back, I'm pretty sure mankind did not need to told in tablet form that stealing is bad and should be avoided. Infact, I'm equally sure that any society throughout history has had in place, non-biblical means with which todeal with thieves. Again, this seems a bit redundant, but a good rule nonetheless.

9. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. Again, a good rule, but lying is something which society at large is more than capable of dealing efficiently with. No need for god to write it down for us, even society back then was capable of self-regulation.

10. You shall not covet your neighbor's stuff. This one's a bit touchy. I mean what's wrong with wanting what your neighbor has? If you do something about that desire, something which would violate another of the commandments, then I can see the danger, but the simple desire itself seems a bit over-the-top. We all want our share. Consumerism is the basis of all progressive economies, including ours. Without products, people would not buy things. that in and of itself is not a bad idea. I kind of like the concept of self-suffiency. But to include it as one of the unbreakable moral codes of humanity is bit extreme. Seems, jealousy was high on the minds of the authors of the bible. I guess it's not a bad rule to have, but I for one have some reservations about it.

Now to the "other" set. the one no one ever talks about.

In exodus chapter 34, moses has to chisel two new stone tablets to replace the first set which were broken. On these tablets were written, by god (supposedly) the ten commandments:

Chapter 34:27 -28 "Then the lord said to moses " Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and israel." Moses was there with the lord forty days and forty nights without eating bread or drinking water. And he wrote on the tablets the the words of the covenant --- the ten commandments."

1. Do not make cast Idols (34:17)

2. Celebrate the feast of unleavened bread (34:18)

3. The first offspring of every womb belongs to me, including all the firstborn males of your livestock, whether from herd or flock. redeem the firstborn donkey with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, break it;s neck. redeem all your firstborn sons. (34:19)

4. No one is to appear before me empty-handed. (34:20)

5. Six days shall you labor, but on the seventh day you shall rest (34:21)

6. Celebrate the feast of weeks with the firstfruits of the wheat harvest, and the feast of ingathering at the turn of the year (34:22)

7. Three times a year all your men are to appear before the sovereign lord, the god of israel. I will drive out nations and enlarge your territory,and noone will covet your land when you go up three times each year to appear before the lord your god (34:23).

8. Do not offer the blood of a sacrifice with anything containing yeast (34:25)

9. Bring the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the lord your god (34:26)

10. Do not cook a young goat in it's mother's milk (34:26)

WOW!! This is such an awesome set of moral rules. How many times have I sat down to boil up a goat in it's mother's milk and thought to myself, ehhh, I better not do that, it's so wrong. Give me a break. I don't even need to go into how inane this new set of rules is, except to say, the bible itself, says these are the ten commandments, not those other ones from before, although at one point in the timeline those earlier ones were the covenant, but since the tablets were broken, they aren't anymore. These new ones are even better. So which set do you, Mr. Christian, adhere to? The first set which are morally either not, or obvious, without the hand of god needed at all; or the new set regarding cooking practices and feast celebration protocol?

The bible is just stupid.

On the spectrum of morality, right and wrong

2008-12-27T16:43:00.009-05:00

I got a cool gift from myself for Xmas this year, the BBC's Planet Earth on dvd. Last Xmas, I bought the same for my parents and I got to watch a little of it after dinner was over, so I knew I was eventually going to buy it myself. I also have the BBC's Blue Planet, which is comparably spectacular. Today while watching it I asked myself what it was I liked so much about the program. My answer was... the spectacle displayed on the screen of the world at it's largest, it's massive life-herds, landscapes, and planetary isolation in the sort of context that could only be providedby a satellite view. Seeing the world I live on from this vantage, was and is both breathtaking and humbling. Seeing horizon-spanning flocks of birds mid-migration, a continuous shot showing the actual spanse of the horizon as the flock extends past it, is eye-poppingly wondrous. For those who have never seen this documentary, do yourself a favor and buy it, rent it, check it out from the library, something, but see it. It will be worth your while.
So after asking myself what I liked about it, I asked myself what I thought my very religious parents probably like about it. I came up with the same answer, the sheer spectacle of our world.
I found this an interesting thought to pursue, so I continued my self-interrogation roughly as follows.
Question: What do my parents see in the grandiosity of our world that I do not?
Answer: Nothing, we see the same beauty.

Q: So where do my parents think the beauty of the world comes from?
A: God.

Q: And where do I think the beauty of the world comes from?
A: Nowhere. The beauty of the world does not exist in the world. In other words, it is not a feature of the world, but an interpretation within the confines of my mind, of the world as it exists. If I were not here, or for that matter, were no humans at all here, then beauty being an idea would not exist. Beauty is a thought that we are capable of having, and thoughts are without a doubt confined to the mind. Without our minds, beauty's state of idea-ness could not exist and thus would not exist. The world is what it is, the mountains we look at are big to us because we are comparing our size with their's, the rivers are blue to our eyes, the diversity of life and it's various manifestations are noteworthy to humanity only because we can compare them (since they exist) to the idea of them not existing, an ability which is unique (probably) to humans. The act of comparison is what creates our ideas including that of beauty. So again, I do not attribute the world's beauty as having come from somewhere, much less a god. It is of our own devising, and our ability to do such a thing is the direct result of our brains being developed as much as they are. And just to be clear, the notion of ideas being planted in our minds (by some outside interloper) can be adequately put to rest when you consider the alternative of comparison generating discrimination. We compare. We then discriminate, assigning beauty to one side and ugliness to another, with banality somewhere in the middle. Our minds, in the act of comparison, are the generators of what we say is beautiful.

My parent's see the beauty of the world as the proof of god's existence.
I see the beauty of the world as the beauty of the world, as my mind determines it to be, through comparison and subsequent discrimination.
But, here's the real point, we both see the beauty of the world. It is the world, visible, measurable, and tangible to which, at least in part, those who believe in god point to as a reason to harbor such a belief. These people are relying on evidence for their belief. Evidence in the form of the extant world and it's vastness. The sheer size of the world as displayed by the BBC's documentary is proof of god's creativity and handprint, to my extended family.

But the thing is, the evidence they are relying on to solidify their position is, in this case, evidence for the exact opposite as well, namely that the world is tangible and explainable. The mountains majesty is there for all to see, and if so desired, to touch and analyze. the rocks and elements that comprise the mountain can be discovered, named and repeatedly recognized, thus pulling back a little bit more of the veil of the physical world. Indeed the physical world we see has an explanation completely devoid of divine invocation. Infact, the explanations offered by the last few centuries of ever-progressive scientific discovery reveal complexities of nature that no religious text has ever even described, much less adequately explained away. For instance, there are cave systems throughout the world that house life forms that simply were unknown to the arabs and jews of the 1st century a.d. Animals that are pigmentless, and eyeless, because these physical characteristics were and continue to be unnecessary to them, have lived in these isolated areas of the world for more time than the bible recounts. To the testimony of these animals, the great flood of noah as described in the bible, is incompatible. It is understandable that the authors of the middle eastern religious texts did not know of animals like these, or others (emperor penguins, carrier pigeons, dwarf mastodons (who were alive at the time of the writing of the old testament)). And without the knowledge of these animals, or better said, with only the knowledge of the largely agriculturally-domesticated animals with which they were surrounded( such as rams and goats), the civilizations who passed these stories of man's superiority over the animal kingdom (and interestingly enough also the plant kingdom, but not the fungus or slime-mold kingdoms) are easily forgiven for concocting a story to describe, as best they could with the information they had, the world as it appeared to them. What is harder to forgive is the determination through time to cling to these abhorridly incomplete descriptives of the world we live in. We know polar bears exist, but the biblical authors did not. Should we then trust that these stories created so long ago, and designed to describe the natural world and our kingship over it are still representative of the truth of our world? Of course not. We cannot allow ourselves to "believe" in something that has been overturned by a wider discovery, yet that is exactly what the world at large has been doing for more than 2 millenia. Religions request that we suspend our disbelief quite in the face of more satisfying and sensible explanations. To that end, over time, religions have surriptiously altered the arena of disparity to another more slippery slope, that of the mental accuity of humankind.

The soul, the consciousness, the human condition is undoubtedly what my family would now point to in defence of their belief in the religious. There is, in their minds, something which has yet to be explained, the human condition and all the stuff that goes along with that; concepts like morality, right and wrong. To the religious, these are concepts about which science can offer no insight, or better said, the natural world has not nor could ever have a way to explain. They also would maintain that morality is something that transcends humanity and is part of a divine set of laws laid down long before mankind ever stepped foot out of the good-ol-garden . I would take issue with these concepts, and infact I do. Here's how.

Morality is commonly accepted as the umbrella term for defining right and wrong, but the word actually offers no clear definition of anything. It harbors the other two terms but does little else. Ask yourself " what does morality mean". what answer do you come up with that doesn't invoke the words right or wrong? Morality is only a word, one which at best simply makes reference to a particular realm of humanity. In this respect, it is just like the words right and wrong. Ask yourself "what does right mean" or "what does wrong mean". What answer do you come up with that doesn't invoke the words morality or right or wrong. Instead of offering definitions, all three of these words rely on the assumptive practices of those who say them to divert the attention of those who hear them uttered or see them written on a page. The word morality assumes that there is an outside standard to which all behavior is measured, a spectrum that at one end reflects universally acceptable behavior, and at the other end, universally unacceptable behavior. These poles of universal acceptance or rejection are what the words right and wrong are in reference to. The words right and wrong are not descriptors, they are instead judges of what is acceptable and what is not. Something intersting yet subtle to notice is that these words also rely on the assumption that this spectrum actually exists, that there is some universal standard, removed from the behaviors themselves, to which the behaviors can be judged. Now I'm not sure how far Heisenberg's uncertainty principle can extend (that which you observe you change i.e. if you know the position of a particle you cannot know it's velocity and vice versa) but what is clear is that none of the words include a description or even a measurement of what is most important, behavior.
Morality refers to the entire spectrum, Right refers to the acceptable side of things and Wrong refers to the unacceptable side of things, but again none of the words properly addresses what the spectrum should be used for, actually measuring behavior(s). The words morality, right and wrong don't describe actual behaviors, they only report where along the spectrum behaviors might fall. So in this sense there is no value to use words like right, wrong or morality, because at best they simply place undescribed behaviors along a possibly non-existant spectrum of judgement mostly, as we will see, in an deceptively arbitrary manner. Again, all three assume there is such a spectrum. But when that assumption is abandoned we can see that such judgemental practices become silly. To return a previous point, without the human mind, ideas simply don't exist, and this applies to idea that a spectrum exists with which to assign a place to human behavior(s). We created this spectrum, without us, there is no concept of morality. Just look at the idea of killing. Non-human animals do it all the time and show no remorse for their victims. It's all in a day's work so-to-speak. Certainly these predators recognize that their prey are alive, yet they commence to killing them anyway, and as if that was not bad enough, they then EAT what they killed, and why, because they "know" if they don't eat they will suffer and maybe they know they will die. There is fear present in predators. And certainly the prey animals recognize that predators are trying to kill them, so one cannot say that they do not display fear of pain or death. If such was the case, and these animals showed no fear of predators, then they certainly wouldn't be the excellent runners they are, or so adept at camoflauge, infact the entire arms race between predator and prey would have never gotten off the ground, because the predators would have wiped out all the prey, seeing as how the prey didn't resist, which would have of course led to the demise of the predators themselves, because if you don't have a steadily resupplying reserve of prey, eventually you will run out of food and die yourself. So fear of death most likely exists for the prey and predator alike, yet the killing still goes on. Such "emotions" don't cause the predators to stop their hunt or the prey from standing idly by. No, the predator-prey relationship abounds and has done so since the beginning of life. Predators don't feel bad for their prey, certainly not enough to not go after them. Rather, murder (the premature and intentional ending of a life) is a natural part of the life cycle. It is we who have villified the practice.

Now of course we qualify murder as the killing of someone for the sake of killing someone. The choice to kill someone (of our own species) is what has made the practice fall at the "wrong" end of the spectrum. But, and this is crucial to keep in mind, the act of killing is no different to a lion as it is to us, the only difference between our two species is the reason behind the killing. And where does reasoning come from, the human mind. So the origin of morality's spectrum is again revealed to be a concoction of the human mind.

Cannibalism is another good example to look at. Across the animal world, cannibalism is not a universally accepted behavior, but it is also not a universally unacceptable behavior either. In some species, it happens all the time, as a part of the life cycle. Even plants practice it, although the process is much longer, and consequently doesn't cause humanity to cringe at the thought, like we do when considering animalistic cannibalism. Since the practice is not universal on either side of our spectrum of judgement, then it must lie somewhere in the middle. Well, but, murder is also acceptable in some instances (self-defense, war-times, capital punishment) so shouldn't it too be considered to fall somewhere in the middle of our spectrum, rather than at the polar end of unacceptable behavior? (Notice again, the spectrum does not describe the behavior, it only assigns a judgement to the acceptability of it). Cannibalism is interesting in that most everyone would agree that it is a "wrong" behavior, but how so? In the same manner that we think murder is "wrong"? Mind you, I am not condoning either practice, I am only discussing the idea of whether or not there is an outside standard of comparison which exists, by using familiar and extreme behavioral examples such as murder and cannibalism. For the record, Don't kill anyone or eat anyone. Caveat done, back to the blog.

Well what about, the good or "right" side of things? We talked about murder and cannibalism, and have shown that the spectrum doesn't provide the definitions we think it does, and also incidentally we have shown that, at least the polar end of universally "wrong" is not so polar afterall, since the extremes of human behavior actually fall in the middle.
So let's look at altruism. That seems like a behavior that would certainly fall at the "right" polar end of our spectrum. What altruism is, our spectrum doesn't tell us, it again only assigns it a place of "rightness", and again only within our minds. If we weren't here, altruism (doing good for others regardless of effect on the doer) would not exist. All we have to do is look at the non-human world again and we can see that the closest non-human animals, and plants for that matter, ever come to altruism is through the phenomenon of symbiosis (where two species perform services for each other to the mutual benefit of both). It may be a uniquely human concept, altruism, but before we can examine it's place on our spectrum we must ask does it really exist at all? Well what are some altruistic behaviors we could examine? How about military service in times of war? That seems like a good one, especially right now. Except, military people get a paycheck when they are in the military, whether or not there is a war going on, so nope, military service does not meet the criteria of being altruistic because there is a benefit to the doer (paycheck). Brave and to be commended, but not altruistic.

What about religious persecution, standing up for your beliefs? Well, we all know that those who are religiously fervent enough in their beliefs to be persecuted for them, are also banking on the paradise that awaits the martyrs of the faith, so nope, the benefit to the persecuted is there (at least in their minds) and thus religious piety does not qualify as altruistic either. But let's say somewhere in the world there is an example of pure unsullied altruism taking place right now. what does it matter if that example is being performed by a human to a member of a different species. Nothing. It is only altruistic if it helps our fellow man. Before the animal rights folk jump all over me, let explain a bit further. Let's say the unsullied example of altruistic behavior took place in a world where no humans existed save our one hero, instead there were only non-human animals incapable of creating a concept like altruism. This human constantly behaved altruistically, to the other animals around them, but with no accolades or reciprocity (thus adhering to the qualifications of being considered an altruistic individual), how would this person ever go about discerning that their behavior was altruistic? To this individual, altruism would simply be the way of life. Having no other humans (individuals capable of coming up with altruism) with which to compare their behavior, this human would not really be altruistic so much as they would just be a (the) person. In such a scenario, we can see how altruism is another concoction of the human mind, and as such, it easily falls onto the "right" end of the equally concocted spectrum of judgement.
Now we can ask whether altruistic behavior isreally deserving of being on the "right" end of the spectrum. What about the case of euthanasia? For a doctor to perform this procedure to a dying cancer patient, who clearly has expressed the desire for it to be done, would result in imprisonment for the doctor (Dr. Kevorkian), and before you say "well there's your altruism for you", remember that Kevorkian got paid for his services, so he might have had some detriments to weigh his decision against, but there were also some benefits, so no altruism there on his part. So if the procedure takes place, is it right? Certainly to the patient it is, and probably to the doctor, but not to the opponents of the practice. So again we have muddy waters here. If euthanasia cannot be qualified as absolutely altruistic (again in our human minds) then it certainly cannot fall at the "right" end of the spectrum, but rather like the concepts of murder and cannibalism, it should and does fall somewhere in the middle.

So now I must ask, do we really even have a spectrum? Examples from both ends, seemingly clear cut examples, don't fall where we superficially think they do. It's more like a big cauldron of behaviors that sometimes allow certain behaviors to roil up to the top and be deemed "good" or "bad". The surface behaviors are really only that surface ingredients, that periodically burst forth to our eyes, long enough for us to denounce them or glorify them while all the rest of the time the cauldron is mixing everything together creating the soup of the human experience.
We make our own rules, like it or not. We determine what we think is good, bad or indifferent. We compare, discriminate and isolate everything around us, especially ourselves. There is no spectrum chiseled in stone tablets, sent from above by some invisible yet all powerful overlord. We have made it up and it is not true. The world is not the handiwork of god, nor is it the handiwork of us, it is the handiwork of it. We call it beautiful because we have decided it is. When we are gone, the world will still look like whatever the world will look like then, and no one will be the wiser. Happy new year, everyone, and thanks to those who have been periodically reading this blog over the past year.

On Socialism and the candidacy of Barack Obama

2008-11-30T01:15:00.000-05:00

I will begin with a caveat; this blog began before the election. Rather than abandoning it though, I've decided to finish it, omtting or changing nothing from what I started out writing. That being said, let the stonethrowers begin to gather their destructors...

This election eve is witness to almost a year's worth of unending slander. Hillary vs Barack. McCain vs Romney. McCain vs Barack. Palin vs Barack. Palin vs Biden (not often). Biden vs McCain. etc... As is the case with every election that I can recall (I'm only 33), this one has been mired for some time in the doldrums of insult after insult. And what's more, people really seemed to get jazzed by it. Youtube has given us too many opportunities to hear the bloodlust americans revel in when it comes to denouncing their opponent. I say their because that is exactly what it seems to play out as, Barack vs the guy in the line at the McCain/Palin rally. It seems as though the voters actually think they have an obligation to hurl expletives at anyone who might challenge their choice of supportable candidate. "Barack is a Muslim. Barack is a terrorist. Barack is a socialist. Barack is a communist". I'm sure there are many others, but this is as comprehensive a list as I need for the purposes of this blogpost.

I don't know what religion Barack Obama adheres to, quite frankly I find it appalling that his or any of the candidates for president for the last 225 or so years, religious beliefs has ever been brought up during an election season. I hope one day an atheist can be elected president of this country, but I hold no real hope for that, as it seems painfully obvious that this country as a whole seems bent on turning itself into a theocracy. Just down the street from my house in west michigan is a church (protestant) which has a row of pseudo-election signs lining it's driveway which say "Jesus for president". I kid you not, "Jesus for President". Now, I don't know about you, but the thought of there even being a portion of our country which feels strongly enough about the possibility of America being headed by an invisible, 2,000 year-dead, middle-eastern, megolomaniac, seems both a bit far-fetched and a trifle troubling, but who am I to pass judgement, that is for the vengeful god to render.

I also don't have any reason to think Barack Obama could actually be an all-out terrorist. For one how the hell would a terrorist think it possible to have any terroristic effect on the nation state and not be found out. The office of the presidency is the most scrutinized public station in the world. We found out that Bill clinton got a blowjob from an intern didn't we? If someone can dig up a morsel like that, how hard would it be for someone to discover that the person we democratically elected as our commander-in-chief, was actually plotting to destroy our country from the inside out. We do not, no matter how much some people might wish we could, live within the confines of an Ian Fleming/James Bond storyline. Nor do we languish in the pages of a Tom Clancy Novel. Obama is not a terrorist. And for those William Ayers/ Jeremiah Wright folk out there, who use indirect associations to "determine" their opinions, let me say, what would you have done had these two individuals not been thrust to the headlines as they were? It was a good thing someone found out about these two people, so that those oh-so-many voters out there who are basing their decision to vote for McCain solely on the fact that he is not Obama, could have a leg to fallback on, when they were questioned about how they came to their decision. Obama is scary, because of these two people, mind you not because he himself is all that scary, but because he knows of these two people, and somehow, in the minds of the Anti-Obama proponents, he is incapable of distancing himself, intellectually from those who do not labor with the same interests as he, at heart. Nope, Obama is just a puppet of the Ayers/Wrights of the world. We've all heard enough from this particular demographic. We understand that you have decided to vote against Obama because you can't believe for a minute that he is a man capable of deciding a proper course of action by himself. You believe, wholeheartedly that he is a shell, one who will do his anti-american masters' bidding, as though he were as brainwashed as you are, if he were to get elected. You are a component of society which at one point in middle europe, oh a couple of hundred years ago or so, were denied the chance to vote democratically, and rightfully so. You can't think straight, much less come to a reasonable decision regarding who is or is not a valid candidate for the office of presidency. Please, don't expect any who have a brain to assign any degree of dignity to your ignorant and dangerous voice in the voting booth.

Barack is a socialist, or a communist. This one has been all over youtube at the republican rallies. I wonder if the people who are vomiting these words even know what they actually refer to. I tend to gravitate toward the idea that these people are the same who never really learned high school government, but just memorized enough words from the book to answer enough questions correctly to pass the class. I would submit that these folks most likely think socialism and communism are the same thing. They are not. But to these backwater mouth-breathers, anything that is not preceded by the prefix Demo, politically is directly from the realm of Hades. Socialism is different from Communism. Communism leads everyone to work conjointly at the behest of the central government to better the state of which the people are the populous. The government assigns duties and delegations to individuals in order to perform the functions of society at large, for the betterment of the nation. Everyone works for the betterment of the state, for the state is what matters over all else. Communism is as viable a political concept as democracy is, if it were to be administered by people who were actually of the mind that the state is more important than the individual, however, history has proven that so far, no human leader of a communist country has this necessary personality trait. Indeed, no person will ever be that ideal, for the simple reason that we are all selfish, and rightfully so. But if such a person were to come along, there is no reason to think communism in it's truist form could not work just fine.
Socialism promotes the betterment of the people, not the state in which the people live. Socialistic ideals are as equally viable a possibility as democratic ideals, but have not been ideally put into practice because again, absolute power will corrupt absolutely. Those who have been the leaders of socialist countries, have historically let their own individual ambitions and idiosyncracies overthrow the mandate of their political genetor and impede the socialist progress that was, at least at one point, possible under their administration.
Democracy promotes the self over all else, it is by design selfish, and rightfully so, afterall we are all individuals. What better way to live life than to look out for number one. Problem is, absolute power still corrupts absolutely, and make no mistake, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did everything possible over the last 8 years to increase the absoluteness of the president's power, and we are now paying many prices for this corruption. No system is foolproof, all can be faulty, if they are entrusted to less than qualified people, which is how Governor Palin should never have been picked by McCain. Qualification is earned through demonstrable intelligence and experience, not from popularity. As nice as Palin has made the thirty-something evangelical christians feel, this in no way shows her to be qualified for the vice-presidency.
Back to the point, lets look at all the socialistic tendencies America has in place, and then decide whether we really want to ridicule the evil of socialism.
1. The military, to defend the people from oppression
2. Public and Private education, to ensure that the society as a whole progresses intellectually, making life better for all.
3. The Transportation system, rails, roads, shipping, air traffic, all designed to connect populations of people to each other, thereby increasing the socialization of our species
4. The taxation system, designed to use funds provided by everyone to build and maintain that which all will use to some degree, thereby bettering the society at large
5. The centers for disease control, working to eliminate societally widespread illness and contagions, clearly for the betterment of the society, not the government, and only secondarily for the betterment of the individual.
6. For that matter, the entire medical field, at it's heart; however, democratic ideals have seeped into this field as well, fostering greed within the pharmaceutical industry as well as the actual field of practical medicine. But at the heart of medicine, is the survival and flourish of the society.

Socialism is deeply imbedded in our "sacred" democracy, like it or not. You may think you are an island unto yourself, but everytime you pull out into traffic you are tacitly engaging in a socialistic activity. By purposefully driving safely and not recklessly, by adhering to the rules of the road, you are participating in a societal act, thus I can rightly "accuse" everyone who has ever driven a car on a road amongst traffic of being a socialist. Of course such an "accusation" is not an accusation at all. Socialism is not a bad thing, despite what the ignoramuses at the broadcasted McCain rallies in PA might desperately want you to believe. I really wish people would stop before they start to denounce any idea they have little to no understanding of. I wish they would stop and ask themselves "Is what I'm about to say really true, or do I just think it is, because that's what I've been taught to think?"

Quite frankly, I think the country could use a little socialistic bent right about now, as long as those who put it into the mix do so with its real meaning at heart.

Fear, again

2008-11-03T05:04:00.002-05:00

I began thinking about this particular blog a few months ago. After many sidetrackings, I've decided to return to it. So, the question is, are you afraid of dying?
Davy Jones asked his victims "Do you fear death?" in the second Pirates of the Carribean movie.
Do you?
If so, how so?
By what reason or mechanism do you arrive at the point of fear whenever the thought of your no longer existing comes to you?
What makes you feel the way you do about your own impending death?
Have you ever thought about death's psychological power?
I know, I know, I just asked a lot of similar questions. Let's try and find some answers.
Death can mean a lot of different things to people. For some, it means the end of our physical life, our body's demise. It can also mean, the end of our mindfulness, our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. For many, we can die an unavoidable physical death, but can choose to either die or survive a spiritual death. So I ask, what is it about an ending that is so fear-inducing? We have no inkling what non-existence would be like. We have only ever been alive. We are understandably unfamiliar with what being dead could be like. Infact, we can't even be sure there is a recognizable likeness to being dead, we could be privy to, having never been in a state of recogizable deadness before.
Death is the unknown, and the unknown is what drives and sustains fear. If you are at all, or have ever been, afraid of your own death, it was (is), for sure, the currently unknowable premise of what awaits you, post-life, which has fostered your dread.
If you are not afraid of your own death, good for you.
This means you have come to grips with your inability to fortell the future, in one of a few ways. Either you are living in the comfort of any of the various forms of immortality offered by the many world religions, or you are living your life according to the principle that there is no afterlife to worry about and you only have the time you have on this earth to do with as you will, for good or for ill. Christianity offers immortality via jesus' supposed ressurection. Judaism offers immortality to those who are jewish and are awaiting the "real" messiah who will take them into paradise. Islam offers immortality to those who believe in Allah and his one prophet Muhammad (I probably spelled this wrongly). Hinduism and Buddhism advocate varying types of reincarnation as immortality, and so on and so forth.
None of the religions offer relief from the oppression of fear through personal means. It is always at the hands of an outside figure, a god who controls things from on high, or a perpetual evasion, that we can, through the world's religions, attain relief. Relief through Belief.
The religions seperate the mind from the body. Indeed, dualism is a bedrock of religious dogma. Without it, immortality would be a much harder sell. It's vastly easier to persuade someone to buy insurance than it is to buy a well made and easy to maintain item. Religion is a form of insurance, against an unpleasant afterlife. We hear the pitch of the salesman, " Serve god now with all your heart, and receive riches beyond your wildest dreams upon your death and subsequent entry into heaven i.e. rivers of milk and honey, gold-paved streets. It resounds with us "wow, I really should think about this, what if all this stuff is true, and I am digging myself into a deeper hole...". and we sign the check. Think about it, people buy homes on the gulf coast of the united states all the time, knowing full well that hurricanes are an annual imminent threat, and then they buy outrageously priced insurance policies to cover those houses, in the "event" of a hurricane. When it would be much easier and smarter to not build a house in an area of the country prone to natural disasters. We are so easily persuaded to do stupid things, things that run counterintuitively to our own common sense, it is no wonder religion has entrapped the world's population.
If you don't believe that our fear of death and the fear of our own mortality fuels the belief in the god of christianity, then ask yourself " What if we were immortal right now?" What if humans had been immortal since day one? If, hypothetically, we were always immortal, then many superstitions would simply never have arisen. Vampirism, ghosts, angels, the mystique of the graveyard, voodoo, the light at the end of the tunnel, etc... I could go on and on, but the point is made, halloween would not only be much less scary, it would never have become a holiday at all, so I guess there is a good point to religion afterall :-). The fear of death and mortality pervades so much of humanity. Without it gun violence would not matter, neither would drug trafficking.

Infact, if we were immortal right this minute, then most likely we wouldn't even be here, from the simple point that if all humans, ever, have always been immortal, then we would have had no need to procreate in order to continue the survival of the species. Species survival would have been a nonissue. Seeing that the world is the size that it is and can house so many individuals of so many species it seems obvious that the world was "destined" to be the home of mortal beings who die off periodically only to be replaced by newer members of the species. Death is part and parcel of the natural world, as it only could be. If according to christianity, adam and eve were originally immortal then it seems odd that having been made in the image of god, as the bible narrates, they were bestowed with the same reproductive "equipment" as all other mammals.

Dualism, "the ghost in the machine", " the little man at the controls", "the homonculus", the "soul" whatever, is an unnecessary step. We do not need to seperate the mind from the body. What basis do we have to even consider such a thing. We do not have anything to point to which we can say irrefutably "that is from the realm of the supernatural". We only can interpret things as such. And if one can interpret something as supernatural, another can interpret the same as natural, which is exactly the point, there is nothing that is universally accepted as being from the supernatural realm (and for the record, again, I am of the opinion, until shown otherwise, there is no such thing). On the flipside, we have plenty of universally accepted natural-world objects. Concrete blocks, hair, the Atlantic ocean, cock-roaches, thermonuclear warheads, the list is limitless. Well what about songs? Do they exist? Or poems? If they are realized, through production of some sort, they then exist in the natural world, for all to experience, but if they remain unrealized, they still exist in the natural world, the difference being they can only be experienced by the author(s). Thinking something is no different than building something, only the scale of enjoyment changes between the two, not the realm in which they exist.

If we do not seperate our mind from our body, if we reject the idea of dualism, then we need not harbor feelings of dread about death. It is only because we have been sold our insurance policy that we hold onto the unknown and it's fearsomeness. If we relinquish the policy, the unknown will become irrelevant, and there is nothing at all wrong with this. Infact, this would be a much more peaceful world, if we all lived with no regard for a continuation past our own death. Life would be more precious, because we would recognize it's fleetingness, and we would enjoy it more fully, knowing that once we die, we are gone. There would be less of a struggle to find ourselves, to live at peace with our neighbors, to be good people, because with no safety net to catch us, we would be on our own, and being on your own is the best way to grow up and be responsible. Despite the siren song of religion, I truly wish civilization could look clearly at what the world would be like without religion just once. Fear is what religions need, and it is what we have swallowed hook, line and sinker, it's time to spit it back out, before the whole world gets hauled up into the boat and slapped on the grill.

On Inductive versus Deductive reasoning

2008-10-19T10:56:00.002-04:00

Since "coming out" to my family in January about my atheism, I've had a few debates with them and others about christianity versus atheism. Just the other day, two Jehovah's witness ladies came to my door, wanting to innocuously know if I believed the bible had a prophetic nature. They had no idea what they were in store for. It was a pleasant discussion, but ultimately one that had very little effect on either parties involved. A few months ago, I posed an email question to one of my long-distance friendly adversaries that said "What of science, do you accept?" They said, " I accept any claim of science reached through deductive reasoning. I disregard anything concluded as a result of inductive reasoning" This person categorized evolution as a postulate arrived at through inductive reasoning. This is interesting. Inductive reasoning (bad, for scientific truth), deductive reasoning (good, for scientific truth). My friend doesn't think evolution has occured, they think we were modeled out of dirt by the hand of god, 6,000 or so years ago, in our current form, as was everything on the earth (maybe not necessarily out of dirt, per se). They also give as one reason for their unacceptance of evolution, the statement that evolution was arrived at through inductive reasoning, not deductive reasoning.

Webster's dictionary:
induction: inference of a generalized conclusion from particular instances.
deduction: inference in which the conclusion about particulars follows necessarily from general or universal premises.

Please take a moment to look at the difference between the two definitions.

To induce that something is the case, you must begin with a set of particulars, from which you can then extrapolate a more complex and wider idea. The beginning is the details.

To deduce that something is the case, you must begin with a general or universal premises, from which you can then conclude that the particular, observable micro details are direct results.

My friend doesn't accept evolution because it begins with a set of particular observations about nature a: extinction, through the observable particular of fossil remains, b: genetic mutation, through the observable particular of both laboratory DNA experiments and natural adaptive attributes of different species. My friend doesn't accept evolution, because it then proceeds with these particulars to expand a more widely-encompassing set of explanations, which arebased on the little details already observed. My friend DOES NOT ACCEPT evolution because of this.
But, my friend, accepts most everything else they encounter in life which employs the exact same process.
Take breakfast, my friend decides to have breakfast after having taken inventory of the particulars of their pantry. They start with the details. They then induce that breakfast is a possibility, so hunger and energy will dissipate and increase respectively, extrapolations based on detailed information gathered. My friend accepts inductive reasoning when it comes to breakfast being helpful, but does not accept inductive reasoning in regards to evolution. What else do they contradict themselves with? Well, how about travel? My friend goes to work each work day, and I presume they employ some method of transit to facilitate this trip, either individual car, mass transit system, paddleboat, something. Well, how do they do this. Do they begin with the universal premises that travel is a possibility? Yes and No. Yes, in that, to the short-lived human individual, confined to the particulars of past discovery, it is inevitable that to my friend, it seems a universal premises that traveling fast via non-human means is a real possibility. However, that universality is only seemingly so. The wheel was undiscovered at one point in our history, albeit well before I or my friend lived. My friend and I both enjoy the benefits of the wheel, but the wheel was at one point, an observable particular of the environment. Using this observable particular, our ancestors extrapolated that this arc-edged implement could be used to speed things up for them, and the rest is history. So in this way, the answer is no. My friend as a human being, can never begin, at the real beginning with a universal premise that faster travel is possible, they must always and forever be grateful for the particulars discovered by their distant ancestors.

Inductive reasoning is validly accepted as a way of discovering scientific descriptions of our world. Evolution could only ever have been the result of inductive reasoning, and rightfully so, that is exactly what makes it make sense. It started with details, and Darwin induced from those details that something more fundamental and unseen to the incurious, was going on.

But what about deductive reasoning? The taking of a universal premise and gathering the observed details underneath the umbrella. This is a different approach, and certainly not one that scientists regularly employ. Particle physicists sometimes employ this method, because without such a method, the unobservably small constituents they are concerned with would never have been postulated to begin with. Elementary particle such as quarks, leptons, and electrons don't leave tell-tale signs for the laymen to see, which is how each of them remained unpostulated for so very long. However, the only other arena which regularly utilizes deduction is that of religion. It makes sense to me, that my friend, a fundamentalist, southern christian conservative, would accept deduction but not induction, because religion starts with the universal premise that god exists. It then gathers under that assumption, the ideas that we are his creation and we are sinful by nature. The evidence gathered under the umbrella is done so after the macro-assumptions are made. The bible is one of the particular evidences of the truth of christianity, as is the idea of our possession of self-awareness. These two particulars of evidence are assimilated into the general idea that god exists, only after the the premise has been both postulated and accepted. This is the nature of deductive reasoning. So according to my friend's logic, they can willingly accept the inexact theories of string theory, the multiverse, and both quantum mechanics and special and general relativity (which few non physicists really understand), but they can't accept that breakfast might fend off hunger and increase productivity.
All of this is prelude to the real subject of this blog, and that is this:

If christianity were truly true, then christians should have been able to arrive at their belief system wholly divorced of the bible. Now doesn't that contradict the entire preceding section? Didn't I just get finished saying my friend arrived at their belief because of deductive reasoning? While that is true, it doesn't really counter what I've already said. Again, If christianity were really true, then evidence other than the bible should support it's claims. Christians have only the bible as external evidence that what they claims is true is so. Without the bible, for the last 4,000 years (torah and later the new testament) what grounds would the christian church have had with which to not only survive, but to flourish as it has? I say, the christian has only the bible as an external source of evidence, but what about the recognition we all have of ourselves, our self-awareness? That is not an external source of evidence but an internal one, something that is confined to the individual and cannot be rightfully used to gauge the truth of a social trend such as a particular religion. Social truths (memes) as religions claim to be, can only be found to be as such, if A: they are the result of individual(s) within the population coming to exactly the same conclusions time and again throughout the entire course of the population's existence (species), and B: if there is indeed an all-powerful controlling entity which actively participates in the lives of the individuals in such a way as to ensure that such social decisions are being arrived at. However, such a discovery is not possible, because it pits inductive reasoning against deductive reasoning. Remember inductive reasoning involves starting with the particulars and ending with the big picture, while deductive reasoning starts with the big picture and fits the details into that big picture. The problem with trying to affirm or deny god's existence by evaluating the testimonial truth of self-awareness as internal evidence, is that it requires that we start with inductive reasoning, the details being the observable, comprehensive and macro-social behaviours of the species, and the resulting arrival at the same behavioral conclusions, all of which will result in the big picture of god existing as the controller of this drama; and, it simultaneously requires that we begin with deductive reasoning: assume there is an all-powerful, active participant in our social lives, having endowed us with self-awarness, thereby granting us the ability to construct social lives, whose further activities center around ensuring our arrival at a universal set of behavioral conclusions. We must start with the big picture of god absorb all the details into this as to make them fit with our preconception. we must deduce that the details are the result of god's being in existence, but we must also induce that god exists because of the myriad of details which poin to that conclusion. This is circular. You can not have both inductive and deductive reasoning at play at the same time.
Rest assured, I am by no means suggesting that humanity, in all it's societies has actually resulted in the same universal morals, as such a discussion would require. It is painfully obvious that we as a species have exhibited throughout our history a deplorable lack of compassion for our fellow man. Genocide's existence testifies to our incapability of agreement on the universal sanctity of life, So does slavery. For that matter, all violence testifies to the one thing that makes humanity the same, we are animals. Our self-congratulatory religions might feign to celebrate the simultaneous prestige and disdain of humanity, but our behaviours illuminate our animalistic nature much more so. I suggested that christianity should have some other source of external evidence with which to support it's claims. Here are a few suggestions:
Let's see some literal stars fall to the ground (impossible since stars are bigger and hotter than the earth, and so would burn us up without being able to "touch" the ground): Mark 13:21-25.
Let's hear some mountains sing about how good god is (again impossible since sounds must utilize vibrations and mountain cannot be simultaneously the source and agent of vibrations, not to mention what language the mountains would sins in ): Isaiah 55:12
Or how about some rocks crying out: Luke 19:40.
How I'd love to see a big-ol mouth open up on Teddy Roosevelt's face at Mt. Rushmore and hear him start singing the hallelujah chorus....
There is no evidence away from the bible, for the christian to believe in christianity. Without this, it is impossible to validate the truth of christianity's claims, therefore, without taking anything else into account, the best christianity can do at this point is acknowledge that it is severely deficient in it's case for the ultimate in truth. But we must take into account many other things, for instance: a: The existence of rival religions, some of whom make almost identical claims using almost identical sources of "evidence", b: The existence of secular explanations for the issues religions concern themselves with; life, thought, feelings, etc...
When these alternative explanations are taken into account, the christians case slides from being severely deficient, to that of one of maliciously outright deceipt. It is no excuse for the christian to assert that their belief system has brought comfort to anyone, much less many billions of people over the years. Comfort with an idea is not a way of validating it's truth. I may be very comfortable with not working a day in my life, but that is no reason to believe that not working a day in my life is how I should spend my existence. It might be very comfortable for me to simply ignore the cries of my child, because I'm tired, but that doesn't mean that my child isn't hungry, just because I am more comfortable thinking that if I wait long enough, he will stop being hungry and stop bothering me. Comfort is a not only an invalid excuse it is a deplorable one. The truth of existence, will only ever be discovered, it will not be nor has it been revealed, not in the manner which religions speak of.
Christians: you have no acceptable reason to say the things you say, you have no honor in speaking of things about which you've never invested any amount of effort in trying to disprove, and you have no sympathy from those of us who recognize your false humility.
Atheists: you have a responsibility to call out your lazy religious friends and make them confront what they say they believe, but do so in a nice way, so as to make them sure that you're confrontation is a plea for reason and not an attack on a personal level.
Scientists: You have a responsibility to do your jobs, continue collecting the data, and inducing from your data, larger more encompassing explanations of our world. It is to you who the world looks for it's answers, despite what the world might say to the contrary. It is widely accepted that cars will work, we base our transitive lives around this fact, but I'm unaware of any church official who beat Henry Ford to the punch and invented the automobile before he did. Science is what we need, not religion. Keep up the work.

A conversation

2008-10-13T10:30:00.000-04:00

Atheist and Christian:

A: " Why do you believe in something you have no credible evidence exists?"
C: " Because I have plenty of evidence of what I believe in."

A: " Such as....?"
C: " Such as my soul, my sense of morality, my very faith. All of these are the evidence you seem to think doesn't exist. But for sure, faith by itself is enough proof that god exists, because without god, there would be nothing to have faith in, therefore faith would be uneccessary and would have never come into existence. Since it exists, god exists."

A: " Is it safe to say that if you didn't exist, bodily, that all of your evidence, your soul, your morality, your faith would also not exist?"
C: " Only for me personally, nothing about my non-existence has an affect on the existence at large of those concepts, morality, the soul, etc..., but yes, I think it's safe to say that, when referring only to me."

C: " Ask yourself this, If there is no god, then why do we exist?"
A: " Okay."

A: " If there is no god, then why do I exist?"
A: " The question is faulty to begin with, it should be if there is no god, then HOW do I exist. By using the word why, I imply the existence of some reasoning being that can and does impose it's reasoning ability onto the issue of existence, a reasoning being is a god, even if it's not a creator god, such as the Judaic version is said to be. But, if I change the question to "How do I exist", I can answer as such: I exist because my parents joined an egg and sperm together. My DNA enabled my proteins to replicate and diversify, eventually into me. It just so happens that my parents had non-detrimental genes which successfully got passed down to me as the representative of a new generation, because they mated. And it happens that their parents were also as fortunate, and their parents' parents were also, and so on and so forth. That is how I exist, but I would ask you to ask yourself the very same question you posed to me."

C: "Okay."
C: "If there is no god, then why do we exist? I don't know why. It seems to me, there would be no reason for us to exist, no real explanation for our intelligence, self-awareness, consciousness, morality, sense of right and wrong, and so on and so forth. My heart tells me these things, my mind doesn't. My mind might tell me the answer to an arithmetic question or whether or not to buy a certain stock (certainly not GM), but my heart is what leads me to not lie to my friends, my heart is what tells me I love my family. There is no biological explanation for what I feel in my heart, but there is a perfectly acceptable supernatural explanation. Without a god having created these things, they simply wouldn't exist."

A: "So when you ask yourself this question, are you questioning the existence of god, or yourself? It seems to me, that although this seems, on the surface, to be an exercise in questioning god's existence, it is really questioning humanity's."

A: "Postulate that there is no god as we do at the beginning of the question" If there is no god", then follow that with the remainder of the question " then why do we exist". Being in existence but without a god, is not possible for you to imagine, so really you are questioning your own existence, if you posit god's inexistence. Since you obviously exist, you have every reason to think god does as well, because, it is impossible for you to contemplate that humanity could exist as it does, with all of our "uniquely" human attributes, without our having been designed by a higher power. But that is the chink in your armour. You see, it is only the incurious who accept things at face value. It may be impossible for you to see existence seperate from a god, but such a view is narrow, and allows for no room to err. Frought with conceivable doubt, such a tunnelled opinion tends to lead it's adherents toward evermore compact doctrines, always refining until the point at which, the refinement, the honing eventually melds the original material into such a hard, compact almost projectile weapon, metaphorically speaking. In this case, the original material humanity began with was uncertainty itself. Unsure of what the noise of thunder was, we were curious but afraid, so we assigned it a divine position. But our unsurity continued, as it did with other primitively thought about phenomenon. As we grew more intelligent, we dug further into the fields, and uncovered more of the answers about those things which concerned us. Disease became, if not universally controllable, at least more containable and treatable, through wholly natural means. Same with crop propagation, inclement weather avoidance, etc... but the divine status we earlier had apportioned to many misunderstood phenomenon, remained more or less intact. This original material of uncertainty first began to be welded and compacted by superstition. Time moved on and the compaction continued with the advent of organized religion. Uncertainty of anything was not alleviated by religion, it never has been. Religion only soothed the savage beast, it has never done anything to clear up misconceptions. It provided no answer to our questions, it has only ever made us forget our questions altogether (although, notoriously, questions tend to have plagued us throughout history long after we swallowed our false medicine, popping up again and again, ). The sheer inability of someone who believes in god, to acknowledge the possibility that everything we see could very well have come about without a god is what makes the gap between the atheist and the christian. It really is a simple thing, if you think about it, on the one side, a person thinks it is possible for the world to have come into existence through means that are part and parcel of it as it is today. On the other side is someone who cannot think such a thing. Christianity, or religion as a whole (those religions which postulate a version of creation) is simply a result of uncreativity. If you can't imagine something, that certainly doesn't mean that such a thing is impossible, it only points reveals a lack of imagination. I, as an atheist, can absolutely imagine a world having been created by a god, but it is only imaginary. I don't bear the burden of questioning my own existence, because I am not hung up on whether or not god exists, I know he does not. You, a christian, have to square that, because it is you who have accepted as inexplicable that which has already been explained by the world. It is you who have relegated incuriosity to the realm of being faithful, and thusly have helped to build our world systems around social foundations based on the non-existent. These world systems are now beginning to crumble, because of the lack of sure foundational reality-based support. God is not on his throne, all will not be solved by him, America will not be saved because it is a country of the faithful. God does not bless America. We are not one nation under god, we are only one nation under nothing, all on the same level. For sure, we exist, but god does not, nor did he ever need to. It's high time you accept that what you believe is simply incorrect."

C: "I pity you, and will continue to pray for you."
A: "Thanks, but please spend your efforts more wisely."

Questions for the Christian

2008-10-12T00:25:00.005-04:00

The following are a list of questions for any of you Christians out there to ask yourself. I'd love it if anyone wanted to actually answer them for me by commenting.

1. What are you in need of salvation from?

2. What is sin?

3. How do you recognize it?

4. Is sin a source of fear, resignation or delight for you?

5. How do you gauge your behaviour?

6. What is heaven?

7. How do you know it exists?

8. Does being a Christian make you personally a better person, all by itself?

9. How do you know you possess an immortal soul?

10. Do you tend to reconcile contradictory passages of the bible, if so, how?

11. Do you recognize contradictory passages in the bible?

12. Do you base your personal sense of morality on what is found in the bible, or do you form your own ideas for morality on what you've learned as you've aged and observed your surroundings?

13. How do you know god exists?

14. Do you base your belief in god on the writings in the bible, your intuition of the existence of a soul, your sense of morality, the wonder of the natural world, etc....?

15. Where is heaven? Hell?

16. How do you know hell exists?

17. How do you know the christian god is the correct model, and all others are not true representations?

18. How is blasphemy any worse a sin than any of the other possible sins mankind could commit?

19. Which of the two versions of the biblical ten commandments do you adhere to?

20. If, on the eve of your death, you were to find out definitively that there is no god, heaven, hell, sin, or christ, would you regret any portion of how you lived your life?

Have fun, and please answer honestly.

On the salvation message and loving your enemies

2008-10-11T13:15:00.000-04:00

"For god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever should believe on him, would not perish but have everlasting life." John 3:16 Everybody that has ever heard of the bible knows this verse. Many of us know it from memory. Hell there's probably plenty out there who know the whole bible from memory, I don't know. The point is, that rainbow-colored-wig-wearing guy at all the major sporting and political events has made this verse known to a lot of people. I think we should discuss it, and by we, I mean I think I should offer my critique of it, and those of you who read this can spout back at me your critique of me and how you're sure that I'm gonna burn in hell for my blasphemy and sacrilege. Bring on the grilling.

Christ (which incidentally was not his name, but an misappropriated title meaning messiah, his last name was not Christ) did not love his enemies, despite what mainstream christianity will proclaim to the uninitiated. The bible verse cited above says that god loved the whole world, (presumably he loved the whole world of humanity, since he has unquestioningly ignored the plight of the rainforests, as well as the extinction of many modern species of animals), but that's not exactly what is bornout through the stories passed down by generational christians. Actually, as closer examination of both John 3:16 and other new testament verses is employed, it's easy to see that he died only for those who loved or currently love him, or stated more accurately, came to or will eventually come to love him, all others, including but not limited to those of us who knowingly reject him, as well as those of us who were born into the disawareness caused by debilatative diseases, have been relegated to the sufferings of the eternity of painful burning in a lake made of fire.
Now, the way it seems to me, a real messiah, who was truly part and parcel of a creation-wielding godhead should have died for everyone, and indeed would have included all in his umbrella of salvation if he were really what the bible claims him to be, but even more so he especially should have died on behalf of those whom he knew would reject him. In an existence governed by a god (father) figure that we are meant to think we actually do live in, it is those people who disregard the danger they allow their immortal souls (things which I thoroughly disbelieve in, just for the record) to exist under that should be the first in line, precisely because their very willingness to flaunt themselves in the face of eternal death, could be seen as true ignorance, to such a degree that a responsible "loving" god could not allow it to dominate the survivability of his offspring. Again, if we are to believe that god really did so love the world, and not just those whom he knew would accept him ahead of time, (see omniscience) then those who don't so much as acknowledge him should be, if not first in line, then at least right behind those who glory in him. One could argue that god-loyalists should be rewarded for their loyalty above and before those who show no acceptance of or grovelling over such a "wonderful" gift of salvation. But how could god love everyone, yet allow some of those he loved, one who happened to not love him back, to go to hell anyway, when it was well within his power (see omnipotence) to disallow that scenario if he so chose. The rules being of his own making, and his not being subject to them, else he lose his omnipotence, he could easily have arranged things such that no one, christian or unbeliever, would ever be the wiser to the fact that acceptance of the gift proffered by him, was not a contingency of entrance into the paradise awaiting them in the afterlife. He could have built his elaborate plan in such a way that people could live life as they wanted, striving to be as good a person, individually as they could be, eliminating the threat of eternal torment from the system, and then upon each person's death, he could have simply announced to the unearthly hosts of the already deceased, and the newly decesaed that "SURPRISE, you going to spend the rest of all time in paradise, despite what you might or might not have done during your lifetime, because I so loved the world that I gave my only begotten son, that whosoever lived will have ever-lasting life, because those life-having folks (everyone) are my children and I love you all, no matter what. A god could have said something like that in his "word", he could have set his elaborate system up to actually do what would truly be beneficial to us his children (the creators" of god), but he did not, and you wanta know why he didn't set things up this way? It is because, he doesn't exist, and this system of atonement is an incomplete and primitive system of tribal justice. Justice is a human ideal. It is born of self-awareness and is most likely peculiar to us as a species, but not because we possess some immortal soul, but because we happen to have neurologically evolved to a more advanced state than other mammals have so far. God didn't send his son to die for the whole world, as the bible story recounts, it is clear that the fictional biblical god sent his son to die for those who would accept his gift of atonement, all others could literally and, in his mind rightfully, got to hell. This is pedantic, juvenile and outright transparent in it's display of the human qualities of jealousy and hurt feelings. For god did not so love the world, but we so loved those in it who would think and do what we as a species came to believe was the "right" thing to do, that he did not give his only son so that whoever believed on him would have everlasting life, but we gave ourselves a fantasy that would absolve us of taking responsibility for our own actions so that we could seperate ourselves into classes of distinction between those who are "good" people and those who are "bad" and by doing so we allowed ourselves to construct equally fantastical divisions such as heaven and hell, and we were then able to further elaborate our construction into a system of do's and dont's which would get you into said heavenly or hellish constructs. But we ignored one thing as we revelled in our newly-found cleverness as fictional constructionists, our ability to build, was blinded by our need to build, and so we left cracks in the foundations of our facades in our hurry to erect the shell of our morality. Cracks such as god loving the whole world, but only allowing his sacrifice to cover those in the world who accept it, a glaring inconsistency if ever there were one. If you are a christian, please take a moment and CRITICALLY evaluate the tenets of your faith which you hold so dear. Take a moment and play devil's advocate with yourself and your faith. I know you live in a world of certainty about what you believe, but have you ever even considered the possibility that you might be mistaken, and that despite your desire for the things you believe to be true, there may not be enough concrete unassailable reasons to think they really are? I grew up a christian, in a christian household, as I've mentioned many times on this blog. I have learned the tenets of the christian faith, and I have found them to be childishly ridiculous, How is it that I but not you could have come to this conclusion? Is it because I wanted to disbelieve? Certainly the mainstream, Palin-supporting, southern, 30 something, middle-class, christian mom and/or dad of three god-loving children has always wanted to believe, so is it just a matter of me being the opposite, I want to disbelieve? Or is it that one of us has conciously decided to approach the subject from a purposefully different and counterintuitive angle, precisely for the objectivity such an action could provide, and one of us is too comfortable in the established course of life to disrupt it in any such way? Which sounds more plausible to you? Christians, wake up, and either question what you believe for the sake of the answer, whatever it may be, or waste the span of your life trusting that you haven't f***ed up royally. Either way, as the bumper sticker says, If I'm living my life as if there's no god, I'd better be right, well, I am living my life that way, and I'm more certain there is no god, than any christian I know is certain there is. And you know how I know, because I can't stand some people, especially those I would qualify as my enemies. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

On the election

2008-10-10T10:27:00.007-04:00

I am voting for Barack Obama, when the time comes. My reason: I have concluded that he is the most intelligent person running for the High Office. My evidence: He is in the prime of his life. He is articulate. He received a degree from Harvard. He understands fiscal issues. He believes that he can effect a portion of change, but also acknowledges that he is not the only possible one who could do so. He negatively portrays his opponent only about 1/3 of the time, in his political commercials, according to an NPR report yesterday, which means 2/3 of his commercials are portraying what his qualifications are for the office, and what possible changes he would try and implement if he were elected. He is not a self-proclaimed maverick. He makes decisions on an individual basis, sometimes going with the prevailing thought, and sometimes not doing so. He is a pragmatic idealist.
John McCain is probably a nice man. I don't know him personally, nor do I know Barack Obama personally, whom I'm sure is also probably a nice man. Senator McCain is a lot of what Senator Obama is not, but there are seeming similarities between the two men, at least to me. For one, they both recognize that some restorative course of action is due for the failing financial system of which up until recently, America was at the helm of. Secondly, they both acknowledge the fact that America is not behaving responsibly with regards to fossil fuel consumption. Thirdly, both men want America's place within the collective world's esteem to be restored to it's pre-911 position. There are other general similarities, but three is enough to illustrate my point.
At the heart of the matter, the two candidates want the same basic things.
So how does one person get elected to the Presidency in America? Do they highlight the similarities between themselves and their opponent? yeah...Right! Opponents by definition, try to persuade as many voters to see the dissimilarities between they and their opponent. Especially if the candidate views him/herself as being the underdog of the contest. Obama spends about 33% of his ads attacking McCain. McCain spends almost 100% of his ads attacking Obama. This is the first sign of the disparity in intelligence level of the two men. McCain could behave as the bigger man, but he has chosen not to. If Barack Obama were the nefarious person McCain ads want to show him as, then in this media-driven world, by now, someone unaffiliated eith the McCain campaign, would have uncovered and exploited his (Obama's) deviousness. McCain has no need to bring anything negative about Obama to the attention of the voting population, that's what CNN, MsNBC, and The New York Times are for. Obama recognizes this, which is why he has spent relatively little time highlighting his opponents deficiencies, instead postulating his own assets.

Reason one how Obama is smarter than McCain: Obama doesn't waste time on people who don't matter, because he realizes he is the only one he can control.

I decided to vote for Barack Obama the first momentI heard him speak, during the early days of the democratic Primary, and I have never faltered in my support. This is because, he spoke well. He does not stumble over his words, he does not say "Um" or "Uh" a great deal, and he is deliberate in his pronunciation. What do any of those points matter, when it comes to choosing a president-elect? The president is a figure head, albeit one with some degree of official sway, but a figure head nonetheless. As such, the president is thought of as an image, in the minds of the world's population. If we elected a person with poor speaking skills, such as George W. Bush, the esteem of the country is automatically lessened, and lest we forget, both McCain and Obama want to reraise the level of the world's esteem for us, so please don't fall into the trap of thinking that America can "go it alone" without the rest of the world. If we lived in a different world system, perhaps that would be possible, but we exist in a world of our own making. Our credit-based system which has assimilated a large portion of the world, requires that we Americans either restore our credibility, or allow it to evaporate entirely, and rebuild from scratch either a carbon copy system of credit/loan/investment or a new system based on something else (production/saving). Obama is a much more polished public speaker than McCain is. He is more comfortable speaking in general. McCain strikes as someone who wants to seem like he wants to be there talking to you, but really he desperately wants to go somewhere else. Obsession is a sign of disorder, mostly, and McCain is entirely obsessed with using the phrase " My Friends" when he speaks publicly. Clarity of articulation results from years of practiced thought, introspection, and conclusion-drawing. McCain simply doesn't sound like a thinker, he sounds like a guy who's gonna shoot from the hip, go with his gut, someone who might listen to what those around him are saying, but might for no comprehendable reason go exactly against their recommendations. Bush lasted 8 years doing so, but he has dragged our country into the doldrums as a result.

Reason Number two how Obama is more intelligent than McCain: He is vastly more articulate.

Quickly I'll touch on how the choices we make reveal a great deal about us. Sarah Palin is clearly unqualified for the office for which she has been asked to run. And make no mistake, she was asked to run for the VP office. It was not her intention, six months ago, to eventually BE the republican choice for vice president, she was chosen by the McCain campaign. She has done nothing to illustrate her qualifications for the office of VP, moreso than any of us might have been able to do, which is why she is so fond of the phrase "Joe Six-Pack" in her speeches. She knows that she is a Joe Six-Pack and if she has any chance of getting elected she'll have to convince Joe Six-Pack that Joe-Six-Pack wants another one of him/herself running Joe-Six-Pack's home country. She also knows deep down that Joe Six-Pack does not want Another Joe-Six-Pack in charge of everything,and she has to convince him otherwise, even thought she probably wouldn't havevoted for a joe six-pack for VP in the past, but who knows. Deep down she knows, most americans want someone to do their thinking for them, presumably someone can do so well. Palin has spent the last 5 weeks or so, trying desperately to suppress the revulsion most people have to the idea of their stupid-ass neighbor being the Vice President. I say suppress because that's exactly what she is doing by showing up to rallies in states her own party has abandoned. She is Amwaying her way to the white house, Go Diamond!!! Revving up a crowd with worn out cliches about how Mavericky she and McCain are, is no substitute for real-life intelligence and experience. As a voter, I am supremely uncomfortable with a candidate needing to point out "all" the executive experience their running mate has. I don't want my electoral choice to ever even be in the same conversation with executive experience. There should be no question, no conversation to be had, in such a regard. Executive experience when in regards to someone running for National High office should be a subject unneccessary to bring up, it should be a given that someone running for the office they are running for, should have unquestionable experience. I have lied on applications for jobs, I have worded things in such ways as to play myself up to being more than I really am, but a grocery store clerk is one thing, the vice presidency is so much more. McCain's choice of Palin as his running mate reeks of transparency, at least I hope it does. The way I see it, he chose her for one of only a couple of reasons. Initially I thought he chose her for her charisma, which is something he has little of. She certainly makes up for his lack of it. Second though, he could have actually thought she was the absolute best option out there for his Vice President. Either choice illustrates his intelligence rung. On the one hand, he is stupid for believing that the best course of action is to pick a person who will help him get elected as president, because, insincerity always wreaks it's true destruction on whomever wallows in it. Bush patronized the entire country into believing he was right about everything, and he is currently regarded by approval ratings as one of the worst presidents this country has ever elected, not once but twice. His father succumbed to siren song of insincerity as well, also being regarded as one of the poorest choices for president toward the end of his one and only term in office. McCain may really believe the country will approve of him so much that they will fall for his parlour trick of Palin the charisma magician, and elect the two of them to office. He may really believe the country will continue to approve of him as its elected leader and her as second in command well into his term of office, regardless of whether she stays out of the way or is as hands on as she seems to be implying she will be, and regardless of whether her ineptitude will manifest itself in nationally destructive ways. If he does actually believe these two things, then this country will have as one of it's choices for president, the fourth stooge.
On the other hand, he could believe she really is the most qualified of the potential pool of vice presidential prospects. If this is the case, then I am frightened that so many people in this country actually want to vot e for McCain because of Palin being on the ticket. His intelligence level is clearly betrayed by his choice of running mate.
Obama has chosen someone whose qualifications for the office of Vice President has never even been brought up. That is as it should be. Now, if anyone wants to question Biden's abilities, that's fine, he will be able to answer them, and the questioner will be doing so as a response to the unending line of questioning that Palin has been undergoing since her appointment. But, Biden has a clear pedigree, whilst Palin simply does not. It is this lack of superficial experience that ensures (and rightfully so) that Palin will be unscrupulously examined for the next month. I'm sure Biden will not.. How is this fair? Palin has not spent her life notching her belt of experience year after year, she is trying to manufacture surface-confidence in a very short time.

Reason number three how Obama is more intelligent than McCain: He wisely chose his running mate.

McCain and Palin are incessant about their maverickness. They are both going to shake up washington. Thelast time we elected a president who was an outsider, we elcted George W. Bush in 2000. He "won" over the washington insider Al Gore. He was the Maverick. He shot from the hip, he quickly became a wartime president, and he loved that. He portrayed himself as the Cowboy, downhome, texas good old boy, that was on your side, and was going to come to washington and change the clinton legacy to be more moral and responsible. Now we have the end of another morally questionable two-term presidency whose washington insiderness has been celebrated by everyone even remotely associated with this administration. And we have a candidate who is espousing his outsiderness, his tendency towards bucking the system, going against the flow, Blah, blah, blah. And we have his running mate who is most decidedly outside of washington, and is also touting her independently political wares. Being a maverick backfired on the country in 2000 and 2004, what possible reason could anyone have for thinking it will not do the same this time around. Going against the flow for the sake of going against the flow is not smart. Anyone who thinks it is is simply short-sighted. Senators, representatives, judges, lawyers, cabinet members are all in the places ther are because we as a voting population trusted them to be our elected officials. For us to wantonly abandon our own opinions about these people (as those who think a maverick president is a good thing would do), is to ridicule ourselves to the rest of the world. It is saying "We are the most fair and democratic society in the world. Look to us to model yourselves after. But don't mind our fickleness, when it comes to electing a president, we don't really trust those we elected to be of true help. We would rather have someone who thumbs his nose at our collective choices, and goes his own way."
reason number four how Barack Obama is mor intelligent than McCain: He is not a Maverick.

This blog post has gone on long enough. I hope my point is clear enough: Intelligence is required by the office of the presidency. Let us all strive to elect the person who has the most of it, and then let us all trust that the person we elect will utilize it to the benefit of our failing country.

On being a weakling

2008-10-06T10:21:00.003-04:00

Yes. I am going to offer another, yet another, argument against one the christian's hallmark beliefs. It's funny how there is a never-ending supply of critique-able topics within organized religion. I guess that's a good thing for folks like me. So here goes:
The christian maintains that humans are the special creations of god. Better than the other living beings around us. Maybe not better, per se, but certainly on a higher rung of the liffe-ladder than trees or manatees. You know what makes them think such a thing. The soul we all have is unique to us. No other being, be they flora or fauna has this set of imperial new clothing. Only we blessed humans have this. Now, go ask any christian you know to describe what their soul looks like. Ha, Ha, Ha. I just couldn't resist throwing that one in there. Of course I know what you're thinking they would say "Just because you can't see a soul doesn't mean it doesn't exist, I mean you've never seen an atom, but you still think they exist!" I think such a response, even one like this, which is one I've extrapolated from my own pre-atheistic experiences, would be better phrased in this way " Just because I can't see a soul doesn't mean it doesn't exist, I mean I"ve never seen an atom but I still think they exist." You see, the subtle change in pronouns between the twosentences betrays just how fundamentally different the two are from each other. In the first, the tone is accusatory and offensive (in the sense that the speaker is on the offense, not meaning I as the listener have taken offense at the statement). I, the listener, am being ridiculed for being hypocritical, in that I am perfectly willing to (in the eyes of my accuser) believe in one particular invisible thing (the atom) but simultaneously unwilling to believe in another similarly invisible thing (the soul). Whereas the second phrase, is defensive and slightly apologetic. I the listener am being asked to understand that the speaker really is utterly convinced of their convictions that the soul exists because of the same logic they use to accept that an atom exists. It is not accusatory of me, it is apologetic on the part of the speaker. It seems to me, that the most prudent method for procuring acceptance of your believing something with no evidence is the method which avoids accusation of the proposed acceptor, wherever and whenever possible. Isn't then ironic that I am writing this blog at all, maybe even a bit hypocritical? yeah, I suppose it is. But how else am I to breach a subject such as this, if not within a public medium such as a blog. And since a blog is written within a singularly isolated authorial bubble, with no input being offered by outside sources, until post-posting has occured, it really is an impossibility to not be accusatorial in writing such things, but I defensively digress. Back to the real post.
Christians think we are special because of our souls. If that were the case, if we were really the most important of all god's creations, above all the animals, plants, even the universe at large or small, then how does a christian explain our fragility. I cannot accept at this point, a christian saying something along the lines of " well it's our very fragility, our susceptibility to the world around us, that makes partly so special". It is by the admission of the christian, our possession of a soul which makes us so special. It cannot be both soul-ownership and also physical frailty. It can in the end only be one, just like highlander. How is it that god, would think it smartto make the most special thing he could make and then house it within such a destructible shell. I mean, bacterial infection aside, the downfall of man through the commission of original sin aside, how could god think it a good idea to make it so the most important of all his handiwork, could be crushed by a loose boulder in the hills outside jerusalem? Our bodies are not capable of universally surviving being smashed to smithereens on the floor of a canyon after having fallen from a 2,000 foot clifftop. maybe one in a few people could possibly survive somethinglike that, but not 100% of us could, which meand we were not designed to be able to do such a thing and live to tell about it. Those lucky few who could and maybe have done so, are the exception not the rule. SO again,what is the christian explanation for our bodies being the frail shell they are? I know damn well, if I were the creator of the world and humanity was my crowning achievement, I would make sure that there was no way my magnum opus could be destroyed by some namby-pamby rock, or stick, or mouthful of teeth, or some microscopic parasitic mooch-driven slimeball. If there were a creator god, which of course there is not, then he was an idiot for giving us such crappy, candy-shell, peanut-brittle bodies. it just shows how unimportant we really are. Just because we can think we are more important than all else in existence doesn't mean we are. How do we know that cockroaches don't think, How do you, Mr. Christian know that a cockroach cannot think. Cause it looks to me like the cockroach is better equipped to survive a 2000 foot fall than I am. Maybe, we got it backwards, maybe the cockroach, or the shark or bacteria are the real important ones, cause they've been around a lot longer than we have. And maybe they can think, I don't know that they can't.

The Miracle of Creation?

2008-10-03T10:30:00.001-04:00

Isn't nature beautiful? Complex, varied, awe-inspiring (in the true, non-cliche sense) and some say miraculous. How could we have the world we live in if something didn't make it, purposefully? My mom sees the existence of god in the world around her, as she has told me. Leaving aside the possibility that she includes the magnanimous behaviour of her friends and those "nice strangers" she meets each week at church, I assume she is mainly referring to the grandiosity of the natural world. Her garden growing, wildlife all around her, the vastness of the atlantic ocean, etc... Indeed, the workings of a living body are complex, so complex that most don't bother ever attempting to learn how they operate, beyond a conversational familiarity with the subject. Mountains are enormous. I certainly couldn't make a mountain out of a bunch of rocks and dirt. I couldn't dig out a big bowlful of earth and then fill it with water enough to equal the atlantic. Awesome is a good word to describe these and all the many other monumental natural "wonders" of the world. But I of course have a problem with the tacit assignment of supernatural origin to all of these wonders, that my mom and so many many people in this country so easily give away.
If god were the true creator of all that we see, then his Creation should be comprised of false fronts. The "miracle" of nature, should by definition, defy the laws of the natural world. God should have "made" everything to work exactly as it does, but without the various inner workings that science has slowly revealed over the last 1500 years or so. A human body that lives as ours do, but one with no bones, blood vessels, internal organs etc... would indeed be a miraculous thing. An oak tree that looks just like an oak tree, that does all the oak tree things, but is only a caricature of an oak tree, now that would be something of divine origin. But that is not what we have. Instead we have living bodies that exist according to particular protocols. Reproduction occurs according to duplicatory measures. Respiration occurs in a regulated manner, one that can be observed and described. Infact, the only way the word miracle could be used to describe the workings (or results) of nature is if there were no words other than miracle to use to describe what we see. By having other words to describe more accurately, these repeatedly observable processes, we eliminate "miracle" from the vocabulary. God's "creation" is capable of working all by itself, utilizing no supernatural means, only what it possesses naturally. This in itself is enough to discard any thought of a theistic origin to the world.
If there is no "creation", then what is left to argue for on the side of the existence of god. If "god" didn't create everything, which is one of the hallmarks of god's omnipotence, then what other reasons do we have to believe in such a being. Let's say, everyone agrees the earth was formed from the coagulation of cosmic "gases" comprised of the simplest elements, about 5 billion years ago. Let's just say that we all agree on that, which I know we don't, but let's just pretend likewe do for a moment. If we dismantle the idea that god mysteriously "created" the earth as we know it, through his godly methods, of which we will never be privy to, then in what capacity does god remain ALL-Powerful? If he is not the creator of the universe doesn' this take away some of his power? If some of his power is removed, then doesn't this mean he is not OMNIpotent. If there is something which he did not do, then that means something else did it. I suppose it would depend on what the something is that we are disucussing. Obviously, if we were talking about god having the power to make a pizza, and then we remove all reason to believe that god had ever made a pizza, then of course our conclusion couldn't be that god was incapable of making a pizza, just that he had never done so. But let's be clear, we are not discussing the origins of a tasty italian-american meal. This is the planet's existence here. If god did not create the planet, then we must come up with another explanation for it's existence. If the planet came into being as science has described, without the help of god, then in this grand case, it is prudent to conclude god's incapability in the arena of planet construction. For sure, if god had wanted us to know he existed, without a doubt, it would have been a much easier and more successful road hoed, if he had simply left ample, inscrutable and unassailable evidence that he alone created the earth. Since he did not do such a thing, it is entirely possible to dismantle the facade of god's planetary creationist powers. The way I see it, if the truth really were, god is the all powerful being that christians say he is, then he would have left in our minds, no room for doubt. Since we obviously have this capacity, and exercise it with a divinely morbid regularity, this must lead us to conclude that god's existence is not what the christians have packaged it as. Of course, not everyone is accepting of the scientific method's alternative explanation on the origin of our planet, but the fact remains that this alternative exists. So what if god is just this thing that is bigger than us, that we just know is out there? So what if he is? Who cares? And for what reason do they care if they indeed do? If the christian god is not god, then is the muslim or jewish god God? They really aren't that dissimilar, having originated from the same tradition, so what about the hindu god(s), the norse, native american, various african? None of these, offer explanations which are MORE credible, than that of the scientific explanation, to the origin of the earth. In order to be more credible, they each would have to explain things which science cannot, and do so in a way that is not childishly ignorant. They can not. What about those who say, religion is a means to live your life the best way possible? God is that which can help you to become a better person. The word god, for these people, is a crutch. It adds nothing explanatory to the discussion, but it does allow for retreat into safety, when the discomfort of bad decision-making becomes a bit too much. The idea that there is something directing them towards being good, absolves, ever-how indirectly, a person from having to accept full responsibility for all of their life-long decisions and actions. God is a crutch, that does nothing to illuminate more fully what we do not understand. It is high time we relinquish that which does not help, even if it seems like it does help.

On Guns

2008-09-05T10:22:00.005-04:00

" Guns don't kill people, We Do!" A quote from Kiss Me Kate, the Cole Porter musical. It pretty much sums up the NRA position, all joking aside. I'd like to talk about that for a moment. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. If that is the case, I'd suggest to anyone who truly adheres to such a statement, that they give a fully loaded (including one in the chamber, with the safety off) handgun of any caliber above a .22 to a three year old child, standback and watch as that child explores what the trigger is for. Enjoy especially the moment when they discover the cool dark hole at the end of the gun, the one that's cool and smooth. Smile as the three year old points the gun at them while learning exactly how much pressure they have to exert in order to pull the trigger. And then continue to maintain that the three year old with gun inhand is maliciously intent on doing them severe bodily harm, knowing full well what havoc the device in their hands is capable of inflicting. You get my point here. The three year old is not going to kill anyone, yet with a handgun placed within their reach, and with someone, anyone, near them the potential for death is high, BECAUSE OF THE GUN!
Guns are not pieces of art for arts sake. They were not invented FOR their aesthetic value. They are not implements of creation. They are devices with a single reason as to their existence, ending a life. They weren't made so humanity could poke holes in things really quickly and they sure weren't made so we could stick flowers in their barrels. The point of a gun is to propel a very hard, very small object at such a fast rate, so as to penetrate the living flesh of a possible source of food, or that of a possible predator. Wounding something was not what the gun makers were going for. If you wound a prey, then eating that prey will prove to be difficult. likewise if you only wound a charging predator, you probably willstill be overtaken and summarily dismissed from this life. Death, and providing the means to inflict it as quickly as possible, was on the minds of the gun's creator(s). How can we stand at a safe and/or adequately camoflauged distance and still be able to take down our quarry, be it hostile or otherwise?
Most people today are not out participating in the predator/prey dance. Grocery stores, slaughterhouses and commercial agriculture have done a good deal of work to eliminate the one-on-one time we as a species used to have to invest in the procurement of our food. Now guns are primarily used for "sport" and self-defence. The self-defence part is what remains of the prey instinct we all have. None of us wants to be the victim of violence, be it administered by a grizzly bear, bengal tiger or a fellow human. Since we primarily have no run-ins today with grizzly bears or bengal tigers, we are left with the violent tendencies of ourselves to deal with. The "Right to bear arms" that is so often touted by the NRA folks, is cast in the light of being able to defend ourselves from unwanted violence from our fellow man. There is really no argument to that desire. The real argument is that the "right" invoked by the language is viewed as being higher up the ladder of important rights than it should be. You see, we all have a more fundamental right than that of being able to bear arms, and that is the right to being ALIVE. I am not a member of the NRA. I don't own a gun, and never will. I grew up with a hunter father. He taught me how to handle all mannerof guns safely and responsibly. I have hunted and killed (as a teenager, on hunting trips with my dad). I have shot many types of guns. I will never own a gun. The reason is because, although I recognize the necessary protocol in having and possibly using a gun, what reasonsmight exist for using one, in what circumstances the use of a gun is warranted, etc... I also recognize that the gun's very existence is a violation of serenity and peace. A person will pull the trigger, but a trigger pull will result in death if the trigger is attached to a device that can fire a bullet at a target. It doesn't even have to be an intended target, many people are innocent bystanders who "inadverdently" get shot while putting their groceries in the car during a driveby. GUNS KILL PEOPLE. People might use guns to kill particular people, that is where the people side comes into play, but it is the gun which puts into play the death march.

Which brings me to other objects that can be used to kill, knives, bows and arrows, blunt objects, swords, etc... All of these objects and devices existed before guns did, and they all have been usedby people to kill other people, so doesn't this repudiate my entire argument? Not in the least, and here's how. Knives were invented to kill prey. Have you ever tried to kill something with a knife? You have to either be really close ensuring accuracy but sacrificing concealment and/or personal safety or far enough away, ensuring concealment and/or safety but sacrificing accuracy. Neither way proved to be the optimal method for getting food or avoiding danger. So goes the description of the use of blunt objects as instruments of death. Probably, blunt objects were used before knives (sharply-edged stones) were anyway. Bows and arrows offered more distal accuracy, but only marginally so at first, and it also left a lotto be desired in the lethality department. A puncture that only goes through the outer layer of skin doesn't bring down a prey very efficiently. Swords probably were not used for hunting much, for the same reasons knives led to projectile devices. Which brings us to guns. They offer the best of both worlds: distance = safety and concealment, and accuracy = really fast, really small projectiles. Yay!!! We don't have to worry as much about food now. Except you and I don't live in this pre-civilization world, yet guns still exist and have gotten more deadly and more accurate. For what purpose? We've already spoken of that. None of these other devices are of the depth and scope of a gun's complexity. In order to use any of the devices listed above well, it takes a great amount of skill and diligent practice.
How is it that all of the implements listed above still exist today? How is it that guns have not relegated them all to the museum as laughable growing pains of our youth as a struggling species? It is because they work. None of them was a failure, they all contributed heavily to our survival. It's just that guns made our lives more convenient. It made it easier to kill things, leaving us moretime to waste on other pursuits (worthwhile or not). Now that we live in a world where we don't HAVE to hunt our food, the convenience offered by guns can only be manifested in one arena, that of self-defence. Guns make it possible to kill anything that comes close to us, and quickly, whether or not that thing is a danger to us. We use them to "protect" ourselves from ourselves. We also use them to exert self-dominance. We no longer are subject to the dangers lurking in the forest or the savannah. No longer do we require a method of quick preemptive striking on would-be attackers from species other than ourselves. In the resulting evolutionary gap of species dominance we now live in, we manufacture artificial subjectivity within our own species and we commandeer once-necessary death agents and reassign them prime position in our arsenal of species-wide auto-subjugation. Those who really think guns are our natural, god-given right, are going to ensure they never go away, and thus no amount of gun-control will ever make a dent in the self-inflicted violence humanity indulges in on a minute-by-minute basis. Sarah Palin is a sad reflection of the lack of thought behind the rhetoric of gun enthusiasts. Let's hope that, we don't get another Dick Cheney in the vice President's office, or else we'll have another hunting "accident" in a few years.

On the nature of our existence

2008-08-30T13:50:00.000-04:00

Where do you live? I mean where do you exist? The natural world, right? When we refer to the most fundamental of fundamentals, we inevitably hark back to the "Nature" of things. In one of my other blogs I have pointed out how the word supernatural is a word that has, as it's root, the word nature, super having been added as a prefix to it. Whenever someone makes a comment about another person's behaviour, they always say it's their nature to do such a thing, or it's in their nature. Isn't it interesting that no one ever refers to the supernature of our existence? I mean, think about it, the few times you've heard the phrase " It's our nature, it's human nature, etc..." you never hear anyone say " well, it's our supernature" or " it's just supernature..." Doesn't it seem a bit silly to say such a thing? It certainly sounds silly to my "ear". So, let's try something, if we can. Imagine yourself without a body, better yet imagine no one with a body, even better still, imagine nothing (trees, sharks, bacteria, etc...) with a body. Imagine bodies never having come into existence at all. All we are is floating, noncorporeal thought-producing (in some cases) non-entities. Now, having no physicality, but still being, we are, at this point, the manifestation of the word "spirit" as most of us define it. I realize manifestation may not be the most accurate word to use, but you get my point. How else could we describe ourselves, but being spirits, essentially spiritual, if we were extant but non-corporeal?

In this state it would be difficult to find something to point to as being our generative source, for 1. how does one bring into existence something that is non-existent in every observable way and 2. since in such a state of reality, for all beings there really couldn't be the idea of "someTHING" to even take into account, things being physical, not aphysical. Furthermore, I think it would be hard to even have a way of finding such a generation point (or process) if there were one to find at all, which I don't think there would be. In such a state, the scientific method, which is what we use to describe the physicality of our surroundings now, would be a near impossibility, for there would be no physicality to describe. And remember it's not just us that have no bodies, but everything we know: trees, dogs, corals, everything is without a body. Again in such a state, a method of discovery like the scientific method just wouldn't be possible. There would have to be some other way of learning of ourselves. Perhaps some sort of extrasensory perception or something like it. This state of supernaturality, of being above, out of the realm of, nature, is what everyone is denying when they say " It's human nature". For sure, such statements are speaking exactly to what each of us truly understands over all else, namely the physical of us all, the nature, of us.

I don't know of anyone who thinks that we exist only as non-corporeal beings such as I described above, the operative word being ONLY. We all live as corporeal beings, replete with bodies, subject to the physical, natural forces of the universe. So again, where the rubber meets the road, we all agree that the natural is the medium in which we observe our states of being. That is because we actually do have bodies. We can see them, touch them, sometimes smell them (even if we'd rather not at times :-) ). We don't exclusively live in the misty, free-floating world of ghosts. Because of this we indeed have our method of decription of our physically-existing world, and consequently us; the scientific method. The method is what is valuable. The method is what provides answers and yes, even questions. The answers given sometimes may not be stable enough to survive for very long before being overturned by new information garnered by the same scientific method that gave us the initial "answer", but the method itself is what provides continuously updated information, with which outdated and incomplete understandings are rightfully discarded. The method of discovery, which is based wholly within the natural world is faultless, although it may sometimes give incomplete information. Really though, that is not the fault of the method, but the fault of the interpreters of the method's gathered information. If a conclusion is overturned by new information, it is not because the scientific method was wrong and should be discarded, it is because the scientists were to hasty in halting the information gathering process. They should've kept going with their experiments, but as the saying goes, hindsight is always 20-20.

So, what about all that stuff that the scientific method has nothing say about? ESP, picking up vibes, premonition, our souls, etc... Well, who says the scientific method has nothing to say about them? Infact, the scientific method has a veritable plethora of opinions about these phenomenon, it's just that those who "believe" in things of this sort may not necessarily like what the method says about them. To date there have been no substantial, credible, experiments demonstrating the existence of these abilities/phenomenon outside of the physical, natural world of our brains. What that translates to is, all of these things can be explained as being things that SEEM to be extrasensory, but in reality are only SEEMINGLY so. They may look and feel like they are outside the realm of nature, but that doesn't mean they are, it means that those who feel them to be as such are simply mistaken, no matter how true their opinions may resound to them. The whole world used to truly believe many things that seemed to be the case, but were found out to be not so, after more information gathering was done. The earth is not flat, there are no four corners of the globe as the bible says. Disease is caused by microbes not by demonic infestation. Again, more information was gathered and thus the faulty opinions were overturned. It was not the method that provided the opinion; no that was arrived at by the impatient scientists. The method was only the messenger, and you know what they say about hating the messenger. This leads me to think that those "unexplained" phenomenon that many are utterly convinced are proof of realms other than the natural, are actually premature, not fully-informed ideas, based on less than complete information. How, indeed can we claim to know what some of us claim to know about these phenomenon, when we don't even have a unified theory for explaining the universe yet? I think with more time, science will have good explanations for even these seemingly non-scientific abstractions. Actually science is beginning to formulate such hypotheses at this moment in the field of cognitive neuroscience. We know our brain is composed of the same elements the rest of the universe is, and with that knowledge, neuroscience is starting to be able to thoroughly map the brain's areas of activity. We can say with some degree of certainty that the amygdala is the area of the brain where anxiety and fear trace their origins. The hippocampus is involved with memory. We know where the sensory-motor cortex is. All of these structures are ensconced within mother nature. Although they may seem to be non-physical, because most of us cannot point o our amygdalas, not unlike our inability to be able to point to an air molecule, they are infact not non-physical. Our idea of them is wholly non-physical, but the structures themselves are completely physical. We are born with them. They grow because we eat food and drink water, physical processes both. We live our lives and they continue to grow, all the while operating so complexly that we are easily lured into thinking we are more than what we are made of. We die, and these die with us, rotting along with the rest of our bodies. Our thoughts cease to exist when our bodies cease to exist. The thoughts we generate during our lifetime are generated by the physicality of our brains, so when our brains die, so do our thoughts.

We exist in the natural world, as we all acknowledge, and rightfully so. There is no reason to invoke a supernatural realm at all. Any such course of action is one taken from a place of incomplete knowledge. Now, I know what many people will say at this point, " science doesn't know everything, there are so many things unexplained by science, etc..." which is is some ways true, but is not at all what these people are really wanting to say. They are really saying that SCIENTISTS, don't know everything, that Science is just another type of belief, that no one can see an atom, but we believe in them anyway. These types of statements betray just how little those who speak such inanities really know about what it is they are saying. Firstly, the outline of atoms has been directly observable since 1981. People have seen them, we don't need to simply believe they are there to know they are there. Secondly, for those who would say I personally have never seen an atom's outline, so I am guilty of utter belief in what the scientists say is the case, I will point out, that unlike the fervent religious folks who cannot substantiate their utter belief with any possible physical reconciliation of those beliefs, all I have to do is ask to see the outline of an atom, and it is there for me to see, provided I have the appropriate amount of economic freedom and intellectual clout. The evidence is available to see an atom, sorry to disappoint the fundies out there. And Finally, as I said before, scientists are the interpretors of the information gathered by the scientific method, which is why I say, the real indictment being made is not, nor could be against the scientific method, but against the scientists themselves for having the "gaul" to simply go against the flow of the commonly accepted practice of incuriosity for the sake of laziness. Non-scientists have little to no appreciation for what scientists are discovering everyday, instead we all happily lap up the benefits provided by scientific discovery, while simultaneously ridiculing those who practice it. It is unecessary to point out the irony of this situation, but I've done it anyway.

A letter of inquiry

2008-06-25T10:41:00.001-04:00

" Y "

Supernatural vs Natural, part 2

2008-06-24T10:17:00.005-04:00

This is going to be a short one, because I have already written a post similar to this. This one comes at it from a different direction though, so here goes. It occurred to me this morning in the shower (again) that the term supernatural is self-contradictory, or at least the word contradicts the definition. Consider that the root word of supernatural is natural, to which the prefix super is attached. Super alters the existing condition of natural. Natural becomes supernatural, supernatural stemming originally from simply natural. Now, the commonly accepted understanding of the word supernatural is something that is "above" the natural world, somehow beyond the reaches of the laws of nature, transcendent, if you will. But this definition implies that the supernatural is more advanced than the natural, that the supernatural is what the natural stemmed from. The accepted definition contradicts what the words actually mean. It's funny that so many religions claim this secondary, newly-adopted and morphed definition, the natural world is the intentional product of those inhabitants of the supernatural realm. If this were the case, then the word natural should apply to what we actually refer to today as the supernatural, while the natural world as we call it today should actually be referred to as Subnatural, since it is the natural world which, according to many religious doctrines, is the altered state, and consequently is less-perfect than the supernatural world. Looking at things this way, it is easy to see how sub-standard religions regard their very proponents. It is deceptively masochistic to base a doctrine, or series of doctrines on the idea that those who are to accept and believe the doctrine are somehow less than what they truly are. Religions should celebrate the wonder of humanity, the inherent worthiness of our existing at all. Instead, many relegate us to a station merely one step beyond that of rocks (and some even put us below them, as even the rocks and mountains will sing his praises, while we will not, aptly attests :-)). While this is partly a semantic issue, semantics are how we communicate. Through commonly accepted ideas, not just words, but the very ideas, we became civilized. Through the words, we now allow ourselves to either continue in a civilized manner, or degenerate into our previous more primitive selves, only this time knowingly. Choose your words carefully, make sure you are really saying what you mean, or you might find yourself in the middle of a Brainwashing session, a Jihad or even a cave in the middle of the french countryside making drawings of buffalo with slightly differently colored clays you happen to find while foraging for berries, or perhaps hunting stags. Progress happens from the less sophisticated to the more, the supernatural stemmed from the natural. Unfortunately, imagination has become so complex, it has hijacked our sense of existence, and has made us believe in our own fairytales. Perhaps, this is only a rogue branch on the tree of evolution, and the trunk remains intact. Infact, I'm sure it does, but wouldn't it be nice for humanity to be around for the remainder of the evolutionary road, instead of our getting lost down this dead-end branch, too ignorant, delusional or blindly egotistic to see that we should turn around?

On Creativity, Part 1.

2008-06-23T12:34:00.006-04:00

A few months ago I started writing something, an essay, a blog, something, about creativity. I was holed up in a hotel sick as a dog and by myself for an entire saturday. So I spent half the day watching the discovery channel (Deadliest Catch was running a marathon that day) and the other half thinking about and then writing, preliminarily, this thing about creativity. The previous week had witnessed a conversation between a teacher friend of mine and myself, about creativity, one evening as we drove home from orchestra rehearsal. I don't really remember the initial discussion or it's origins, but the issue that everyone is creative came up at some point. My friends stance was that indeed everyone is creative, they only need outlets with which they can express it; whereas, my position was that perhaps not everyone is creative, but only some are. More than anything else, I was playing the devil's advocate that night, but after dropping my friend off and driving home alone, late at night, for 2 more hours, I found myself thinking about what I had posited. When I got home, I had started to feel my oncoming sickness and additionally, the conversation that had started nearly three hours earlier was still running in my mind with no signs of stopping or even quieting down.
I thought about it for the remainder of the week and on that saturday, I found myself in the hotel with a notepad, a phone and a lot of time. So I started writing. What I came up with represents the ewmbryonic stage of what has become a monstrosity of thought, opinion and conclusions about what we mean when we speak the word creativity, when we opine that something or someone is creative, and what possibly comprises the field of inquiry.
One of the first thoughts I had about creativity that saturday was actually a question, or more precisely, a series of related questions, the first of which was, Is creativity something that exists outside of ourselves and if so, what comprises it, such that we can (presumably) recognize its existence? So I started thinking, and I came up with four components: Imagination, Resources, Motivation and Skill. After coming up with these catagories, I then started asking myself, how much of each catagory was required for creativity to exist as we know it. At this point, I decided to ask around to see what other folks might think. Luckily, I was to be at the last concert of the orchestra cycle the next day, and so I knew I would have at my disposal, at least a few willing survey-takers within the confines of my orchestra colleagues (at least I assumed I would, and it turned out I did). So I started an informal, fairly non-scientific survey. I ended up getting about 60 or 70 participants, mostly orchestra folks, but there were a few laypeople (not involved in the arts) who also participated. The results were interesting in that the opinions varied much more than I would have guessed. Here is what I garnered:

Imagination: roughly 40.6 %
Motivation: roughly 26%

Skill: roughly 19.4%

Resources: roughly 14%

As you can see, imagination was far and away the largest required component, in the opinions of my survey audience, involved in the creative process, while the actual resources were considered to be the least important. After gathering this information, I continued thinking about my catagories,a nd at some point along the way, I altered the catagories in a fundamental way. This happened during the course of gathering the survey results, and so in the interest of congruence, I maintained the original catagories throughout the entire survey process. The original groups (all 4) remained in my mind as catagories, after I morphed the divisions, what I did was simply reorder the existing catagories into a new registration. The new configuration became not 4 catagories but 2: Intention and Resources. You're probably asking yourself, where the heck is Imagination in the new configuration. Seeing as how it garnered the most votes of confidence in the original survey, can I live with eliminating it from the results altogether? This is why I reorderd things. Imagination now fell under the catagory of Resources, along with Skill and the original resources (notice the lowercase r), leaving only Motivation to be accounted for (from the original fantastic four). In the process of reordering the catagories, I realized that motivation was not the ultimate factor I had once thought it was. Motivation revealed itself as a precursory step to Intention. This new step became the fourth catagory, having been based upon the earlier motivation. So, as I now had it, it went:

Resources:
Imagination:
Skill:
Resources (also renamed as materials):

Intention:
motivation:

The numbers I had gathered remained the same, at least I think they did (and do), so thank you to all of those who participated in my thought experiment.
As to the writing of the essay about creativity, it is continuing, but I will admit, I have taken a brief hiatus from it, as I was becoming a bit overwhelmed with the scope. But I will be posting portions of it on this blog as I finish them. In the meantime, those of you (few though you are) who were wondering when that danged fool Dan was going to actually post what he said he was going to, here it is, thanks for your patience.

To be Continued.......

A life philosophy

2008-06-21T10:29:00.006-04:00

I was wondering earlier today (in the shower, which is where I usually come up with these blog topics) about how different folks arrive at their philosophy of life. Some grow up in a religious household (actually,most do, at least in America), and retain those same beliefs when they leave home and start their own life. Some grow up in secular households (a sad minority) and retain their secularity into adulthood. And of course there are those who grow up in one or the other types of home environments, who turn away from their inherited beliefs by looking to the opposite, atheist turns religious, religious turns atheist. I will concede the varying degrees of either system as being considered autonomous, but will also point out that an equal claim can be made that all variations (Pantheist, Deist, Agnostic, etc...) are simply that, variations on one of two themes. Isn't it interesting that there is no neutral ground in which a child, living in America (or anywhere in the world for that matter) can grow up. Either a child is reared as someone without religious beliefs, or they are raised with some form of religious belief. It is not possible for someone to come to either side of the table from a neutral place. Isn't it also interesting that to come to atheism or religiosity from a place of complete neutrality, would be the most valid route, not being polluted by any particular view, towards possession of a belief (whatever it may be). There is either belief or unbelief, there is no middle ground. Again, I willingly concede that agnosticism, buddhism, taosim, skepticism and all the other unmentioned forms could lay claim to the phantom middle ground; but, if you get down to brass tacks, they are only "types" of one or the other. Skepticism is a degree of atheism, so is agnotiscism. Buddhism is a form of religiosity, so are the milieu of native american belief systems. Either you believe in a higher power, or you do not.
But isn't there a different way of looking at this? Knowing there is only belief or unbelief, perhaps unbelief is a more neutral satnce than belief. Atheism means unbelief. Religiosity means belief in something bigger than us, that is not us, but has or has had a measure of control over us. So unbelief in such a thing would, semantically, satisfy the criteria of "in opposition". Are atheism and religiosity diamteric opposites? Maybe not. Maybe atheism is the neutral ground we are looking for. If so, then what would be the opposite of religiosity? Perhaps anti-religiosity? Christianity vs Satanism? No that can't be, because satanism is a form of religion. We are all born as atheists, aren't we? I, for one have never heard tell of, nor witnessed a newborn infant proselytising about the evils of unbelief and/or the wonders of religious belief. As infants, our lack of language capability is an understandable impediment to our being immediate prophets. From this argument, we can see that from birth until some unknown age, which differs for each child born, we are atheists. It is the natural state of birth. We aren't born into sin, we are born into atheism. God is small potatoes compared to the mammary glands of a hungry, newborn's mother (or the other assorted methods of nourishment available to mothers today). How could an infant give a rip about an invisible god, when Mom (or Dad) is around to comfort them, to make them feel safe and happy? Ironically, these attributes are exactly what god is supposed to be the (non-physical) embodiment of. He is a father-figure, there to comfort us when we need it. Funny how, as parents, we provide these services to our children through our physical presence, but god supposedly provides these services to us , while being conspicuously, physically absent. How does he do this? Atheistic belief is what we all begin life with. Religious belief is a choice we all are confronted with in our later lives. For sure, many parents, teachers, or preachers, hijack that choice from us at our most impressionable ages, stealing, what can be a valuable lesson in choice and consequence to our young selves, but regardless, the decision to live a religious life is a voluntary one. Afterall, god "gave" us freewill, with which he expected we would "choose" the life he wanted us to, didn't he? So, assuming the mantle of atheist for a moment, how would the choice made by someone to live unreligiously, be a change from the life already being lived by the chooser? Answer, it would be no different. People come to religion, for many varying reasons, but they always come to it from atheism, whether they realize it or not and regardless of whether they would like it.
What about those, who walk away from religion? Aren't they "coming" to atheism just as those who receive religion do? Perhaps secondarily, but at the beginning of our lives, we all (including those who eventually walk away from religion) approach religion from atheism. Whatever happens subsequent to the initial drawing of religion, is just that, subsequent action on our parts.
Atheism, as it turns out, is more neutral than we initially thought.
It's interesting, that the decision to be religious, is made by those from a religious home, most often prior to the time that they become conscious of themselves, others, and how their actions effect everything and everyone around them. It seems cognitive maturity is not all that important to the process of coming to religion. If left alone, the atheistically-born child, will grow into cognitive maturity, and at that point, having been left alone, they will be able to decide on a path for their spiritual lives, one way or the other. The key point is the decision can be made after cognitive maturity is reached, not before.
Sometimes, people will be allowed to come to their own decision regarding religiosity, after they have reached a level of cognitive maturity, but other factors, sentimentality, familial ties, tradition, etc... will interject a strong influence over the "decision" and the individual may not come to the chosen path with complete intellectual honesty. This decision usually comes back to haunt those who make it, either by instigating severe guilt, shame and regret, or by pulling the individual away from the false path. Those who never choose to be religious, having examined the tenets from a cognitively mature vantage and having purposely rejected those tenets, are perhaps the most fortunate of all of us. For everyone else, we must decide on our own at the correct time, overcoming or succumbing to the intellectually dishonest advice and direction offered by those we have been surrounded with our entire lives, i.e. family and friends. To return to our atheistic roots is, from my view, the best course to take, but only if we supplant religiosity with concern for humanity and our place in the sphere of earth life. If this doesn't take place, and atheism allows us to contribute nothing to the betterment of anyone (even if it is only ourselves), but religion does allow us to contribute positively to human life, then it might seem religion would be an accepatable platform to standupon, but that platform is built on ground which covers more problems than we might know. Religious belief may help some, but it does not help all. It cannot, for there are many differing beliefs, and only one can be right. They can not all be correct, many are contradictory by their very natures. Similarly, atheism may not help everyone, but unlike the world's religions, there is really only one type of unbelief, UNBELIEF. Therefore, since it is the natural state we are all born in, and there are no contradictorial variations of it, atheism offers humanity the best option for bettering our lives while we are here. And remember, we are only here for 100 years, give or take. Is it really worth it to sacrifice those years, for something no one on the earth has any concrete reason to believe in? Wouldn't it be better to live life as we were born to live it? Giving credit only where it is due, and not relegating our worth to something other than ourselves? We are atheists, let us celebrate that and live that life.

Update to Atheist 13 meme again

2008-06-20T00:26:00.002-04:00

I've changed my mind again. It's really Cosmology, Philosophy, Cognitive neurophilosophy, paleontology, astrophysics and elementary particle physics. There, I think that about covers it. Til next time.

update to Atheist 13 meme

2008-06-17T20:21:00.002-04:00

I've changed my mind. I'm more excited about the field of Cognitive neurophilosophy, not cognitive neuroscience, although there is a large amount of bleedover between the two fields.

Atheist 13 meme

2008-06-16T01:10:00.005-04:00

This is a response to another blog I read earlier this evening. Billy the Atheist. He's the questioner, I'm the responder.

Q1. How would you define “atheism”?
"The natural course one would adopt after a period of philosophical social and self-examination, scientific and religious exploration and reflection."
Q2.Was your upbringing religious? If so, what tradition?
"Yes. Christian, protestant, pentecostal (fundamentalist)"
Q3. How would you describe “Intelligent Design”, using only one word?
"oxymoronic"
Q4. What scientific endeavour really excites you?
"cognitive neuroscience"
Q5. If you could change one thing about the “atheist community”, what would it be and why?
"Not sure, perhaps more vocal, but with the normal congeniality."
Q6. If your child came up to you and said “I’m joining the clergy”, what would be your first response?
"How have you arrived at this decision?"
Q7. What’s your favourite theistic argument, and how do you usually refute it?
"First Cause. my response is usually to direct to the writings of Dr. Brian Green and Dr. Stephen Hawking, and what their particular theories have to say about the "necessity" of a first cause ie. "Creator". Secondary to that, I sometimes will take the Sam Harris route of pointing out that even if there were a first cause, who says the particular god they happen to believe in is the causative agent, or that we might be part of an alien simulation, etc..."
Q8. What’s your most “controversial” (as far as general attitudes amongst other atheists goes) viewpoint?
"Not sure, perhaps that spiritualism is wholly a natural phenomenon, contained within our brains,not without?"
Q9. Of the “Four Horsemen” (Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens and Harris) who is your favourite, and why?
" Daniel Dennett. I'd like to study cognitive neuroscience and he is ensconced in that field of expertise, not to mention, his books are really fun to read."
Q10. If you could convince just one theistic person to abandon their beliefs, who would it be?
"I'd rather convinve the droves and droves of apathetic "believers" that what they say they believe is something they don't even understand. I would like have them come to realize how juvenile and naive the tenets of their faith really are; and, I would have them learn as much as possible about my "side" of things in order for them to see just how convincing an atheistic view of life doesn't even need to be, yet still is!"

On being religious

2008-06-11T15:11:00.005-04:00

Religious people like the idea, not the act, of being religious. Saying they believe a particular religious faith's themes and proclamations is what really matters to them, when you get down to the real stuff. The word religion is fraught with connotations of "rightness", "how we should behave and think" and "morality". These connotations also exist outside of religion, but the religious don't make the connection. To say " I am a christian" is to be proud. But of what? I distinctly remember at a Christopher Hitchens debate with his brother Peter, Christopher calling out anyone in the audience to stand up and willingly admit they are a sheep for their christian faith, and sure enough, one middle-aged woman stood up defiantly, and with a fervency usually reserved for AA meetings, spoke up for her sheepishness. She was absolutely proud to say she was a sheep for christ, blind to anything that might run counter to the teachings of her faith (whatever it may be). It is this pride that the religious are happily infected with, and it is this pride that will ensure a divided world for as long as we are here. Can you imagine a moderate muslim being happily accepting of a belief that the prophet muhammud was a sufferer of temporal lobe epilepsy, and that is why he recorded the fantastic imagery he did within the koran and the hadith? It is an issue of pride in what we've chosen to believe, but it is also an issue of selfish pride, in that what we've chosen to follow cannot be wrong, else we might look the fool. Which brings us back to the appearance of religiosity. Those who truly believe in the tenets of religions, are those who have thought about those tenets at great length, and have had to come to some level of acceptance regarding the discrepancies, unpleasantries and negative connotations the examined religions harbor. There is no existent religion that answers all questions, without discrepancy and mystery. This being the case, one of them might be right, all of them might be right, some of them might be right, or all of them might be wrong, the claim each of them hold on Truth, is equally valid to their counterparts. This is why it is much easier for the general populus to skate the surfaces of religion, by posturing themselves about as devout and pious. Because, to do otherwise would require an immense amount of problem-solving, data-padding, and outright contradiction, and they know this. They would rather say they are religious, because on the surface that type of proclamation sounds good. However, in life, the behaviours espoused by religions the world over are the same behaviours espoused by those who hold to no religion whatsoever, humanist ones. We have no way of evaluating the effectiveness of religious adherence on the after-living. We can only judge ourselves, our living selves. So it is human behaviour which governs the validity of religious dogmas. I would urge all religious folks, to take a good look at your average, everyday atheist and find something they do that you are incapable of doing that is also morally reprehensible. But I am not the author of such an idea, that title goes to Christopher Hitchens. But a good challenge it is. To the religious folks out there, I wish you good luck.

On the goodness of change

2008-06-09T19:17:00.006-04:00

Do you think change is good? I mean do you really think change in and of itself is qualifiably "good"? I get incenced whenever I hear the phrase change is good from someone who obviously has not thought it out as a concept, and is only saying it because they heard someone else say it and watched as everyone around that person applauded the veracity and foresight of such a statement. I guess it's not really the word that incenses me, bu the ignorance with which it is utilized in everyday conversation. So, is change good? Certainly the results brought about by the process of changing can sometimes be positive. But just as often, the results can be negative. Surely, we shouldn't annoint the idea with a crown of impunity, regardless of the experiential results it produces. Shouldn't we examine whether each instance of it's employment ends with a positively progressive outcome or not, before we categorize the whole as a worthwhile endeavor? Change is going to happen, regardless of whether we want it to or not, at least naturally. But to artificially force the process, where it may not necessarily be required yet, is tantamount to forcefeeding a child a food he/she is repulsed by. The immediate result may seem to be what you want, but the eventuality will be less than what you would have intended, sometimes by an order of magnitude.
As I said, change happens, but that is not all that happens. Successful change is always followed by a period of stasis where the new processes introduced by the change are allowed to set in. This setting in is needed for any environment to flourish, even for a brief while. Without the periodicity of change interspersed with stasis, any environment will decay prematurely. We have all experienced this phenomenon. Stress effects every person that you can think of, including yourself, and it is the times of relief from the stress that we relish and look forward to. Indeed, even those who might say they actually relish the stressful times are not being honest, in that, without the periods of downtime, they would be unable to recognize stress as being periodic, stress would be all that they knew. In such a case, we would be living with the idea that life is what it is, offering no alternative but to live worrisome, fearful, or whatever we would call it on this side.
So, we need staticity for comparison with times of stressful change, but also for the relief and reprieval it offers. Change is a form of stress, to varying degrees, depending on the individual. If we lived in a world without staticity alternating with times of change, we would no doubt have been eaten into extinction long ago. We've evolved to evade the stressful. Our houses, our jobs, our restaurants, our public toilets are all illustrations of our desire to escape the stress of uncivilized life. However, despite our most clever ideas to leave the stressful life behind us, we are haunted by it in the very civilization we have been so careful to construct. Look at the idea of multi-tasking. It is not good enough for us to learn to do something expertly and to then do it, no, we must tack on unnecessary, extra duties that we most likely are not as competent in performing, in order to get more stuff done during the work day. If this is not the definition of stress, I'm an oak tree in the middle of Mordor! Multi-tasking was not always the workplace messiah it is viewed as being now. Something changed in our recent past, regarding the view we took of our capacities for time-management, and that change is now being shown to have been a poor direction for us to have chosen to take. Studies have shown that multi-taskers get less done on the whole than those who concentrate on individual tasks. Our brains aren't interested in doing more than one thing at a time. For sure there are people who are better at multi-tasking than others, but without a doubt, there is not a single person on the face of the planet who is capable of the level of efficiency proponents of multi-tasking believe exists for each of us. This is just an individual example of a particular change that just happened to not work out for the best, but obviously there are oppositional examples as well, things that we adopted as new societal behaviors, which resulted in a better world (the change in acceptance of slavery, for instance). But if you look at the idea of multi-tasking for a second, it orbits within the same system as the phrase " change is good". In fact, multi-tasking-friendly bosses are usually the ones who are spouting that change is good. And so, I think the multi-task example is pertinent on a deeper level than just as an example of something that didn't work as an idea for change.
So, I think change can be good, and I think it can be bad, at least it's results can be evaluated that way. I think our unholy fascination with the idea is more contributory to bad results of change than any of us ever admit. So at best, change can be good, but only because it is the existent alternative to the equally existent stasis. Let's call a spade a spade here folks, and admit that just because people you may or may not know, say one particular thing about a particular topic, like change, does not for one minute mean you should just accept it at face value. They might be right, but they might also be wrong. You owe it to yourself and to the world around you to think your own thoughts through to completion regarding these types of public decrees.

On the psychology of religion

2008-06-08T09:58:00.012-04:00

I have a few friends who are "progressive" christians. They have garnered and retain certain faith-centric ideas that, not surprisingly, resound quite strongly with me, a humanist, secularist, atheist, etc... This resonation does not occur because of some secretly harbored religious, soft-heartedness that I have deep down inside, or anything of that sort; instead, it exists because, more and more, the things I hear "progressive" christians say, regarding Christ's message to humanity, are primarily humanist and therefore unintentionally secular. There are many "New-apologetics" out there that are purporting to counter the " New Atheists" who are behaving quite vocally. Bishop Spong, Timothy Keller, and locally here in Grand Rapids, MI, pastor Rob Bell are just a few who are trying on some new clothing for the sake of the faith. No doubt, these religious leaders are attempting to recast the message of christianity in a light that will gather more to the fold, but I'd like to believe their intentions are more magnanimous than that, and that they really are trying to positively effect mankind's existence. If this is a part of their aim, I will not complain, because I am a person, who has to live next to other people; and, if these religious leaders can help these other people to feel better about themselves and thus act better towards the people they live next to, that will make my life better, and I have no problem with that.
Helping other people learn to live better lives, to feel better about themselves and to be more content with the lives they are leading, sounds an awful lot like what psychologists do. Psychologists help people to see what problems they, themselves are running into in the everyday life. They uncover what we can't necessarily see. Objectivity is where they stand, and it is from where they look at the lives we lead. It is this objectivity which enables them to see what we usually do not, and we trust this objectivity (but sometimes we don't). Doesn't this sound exactly like what a pastor does? They too stand outside the arena and look into our lives. Old school pastors and fundamentalist teachers do this as well, it's not just the new apologetics. A difference between old school and new school, is that with the fundamentalist side of things, the standard which pastors would compare our lives to is that derived from an outdated, contradictory and sometimes downright silly book. Nowadays, the new guys no longer just use the same book to compare our lives to; they also use the "standard" of morality, which translates to the standard of humanity. It is what psychologists try to steer their patients towards. Tapping into that which will allow people to think of themselves in the best, most beneficial light possible, is something that both psychologists and the new apologetics do. So, my question is....
How is it that the new apologetics think the god side is necessary at all? Maybe god exists, maybe he doesn't (I certainly don't think he does, for all of the many reasons I've listed on previous posts), but what I am certain of is, religion has little to do with a god and it has everything to do mankind. Man is the target audience. All of the rules and stipulations are in place because of us and the recognition of our inability to behave universally welland live a good life, sociologically speaking, for that is really the whole point. If there were no other people, save me, there would be no need for a set of rules or stipulations on how to behave or live my life. I could do exactly what I wanted, when I wanted, and for whatever reasons that I thought proper. Of course, I'd have to pepper my decisions with behavioral choices that would result in my survival, else my existence, while being uproariously enjoyable for the most part, would very quickly decay into discomfort, despair and death. Morality would play no part. It would not exist if it were a one-man show. Morality is societal and the fact that there are more people here than just us, clearly illustrates this.
Thus the humanist side of religion is the side which actually matters, whereas, the supernatural side is silly hocus-pocus, boogeyman, campfire ghost stories, which only superficially resonate with those who say they "really" believe. I would ask those people to imagine themselves as adam, but with the knowledge that we have today about the scientific nature of the world. Could they still imagine praying or sacrificing animals to a god for the benefits of rain, a good harvest, or a long life? If they said yes, then I think its a safe bet that most of us would accuse them of simply lying to themselves and us, and that they should think a bit more about the question, maybe from a different point of view.
Religion is a form of psychology, maybe the oldest one we have, and maybe the strongest, but it is not the religiosity that makes it so powerful, it is the psychology that makes it so. People flock to churches every week, be they progressive or fundamentalist, christian or muslim, in order to help themselves, not physically but psychologically. It is a free form of group counseling. And no doubt, it helps countless people, in the short-term. But as is testified by the return each week, for the same life lessons by the same folks, the weekly teachings never sink very deeply into the psyche. You get what you pay for, in other words. If you want free psychological counseling, you're going to get the caliber of advice that would not be worth charging for.
But there are other problems. Unfortunately, there are those church-going folks who have morphed the process into the goal itself. The teachings have become the prize, and the benefits of the process are no longer beneficial. Living a better life, has been pushed into the background in lue of doing what is necessary to be able to live a pristine and utopian life after death. The letter of the law becomes the goal itself. It is at this point when religion loses its value. When the supernatural overtakes the natural and obliterates it, we witness jihad, or the sincere desire to obliterate an entire country only because it is of a different official faith than yours (Iran's president saying on many occasions that Israel should be destroyed).
While the new apologetics are surely trying to swing the pendulum back to the center a bit, I would say, we should be trying to solidify the pendulum, stop it's swinging altogether, pointing it towards a better humanity. We should be looking to ourselves for the answers to how to live the best possible life. We can do this by first admitting that that is what religion really exists for. It is a responseto the fact that we are conscious, social beings, who recognize detrimental and beneficial behaviours for what they are. Secondarily, we should celebrate the humanity we all possess by not cow-towing to the silliness of a belief in something that has no discernible presence, and thus effect on us. Finally we should abandon the thoughts that lead us to think we are better that those around us for whatever reason, and recognize that no matter what we say to our friends or ourselves, the life we are living now will end after a span of approximately 100 years (give or take) and what we do with that time is the only thing that will ever matter, cause after we're gone, we're gone!

Objectivity and the assumption of God's existence

2008-06-04T22:12:00.003-04:00

I know the question of God's existence is one that has been argued from both sides for an extremely long portion of our special existence; and I also know that anyone reading this will probably be able to argue for either side of what I present. I am not of the delusion that what I say will change anyone's mind about anything; but, I think I can at least spin the argument a way that perhaps you might not have thought of, yet. But maybe not, we'll see.

We observe things everyday, all day long, all year long, all our life. We never stop, except while sleeping. We do so without thinking about it and we do so in order to assemble an understanding of where we are in the world, how long we might be around, and what we can do or not do to live the longest, healthiest life possible. We observe with our five senses. For most of us, one or another of these five will take a more prominent role than the others in everyday life, but regardless of the comparative ratios of their use, it is only through these input portals that we can observe the world around us and assemble the info we need for life. We have no ability to observe without them. As observers, we stand outside of our observations. If we look at a sunrise over the horizon, we receive the photons of radiant energy from the sun through our eyes. We convert the photons into electrical signals, which then travel into our brains and undergo a process of interpretation wherein we "see" the sunrise. The observation of the sunrise we make, requires our outward vantage. We must observe the sunrise from an objective vantage, not that we purposefully do anything to the contrary. Obviously, we do not subjectively try and alter what we see coming over the horizon, we are just watching the sunrise. If we were to put on sunglasses, then we would be altering our observation subjectively, but our vantage would still be one of objectivity. We would still be removed from the event, only participating in it vicariously through our eyes. I picked a sunrise arbitrarily. The example could have been anything. Observation is an objective enterprise precisely because of the inherent placement of the observer in relation to the observed. If we shine a light on a particle to try and measure it's position, then we alter it's velocity (all particles are in motion). If we measure it's velocity accurately, then we sacrifice our knowledge of it's accurate position. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle exists and would seem counter-intuitive to the idea of objectivity but for the idea that the position of the observer of the particle is what is in question. For each of the proposed measurements (velocity and position), the observer standing away from the particle can garner an accurate and objective reading of one of them at any given moment, thus the objectivity of the observer is unaffected by the heisenberg uncertainty principle, in this case. Again, observation is inherently objective.
Now, back to how we gather our objective information. Remember, we do so through our five physical senses. There is no other path to our gathering data. Intuitive thought, might be popping into your mind right about now, but isn't intuitive thought simply the amalgamation of previously gathered information, stored in our memory and reassembled into previously not thought-of concepts? Intuition is based on our life of observations. So, with observation comes knowledge, or at least information. And objectivity is part and parcel of how we observe things.
So, who here has ever observed god? Most everyone believes they know there is a god, be he/she whatever particular form. You know. You have knowledge. Knowledge comes from observation, not feelings, intuition or whatever you'd like to label it. Observation is objective by it's very nature. So, god, if he were to exist, which he does not, would be required to be objectively observable, which he is not. No one has ever, demonstrably, observed god in action. the best that anyone can say, is they see his handiwork in the makeup of the human condition, or the physical at-large world. But, for sure, an objective observation of god has never been made, nor will it ever be made, because of the very incompatability between the supernatural god and the natural phenomenon of observation. By the definition, we cannot observe something which is supernatural, because it is outside of the natural world. Our senses, being ensconced in the natural world, will never be able to observe something from a supernatural origin. This being the case, and knowing that the only possible way to "know" something is to have observed it at some time (or its foundational components), we can rest assured that if god were to actually exist we would never know it, thus the whole point is a moot one. After all, what good is a god who can have no effect on us and indeed cannot even be known by us. Doesn't make him very god like, if he can't get past his own rules. Stop worshipping something which is wholly pointless, and instead start living the best life possible. Be the good person, religion says you should be, but do so without the shackles of eternal oppression if you don't.

On Living Life

2008-05-17T09:37:00.004-04:00

I used to be a Christian. I grew up in the protestant pentecostal tradition. At times my family would attend church three times a week, regularly, with an occasional "revival" attendance thrown in for good measure. By the time I got to high school, I identified myself with christianity, which is no doubt what my family was openly striving for. I'm ok with that. I don't harbor any ill-will toward my parents for their choices in how they raised me. I know they were doing what they truly thought, and still think, was the right thing by me. Indeed, the intentions of my wife and I are to do the same, raise our son in the best manner we think. It just happens, that we think oppositely of my parents. From a familial standpoint, that's fine. Maybe not from a sociological vantagepoint, though, but whatever.
Obviously (if you're reading this blog), I no longer identify myself with the christian faith, and thankfully so. I walked away from what never truly resonated in my mind, even as a high-schooler (or maybe its especially as a high-schooler). Having been on both sides, I enjoy looking back and poking holes in what used to seem like a forbidden-to-touch wall. I understand the many different approaches to christianity, the different protestant denominations may employ, some of which are less formidable than those of my childhood, but that recognition in no way excuses the capability of such a faith from the wayward behavior of a few rogue denominations. The whole is responsible. Otherwise, the different denominations cannot be gathered under the same umbrella term of christianity. I'm getting away from my topic, so let me return to task.
I'd like to discuss one particular idea of christianity that has always bothered me, even when I was a kid. Christ lived a life that christians readily model their own after. I can't say how many times I've heard over the years, from christian friends, that they are trying to live like christ. Honestly, most of you are familiar with this idea, aren't you? It really is one of the hallmarks of Christianity. Now aside from the obvious fact that most people are either incapable of doing so, or are truly (secretly) uninterested in doing so, there is something else that really bothers me about the idea of living the life of somebody else, even if they were the greatest person ever to live. How do we know someone else may not possibly be an even better person than Jesus? I'll repeat that. How can somebody really believe, to the point of action on their own part, that Jesus was the best that could possibly be, and that no one else will ever be as good of a person? Jesus was the son of god! That's how a christian can believe such a thing.
But aren't we all god's children, according to the bible? What makes Jesus so special?
He was/is part of the triumverate godhead, one of three. That's how Jesus is more special than we are.
So the son of god was not really that, he was really just god. But didn't the bible say we became as god, knowing good from evil because of original sin (see earlier post On original sin)? And weren't we made in the image of god?
My point here is, I think it is counterproductive to try and live the life of someone else, anyone else!!!!
To do such a thing, we have to suppress the individuality which makes us who we are. In the attempt to contort our consciousness into a religious mold, we must sacrifice our true selves, for better or worse. For sure, there are some, for whom a change of landscape is a good thing. The serial rapist who finds god and repents of his ways, is doing himself and society a favor in looking to an outside source for help. I don't think most would argue that point, but I also think most would agree that if that is all the guy does for his rehabilitation, he is only superficially dressing the wound, while leaving the "infection" stolidly in place, perhaps to resurface later in life. Suppression is never the best medicine, even if the suppressed is a horrid behaviour. For the rest of us non-serial-rapists, I think we do ourselves a great disservice by happily jumping into the sludge of religious subjection. No matter what any religion says, there is no concrete reason to believe we live beyond death. We might, but we might not. Its sad that so many people in this world give up living a happy and worthwhile life because they think the one coming up after they die will be better. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers have a fantastic song that I have sort of adopted recently as a soundtrack to my Atheistic life, called "Two Gunslingers". If you get a chance, listen to it, even if you don't like Tom Petty's unique voice. Perhaps, an afterlife will afford many an opportunity for a better life than their current one, but even if that turns out to be the case, what validity is there in voluntarily sacrificing any available happiness they might find in this life? I am not saying jesus lived a life of torture and destitution, the bible does enough of that. What I am saying is if you are going to try and live a good life, one that has a meaningful impact on the people and world around you, shouldn't you look for a more contemporary example to model yourself after, perhaps your own valuable mind? Jesus, had no reason to discuss Carbon Footprints, because the industrial revolution was still 1750 years away. He had no reason to suspect that disease was not caused by demonic possession, because the germ theory of disease was well in the future. I know he said many positive things regarding how to live a meaningful life, but he also said some horrible things, which instilled fear in the minds and imaginations of those who heard or read what he said. But that is not the point. The point is your own life is your own life. You might be a better person than Jesus, and there's no reason to think otherwise. You have the opportunity right now to live life, happily, miserably or somewhere in between. You can choose. Jesus asked that we live one of the last two choices right now, so that we could have the first choice after we die. That sounds like the definition of an empty promise. There was no way jesus could verify his claims, but he asked anyway. I'm sorry, but I don't see the virtue in giving up a opportunity in hand just to have a later opportunity of the same nature given back to us. Jesus may have been a good person, but he was not you, and his choices or decrees might've been ok for him back then, but why in the world would we think those proclamations are more valid than what each of us can think of ourselves right now, especially in the light of all the knowledge about the world we have, that he did not? Your life is worth living, because you are you. Don't waste your chance, you may not get another one.

On Natural Disasters

2008-05-15T00:03:00.008-04:00

A christian friend of mine recently made the comment to me that the world experiences natural disasters because of sin and our propensity towards it. No doubt many of you remember Pat Robertson's notorious comment about the decadence of New Orleans being the magnet for Hurricane Katrina. And I'm sure many fundamental Christians out there right now are spouting about how the wayward Chinese and Burmese (Myanmarese?) are having their chickens come home to roost, in a manner of speaking. Now, I will concede that no one in the world behaves the way they should 100 percent of the time, and many troublemakers experience bad things because of what they did, but I will in no way concede that the recent earth matters, natural disasters, whatever you'd like to call them, are in any way connected to the chosen behaviors of one young species of life living on her surface. I'd just as soon take up astrology, which is interestingly not all that different from what these "righteous" folks are vomiting up. How is it to say the planets have a direct effect on our lives, depending on how they are arranged in orbit is significantly different from our behaviors having an effect on the internal workings of an entire planet?

Enough of the complaining nature, let's look at the semantic side of the claim of my friend.

Are natural disasters the result of sin? What I mean by sin is "original sin", disobedience to the monotheistic god of the bible and the quran. Firstly, Natural disasters are only "disasters" in the anthropomorphical sense. Ther are only disasters to humans. One cannot say that animals (non-human) or plants view earthquakes as disasters, only that they view such things as being dangerous and to be avoided. It is only we that can recognize and label hurricanes and tornados as being disastrous. What these things really are are natural events or occurences. They are completely within nature's realm and are wholly governed by the laws of physics.

Now, what I'd like to do is take the christian's side of it for a second, just to illustrate the fallacy of such a statement as sin is theroot of natural disasters, so please bear with me.

Assuming,as the christian does, that god created everything in the world, I think it is safe to assume that this creation act included not only the things to be governed by the laws of physics but also the laws themselves. That being the assumptive case, natural disasters had the potential to occur prior to Adam's commission of original sin. There could have been an earthquake before the apple was eaten (or the decision to disobey was made), precisely because, presumable god set up the laws of physics concurrent with his creation of the physical world, before the act of sin was committed.
An intereseting side note from the atheist point of view: The 1st natural disaster to be recorded in the bible was the great flood of Noah, who lived about 1500 years after Adam's birth (give or take). How did it end up that the most devasting and apparent result of sin took so long to occur after the fact? Anyway, back to playing the devil's (god's) advocate. According to the timeline, natural disasters (events) or at least their possibility, existed prior to their supposed cause. Again, the effect preceded the cause!!! Strike one for the Christian's argument.
Well, what if the anthropomorphical definition of natural "disaster" is what is actually in question, rather than the timeline of events? What if "original sin" did not result in the initiation of natural disasters on the earth, but only ushered in our personal capability to recognize the disastrous effects events such as Tsunamis, cyclones, and volcanic eruptions have on the world? In other words, is sin what gave us our humanity? Do we recognize the destruction and it's long-term effects on us because we sinned? If so, then being human is worthless. We should never have become human. I find this potential idea repulsive, and I would hope everyone feels the same, because it calls into question everything we as sentient beings hold as important. Where is the "sanctity of life" if this is the case? Furthermore, if we were made in the image of god, then this must mean that the creator himself is subject to the idea of sin, since we, as his proverbial clones, are subject to it.
Does our recognition of the devastation caused by natural disasters somehow change or increase the amount of damage done? Do we cause more undue catastrophe to the other inhabitants of this earth, by simply knowing what the world will be faced with after the storms subside? Of course not. But we do cause ourselves to be stressed over the situations, because we are capable of worrying. No other animal or plant has this ability. Trees do not ponder what will happen to them if they don't save enough to retire at 65. Lions are unconcerned with whether the roof of the house (they obviously don't live in) is in need of repair soon. We are alone in our recognition of cause and effect to such a degree. The profound effects on survival of all living things, Plants and animals is brought to light by the natural disasters, but only to us. This being the case, the physical damage caused by such events cannot be relegated to having been designed only for our benefit (in the sense that punishment for sin is a benefit :-) ). The effects are for all living things, not just us. Our recognition of this might be the result of our sin, but it is a one-way street. Our sin effects everything, even those which cannot recognize the benefit or detriment to them. Strike two for the Christian's argument.
I will now return to my atheistic point of view and say, which is more plausible: that a supreme creator built a world that would periodically need to be decompressed through planet-wide destruction and renewal, butwould simlutaneously hold-back this built-in necesary cycle for the benefit of one species of life on the planet, one which happens to have the capability of recognizing that these types of events can have seriously bad consequences for them and their survival, at least until the species decided to live their own life and make their own choices, at which point, the supreme being abandoned the creatures he so "loved" just a moment before, cosmologically speaking, to the whims of the very world that he placed these"precious in his sight" beings whom he purposely made to be small versions of himself, OR, are natural disasters the result of tectonic shifts in the earth's crust, the result of unpredictable warm air patterns over oceans, the result of seismic perturbances deep below the surface of the oceans causing huge upwellings of the sea, etc... you get the picture. Occam's razor is sharp folks, use it. Strike three for the Christian's argument. There is no coherent argument for sin being the causative agent of natural disasters, and to voluntarily deny, ignore, passover the scientifically verifiable explanations for these events is just childish, wishful thinking. In the meantime, attitudes such as those expressed by my christian friend are easy methods to use if you want to dismiss in your own mind, the real effects on the human populace these catastrophes have. If you would like to feel bad for those poor folks over there, then by all means, think that our own sinful nature brought this on. If you'd like to see the world spared of these things, then by all means keep praying for the rapture. If you are of the mind that somehow, these events will bring the world closer to god and his purpose for all of us, then by all means keep doing nothing. If however you're like me, and you think the earth is her own, and we have but a little effect on her, then can see that what we do ordon't do will only have an effect on us. Since I'd like to live as long as possible, and I'd like to see my son do the same, I think it is high time we put aside the childish things, as christians love to quote. Stop ascribing false ownership of the world to a god that doesn't exist. Accept that the world is magnitudinally more marvelous than any sentient being could have ever come up with. Nature alone is capable of what we see. It is nature in all her glory, not god in his. And in the meantime, keep up the good work scientists. We are in your debt, not Christ's.

update

2008-05-12T10:41:00.004-04:00

For those of you who keep checking back to see where the creativity essay containing the survey results is, I am working on it as often as I can. it will be up as soon as is possible. Thanks for your patience.

On Verifiability and Universality

2008-04-29T11:50:00.003-04:00

If Christianity is true, then it should be verifiable outside of itself. the bible should be unnecesary in order to prove the truth of Christianity. If any religion is TRUE, then it has to possess a quality of universal believability. Religion has to be universal, or it cannot be true, because truth is universal. I speak of Truth in the grandiose scheme, not in the everyday scheme. Truth has to be universal, or else it would not be truth, only opinion. If religion is the truth, then it has to universally true, but no religion is universal. Since religion is designed for and by humans alone (all other animals and plants having no need for it) it is up to us to detemine the criteria for religion's truth. Since no one religion can claim universal belief across the board, it stands to reason we have not yet found a religion that is the truth, except for morality. Morality, is universally agreed upon, by those capable of understanding morality. No one believes murder to be the right thing to do (psychopaths are unable to understand that murder is wrong, because of brain abnormalities). Lying is universally agreed to be wrong, even by those who do it constantly to gain the upper hand. Morality is the one area that all of humanity agrees on, and it is the church of humanism that preaches morality as it's "dogma" if you will. If there is a qualifying religion in regards to truth, it would have to be secularism, humanism, non-supernaturalism, whatever you'd like to call it.
There are those who would say their religion is not universal yet, but will soon be, we just haven't waited long enough. Certainly the abrahamic religions all count on this. I would say this: If one particular religion is true and others are false, then it is a colossal waste of time (if you are the deity) to allow the other religions to persist. Why not be universal in your coverage. The very fact that there are so many other religions points all too clearly to each of them being manmade, otherwise there would never have been any religions but one. A monotheistic god would be unsatisfied with partial acceptance of his decrees, commandments, and indeed his very existence. The idea that a monotheistic god wants only those adherents who come to him voluntarily is silly, in that any religion (TRUE) that can only attract a certain portion of the population cannot in good consciousness claim itself to be the one True religion. Since it is the Truth, shouldn't it be unabashedly clear to anyone who ever comes into contact with it, that it is the way to follow? There should never be any question in the minds of us, if there is one true religion. There should be no such things as atheists. We should not be able to turn away from the trueist religion. But of course we can and do. Our very presence is testament to the inadequacies of religion. The very presence of so many contradictory religions is testament to the inadequacies of them all. The only universal thought process we have is secularism. Nature is going nowhere, and there is no other nature to compete with the one we have. There is no avenue of deniability about nature's truth or existence. It is here for all to see and enjoy. If we can't universally agree upon something, it cannot be the truth. Science searches for the grand unifying theory of the four forces of nature, Gravity, electro-magnetism, The Strong Nuclear Force and the Weak Nuclear force. Science does not have a grand unifying theory yet and so it (science in general) does not purport to have found that Einstein's special theory or general theory of relativity is the theory that explains it all. Neither does science say that Quantum theory explains everything. Neither do the two theories agree with each other. Universality of agreement and acceptance is required if something is to claim itself as the Truth. No religion can claim itself to be the Truth, precisely because no religion is universal in its acceptance or agreement. We do not need more watering down of the religions that exist, we need a completely new religion. A religion that is accepted everywhere by everyone. We already have this religion, it is called Life. So go live it.

If it's too good to be true, then it probably is

2008-04-28T22:58:00.001-04:00

Every single person that has ever lived or ever will live on the earth is fatally guilty of trespassing the mandates of the eternal god of christianity. We will all die and spend eternity in unending agony for simply being born into the original sin perpetrated by Adam and Eve. There is no repose from this fate; either for those who have lived, are living now or will live at some time in the future; no possibility of escaping the fires of hell. Except for the life of a man named Jesus. Approximately 2000 years ago, this man magically appeared on the earth, claiming no biological father, but only a biological mother and none other than god almighty himself as his father. He lived a life as we all do and died when he was in his 30's (I'll be no more specific as I am unaware of any definitive length of this man's life ever having been recorded), but his death was prearranged, by the man upstairs who oddly enough was also him, to satisfy himself? that all humanity should be given an opportunity to evade the damnation planned for them. By dying, he would represent the death of all of humanity, taking on the original sin that the species procured at birth and satisfying the edict of death as payment for sin, or so we are told by the christian church. Seeing as he was actually god, he only stayed dead for three days, at which point he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and came back to life, proverbally sealing the deal. The devil was satisfied (or was he), god was satisfied (how obtusely grotesque is that), and of course, all of humanity was satisfied, right?
Wrong. All of humanity was not satisfied, indeed hardly any of humanity even knew of the sacrifice made on their behalf. even to this day there are plenty of people who could give a rip about jesus and his ultimate sacrifice, having never heard of the christian belief system.
Now, we've all heard the phrase "if it's too good to be true, then it probably is".
It is a rule of thumb we all live by on a regular basis, without even thinking about it. Imagine not living by this rule and you'd be in a world where you'd not only open every piece of junk mail you got, advertisements shouting at you about outrageously fantastic deals, but you'd jump at every single one you read, immediately. Unfortunately, a lot of us do this anyway, hence the inherent success and badness of advertising flyers (another blog, another day). In this world, you'd never think twice about taking prescription medication, wondering if there'd be any side-effects. Gamblers live in this world sort-of, if only in the sense that they operate on the assumption that they can buck the odds enough times to make a living at it.
But, if it's too good to be true then it probably is!!!
So, we left off at the point where we were all headed for hell and then jesus showed up as the answer to our (at that point) unvoiced prayers, salvation for us all. What's great news, in fact christians even call it the "good news".
What "good news" could possibly be better than " You're not going to be spending the rest of time in agony, flesh burning continuously. I've paid your debt, you can now come live with me and my invisible father (who's also, curiously, me) in a paradise of your dreams, where everything you could imagine will be there for your pleasure. Just think, rivers of milk that somehow never curdle, even in the open air and warmth of sunlight, and honey that never sours despite the same exposure to the elements. Roads will be paved with gold (although as we all know, abundance causes decline in value) and the whole of limitless heaven will be enclosed(however that's possible) with gates made of pearl (which as I understand it is a substance akin to pretty, hardened, oyster vomit). Doesn't that sound like a deal and a half? How could you say no?"
It does sound like a fantastic offer, doesn't it; one which comes with only one caveat; believe everything that jesus said, no matter how stupid it sounds.
So who is it that offers the incredulous? Who are they that offer something for nothing, or something so great for something so small? Is it our parents? Do they deliberately tell us lies in order to get what they want, with a total disregard for the detriment to us? Do trusted officials such as the supreme court justices ascend to their positions by practicing sleights-of-hand? Do our most closely-held friends and associates regularly deceive us for their own benefit and amusement? For the most part, the answers to these questions is no. We do not count these people (people we trust) as those who would trick us, or who would promise us something they knew they couldn't deliver on. No, it is the used car salesmen, the conmen of this world that we expect such behavior from. It is they who prey on our geatest weaknesses. The sheepishness of some, the trust of others are what play right into the hands of the conmen of the world. Jesus was just such a conman. He played upon the fears and hopes of the people he was around. His familiarity of the jewish traditions (being jewish) was good homework for him, and he did his homework. He duped enough people to ensure his name would be in the headlines for a long time, but a conman is a conman.
OK, enough with the inanity.
IF we were all sinners, guilty of our supposedly common progenetor's disobedience, and IF we were all subject to spend eternity in a hell for this transgression of guilt by association, and IF jesus were sent to save us from this because he was truly the son of god and the only one capable of doing so, then and only then would this be a good deal.
If, however, none of the preceding conditions were true, then the deal was and is irrelevent. So some guy died 2000 years ago. I feel bad for him, as much as I can feel bad for someone who lived that long ago. As crass as it might sound to the ears of some, I simply don't care about him or his "sacrifice". An event that, at best, might have happened over 2000 years ago rightfully has no bearing on my life today. I believe I am a good person. I know my wife is a good person. I know our son is a good person. If every person on the face of the earth would concern themselves with being good people all the time, what need would there be for religion?

On the questions of Why? and How?

2008-04-28T16:30:00.000-04:00

I'll admit it, I'm into semantics. I like analyzing what I say and what others say. I like looking at word and phrase choices. I'm nerdy like that, but so what. With that in mind, I'd like to propose that people ask "Why" entirely too much. I believe they should be asking "How" instead. For example, say the following thing to yourself: Why are we here? Good, Now say this: How are we here? It's plain to see the two questions are not asking the same thing. Example A asks an anthropomorphical type of question, by the use of the word "Why", whereas example B asks an empirical sort of question by the use of the word "how".
We all know the six common information-gathering questions we regularly use to communicate with each other. They are "Who", "What", "When", "Where", "Why" and "How". Most of us have been familiar with these questions since childhood and The funny thing is, they are much more complex than any of us think. Let's look at them one by one.

The word "when" shows up if we want to ascertain the place in time a particular event has happened or will happen. It appeals to the concept of time (as defined by us and divvied up by us into seconds, hours, days, years, etc). Time is not an entity. It has no consciousness to speak of. It cannot decide to alter events which take place within it's flow. It is rather like the surface of the ocean, in that it is in constant motion and it carries actions and events along with it, but has no bearing on the manner in which those actions or events will take place. As such, we do not attribute any personification to the words "day" or "nanosecond". Those words are only measurements made of the fourth dimension.

The word "who" shows up in fields of unfamiliarity. We see a fellow human whom we have either never met or have forgotten and we are curious about them, or we remember a particular event involving someone but cannot remember the someone and again we become curious. The word "who" appeals to memory and curiosity, animalistic traits that are within the confines of our organic brains. Unlike the word "when", "who" is inundated with personification. Indeed, it exactly asks about a person(s). However, like the word "when", which appeals to the human notion of time, "who" also appeals to a human idea, in this case memory. We do not appeal to anything outside of our selves (other than our trusted friends or authority figures)) for the answer to our question of "who".

"Where" looks to the commonly agreed upon geographic boundaries for it's answer. Whether GPS satellite locators, or good old-fashioned maps, or even a good sense of direction, the question of "where" makes its appeal to the questioner's acceptance of mutually-defined borders and regions, definitions which were born in the mind of people (or the people's friends). The answer to "where" like "who" and "when", does not lie outside the realm of humanness.

"What" asks for clarification from other people. Unfamiliarity with some object or behavior impels us to look for a source of understanding about the unknown. "What in the heck is that thing hanging from that tree over there?" To answer such a question, we either must observe it more closely (go look at it), we must go ask someone who might know what it is (we think), or we must research it ourselves, without petitioning a factor outside of ourselves for the answer.

This only leaves two questions, "Why" and "How". I think these two questions are grossly misused much more often than any of the others listed above. I think they are often reversed. A person will ask why, when they should be asking how, or vice versa.
The question of "how" is a direct appeal to the empirical process of discovery and understanding. It looks to at least a form of the scientific method. It is a way of finding a path to the destination. It asks what is necessary for the goal to be accomplished. It simultaneously states the need for all essential knowledge and the requested path to attain that basic knowledge. For example, " How is it that I cannot play a high B-flat on my trombone?" This question is the pertinent question. What is required, which I am not doing? Oftentimes, asking the question "How" will lead someone to answer the question (accurately) themselves by simply thinking about the topic of dispute. Now ask the same question a different way "Why can't I play this High B-flat"? Notice the absence of a request. There is no plea for a method for accomplishment. The questioner does not ask for a path to the destination. They only ask for absolvement from personal responsibility. There must be some other reason for my inability to gain this skill. I can't be held responsible, because if it were up to me, I could do it.

Of course, I'm being glib to illustrate the point that, although, most people really don't wallow in self-misery over the question of why, they are not actually asking what they think they are asking! They are looking for an answer, but the question they ask is not designed to elicit one. It is more adequately illustrative of the complaints they have over their confusion or frustration, feelings all of us have in our everyday life experiences. By-the-by, it's interesting that the fact that people will often ask "why" instead of "how" can be indicative in some ways of why competition is so prevalent in civilization. Competition relies heavily on some asking how and some asking why. The Whyers are inevitably going to fall short, while the Howers will get the job done. Competition, however, is not the subject of this blogpost, so I'll save it for another day. In the meantime, ask yourself this question: Are you a Whyer? Do you wonder what the reason is for your successes (and failures)? Do you expect the answer to be divined somehow? If so, perhaps you could try asking yourself "how" next time instead of "why".

The word "why" contains an implication that the author (you) believes there is some outside (of you) force, factor, entity, whatever, which holds power over you to render decisions which effect your life in a tangible and not always positive way. "There must be some reason for what happened. Since I didn't want this to happen, and it happened anyway, there must be a reason I'm not seeing, and that means there is something in charge of what happens to me besides me". All of this is contained in that little question of "why". We ask authority figures "why" all the time. Why did I get a ticket, officer? Why can't I go to the movies, Mom? Why won't this stupid door shut? etc... If you look at the first two questions the plea to an outside force is obvious, but look at the third question and ask yourself what or who is the questioner appealing to? The Door? Certainly not. Their Neighbor? Probably not either. But there is a definite sense of fatalism in the question. "The door won't close, and I don't know why. Will somebody please tell me why this door won't close".
I see asking the question of why as primarily a waste of time. It would be more prudent to ask the same question with "How" instead of why. Here's how it would go.
" How is it that this door will not close?"
Asking the question this way, opens the door to finding an answer that will alleviate the problem. The solution may not be found, but an attempt to actually search for it is embarked upon by simply changing the word we use in the question. Instead of "revelling in our abandon" to borrow a lyric from Tom Petty, we should be after answers by asking real, valuable questions.

What can I do for ya honey

2008-04-22T21:40:00.003-04:00

I am a freelance trombonist by title, but a trick-turning whore by practice. The gig I just finished playing has made me feel all dirty and ashamed. Don't get me wrong, I think some gigs are great, but some of them are terrible, and all of them are causing me to live the life of a musical prostitute. Somebody will call me for a gig the week before the gig, offering a pitiful,yet acceptable fee, and what do I do? I book it, shuffling all my other calendar committments around to accomodate the newcomer. You could tell them no, you'd say. And you'd be right, except that by declining the gig, I am ensuring the loss of that pittance of income, and it is those pittances that comprise my laughable salary. I am in no position to say no to a gig, yet. But, I did tell somebody no to a gig tonight, as luck would have it, and because of that, I don't feel quite as used as I could. I hope to leave my chosen world behind soon enough, but until that day, I suppose I'll keep pleasing the jons, who let me play the repertoire I worked so hard to learn in grad school in exchange for walking all over my sad availability.

On Winnie the Pooh

2008-04-05T08:20:00.014-04:00

My son is 3 and a half years old and he thoroughly enjoys our reading the stories of Winnie the Pooh to him at night, before he goes to bed. I know it sounds cliche, but it's true. He really loves reading, yay!!!! He also enjoys watching the dvd we have of those pooh tales. The particular dvd we have showcases a few of the original stories Milne wrote, but, at the end of the dvd, there are two "bonus features" not written by Milne, but, rather, concocted by the Disney Corporation. These are a part of television series that Disney created and they are called "Winnie the Pooh and the Super Sleuths in (insert whatever subtitle you'd like)"or something like that. In these episodes, there are two new (that is non-Milne) characters which just bother the hell out of me; a little girl named Darby and her dog Buster. They are, along with Pooh and Tigger (Tiggr), the main characters. Mind you, all of the other classic characters from the stories are still there, (except for maybe Owl). Eeyore, Piglet, Rabbit, Kanga and Roo, Pooh and Tigger are all present and accounted for. Christopher Robin, however, is nowhere to be found, and in place of him, the geniuses at Disney have unleashed upon the world this idiot Darby kid, and the even more useless Buster.
So I ask, who the HELL is Darby?
A.A. Milne wrote the stories included in The World of Pooh and The World of Christopher Robin for his son (who Christopher Robin was named after if I'm not mistaken, or at least based upon). The characters were his son's toys. Watching his son play make-believe with these toys, giving them personalities, is what led Milne to create his wonderful, memorable and timeless characters. He did not write about any girl named Darby, or any dog named Buster, that I know of. What he did write were life-lessons for readers of all ages, which took the form of fictional, children's stories . They may have been written for his son, but the stories transcended the Milne household and have become invaluable to humanity. The lessons of Trust, Friendship, Sharing, Thought, Care and Understanding illustrated in the Pooh stories are some of the most important lessons young children can and should learn if they are to grow to be the good people in this world that we all wish and hope they will. The characters Milne wrote about, and the adventures they embarked upon, never focused on "learning" what a shadow was, the inhabitants of the hundred-acre wood were already smart enough to know that kind of crap. They, instead, learned of the morals listed above, which is where I believe the real value of Milne's works lies, in the teaching of kids in how to live well. The world Milne created is certainly imaginary, but the lessons he wrote of are real. My son's dvd begins with a narrator holding a book, reading aloud, to the viewing audience, the words printed on the 1st page, introducing Winnie the Pooh. He "tells" the story by reading to the viewers. This continues throughout the movie. The narrator periodically interrupts the dialogue to keep the story moving along thus remaining an integral part of the storytelling. Certain scenes are included which show Pooh, or some other character, actually moving from one page in the book to another. This type of cinematography clearly serves to remind the viewers that the stories are, and always were, imaginary, make-believe and not existing in the real world.
This is unlike the new pooh episodes, where the "reality" in which the characters of the show live, is not that of Milne's (father's or son's) imagination. Pooh doesn't "live under the name of Mr. Sanders", and he really doesn't seem all that interested in finding honey or honeypots. Tiggr still likes to bounce but he is now concerned with "solving" mysteries, not unlike The Scooby-doo gang of old. The new characters are transparent and the old ones have become less childlike and more "useful". They exist in the "real" world of Darby and her dog, not the imaginary one of the hundred-acre wood. It is the same world the children who are watching live in. A world of baseball caps, parks, and absolutely NO NOSTALGIA!!!! The imagination, which was required to create the original, is sadly lacking in the new incarnation of Pooh and his friends. The show requires no mind's eye, only bland observation. Kids can't cognitively participate in the new stories in the same way we, as children, could when we would sit down to read the stories or watch the movies. The lessons taught now, aren't as valuable as the original ones. Watching characters discover answers to questions which are, I'm sure, covered in classrooms, is just not as important a way of passing discretionary childhood time, as is watching the life-lessons from Pooh's earlier days. Learning why shadows exist is not the same as learning that you can trust your best friend to always be there for you. I think the creators and producers of this show should be ashamed of themselves for allowing such drivel to be aired on television for children to watch. They've not only dropped the ball, they've lost the ball. Darby should be sent back to her home planet, and maybe she should die in a rocketship explosion, or crash, on the way (oops, Poochy already did that), and that should be the end of her and little dog too. Bring back Christopher Robin and stop "improving" that which needs no improvement. I, for one feel sorry for A.A. Milne (even though he is not actually alive anymore) and all the children who will grow up with these lame excuses for childhood memories.

Atheist Blogroll

2008-03-31T12:03:00.002-04:00

Hi Everyone. I'm happy to say I am officially on the Atheist Blogroll. If you'll kindly look to the left, the Link is happily displayed for all to indulge in. Please do so, as there are so many deliciously sacreligious folk out there, whose words are so much more important to hear than those of the local Pester (oops, I mean Pastor) Thanks much.

Supernatural versus natural

2008-03-24T08:56:00.006-04:00

I do not think it is appropriate to believe the supernatural to be the source of the natural. Every system we know of behaves naturalistically. Weather, Oceanic currents, Glacial formation, Planetary orbital pathways, Radioactive decay, Nuclear Fission, Procreation, Immunity to disease and infection, Nourishment; all conform to the laws of nature. Plants do not call anyone "lord". Mountains do not move according to the verbalized mantras of wishful thinkers. There is only one natural system, influential to humanity, that has ever been considered to be a part of the supernatural realm (to its own detriment) and that is the system of thought.
Human beings are aware we exist. We are aware that others like us exist. We know that we are capable of gaining and retaining knowledge. We understand our own ability to think. Our awareness is what sets us apart from most other living creatures today (aside from the great apes, some primates, dolphins, parrots and other assorted animals). It is from this awareness that, long ago, we conjured up the idea of an immortal soul for ourselves. It's easy to look back and see how we could've viewed ourselves in such a self-important way, when the surrounding animals and plants were decidedly less intelligent than we were (and still are). How could such an advanced species not be endowed with something so esoteric as a "soul". We could think, we were aware, for cripe's sake. Our intelligence simply had to be the result of some divine intervention. We must've been born with this invisible attribute of immortality. The problem is we kept dying, and no one liked(s) that scenario. Death is not conducive to immortality, the two are most definitely at odds. And so, the discomfort with the idea of our concurrent intelligence (awareness) and our inescapable physical mortality led us as a species to invent many stories; ones designed to subvert the inevitability of our physical (and soul's) death (albeit a subversion which is delayed until after we physically die). We have not always been as intelligent as we are now. We were once ignorant of what most today would deem as common-sense. The sun does not revolve around the earth, the earth is not flat nor is it held up on the back of a great turtle, cutting someone deeply in order to "bleed" out an infection is a bad surgical treatment, the use of anesthesia during surgery results in more successful surgeries than the disuse of it does. The awareness of ourselves that gave rise to the idea of our possessing a "soul", has been coupled with a more complete knowledge of the world around us, more so now than at any other time in our brief history of life. Neuroscience is uncovering more and more each day of the buried behemoth of the human brain, and by doing so they are displaying the inessentiality of the concept of a soul. This may sound a bit gloomy for those who have grown up believing we have a soul, but it doesn't need to. To me, the fact that we are all that make us up and nothing else, composed of the same basic elements as everything in the universe, and we can still create works of grandeur such as the Goldberg Variations of J.S Bach, Stonehenge, or the internet is the mother of all testaments as to how wonderful we all are. On the flip side, I see it as unnecessarily condescending, to ascribe our worth to a being who is somehow simultaneously the same as and better than us. I see my son as the most wonderful human being in the world, but that feeling is in no way due to the benevolence of "god; it is due to my son. I will take no credit away from him for being the wonderful person he is. There is not now nor has there ever been a need for god. We are human beings and we are worth our own attention and accolades.

On The Biblical Trees in the Garden of Eden

2008-03-07T09:03:00.010-05:00

Everyone who has ever been to a christian church, and probably many who have not, has some level of understanding of the biblical story of a paradise called the Garden of Eden. In this place, the biblical god placed the first two humans ever to live. Along with all the food-bearing trees and plants known to us today, there were two "forbidden trees" planted; The Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil and the Tree of Immortality. This is recounted in the first few chapters of Genesis. The following are some questions about this story, questions that draw attention to some sensible inconsitencies.
First of all, the story in genesis recounts that, for Adam and all the generations to come, a route to immortality was definitely needed, as Adam was created as a mortal man. In Genesis 3:22 the "inerrant word of god" says "And the Lord god said, "The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach outhis hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever."" This verse clearly shows that the author of genesis understood Adam to have been created a mortal man, one who would die a natural death. Some Christians, however, believe that Adam was created as an immortal being and only lost his immortality when he and eve chose to sin by eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This belief does not fit at all with what genesis 3:22 says, it's flatly contradictory. For my part, I just can't comprehend how these christians can assert the "truth" of the bible when their arguments for such claims simultaneously rely on and are in contrast with what the bible says, but I digress.
Who besides mankind would have wanted or needed a tree of life?
God, as he is described in the bible, would not have required it. Immortality is part and parcel of the christian's definition of god, and if it were not, then I suppose christianity couldn't exist as it does today.
Other possible recipients of the fruit of the tree of life were the animals. Since there are no animals that we know of that are 6,000 plus yaers old and still kicking, I think we can safely assume the animals did not benefit from the tree of life.
Tangentially speaking, I wonder if any of the tree of life's fruits ever dropped to the ground after ripening, and were eaten by the animals in the garden. If this did happen, there should be some really old cows out there somewhere. The bible doesn't mention this ever happening, but I think it's a reasonable thought to have. I mean every fruit bearing tree that lives today drops its fruits once they are ripe, in order to propagate itself. Animals eat this fruit all the time. If the tree of life did not behave in this same way, then I think christian's should have to explain this. I'm sure any apologetic would retort with some blather about god's miracles not needing to follow the rules of nature and all that, but we all know what kind of "explanation" that is. Evasion is a tactic apologetics have mastered.
So, since god did not need the tree of life and animals keep dying, that leaves only us as the benficiaries of the flora of paradise.
If god planted the tree of life for us, then why did he forbid us to eat its fruits? Again, I can hear the apologetic saying, god was using the tree to "test" the faith of Adam. This is just stupid, for any number of reasons. Here are a few.
1. God had no need to test Adam's faith because Adam had no reason to not have faith in god, having no one to compare god with, no one to influence him away from having faith in god.
2. God did not need to test Adam's faith in him because he walked in the garden in plain earshot of Adam, presumably physically (genesis 3:8). If, however, he was "walking" in a purely spiritual sense, he was still the only other "voice" there (excepting eve and the talking snake, I wonder if Eve was a parselmouth?), so Adam would have had no reason to "lose his faith", but as we shall see perhaps Adam's faith was rightfully tested to show the error of it.
Perhaps god was using the tree not to test Adam's faith, but his obedience. This is also stupid. Here is why.
God, as the bible describes him, is omniscient (all-knowing). As an all-knowing being, god would not have been in need of a tool (such as a tree of life) to test for an outcome of obedience level. An omniscient god would have already known exactly how obedient Adam was ever going to be. Either god was not omniscient, or the tree of life (or the other tree) was unecessary in this capacity, pick your poison.
But what about the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Why did god plant that one there? Remember this is the tree in question at the trial all of us should hold within ourselves, of the truth of Christianity as narrated in the bible. Genesis 3:3-7 says:

"but god did say, "you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die." "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. For god knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like god, knowing good and evil." When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked, so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves."

Let's examine this passage shall we? (I feel like a pastor in Bizarro world)
First, god tells eve that she mustn't eat from the tree or even touch it, upon pain of death. So there is a tree that will provide death to Adam and Eve if they touch it, but there is also a tree that will provide immortality to both of them if they eat of it. It seems like a good idea to have an antidote ready in case of an accident, I mean what if Adam and Eve were wrestling one evening and one of them just happened to roll up against the tree of "death"? Wouldn't it be prudent to have that tree of life handy as well? The problem arises when we acknowledge that the god of the bible prohibited BOTH trees. This is perfectly illustrative of how the authors of the bible probably weren't philosophers by trade.
Second, the serpent says she will not die, but only gain the knowledge of good and evil, thereby becoming as god himself. Well, she ate, in fact they both ate, and neither died an unnatural death, so who was right? God said they would die, the serpent said they would gain knowledge of good and evil. Let's look to the unreliable, inconsistent, yet inerrant word of god for our answer. Again to genesis 3:22 " And the lord god said "The man has now become as one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the the tree of life and eat, and live forever."
Survey says..... The serpent wins. God was not just wrong, but pathetically so. The death for Adam, that is described in genesis 3:19 and attibuted to god, "by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return" cannot be claimed as fulfillment of god's earlier threat to Adam and Eve, since the tree of life was the only path to immortality ever available to Adam, and neither he nor Eve ever ate from that tree (at least as the bible recounts).
As a last point, I'd like to say that the biblical narrative from above is a fairly benign example of humanity in the throes of pyschological ignorance, being creative, cognitive beings, attributes that clearly seperate us from our more primitively(?) evolved cousins in the great ape family, constructing elaborate but ultimately false stories, in order to explain and cause to discuss two of the most sought after ideas of humanity, namely wisdom and living forever. One we can certainly achieve, the other might be possible, but we are not there yet (keep at it scientists).

Remember, I am an Atheist, I only use the bible to point out its own fallacies as professed in the christian perspective of the biblical story of creation. I criticize from a psychological and logical point of view.

On Hope and Faith

2008-03-02T19:07:00.003-05:00

Keep the Faith.
Abandon Hope all ye who enter here.

You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, I'm tellin you why..... You're gonna go to hell, and cook for eternity in ovens of burning brimstone......
DAMNATION AWAITS!!!!!

Heh, heh, heh, heh....

Christians would have us all believe that the principles of Faith and Hope are the greatest possible gifts we could ever have been awarded by their god-head.
Hogwash.
Neither of these ideas are conducive to living a fulfilled life, they are only ideas born of unmerited, wholesale fear.
Consider the word Hope. It conjures mental pictures of pleasantness, freedom from unhappiness, bliss. It represents the wish of every single person. However, contained within it, is the implied sinisterly opposite despair.
You cannot have one without the other. No Hope, No Despair (the words hope and despair are easily interchangeable with the words good and evil).
To illustrate what I mean, ask yourself the following question:
"Without evil, how would a person be able to distinguish good?".
If everything were good all the time (as is the example of heaven), how would a person be able to retain the exuberance of eternal pleasure, without ever growing numb to it's effects?
In order to fully experience anything, good or bad, the opposite of what you're experiencing has to exist and be known to you, or you'll never be aware of what you're experiencing. A person could never live in unending bliss because of this paradox. Eternal bliss is impossible because without it's opposite (torture) being somewhere in the mix of eternity, we would not recognize it as being bliss.
In the same way we would not know what cold felt like without the corresponding hot, we would also be unable to distinguish hard from soft, tall from short, good from evil or hope from despair. There is a spectrum of experience which we all are subject to. Without it, we would be automatons with no gamut of feelings.

Now let's consider the word Despair.
What does this word conjure? Thoughts of helplessness, inherent "badness", imprisonment in unhappiness. Now ask yourself in what ritualistic, weekly excercise a person might hear these words spoken. Christians, especially those hell-fire and damnation evangelicals that so wisely want to turn our country into an 18th century theocracy, love to spout out these threats of condemnation to human comfort every weekend (and sometimes during the week if a revival is in town) to the flocks of folk who are all-too eager to "repent" of their evil (there's that word again) ways and be safely returned to the fold, only to stray away as soon as the service is over.
If heaven is the object of hope for christians, then hell has to be the object of despair. As I said before, we can't do without despair, so hell has to exist if heaven exists. But imagine if we took the despair of hell out of the equation. We would be left with Hope on one side and nothing on the other. How then could the Hope of Heaven possibly exist? Actually, I should ask why then would anyone even care about a possible heaven? If no one feared death, or financial difficulties, or disease, or any other malady humanity is subject to, then would anyone even consider afterlife? Of course not, because an afterlife is a form of Hope, and without the form of despair (fear of death), an afterlife becomes pointless and redundant.
If we eliminate the idea of hell, then we needn't bother with the idea of heaven.

Contrary to what christians profess to the media, especially moderate ones, my thought is that the idea of hell is radically more important to their dogma than the idea of heaven is.
I submit that despair is always the initial deciding factor in whether someone believes in something or not. A person will consider whether their possible belief in an idea will offer them hope, but only because they need hope to counter a preexisting despair they may or may not already be aware of (this is one of the sad realities of evangelical churches, that they more often than not, instigate the feelings within their own congregations which lead said congregations to
"be saved"). Said another way, A person will choose to believe something if it offers them the chance at hope for the future, because the past has overwhelmingly offered them despair. This being the case, the idea of hope is always secondary. It is what is utilized to counter despair. Again, without the despair, why the hope? Despair, or the Fear of it, is without a doubt the absolute foundation of all the abrahamic religions. Fear of what will happen to us after we die is an idea that has led many a person to the altar.
Romans 6:23 says “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of god is eternal life through christ our lord”. This is a good example of how despair is offered first and then the promise of hope secondarily counters. I will concede that there have been people converted because of the hope offered by the salvation message; however, the hope would be meaningless if the converted-to-be didn't either already fear something, or didn't get led to believe they had something to fear. During altar calls (public admissions of guilt, to those of you who've never been to a protestant church service), people tend to attach themselves to the immediate benefit of their actions and at that time the benefits of converting usually outweigh the threat of not converting by a dramatic margin, which is, at best, a flimsy reason to convert. Indeed the very idea of death can terrify millions of people at any given moment, but it is also quite fleeting and easily forgotten in lue of what sounds good for dinner.

There is also the herd mentality which some might offer as a reason for prospective-converts to move out of their pew. If so many other people are doing it, they might either look bad in the eyes of someone in the church who knows them, or they might be simply hedging their bets, in the idea that if so many people are going down front maybe they should too. A superficial look at both of these reasonings will all-too-easily reveal their fundamental basis of fear. The herd mentality is itself a defense mechanism, designed to ward off attackers (representations of fears held by the herd). Christianity, Judaism and Islam were all founded on the principle of Fear. Look at the terms “Lord” and “God-fearing” for an easy illustration of this.
An example from the bible (the inerrant word of god mind you): Luke 12:5, “But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after killing the body, has the power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.” Now. I’m not completely sure if the author is referring to god or “the devil” here ,but that is beside the point. It is this foundation of fear that supports the pillars of Christianity.
Having this foundation, Christianity offers a way around this fear; Do what Jesus said. Believe he was the ticket to heaven as the son of god sent from above to pay the debt of all mankind. If you do, you can subvert the eternal damnation in store for you after you die and instead receive eternal comfort. It provides hope to counter the fear. In organized monotheistic religions, hope comes after fear, not before. Christians who truly believe they are saved, obviously don’t live in fear for their lives or souls, for the simple reason that they have chosen the path of eternal comfort, hope in Jesus' not being a crazy, lying lunatic. In their eyes, sinners (all the rest of us) have chosen the path of fear and despair, by recognizing jesus as being just another dude (who most certainly no longer abides ). My personal hope does not lie in this fantasy realm of Christianity, Islam or Judaism, because I reject the notion that my life is in any way subject to manmade hopes and fears. I no more hope for anything fantastic than I fear for anything cataclysmic. I do not center my life's philosophy around the fear of death or the loss of loved ones as one might suppose. That might seem improbable to many,but what I mean is although I would miss them beyond comprehension, I do not now fear for their deaths, because I of course recognize that everyone will die. I certainly do not wish for anything cataclysmic to happen to any of my loved ones, but I also understand that this wish is only a wish. It has no bearing on whether anything will ever happen to them or myself. At the same time that I don’t fear for their death, I also don’t hope to see them after they or I die. I spend my life with them and myself each day, because this life is what I know we are in possesion of. I no longer waste the time I have with them.
I actually think the principles of Christianity belittle the preciousness of life, rather that preserve it, as the term “sanctity of life”, which is thrown around like a hot potato by evangelicals these days, would imply. The very idea that my life now is less important than an unprovable afterlife is an idea that I find not only preposterous but also wildly arrogant on the part of both christians and their fictitious god.
For example: I ask someone to play monopoly right now, and they say no because they want to play a better game of monopoly after they die. This doesn’t make any sense but it’s the same as saying “ I’m not going to live my life now, because I’m going to have a better life after I die” My hope lies indeed in myself and my family. I am a thinking person who did not need to be created in order for me to be worth placing my own trust in.

Faith is unnecessary. Having faith in something rather than trying to find a real natural-born answer, is simply taking the lazy way out. It is the same as saying, "I don't know what this is about, so I'll just make up something and tell everyone I believe that". In that respect, what most christians do is even lazier, in that, most christians that I can remember from my days growing up in evangelical churches in the south, don't even bother to waste time thinking up something on their own. They simply latch on to what everybody around them has already said. Faith is the belief in something without the evidence to back it up. This is absurdity. If there is no evidence to show that a crime has been committed, then how do we know one actually was committed? Of course we don't, this is precisely why the courts don't allow hearsay evidence to be admitted as evidence. Better yet, why would anyone claim that their bank was robbed, if no money was missing and no employees witnessed a robber coming into the bank and sticking it up? Should we just have faith that the person saying there was a bank robbery is telling the truth? Should a jury convict the person he says robbed the bank without any evidence to support his claim? Of course not. An even more absurd notion is that christians somehow think that having faith is virtuous or noble. To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens,
“Christianity requires us to voluntarily relinquish our single greatest attribute, our ability to think critically.” Any institution that encourages us to not critically question the principles of its existence is not an institution worthy of subscription to. Blind faith is an excuse to gloss over the inconsistencies of outdated dogmas. To paraphrase another fellow rationalist, Sam Harris, “Religious moderates don’t ask the question of how they came to be moderate in the first place. At one point, all religions and religious people were fundamentalist. At what point did the fundamental side of religion give way to the moderate position and why did it do so? The answer is certainly not that the religions themselves evolved to be more “modern-thinking. It is that religious moderation is the result of centuries of rational freethinking individuals who have questioned the validity of fundamentally religious dogmas. Those dogmas simply could not stand up to the constant barrage of disbelief, and over time they melted into the sanguine christianity we see today". To now chastise religious fundamentalism, if you are a moderate, is to deny the very root of your own existence. Religious moderation provides a cover for fundamentalists who exact terrible events on the world by creating the ban associated with the questioning of religion. I speak of religion in the abrahamic sense, because hinduism, buddhism and other various eastern religions espouse the practice of not harming or causing suffering to other living beings, above all else . It is, by-and-large, off limits to question someone’s religious beliefs. Blind faith is, in the eyes of it's posessors not only virtuous but also impervious to disbelief. This should not be, and it is my hope to contribute in some way to the overturning of this menace of rationality. Life is worth living without faith in the preposterous, and we need not hope for anything outside of the ability to experience our life as long as we have it.

On Reading, Writing and Arithmetic

2008-02-19T22:59:00.004-05:00

What makes a person intelligent? Intellect? Knowledge? Education? Cognition? While there are a plethora of tributaries to this particular river, I'm speaking only of the constitution of intelligence. For instance, we all go to school (well most of us, and some of us for a very long time), but not all of us, at the end of the day, can be described as being particularly intelligent. It is the variation in degree of intelligence that I wonder about. I know some remarkably intelligent people and I also know some real dunces. I wonder about this discrepancy, why are there really smart folk, and not-so-smart folk? Specialization in education is the mark of the day, but I think it is not all that it is cracked up to be. I hold two degrees (bachelors and masters) in my particular field, and I believe I am at least more intelligent than the average bear in this area, but I do not count myself as an intelligent being because of my knowledge of this specific discipline. Doctors are, on the whole intelligent folk, but I would not consider their intelligence due solely to their knowledge in the field of medicine. It is through the study of those subjects we learn as children that we gain intelligence, subjects such as, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. And it is through the lack of adequate emphasis on these subjects in the earliest developm,ental years of children's lives, that, I believe harbors the reason for the division we see in intelligence levels of particular people. For instance, children of illiterate parentage, tend to grow up apathetic towards reading and writing.
I cannot imagine what it would feel like to be unable to read. Furthermore, I cannot imagine what it would feel like to not want to read. I have been a lifelong reader and I can see my son being the same way, even now at the tender age of three. The last part of his everyday is book-reading. Of course we are reading to him (with an occasional romp into sounding out words himself) and the practice is routine. I have no doubt that this will continue into his later childhood, adolescence and finally adulthood, as it did mine and my wife's. What is the point, that our family puts a high value on reading? Not just that, but also that I say the desire to read, along with the ability, is one very important path to intelligence. It is not enough to teach kids how to read, we should, as parents, mentors, teachers, or any persons of authority, be instilling the love of reading to our kids. Learning itself comes from Reading. Without our reading about information already known to others, humanity would be relegated to reinventing the wheel day-in and day-out,never progressing beyond the days of cavemen.
But there are other, interrelated, paths to intelligence. I just finished writing a response to a christian apologetic friend of mine, in which I spoke of thought leading humanity to answers. This is the next path to intelligence. The ability to think, critically and to such a deep degree, is probably the most human attribute we have, and the best exercise for the development of this trait we laymen have to avail ourselves of, is the practice of writing. Why do you think, the most learned people in whatever field(s) have to publish to maintain their cutting edge knowledge and reputation? Why do candidates for the PhD, in practically any field, have to write a dissertation in order to receive their degrees? It is because writing simply requires so much more thought than other practices. A good book is a well thought-out book. Good books require structure, flow and nuance. Authors have to think of these things before they produce any physical work. Editors have to think as they read, if they are to offer any suggestions for improvement. What is the point? Children need to be taught how to and encouraged to write about everything. For example, My 13 year old neice is an avid reader and writer, she recently won a writing competition (with a $100 prize to boot). She is an intelligent person, and it is because she spends time thinking in order to write. Not everyone will be an author for a living, but all humanity can become more intelligent if we take the time to develop a love of writing. Just look at the Blogosphere, and for that matter me. Humans (thinking ones) cannot avoid the realm of authorship. We all want to do it, but again as parents, teachers, mentors, etc., we need to foster the budding writer in our children, by modeling it and encouraging it. Which brings us to the last area of education, Arithmetic.
What would our world be like if we had no understanding of mathmatical principles? We would still be living in the forest for one thing. Without math, we don't build houses. We would also still be foragers, without math, there would be no agriculture. W e live as we do because. as a species, we have learned math. The Cosmos, the Corporeal, the Psyche all have their roots in the precepts of Math.
Children should be learning math in school, as they are, they should also be learning to love to read and how to write.
Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. Those are the three foundations of what our education should be. Math is being taught, but I worry that reading and writing are not, especially at the younger age levels. The specialization offered at the high school level, loses track of the real goal, that of making informed, intelligent human beings, in lue of "preparing" students for going to college, where they will specialize in something. College is a place to develop a life's philosophy, primarily. Specialization, outside of the professions of Science, Medicine and Law (with some others thrown in, that I can't think of right now), is what we learn "on the job". I became adept at fixing my car by doing it, not by learning how to do it. Musicians become proficient at their chosen instruments by practicing them, not by studying them in a classroom. High schools should rethink what subjects of study they present their students with. The Math subjects (Trigonometry, geometry, Calculus, etc...) yes! The Literature and Writing classes, by all means. The Football training class, not-so-much. The Band or Choir class,while they might be nice to do as pasttimes, kids can and should pursue those on their own, outside of school, and mind you I am a musician. I think kids should be allowed to pursue whatever they'd like, educationally speaking, I just don't think all of the variety of subjects in school is really going to lead them to be smarter in the long run. They only provide a distraction to the real tenets of human intelligence. I may be wrong, however, who knows?

On Dinosaurs and Man

2008-02-19T14:28:00.005-05:00

Here's another one for all of you young earth creationists. There is published literature out there (and I use the term literature very loosely) stating that dinosaurs and man could have and did actually live at the same time. Kent Hovind says so, as do some of his disciples (pun definitely intended). They often cite the river bed in Texas that has dinosaur footprints fossilized in it along with "giant man" footprints. The Paluxy River dinosaur and man footprints have been thoroughly discredited by science. They do not represent man and dino footprints side-by-side in geologic time at all. The "man" footprints aren't even universally accepted as being "man" footprints. But the geologic timetable is not enough of a deterrent to you young earth folks, so here's one to think about:
If man and dinosaurs existed at the same time in the same basic places on earth, how in blazes did we survive?
Velociraptors were arguably the world's most lethal predator, EVER. Six feet tall, they were just the right size to take a frail human out like a package of Ribeye in the meat section of the grocery store. We would've been like cows to them or any other carnivorous dinosaur, for that matter, that happened to spot us strolling down the wooded path whistling a merry tune. There were plenty of other similarly-sized dinosaurs that could've dined on a meal of us and still had room for dessert. There is simply no way we would be the dominant species on the earth now, if we were around when dinos were.

Look at the top predators in the world today, Lions, White Sharks, Orcas, Tigers, Crocodiles, Hyenas, etc... All are lethal to humans, if confronted with them. This is why we, as a generally uneducated population, tend to stay away from these animals. If we were to suddenly begin waltzing around the serengeti plain day-in and day-out, eventually lions and hyenas would catch on to our vulnerability and start adjusting their menus accordingly. Yes, they might not much like the way we taste at first, but I'll bet they'd get used to our stringiness and proportional lack of body fat after enough time. The same scenario would easily apply to great white sharks. Although we are not a part of their regular diet of seals, I'll bet if we were to take to swimming and bathing and generally frolicking in the tropical waters around Seal Island for an extended period of time, we'd see a dramatic rise in the number of reported great white attacks and subsequent deaths. If you can't see how this has anything to do with dinosaurs, just increase the number of lions, tigers, sharks etc. which we have on the earth today by at least a few orders of magnitude and you'll arrive at a reasonable census for the height of the population of carnivorous dinosaurs who might've been interested in us as prey. For instance, let's use Dilophosaurs (the spitting venom dinosaurs from the book Jurassic Park by Michael Crighton) as one of many examples of dinosaurs who would probably have hunted and eaten us if they could have done so. Now, let's implant those dinosaurs into the landscape of the middle east of 6,000 years ago, complete with mud and clay houses, no gunpowder or nuclear technology and only our trusty trumpets (which could come in handy if we want to knock the walls of a certain city down) and swords for hand to claw combat. No tanks, horses (although these wouldn't fare all that well against dinos either) or helicopters. Only us agriculturalists against the marauding (and very hungry) "terrible lizards". Would we even stand a chance? With nothing substantial to defend ourselves? I'm glad I don't live in this fictional world. For that matter, let's transplant all the dinosaurs from, say, the Cretacious Era into the present, and see how we humans in our clapboard houses and Ford Tauruses would stand up against a ten-ton triceratops. Would you enjoy walking out of your house everyday knowing there are hungry and voracious hunters, bigger and more cunning than you, just outside your house waiting to rip you to shreds and devour while you're still kicking and screaming? It might be nice to see or think about a dinosaur, but to confront a living and breathing one in the world, think again!
It's absolutely ridiculous to even entertain the thought of humans and dinosaurs living at the same time. It's absurd. Creationists, give me a break. Do yourselves a favor and just acknowledge the science. Your making yourselves sound ridiculous.

On Abraham and Issac

2008-02-18T22:57:00.004-05:00

Abraham and Issac, the story of faith, the story of love and obedience, the story of devotion and godliness, right? Wrong!!! I’m sure anyone who reads this blog post will already be familiar with this story about how Abraham was instructed by god to sacrifice his son to “prove” his trust and faith in god. God had promised Abraham to multiply and continue his line through Issac, but now god was asking Abraham to kill him. How, without faith, could this be?
My contention, along with countless other freethinkers is, If Abraham were alive today and acted as he did in the bible story i.e. listened to invisible voices that told him to kill his son, he would be arrested and either thrown into jail on child endangerment charges, or attempted murder, or else he would be committed to a psychiatric institution for as long as possible.

Abraham lived in a time of human history when sacrificing a child was not thought of as absurd, on the contrary, it took place quite often, which brings up a thought. The fact that the times were as such does not even approach excusing such reprehensible behavior. If it were right to do so, then the practice of human sacrifice to invisible god(s) should have survived to the present day in modern society. It obviously has not, and thank goodness for that, although I’ll allow the possibility of the practice surviving somewhere in the world in a backwards god-fearing, servile society. In some ways we have progressed beyond the state in which ignorance can breed ill-advised behavior. The example from Judges, chapter 11 (see below) only serves to reinforce the fact that in our infancy, the human race lived in relative, wholesale ignorance.

In Hebrews 11:19 it says “Abraham reasoned that god could raise the dead and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from the dead”. By what “reason” did Abraham arrive at the conclusion that god could raise the dead. There is no mention of bodily resurrection actually taking place during that time in the Old Testament. The only references made in the OT, are in Daniel 12:2, Isaiah 26:19, and Psalms 17:15 in which all are “prophecies” about the end times.

What tests did Abraham contrive to see if god could really raise the dead? How many tests were there, and who were the volunteers? Of course I'm being facetious, but the point is valid. There was absolutely no reasoning on the part of Abraham. It would be much more accurate to say that Abraham assumed that god could raise the dead.
Let’s suppose that god could raise the dead and that Abraham assumed correctly so. Abraham would have then actually killed his son. Nothing after the fact would have been able to change this, excepting of course god His decision to follow the command would simply have not been excusable. It is a simple thought, Abraham killing his son; a horrible one but simple nonetheless. I question not Abraham’s obedience, but god’s intestinal fortitude, arrogance and outright gall in asking such a thing.
Murder, as a test of faith, is deplorable.
What would god have done, had Abraham refused this test on the basis of the sanctity of human life? Would god have killed Abraham for Abraham’s refusal to take the life of another of god’s children? Would he have rescinded his promise by withholding the proliferation of Abraham’s line of descent? Would he have destroyed the earth again as he supposedly did with the flood? A god that asks something of the sort in question is not a benevolent, loving, caring god. He is a jealous, pedantic, juvenile, altogether human god, who exhibits distinctly human behavioral characteristics, characteristics that, at least in humanity, are the result of the development of fear throughout our life history.
God did not create us in his image, we created god in ours. Indeed, god represents everything that we as children simultaneously fear and seek. God is a parental figure to us, both the source of approval for our behavior and dread if we trespass his demands.
I would even submit that such a “test of faith” is really not much of a test at all. If Abraham knew (reasoned) that god could raise the dead in advance, then he exhibited really no faith at all, only obedience. A better and more accurate test of faith would have been if god had allowed Abraham to go through with it completely. Abraham kills his son, takes his life, sees his son’s blood flowing out of his body, and only then does god raise him from the dead, healing his wounds and restoring life to his body. Abraham would have to show incalculable faith to trust that god would still fulfill his promise after Isaac was actually dead. Instead, god fells the hand of Abraham before he actually kills Isaac. This reminds me all too much of the familiar story of the one that got away. “Boy it was down to the wire, my hand was at my son’s throat with a knife, I was so strong in my faith that I was willing to do such a terrible thing, but at the last minute, wouldn’t you know it, The angel Gabriel showed up and said,” Naw just kidding, you don’t really have to kill your son, we were just testing you, here’s a ram instead.” Whew…., that’s a load off. What…., you don’t believe me, well, yeah no one else was there to see it but it’s true, I swear….”

There is an example in Judges that is illustrative of the juvenile nature of god when it comes to fulfilling a vow to kill for him. Jephthah makes his vow to sacrifice the first thing out of his door (in this case it turns out to be his daughter) if only god will help him to conquer (meaning kill and then occupy the lands of) the Ammonites (what did they ever do?).
A god who watches out for the welfare of his “children” would not let a man make such a vow, knowing full well what he was promising, seeing that the man’s vow would result in the death of another of god’s children, through murder. Now at this point in biblical history, the ten commandments did exist, and they explicitly disallow the act of murder. They do not say, thou shalt not murder, except in the name of me (god). They say in no uncertain terms, “Thou shalt not kill” So, the fulfillment of this vow to god, was itself a violation of the fundamental laws that god handed down to moses (supposedly). This is a prime example of the paradoxes offered up by the bible all throughout the old and new testament. Hypocrisy is frowned upon by society at-large, is most certainly preached against in christianity and by all religious accounts a sin worthy of eternal damnation, yet the bible’s god and his “son” constantly illustrate this offence to the intelligent mind. It is high time we cease celebrating the ignorance in which the overwhelming majority of humankind wallows in every sunday (or saturday depending).

God needs us more than we need him

2008-02-16T15:43:00.006-05:00

We've all heard the saying "If a tree falls in the forest, but no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?". Well, does it? The air pressure differential created by the impact would say yes, but the lack of receptor organs (such as ear drums) to quantify that impact would say no. An interesting question about a natural phenomenon. Can we ask the same question about a supernatural phenomenon?

If god were to "say" something, but there were no humans to "hear" him, does this mean he actually "said" anything? Stated another, perhaps more clear, way; Assuming creation to be true, god has an audience, but what if there was no audience? What if we were never here, would there still be god. What would be the need of a god in an existence that includes only him/herself?
Christians make lots of assumptions, indeed the entirety of their faith is assumptive, but perhaps no one is bigger than this: Christians believe that god existed before we did. The only accounts we have of this are the holy texts, which were written by men. Even if we allow the premise of divine dictation, the words themselves were originally written down by men, not god. Since no one was alive to see a god dictate these texts, it is an assumption to say we know he existed before we did, an assumption based on text written by the creation of this eternal being, but not by the eternal being itself.

I say, what point is there for a god without an audience. How would an omnipotent being demonstrate omnipotence if there were no one to convince? Without someone to ooh and aah over the tricks of a magician, there are no tricks, only rehearsals of slights-of-hand. A magician can't fool himself, he needs someone who does not know how the trick is done to impress. Without such a person, the magician has no career. Without a creation to parade his godliness in front of, god is not god. He could be everything, but without a created humanity, he would be simultaneously nothing.

There are two ways of looking at our existence. We were either created by an omniscient god, or we are the most recent evolutionary waystation. I suppose there are really a myriad of ways to explain our existence, such as extraterrestrial implantation, but I think the two most dominant areas of discourse on our origins are the two I mentioned above, so we'll stick with them.

If we were created by an omniscient god, then he must have had no choice in the matter, in that without us he would be not be omniscient. He couldn't be. If there are no uniscient (non-omniscient) beings to compare omniscience with, omniscience cannot exist. If it's the only game in town (being omniscient), then exaltation this element would be absurd since having this trait would simply be the norm (again in an existence with only god). Since we are indeed here to discuss this, then of course the christian god had to create us, if we are to believe in his most divine characteristics of omnipresence, omnibenevolence and omniscience. If god had no choice but to create us, then he is in no way immune to the governances of human logic and semantics. His subjectivity to these governances requires an explanation. Either our disciplines are unsatisfactory to describe god's existence, or he is a fraudulent mixture of humanity's least positive components. If our disciplines are unsatisfactory then, all disciplines must be, including our ability in recognizing god in the first place. If we cannot design suitable regulations for the understanding of the existence we all have, and the surroundings we are all among, then how could we possibly be able to design a system of recognition with which to distinguish the divinity of god? He is the result of the primitive minds of primitive men who were obviously incapable of designing constructive, optimistic and self-reliant societies (the exception being of course the great greek civilizations). Men such as these relied on the fear of the unknown to establish control of the masses, because it was easier than thinking completely through problems. Humans don't need a god. We don't claim the unclaimable, so we need no audience to display to. We do however, have as large an audience as we like, but it certainly didn't come from a creator. We arrived here on our own and rightfully so.

On Universal Origins

2008-02-08T17:58:00.001-05:00

Where did it all come from? Where did we come from? It all had to come from somewhere, and so did we, isn’t that right?
These are questions that Christian apologists rather pugnaciously ask nontheists whenever the issue of creation versus evolution comes up.
There are two references alluded to when such questions are asked; the argument from design (for the origins of life) and the argument of first cause (for the origins of the universe). The two arguments are very closely associated with each other and I’ll speak to both of them together.
The argument of first cause is summed up in saying “everything has to have a starting point, an initial beginning”. The universe may have been around for a long time but no matter how far back in time you go, there has to be a starting point. This is an assumption, one that quite obviously leads to the idea of an eternal creator which in turn leads to the argument from design which is summed up by saying “ anything as complex as life, or even individual organs within a lifeform, is inherently so complex that without some higher intelligence controlling the assemblence of the complex entity, the lifeforms or organs could never have come into being. Chance is not a possibility”. There is an inherent problem with this line of reasoning. If we can agree that the universe is complex (as is life), then we have what’s referred to as an argument of infinite regress. If a system (universe, life, computer virus) is complex and has a designer, then it follows that the designer has to be at least equally as complex if not dramatically more so. This leads to the conclusion that complex design requires designer complexity. If the designer is indeed himself complex, then of course something even more complex than the designer must have designed him, due to the original designer’s inherent complexity requiring complex design. Said again, something even more complex had to have designed the designer. If one argues that the complex designer has simply been eternally in existence, then of course we could simply use the same logic and apply it equally to nature, due to nature’s inherent complexity. Since Christians make the argument that the universe and all of life was created at a finite point in time by god, we have a paradox, which is not a good position to argue one’s case. Who created the creator, who created his creator, who created the creator of the creator, etc. If no one created the creator, then complexity itself does not require design, since god would have to be more complex than his creation. If the complexity of god required no designer, then how does the complexity of nature require one?
A second problem with this line of reasoning is illustrated with the statement that the idea of a beginning for the universe does not necessarily require a creator. It may very well have had one, but to say it required one is simply not true. In fact, it's exactly not true that the universe had to have a beginning. It is perfectly plausible that what we now see as the beginning point of the universe (the big bang moment) may actually have been only a starting over point for the colossal oscillation of the entire universe; kind of like a big balloon being constantly blown up and deflated over and over again. Why could this oscillation not possibly be eternal? Why would it absolutely require a starting point? The fact that we can’t imagine something which pertains to the cosmos, such as eternity being completely non-supernatural, does not mean that it is categorically impossible. Read The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene for an explanation of this potential manifestation of superstring theory. Plausibility is a concept we as humans sometimes are simply incapable of completely comprehending, especially when it comes to the idea of eternity. The more we learn of our natural surroundings, the more plausible concepts will become.
Another seemingly implausible explanation for what we see as a universal beginning can be explained as the other “side” of a black hole (black holes being points in space of infinite density and mass, or singularities). If a black hole’s gravitational pull is so immense as to pull in light photons (which it is) along with everything else, and if the gravitational effect is increased infinitely, as you approach the center of a black hole (which it is), then the possibility for the black hole to invert itself, expanding instantaneously and enormously into another universe on the"other side" is there, although it might be somewhere outside of our ability to currently study. There is a possibility that our universe is not the only universe that exists. Indeed, there may very well be an infinite number of universes comprising a multiverse, each being the expanded other side of black holes in our universe. To categorically apply the notion of a required creator for the beginning of the universe, which is so rudimentarily understood, is the equivalent of packing up the clubs and saying “ I just don’t have my game today fellas” after the ball falls off the first tee without you ever having taken a swing at it.
There should be no confusion of biological evolution with the expansion of the universe, which are two completely different things. For example, biological evolution most likely requires replication, the passing on from generation to generation of observable traits through the inheritance of genes encoded in DNA. This a process that does not, as we understand it, happen as a fundamental force for the expansion of the universe at large. Galaxies don’t spawn daughter galaxies which inherit traits of their parent galaxies. Evolution through natural selection does not apply to the universe.
The questions posed at the beginning are the exact questions that science, specifically the fields of astrophysics and quantum physics, is trying to answer. Religions do not approach answering these sorts of questions. Indeed religion could never answer these sorts of questions. Religion demands us to ignore such pursuits of the knowledge of the fundamentals of existence. The discipline of Philosophy is as close as religion will ever come to these questions. Thought will lead us to the answers we seek, thought and experimentation, nothing else.

On Spiritual Defection

2008-02-07T17:20:00.001-05:00

Everyone knows of people who have deserted what once they professed to believe. I myself am one who has done such a thing. The existence of defectors from one side of the science/creation dialectic to the other is well-documented: Some examples of highly esteemed individuals who have accepted christ and christianity after having tried to disprove it are most notably C.S. Lewis, Francis Collins and Alistair McGrath. I won’t try to list all the ex-christians who have given up the fantastic claims of the religious, there are too many.I confess I have not read McGrath’s work, The Dawkin’s Delusion, but I have listened to him argue against a fellow rational thinker, Richard Dawkins. I have read Dawkins’ The God Delusion, which is, biasedly-speaking, a fascinating book. I’m not sure if Collins has written anything (he was one of the original geneticists working on decoding the genome, if I’m not mistaken). I have however read Lewis’ works including but not limited to The Chronicles of Narnia. I am currently rereading “Mere Christianity” and I have read “The Joyful Christian”, The Screwtape Letters and others.
Lewis was no doubt a great author and literary giant who argued his points well enough, but made generalizations in doing so. Read Mere Christianity and you’ll see what I mean. I willingly concede his literary prowess, but this in no way diminishes the observed fact of evolution through natural selection. The simple fact that there have been refugees from one camp or the other does nothing to prove or disprove either side, it simply illustrates a rebellion by either side against their own inherited concepts. b. The concept of supposition from above undermines the argument christians make that they are looking for the truth and have found it in Jesus. They look for things they've already read, in a book that contains the answers they already believe. They find only what they’ve already decided to see. You cannot be looking for something if you already believe you've found it.
The same cannot be said of scientists. They have no book, readymade with answers they hope to hear. In order to get an answer they have to and do ask questions constantly, even of things they might have thought they already understood. The very idea of science is to study and to question.
Religion demands the opposite, do not question, have faith. To only make a point, children look for nothing. They only see things as they are. To say that any child has ever honestly asked jesus to “live in their hearts” is to turn them into play dolls. A child is in no way capable of deciding to do anything of the sort that the previous statement suggests. There is no such thing as a christian child, just as there is no such thing as a capitalist child or fundamentalist child to paraphrase Richard Dawkins. There are only children. Only adults can look for such things.
I submit that those who have “found god” have done so at times of trouble in their life, not during times of bliss. You don’t hear the testimony of someone “coming to jesus” because they were having such an easy time in life. Even celebrities such as Kirk Cameron from “Growing Pains” who admittedly was quite comfortable with his wordly possesions but felt he was missing something, come to religion, or christ in his case, from some point of dissatisfaction. Again, I’d like to hear of someone coming to god who wasn’t going through some difficulty in their life, it would at least make the idea more respectable. Christianity is a poor source of meaning for the preciousness of life that we humans have. Our lives can and do have all possible meaning if we recognize that there is no need to pay alms to a ghost of our fear-laden, overactive imaginations.c. As an assay,C.S. Lewis said something I find interesting in Mere Christianity. He said “ either jesus was a lunatic, or he was the son of god. “ I completely agree with this statement. I have seen no proof, or evidence of his divinity, although I was raised to unquestioningly believe in it. I have since read and thought of a great deal of evidence against it. I think it’s clear he was a egomaniacal, adolescent, totalitarian madman who most certainly believed himself to be divine and who had a few good things to say along with a host of more subtle and vastly more influential bad things.

Update: I have since read Mcgrath's Dawkins' Delusion. I found it to be well-written, but ironic in it's analysis of the God Delusion. Mcgrath spends his time belittling Dawkins' blunt stance on the backwardness of religion, as opposed to spending his time defying the philosophical points Dawkins relays in his own book. I thought Mcgrath's book should have actually disproven something from Dawkins' book, but Mcgrath purposefully states that while it is possible to do so, he chose not to. Why not? If it can be done, and Dawkins represents the antithesis of what you as a human believe why not write a book that actually does dispel what Dawkins says (especially when you take time in your book to say it can be done). This is a good example of how a person can sound intelligent and think semi-intelligently, yet still, spiritually speaking, behave as, at best, an adolescent and at worst, an infant.

On Presupposition

2008-02-05T08:13:00.000-05:00

It has been said that all of humanity begins thought with presuppositions. Whenever someone begins to think about a certain topic, they do so with a particular bias of some sort. For instance, if one begins to think about the existence of earth and how it came to be, chances are they will presume either the idea of creation or the idea of evolution to be true, seeing as how these are the two dominant explanations. Having this presumption makes discovering supportive proofs for it easier to find regardless of the slant of the person.
Said another way, if you already believe in something (creation or evolution), you will look specifically for the “proof” to support your point of view and use it as evidence for your position.
It seems to me that the word presupposition (supposition would do just as well) itself means belief or at least pre-belief. If you start with a supposition of something, you suppose it to be true beforehand. Why not just say you believe this and be done with it?

There is a problem with saying that all human thought begins with presupposition.
What I mean is, children don’t have pre-existing suppositions of any topic of thought. They and we all begin with an innocent mind. It is only after society, religion, our parents and extended family etc.. distort this innocence into their own conceptions do children lose the innocence of ideas and pure thought. Since we all began as children, it follows that none of us began with supposition. As adults, we might very well do so, but that is simply because we have inherited the suppositions of our parents/teachers/friends; they are not our own.
What we decide to do with those inheritances is a decision we as adults have to make, but as children we do and think what we see and are told to.
We teach our children to have our stances on such things as religion, politics and socially acceptable behavior. If we teach our children to be brave enough to think for themselves and how to do so, will we usurp indoctrination and free our children to be more humane.
Starting with a supposition does not however mean that any “proof” found is false. It only ensures that the proof was more easily discovered because of deductive reasoning or intuition.
Charles Darwin set off aboard the H.M.S. Beagle in 1831 with no intention of finding proof of his then unrealized theory of natural selection.
It was in fact the other way around, he observed what was there and formulated his theory afterwards, which he laid down in “On the Origin of Species” (1859) much later.
He did not believe that evolution through natural selection was true in advance of his trip. He observed it in practice during his voyage. His training for the clergy would most certainly not have put the idea in his mind.
It is quite fortunate for us that he chose a different career path.
The finches he studied on The Galapagos Islands were as unknown to him as they were to Noah until of course he found them and observed the differences in the shapes of their beaks. These differences he noted were, from island to island, specifically acclimated to harvesting the particular foods available on each island.
He did not have any idea that this arrangement of the physical attributes of the local wildlife on remote islands in the Pacific Ocean would exist.
The situation he observed led him to his eventual thoughts on natural selection, not the other way around.

Scientists probably do as a general rule start out with one supposition though, that being, the truth is discoverable, and worth the effort.

Evolution through natural selection is a concept, which does not need to or can be proven, due to the definition of a Theory. Creation doesn’t even qualify as a theory by definition.
I refer you to an interesting article that I believe might shed some light on the subject.

All we can do is test a theory.
Theories by definition can never be “proven”, they can only stand up repeatedly to tests, or fail to do so. If they stand up, they are accepted as true until such time as they fail.
I will happily concede that such a time may come for the theory of evolution, but I personally don’t think it will, considering the theory has survived intact since 1859.
Creation is untestable.
This disqualifies it from the discussion of viable theories for existence. A theory has to be testable, in order to see if it is rigorous enough to withstand doubt.

The scientific theory of evolution through natural selection is completely testable. It has been tested over and over again. It may be disproven someday, but up until now it has not been and this only testifies to it's resilience to scrutiny. Creation, however, can easily be debunked by simply thinking of all we know now, that the authors of the bible did not know.

Creation is the fantastically superstitious myth of scientifically ignorant Arabic peasants from a few thousand years ago for which (to quote Sam Harris) a wheelbarrow would have constituted emerging technology. That the world at large can buy into this children’s story is laughable.

On Noah's Flood

2008-02-04T17:02:00.001-05:00

This is for all of you young earth creationists out there. If the Grand Canyon was indeed "created" in a few weeks as this hypothesis claims, then let's look some possibilities as to how the grand canyon could have been formed.
1. A giant literal flood washed over the entire earth and carved out this mile-deep crevasse while leaving all the surrounding earth intact.
2. A giant flood-induced river plowed through the land at a breakneck speed carving out this canyon.
3. A little creek slowly flowed over the same patch of land mile after mile over the course of many years carrying with it small amounts of earth sediment, eventually carving out this grand canyon.

To see which method satifies all criteria of the biblical account of the flood, let's do an experiment. You'll need 3 rectangular basins full of sand or dirt approximately 4 feet long by 1 foot wide by 6 inches deep. If you can't find these, just do the experiment in your backyard in the ground itself. On second thought that's a better environment for this experiment anyway. In the ground build up three 6-foot long mounds (one next to the other) of dirt that are reasonably flat on top but descend slightly over the entire length of the 6 feet.

You'll also need a watering hose and a big bowl for water.

As you can guess we'll be simulating three versions of Noah's great flood.

First let's take option #1 where a giant flood washes over the land at once.
So, in your basin or your backyard, fill the bowl with water and dump it out at the higher end of mound #1 all at once, simulating a flash flood which should cover the entire surface of the mound. Now, what do you see? Is there A. a very deep but comparatively slender gash in the mound of dirt, or B. did the entire mound surface simply get shortened?
The answer of course is B. This method of flash flooding could not possibly have created the Grand Canyon in a few weeks. too much additional land would have been carried away and no cut in the surface of the land would be seen.

Next let's try option #2 where a gigantic flood-induced river flowed through the land very rapidly resulting in the Canyon as we see it today.
So, Take your hose over to the second mound of dirt and turn the hose on full blast. What happens? Does there appear to be again A. a very deep but comparatively slender gash in the landscape? Or B. is the gash very wide at the top and diminutive in width along the length of the mound? Or C. did the surface of the mound simply get shortened as before?
The answer could be A, but if it is correct, the premise of the biblical account of the flood cannot be accurate because this experiment shows that the flood waters would have not covered the entire earth but only the section of land described by the path of the Grand Canyon today. The bible is clear, the flood waters covered the entire earth, so A is out.
For the same reason, B is out. Even though it's possible it's also incompatible with the bible's story. Which leaves us with answer C, which is as likely as it was in the previous question, but probably not as likely as B for this question.

Last, we'll look at option #3 which is obviously an account of erosion over time. Run the hose at a slight flow, little more than a trickle, simulating the flow of a creek or small river, Again start at the top and watch what happens. The simulated river will carve out it's own bed if left there long enough. The Grand Canyon took millions of years to carve out. You've deluded yourself if you think otherwise, although I'll allow the possibility of a different rational explanation if scientists can come up with one. I think however, the scientists who would be concerned with this particular area probably all agree on the explanation of erosion for the canyon's existence.

On Original Sin

2008-02-03T10:33:00.001-05:00

As we all know, the foundation of all the Abrahamic religions is the downfall of man in the garden of eden through the commission of "original sin" by Eve and consequently Adam. God forbade them specifically from eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They did anyway at the suggestion of the "serpent" and as a result were banished from the garden and forced into a life of grief and toil. Adam and Eve had children and the "sin" they committed when they ate the fruit was inherited by their children, Cain, Abel and Seth, and, I assume, all the other non-named children they must have had.
As an assay, by the logic of its bible, why doesn't christianity recognize that the whole of the human race must be descended from this first necessarily incestuous family. Cain, Abel and Seth had to have successfully mated with females, else we would not be here. It must have either been their mother or their unmentioned sisters. Disgusting.

How did we as the children of Cain, Abel and Seth come to acquire the "sin" of Adam and Eve?
Was it physically? Did we inherit it somehow? If so, this means we must necessarily have a sinful physical nature. What I mean is, if god created us in his image, never once "tweaking" us after the initial creation, then our physical makeup is the same post-original sin as it was pre-original sin, which in turn means that our ability to pass on genes to our children through the process of inheritance has been with us since our creation. Physically, there is only one way to pass on something biological from ourselves to our children. This is called inheritance and involves the replication of DNA sequences of amino acids called genes. Genes are what we inherit from our parents. If this is the case, then what sequence of amino acids would equate to "sin"? Is there also a "meekness" gene which we inherit? How about compassion? The ability to "hear" god speaking, perhaps? Infact, science hypothesises there might very well be certain sequences of amino acids that coorespond to the affects of humanity, although they are yet to be deciphered.

If we inherited original sin from adam and eve then this means we've had the gene for sin as a part of our genetic makeup since our creation, which of course would negate the very idea of original sin. Having the "Sin" gene in us from the get-go disallows the "sinfulness" of disobedience, unless you admit that god set us up to fail. In Logic, this is what is called an argument of Self-contradiction, where the very argument presents two points which cancel each other out. The argument of Self-contradiction is not a valid form of argument.
For argument's sake, however, let's say we do spiritually inherit the sins of our parents through genetics. How then does our spirit or soul survive the death and subsequent decomposition of our physical bodies of which our DNA is the most fundamental part? How could our spirits "go to heaven or hell" after we die if our physical genes are the mechanism of spiritual survival ?
The answer is we did not physically inherit either a soul that is immortal or "sin".
If we did not physically inherit sinfulness, then we must have spiritually inherited it somehow.
If that is the case, then what is the mechanism for this inheritance? It is certainly not DNA, as genetics is physical. Religion offers no explanation for this mechanism. There is no "Religious Method" to counter the Scientific Method of understanding, unless you consider the idea of simply believing what you have been told to believe a method of understanding, i.e. faith.
Curiosity by itself would ask that we try and discover the spiritual mechanism through which these "sinful" attributes are being replicated and passed on to subsequent generations. To date, the only mechanism that we know of that does this exact thing is the DNA in each cell, which is a purely physical entity, requiring no spirituality.
Faith doesn't explain how we inherit the spiritual doom of our parents, it only tells us we do, no explanation needed.
The concept that we "inherited" original sin actually relies on a particular scientific precept, transference, which is also one of the foundations of the theory of evolution.
Attributes are transferred to future generations from previous ones. In evolution these are attributes that are favorable to the survival of the physical being.
Religion perverts this concept into one where the transference does not ensure the survival of the spirit, but the likelihood of its permanent death. "The wages of sin is death", Romans 6:23

If science is not the answer to our questions as religion supposes, then why does religion base its most fundamental precept, the "sin" of which we are all guilty, on the scientifically discovered mechanism of replication and transference, namely DNA?

If on the other hand, we don't inherit our sin, but are given it, by god at the very moment of our birth, then god is a truly malicious being. Adam and Eve sinned and earned god's eternal wrath. We, however, did not. We did not eat of the forbidden tree, we weren't around yet. By the same reasoning, we also did not have any bearing on their commision of original sin.

We, as their descendants, either inherited the problem of sin physically through replication and transference, spiritually through some unknown mechanism that is actually scientific in nature, or god himself bestowed us with this malignancy at the very moment of our births . If god did decide to simply confer on us this spiritual vexation on an entirely individual basis, then he did so knowing the damnation of eternal destruction and torment he was annointing his own creation with. Again, if he did this, he is not a god worth recognizing, let alone worshipping.
Of course, science is the true answer. God is too human, to be anything but.
Religion itself uses science for its own purposes.
Only when science blatantly and completely discredits religion's fantastic claims of the supernatural does it divorce itself from the truth of the scientific method.
This alone is enough to discredit it.