Pre-Conceptions

CALM BEFORE THE STORM-Evolution is quite possibly the most important subject of controversy regarding the religion versus science debate. For many years I ignored the evidence before me as I chose the Bible over science books, and I felt as though Satan himself was deceiving the world with this theory that humans evolved from more primative life. I asked, how dare these scientists relegate humans to this inferior status? My own arrogance blinded my sight. You see, rule number one in progress is accepting the fact that your current position may be wrong. Your current knowledge could be incorrect, but when you release your thoughts from the 6-sided cube that surrounds your mind, doors open. Questions begin to be answered (without having to believe in supernatural explanations.)
There is something that occurs around the age of 18 that all humans experience; it's called "figuring it out." It's my estimation that approximately 90% of people close their mind completely at this age and the window narrows regarding their true capacity to accept new ideas. Also, growing up in Southern Oklahoma is not very conducive to belief in anything besides Biblical dogma, but with every breath I take, the barriers, the chains, the attachments are becoming broken. I finally feel a semblance of FREEDOM. I have lived in fear for so many years; totally controlled. Living my life for someone else. Living my life for Jesus. A person that I had never seen, never directly spoken with, never directly knew. How can a relationship exist when the other party has no physical voice or appearance? Some may say, "Jesus speaks to me everyday. I 'feel' it. I believe." I say, "Why?" For what reason do you believe? Do you believe because you are seeking eternal life? If so, that's self-interest. Do you believe because your parents told you to? If so, that's undeserving of any "eternal life" as well. Do you believe because it "feels" right? It "feels" right for Satanists to worship Satan. Satanists believe that Jesus is the real deceiver, and God's plan is actually to enslave those that worship Him in the afterlife. They believe that the enemy is not the Devil, but God. Everyone believes their belief is correct. So how would you ever know? Quite simply, you wouldn't when it pertains to gods and pseudosciences. That is why I turn to evidence, reality, and that is why I am extensively studying Darwinian evolution. Evolution is a key to finding truth about our lives. It lets us accurately identify what motivates us on a daily basis. Evolution provides us with factual, believable, logical, rational answers to imposing questions about the many aspects of life. Opening your mind's door is most important in giving evolution a fair take, and sadly, many will never take this first step. It took me years to do it, hopefully it won't take many who read my blog nearly as long.

The God Helmet

MIND-In 1836, Ellen White, founder of the Seventh-Day Adventist movement (a Christian denomination), suffered a brain injury at age 9 that changed her personality permanently, and she began to have powerful religious visions that shaped the foundations and beliefs of this new religion. Today, neuroscience is out to prove that God does indeed exist...between your ears, that is. Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) sufferers experience vivid hallucinations that often resemble "God-like" encounters, and this has prompted scientists to experiment with this part of the cerebral cortex. One neuroscientist in particular named Michael Persinger has developed "the God Helmet." Within this helmet, magnetic fields stimulate the temporal lobe with 80% of its subjects reporting feelings ranging from "a presence in the room," to visual hallucinations and even disembodiment. This theory definitely begs some important questions. Is the "God experience" just a contrived, super-emotion of the mind? Could the "Holy Ghost chillbumps" just be a product of an induced euphoria created by our temporal lobe? There is definitely evidence that religious people live longer, healthier lives, but in terms of evolution, wouldn't this "faith trait" be advantageous to keep around? Simply a survival benefit to having religious belief would explain the Jews ability to withstand the many attempts at eradication throughout history. Could God simply be an evolution of the human brain to promote survival and ease our anxiety about death? Maybe it's simply a by-product of childhood tendencies to trust our parents?
Out of arrogance, we believe that we are the only species deserving of eternal life. So the next time you smash an ant on your front porch, think about how it was simply trying to survive, and your convenience took priority over LIFE.





Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/godonbrain.shtml

Faith...

EVIDENCE UNSEEN-Faith has always been an integral part of my daily life, and I've always believed that faith was a positive quality, but the faith I'm speaking of is faith in yourself. I feel that this faith has a distinct power unlike anything else in the world. However, faith in others is less certain (I think we can all attest to that.) This skepticism has continuously grown in my mind over the years, but I somehow feel that no matter what happens over the course of eternity, there is something special about this one chance at mortality that we have today. There is an interesting line in the movie "Troy" where Achilles says:

"I’ll tell you a secret. Something they don’t teach you in your temple. The Gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again."

This leads me into the issue of blind faith. Many of my issues from religion stem from the simple fact that people are told what to believe in childhood. If I was born to Jewish parents, the odds are pretty likely that I would refute Jesus Christ as God. If I was born to Islamic parents, would I really have a fair chance at choosing a different religion? It seems to me that there is NO WAY THIS IS FAIR. So what I am simply saying is that we have been blessed in one way or another with this one chance at life. Maybe there is a Creator, but would the Creator of man want you to simply believe everything you've been told by your parents, or preacher, or would His way be for humans to seek out knowledge, evidence, and truth? If humans had never opposed traditional thinking, would we have ever developed an airplane? And would the world not still be flat? I see so many people that never question. They see questioning as apostasy. This all leads me to wonder if the devout followers of the religions in the world are wasting valuable time at the one chance they have at life. So for now, my faith will remain in my search.


"Suppose there is a God who is watching us and choosing which souls of the deceased to bring to heaven, and this god really does want only the morally good to populate heaven. He will probably select from only those who made a significant and responsible effort to discover the truth. For all others are untrustworthy, being cognitively or morally inferior, or both. They will also be less likely ever to discover and commit to true beliefs about right and wrong. That is, if they have a significant and trustworthy concern for doing right and avoiding wrong, it follows necessarily that they must have a significant and trustworthy concern for knowing right and wrong. Since this knowledge requires knowledge about many fundamental facts of the universe (such as whether there is a god), it follows necessarily that such people must have a significant and trustworthy concern for always seeking out, testing, and confirming that their beliefs about such things are probably correct. Therefore, only such people can be sufficiently moral and trustworthy to deserve a place in heaven — unless god wishes to fill heaven with the morally lazy, irresponsible, or untrustworthy." -Richard Carrier

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/heaven.html

Right and Wrong...

DILEMMA-I want to do a short piece tonight over a couple of moral situations that really made me question what right and wrong truly are all about. If you consider yourself a moral absolutist, then look no further than the Ten Commandments. Murdering is absolutely wrong, in any place and at any time. Stealing is wrong in any situation, and worshipping the Judeo-Christian God is number 1 on the list. But are there exceptions? I'll start out easy, but I can almost guarantee you'll be a little uneasy by number 3.

Question 1. Would torturing a terrorist's wife to get him to divulge information, which included, but not limited to murder and rape, be wrong if it were the only way to save thousands of innocent people?

Question 2. If your child had a degenerative pain disorder that caused immense suffering that would last for years and had no cure, would killing them be wrong? (I don't have a source for this, but one of my professor's said this was a true story: a guy killed his daughter to stop the suffering by putting her in the car and starting it in the garage. He was convicted of murder.)

Question 3. If a mother was pregnant with a child, and you knew the child would grow up to commit a violent crime against you or your family, would you still be against (if you are) abortion? Sidenote: Did you know that crime has drastically been reduced since the inception of Roe v. Wade in 1973? And the reason........a lot of criminals aren't being born. The poverty-stricken mothers that prostitute themselves out are aborting the child that is statistically likely to become a future criminal. (Levitt and Dubner 2005)




Levitt, Steven D., and Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics. First Ed. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2005. Print.

So tell me this.....

MEAT AND POTATOES: Tonight, for my blog, I just thought I would put down a few questions to think about. Be warned....these are morality-twisting. My goal is to give a "spark" to our minds and thought processes. I'm not here to be sarcastic, derogatory, or ill-willed. Just think of me as a personal trainer for the mind. Just like the best workouts for the body include intensity, fortitude, and pain, I believe that our minds work the same way and achieve the same benefit by simply putting it to the same, rigorous tests. We have to be pushed to the breaking point to gain ground. So here it goes:

1. The Bible speaks of prayer and the fact that if we pray for something "in God's will," consider it done. Now my question is this: Wouldn't God's will (according to the Bible) be carried out regardless of your prayers? My interpretation of all of this is that no matter what happens, God's "will" is going to be fulfilled no matter who's praying and what they're praying for. The 2nd part of this question has to do with the following: Why on Earth would it NOT be in God's will to save a dying person from cancer or AIDS, or to even heal an amputee? And actually, that brings me to another point that should be addressed: Can anyone find a documented case of an amputee being healed by God? I have heard reports of cancer being healed, and of HIV being healed, but considering that our immune-system is one of the most powerful biological systems in the world, combined with the potent placebo-effect from the "God high," it is not unreasonable to think that human-beings can be healed rather quickly and it have nothing to do with God whatsoever? As a personal sidenote I would like to add: When I was 13, I had battled severe asthma for all of my life, and while my dad and I were watching a TBN program with Benny Hinn on it, he was listing out the people watching on TV that he felt had been healed of all of these diseases. To my surprise, he actually said, "I feel that someone is being healed of asthma right now as we speak." So I jumped up and down and my dad and I were very happy because asthma had brought such misery to my life throughout the years, and finally, I just knew this was it. I really believed I was healed. Well, within weeks, I was hit with another bad case of weather-induced asthma and as you might guess, I was crushed. My point here is the fact that I was ABSOLUTELY 100% CERTAIN THAT BENNY HINN WAS RIGHT AND GOD HAD HEALED ME OF ASTHMA, AND WE PRAYED AND PRAYED, AND PRAISED AND PRAISED, AND THANKED AND THANKED GOD FOR THIS, but it didn't happen. This in no way changed my feelings toward God. I just thought maybe I did something wrong. Maybe I doubted my healing or something.

2. What was the purpose of God's Great Flood that killed off most of humanity, when He would eventually send the savior Jesus Christ to redeem us from our sins? I was taught that God was not bound by time, and He is simultaneously in the past, present, and future so did He not have a plan from the beginning? Pastors everywhere speak of the grand plan that God has in action, but logically speaking, was the Great Flood really necessary? And scientifically speaking, no evidence of Noah's ark has ever been found, and few scientists believe in a worldwide flood having ever occurred.(1)

3. God speaks to pastors everywhere. Or, at least that's what the preachers tell us. Then why are pastors everywhere teaching different philosophies and interpretations of Christianity? So many denominations. So many differing messages. So much confusion. Does anyone else see the incosistencies with this?

1. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/090206-smaller-noah-flood.html

"Why?"

IMPROBABLE: Why do we believe in God, give money to the church, or better yet, why do we give that homeless person a dollar that’s begging at the street corner? There is a simple answer to these questions, but you may not like it. It’s called selfishness. You might be thinking that this is contradictory, but could self-interest have anything to do with these questions?.....In one word (to start out with), yes. We believe in God and love Him out of the greed that was created by our own personal desire to attain Heaven. Fear motivates us to act in self-interest, such as fear of Hell, fear of death, and fear of God. Tithing makes us feel like we are gaining favor with God, the Pastor, and our fellow peers in the congregation. Giving a dollar to that homeless person makes us feel like a kind, giving philanthropist, and I bet you say to yourself, “I’m a good person for doing that.” But the truth may be that you only gave that dollar to the homeless person to better your standing with God or to achieve the emotional boost that comes from giving.
A new maxim for my life is: Live free from all of the chains that bind. Keeping my mind open and remembering that knowledge has a way of opening paths. Tearing down the years of programming that I've been force-fed, and start living life beginning with the phrase, "I don’t know.” These three words are the first step towards true independence. Give up; and when you give up, give up to yourself. For the power is within ourself to change us, our problems, and the world. We just have to listen, learn, and believe in ourselves. Always remember that God won't do anything for you that you won't do for yourself. He won’t cure you of an addiction that you keep saying “yes” to. If we abide by this creed, then it really doesn’t matter what God does, and most importantly, it doesn’t even matter if God exists. Your life will simply rely on your choices, nothing more, nothing less. Reliance on God is something that will never be proven so why do we not rely on the one, proven, true thing that we know to be the primary force acting in our lives; our choices? There is plenty of proof that making sound decisions lead to fruitful returns in reality. We absolutely, without a doubt know that if we choose the best decision, we give the most favorable odds to the hand that holds our best outcome. For example, if you choose the correct answers on a multiple choice test, you will have the best chance at receiving the optimal grade that you wanted. There is factual evidence to these decisions and we can relate them to life. The variables that we do not know are the ones that relate to God. If I pray for my sick grandfather to be healed of cancer, will he really be healed? Well, supposedly God will heal him if it's “in God’s will, “ but that’s another story altogether. The truth of the matter is that we simply cannot rely on prayer. No matter how strong one's faith is, you and I both know that there are no guarantees with prayer. We have to realize that we will be able to survive without being controlled. Live free my friends. My favorite line from the movie “The Matrix” is when Morpheus says to Neo, “FREE YOUR MIND.”

Uncertainty

TRANSPARENCY: I believe that humans, at this point, have no precise way of knowing if there is a God and exactly who He is even IF he/she did exist. As we progress further, maybe it will become evident, but as of this moment, we are relying on man-made accounts, and I think we all know how humans can exaggerate stories. In my mind, my official category of thinking would be under the "I don't know" section. I simply don't know what happened to get us here and I don't know what will happen. What I can tell you is that I believed for many years that I would be "raptured" along with the world's other Christians to reunite with Jesus before the Anti-Christ took rule over the world. Predictions for the rapture came frequently from the church....1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 ( Y2K was the absolute definite end of the world), 2001 (the 9/11 attacks were to usher in the anti-Christ), 2006, 2010, and now the latest is the 2012 end of the Mayan calendar. You can only "cry wolf" a certain number of times before people start to catch on. Fear controls people's lives (mainly their pocketbooks), but when we really breakdown what's creating this fear, I believe that the culprits are the pastors and churches everywhere. The end of the world fear is almost as terrifying as the Lake of Fire fear so it puts urgency into people's lives to tithe and "spread the word" (basically, so that more people will tithe.) Anyways, I digress, I would like for you to think about this question....if there were no incentive (Heaven), would you still believe in God?

High on God?

EPIPHANY- "I don't know." These three words strike me as the fundamental root of progress for our minds. Anyone that says they DO know probably doesn't know. Around two years ago I watched a program on the science channel that was basically about "stuff I didn't wanna hear." The show was about how the scientific community has been making great strides in biology by using new computer technology to break through DNA analysis and our genetic code. For 28 years, I've been a Christian with a literal view on the Bible's message, but I started to question the very core of why I was so sure of the things that I believed. It always kind of struck me as odd when someone would ask me, "why is it that you believe in Jesus Christ?" I rehashed the same, tired answers that Christians have been giving for many years now. "God has changed my life"..... "I'm saved now"...."Well, if the disciples were willing to die for Jesus, then he must really be God"....Then, one day, after seeing this program, something in my mind triggered a change. I was defensive at first at even the thought of human evolution. Could it actually be that the scientists that have spent their entire lives studying human genetics be right? Could it be that there really isn't a conspiracy from the Devil to persuade us to believe in the process of evolution? Maybe the Devil doesn't even exist? And the biggest question for me was, "could I have experienced a God placebo-effect?" The medical community has long battled the placebo-effect because the human mind is quite powerful, but could it really be that humans everywhere are actually believing that they're getting "God" when they are really just getting high on the thought of God? Simply a mere delusion? Well, after quite a lot of intense soul-searching and research, I think that I was fooling myself into thinking God was intervening and guiding my life when in all reality, it was myself that was in charge of my life. We don't give ourselves enough credit when things are good, and we don't hold ourselves accountable when things are going awry. I've found that this behavior is coded in our nature. After winning the Super Bowl, Drew Brees says, "thank you Jesus?" Self-reliance is my new way. Jesus said "He is the Way?" Well, I think Jesus had some great messages to offer, but now I believe "YOU ARE THE WAY!" Things happen because WE make them happen. If something doesn't happen, it's because YOU didn't make it happen. We have to start being accountable for every single decision and every single action we take. "God doesn't help those that don't help themselves."-Beowulf. Could it be that we are the ones that have total control?