On Time, Space and Being: Part 1, Time

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....

My Deconversion

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.

A conversation

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."

The Miracle of Creation?

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.

A life philosophy

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.

Atheist 13 meme

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 the psychology of religion

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

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 Verifiability and Universality

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.

On Abraham and Issac

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).

On Universal Origins

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.