BASICS-Over the next few months, my plans are to slowly introduce a few concepts that Bible literalists will undoubtedly have a major problem with, but my purpose is to bring these subjects into light for proper discussion and presentation. It will most certainly arouse apologetics of the Genesis account, and ultimately, it will propose a different way of looking at our biological lives. In my experiences from Oklahoma, I believe that far too many people are shielded, just as I was, from an alternative to Bible fundamentalism, and this alternative happens to be an innovation that science has successfully proved to be an incontrovertible fact over the past 100 years. A true and magnificent milestone achievement. Something that is amazingly mind-blowing when properly understood. A set of principles that truly "revolutionizes" one's thinking about the world. What I'm speaking of is Darwinian evolution. It's undoubtedly a very deep, difficult topic to fully understand, but the importance of it is undeniable. It truly deserves as much time as it does respect. Charles Darwin's idea is possibly the greatest innovation to modern thinking that human beings have ever seen because it flew in the face of virtually all of society, it was BOLD, and most importantly, it gave us an entire new outlook on the history of life. The resistance to it persists in the world today because it dispels stories of a talking snake, a man living in a fish for three days, a virgin birth, and ultimately and most importantly, a RESURRECTION. The most intriguing aspect of evolution is that it tells us WHO WE REALLY ARE. Never before has an idea challenged the masses to the magnitude that Darwin's treatise On the Origin of Species did, and again, I hope to soften the blow that it may render to the delicate religious mind that has never withstood such devastating opposition as this. Because after all, my purpose is to guide and discover new, alternative ways of thinking.
It took months of heated, internal resistance for me to even begin to START giving this alternative a FAIR CHANCE, but honestly, upon finding the evidence throughout the rigorous research and hours of study, things have changed for me. (An obvious understatement.) If I've ever experienced anything even close to a "miracle" in my life, then it was the day that Darwin's evolution by natural selection's "lightbulb" came on in my mind. (May my families' grave-rollers proceed with their 180 degree turn. :)
With that being said, I will proceed to today's topic: Noah's Ark. Again, hopefully this will not be the most difficult thing to digest for people who have actually took an interest in science within the past few years, but I suspect some believers will be very offended by it. All I ask from you, the reader, is to think about this with an open mind, simply a possibility. That's a WONDERFUL place to start. I also ask you to consider the scientists that toil in obscurity while devoting many years of intellectual exhaustion and physical sweat to research in acquiring this new evidence and knowledge. After all, if it weren't for these people, we would still have an average life span of 30 years, and I would probably be in a wheel chair right now. (Another story for another time. :)
I would like to start this series off with a page from Richard Dawkin's latest book The Greatest Show on Earth. It is a book that provides us with the evidence for evolution, and I thought I would post this one particular thought about the validity of the "Noah's Ark" story.
"It is almost too ridiculous to mention it, but I'm afraid I have to because of the more than 40 percent of the American population who accept the Bible literally: think what the geographical distribution of animals should look like if they'd all dispersed from Noah's Ark. Shouldn't there be some law of decreasing species diversity as we move away from an epicenter - perhaps Mount Ararat? I don't need to tell you that that is not what we see.
Why would all those marsupials-ranging from tiny pouched mice through koalas and bilbys to giant kangaroos and Diprotodonts-why would all those marsupials, but no eutherians at all, have migrated en masse from Mount Ararat to Australia? Which route did they take? And why did not a single member of their straggling caravan pause on the way, and settle-in India, perhaps, or China, or some haven along the Great Silk Road?
....How on Earth do the 40 percent of history-deniers think this state of affairs came about?...Once again, I AM SORRY TO TAKE A SLEDGEHAMMER TO SO SMALL A NUT, but I have to do so because more than 40 percent of the American people believe literally in the story of Noah's Ark. We should be able to ignore them, and get on with our science, but we can't afford to because they control school boards, they home-school their children to deprive them of access to proper science teachers, and they include many members of the United States Congress, and some state governors...." (Dawkins 268-270)
And what about the penguins making their merry little marches (swims) toward the arctic? Does Noah's Ark make any plausible sense of this at all? Let's shed our preconceptions, and think about this for a moment......if evidence really did, in fact, support Noah's Ark and "the Great Flood" then why would science dispute it?
A)Either science is right, and the Genesis account is a myth.
or B)Satan planted the evidence to "trick" us into denying Noah's Ark.
And finally, I leave you with this question.....what do you think is more likely to have happened?
Also, here is an interesting article (see bottom) from National Geographic that explains the myth of "the Great Flood."
Source: Dawkins, Richard. The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. Free Press, 2010. 268-270. Print.
Further research: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/090206-smaller-noah-flood.html
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
Science vs. Faith
MAXIM-For me, it's irritating to simply be labeled an "atheist" because there is so much more that I believe in and defend, and it has absolutely nothing to do with whether God exists or not. What I stand for is naturalism, rationalism, and secular humanism. I do what's best for myself with respect to the lives and feelings of the LIVING BEINGS around me. No God needed for this. I do good things because it's best for everyone, not because I'm scared of burning in Hell. I question everything. I live by Confucius' silver rule, "don't do anything to others that you wouldn't want done to yourself." In some respect, you could say that I am an "atheist for Jesus." However, religion complicates these values, therefore I think that if the Bible really IS the infallible word of God, then our God is sadistic, mysogynistic, homophobic, and malevolent. One that created His children with the illusion of free will. If we truly had total free will, then God would accept our choice if we chose to live without His company. Just like I would never disown or torture my daughter for rebelling against my wishes, why would a "perfect" Creator Father be any different? Instead, we are threatened with eternal damnation for simply "choosing." What kind of free will is this? It's not.
In one of my previous posts I said that it's infinitely more complex for me to believe that an omnipotent God just "always existed" rather than to believe that our universe came by a simple, natural way (Occam's Razor.) Just as human beings arose through simplistic, natural processes, I believe the universe did as well. This leads into the science versus faith debate and my views about it. No, science does not YET have the answers for abiogenesis or the origins of the universe, but should we just give up and say "I don't know, therefore it must be God?" Faith teaches us to be lazy while science teaches us that hard-work, perseverance, and research breaks down knowledge barriers, and one day we actually might have all of the answers. Science says, "I'm not sure, but I'll try to find out." Religion says, "I'm sure, no need to worry about it." If it were up to religion, would medicine even exist? Would hospitals even exist? The answer is NO because it took scientists that actually weren't satisfied with the Bible's bronze-age explanation for life to develop these cures for our illnesses and diseases. If scientists were content with "God's purpose for our lives," then we would not even care to intervene to change our future. We would accept the fact that 1 out of every 4,000 males are born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a genetic DNA mutation. (Yet, the "signature of God" or "DNA" is supposed to impress me like it has Creationists?) Using faith, we would say, "okay, well, Duchenne, just like smallpox, must be in God's plan, just "believe" and be patient. Pray, and it will work itself out." It would say, "sorry parents, get over it. God wanted Duchenne here on Earth so it's here to stay. It must be useful for us somehow." Thankfully, we have people that won't accept this. For the same reasons believers are atheists toward other Gods, I'm an atheist toward theirs. I bet they think other religions are pretty outlandish, ridiculous, and far-fetched? Well, that's what I believe about the virgin birth, a talking snake, a 6,000 year old Earth, a person living in a fish for three days, and a resurrection.
As human beings, if we really think about it, no matter what we do is in self-interest. For instance, I don't get paid for this blog, but it makes me feel better by expressing my feelings toward an important aspect of my life. It gives me purpose to inform people about the other side of the argument instead of just spreading false propaganda such as "evolution is only a theory" or "if humans came from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?" These are falsities that are spread simply from scientific ignorance or outright denial of the evidence. (Later on, I will do a post about Darwinian evolution because it's the premise for my views about life.) Anyways, back to the point, if you give to the poor, you receive good feelings in return. If you convert someone to Christianity, you are rewarded with the emotions of satisfaction because you think you're making God happy and improving your status with Him. If you die by sacrificing yourself for the good of another person, you believe you'll be in heaven afterwards (otherwise, I think you would be clinically insane for sacrificing your one chance at living.) What I'm saying is that there is NOTHING that you do that is NOT motivated by INCENTIVE. Economists fully understand this. Adam Smith, the father of modern economics understood this as well, but WE have to understand this concept to understand the roots of religion and the meaning behind our behavior. Of course humans are lonely. Of course we want meaning. Of course we think we're superior to the other animals of the world, but the problem is that we CAN'T GET OVER OURSELVES. Given a few more million years, chimpanzees may be just as "intelligent" as we are, but the important issue here is survival. 99.9% of the species that have ever lived on Earth are extinct. Homo sapiens are relatively young (in terms of the universe's age) at 200,000 years old, so we need to flourish with the time we have to make the most of it, and potentially, we can stave off the statistical probability that we will eventually become extinct. My central point is this: science gets us closer to that reality than religion does. We are building churches instead of laboratories. We are praying instead of learning. We should be funding scienctific research instead of buying preachers a new Mercedes. The consequences of this are important. It gets the only life we are absolutely sure of NOWHERE. It inhibits our progression. The truth is, you DON'T KNOW if Heaven exists, and we DO KNOW that suffering exists. Let's fix it!
Anyways, to wrap things up, if you're betting on Pascal's wager that you have nothing to lose by "wagering" on God, I think you may be under the false assumption that it's a 50/50 bet. There are thousands of options for the Creator of the universe, and of course everyone thinks they chose correctly. I believe that IF God exists, this Creator would have much more respect and regard for a person that didn't buy into exaggerated fairy tales that promote blind faith. My idea of a perfect God would say, "faith is for lazy people, evidence is for the wise."
In one of my previous posts I said that it's infinitely more complex for me to believe that an omnipotent God just "always existed" rather than to believe that our universe came by a simple, natural way (Occam's Razor.) Just as human beings arose through simplistic, natural processes, I believe the universe did as well. This leads into the science versus faith debate and my views about it. No, science does not YET have the answers for abiogenesis or the origins of the universe, but should we just give up and say "I don't know, therefore it must be God?" Faith teaches us to be lazy while science teaches us that hard-work, perseverance, and research breaks down knowledge barriers, and one day we actually might have all of the answers. Science says, "I'm not sure, but I'll try to find out." Religion says, "I'm sure, no need to worry about it." If it were up to religion, would medicine even exist? Would hospitals even exist? The answer is NO because it took scientists that actually weren't satisfied with the Bible's bronze-age explanation for life to develop these cures for our illnesses and diseases. If scientists were content with "God's purpose for our lives," then we would not even care to intervene to change our future. We would accept the fact that 1 out of every 4,000 males are born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a genetic DNA mutation. (Yet, the "signature of God" or "DNA" is supposed to impress me like it has Creationists?) Using faith, we would say, "okay, well, Duchenne, just like smallpox, must be in God's plan, just "believe" and be patient. Pray, and it will work itself out." It would say, "sorry parents, get over it. God wanted Duchenne here on Earth so it's here to stay. It must be useful for us somehow." Thankfully, we have people that won't accept this. For the same reasons believers are atheists toward other Gods, I'm an atheist toward theirs. I bet they think other religions are pretty outlandish, ridiculous, and far-fetched? Well, that's what I believe about the virgin birth, a talking snake, a 6,000 year old Earth, a person living in a fish for three days, and a resurrection.
As human beings, if we really think about it, no matter what we do is in self-interest. For instance, I don't get paid for this blog, but it makes me feel better by expressing my feelings toward an important aspect of my life. It gives me purpose to inform people about the other side of the argument instead of just spreading false propaganda such as "evolution is only a theory" or "if humans came from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?" These are falsities that are spread simply from scientific ignorance or outright denial of the evidence. (Later on, I will do a post about Darwinian evolution because it's the premise for my views about life.) Anyways, back to the point, if you give to the poor, you receive good feelings in return. If you convert someone to Christianity, you are rewarded with the emotions of satisfaction because you think you're making God happy and improving your status with Him. If you die by sacrificing yourself for the good of another person, you believe you'll be in heaven afterwards (otherwise, I think you would be clinically insane for sacrificing your one chance at living.) What I'm saying is that there is NOTHING that you do that is NOT motivated by INCENTIVE. Economists fully understand this. Adam Smith, the father of modern economics understood this as well, but WE have to understand this concept to understand the roots of religion and the meaning behind our behavior. Of course humans are lonely. Of course we want meaning. Of course we think we're superior to the other animals of the world, but the problem is that we CAN'T GET OVER OURSELVES. Given a few more million years, chimpanzees may be just as "intelligent" as we are, but the important issue here is survival. 99.9% of the species that have ever lived on Earth are extinct. Homo sapiens are relatively young (in terms of the universe's age) at 200,000 years old, so we need to flourish with the time we have to make the most of it, and potentially, we can stave off the statistical probability that we will eventually become extinct. My central point is this: science gets us closer to that reality than religion does. We are building churches instead of laboratories. We are praying instead of learning. We should be funding scienctific research instead of buying preachers a new Mercedes. The consequences of this are important. It gets the only life we are absolutely sure of NOWHERE. It inhibits our progression. The truth is, you DON'T KNOW if Heaven exists, and we DO KNOW that suffering exists. Let's fix it!
Anyways, to wrap things up, if you're betting on Pascal's wager that you have nothing to lose by "wagering" on God, I think you may be under the false assumption that it's a 50/50 bet. There are thousands of options for the Creator of the universe, and of course everyone thinks they chose correctly. I believe that IF God exists, this Creator would have much more respect and regard for a person that didn't buy into exaggerated fairy tales that promote blind faith. My idea of a perfect God would say, "faith is for lazy people, evidence is for the wise."
Friday, January 14, 2011
Reality as a Simulation...
DECEPTION-This post follows on the heels of my recent viewing of the movie "Inception" in which reality is distorted by tapping into the subconscious mind using dreams as a weapon to infiltrate and exploit actuality. The first film that triggered my consideration about the possibility of an altered or false state of reality was "The Matrix," in which our world is really a computer simulation that is engineered by sentient machines that are enslaving the human race simply to harness energy for their own survival. These ideas pose relevant alternatives to what we perceive as "truth."
However unlikely the possibility of any of this happening or have happened is irrelevant to the fact that it IS possible. Just think for a moment about the video game "The Sims." We have already created artificial intelligence that can simulate and project our behavior as a species, and it can give us valuable feedback for the choices to be made about our own future. What better way to test the future than by a simulation? This brings me to my main point and that is Oxford University Professor Nick Bostrom's "simulated reality hypothesis." It states the following:
i. It is possible that an advanced civilization could create a computer simulation which contains individuals with artificial intelligence (AI).
ii. Such a civilization would likely run many, billions for example, of these simulations (just for fun, for research or any other permutation of possible reasons.)
iii. A simulated individual inside the simulation wouldn’t necessarily know that it is inside a simulation — it is just going about its daily business in what it considers to be the "real world."
Then the ultimate question is — if one accepts that the above premises are at least possible — which of the following is more likely?
a. We are the one civilization which develops AI simulations and happens not to be in one itself?
b. We are one of the many (billions) of simulations that has run? (Remember point iii.)
In greater detail, his argument attempts to prove the trichotomy, either that:
1.intelligent races will never reach a level of technology where they can run simulations of reality so detailed they can be mistaken for reality (assuming that this is possible in principle); or
2.races who do reach such a sophisticated level do not tend to run such simulations; or
3.we are almost certainly living in such a simulation.(1)
Many have proposed that our universe is much too old (13.75 billion years) to have NOT evolved life that is far more technologically capable than our own, yet many of us never give this possibility a single thought.
Furthermore, another idea for reality that envelopes the ideas from the movie "Inception" is the "dream argument." It states that:
A futuristic technology is not required to create a simulated reality, but rather, all that is needed is a human brain. More specifically, the mind's ability to create simulated realities during REM sleep affects the statistical likelihood of our own reality being simulated.(2)
If my purpose holds, then by now, you will have at the very least become skeptical of what you think you know about reality because it could very well be false. I concede that we may never know for sure what constitutes "real," but let us use our creativity to guide us to truth, and maybe some day, our children's children will innocently laugh at our ignorance.
Sources:
1. http://www.simulation-argument.com/matrix.html
2. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=bttg3B5CZOIC&oi=fnd&pg=PA96&dq=dreaming+simulated+reality&ots=iPQG-evOVr&sig=_7NT_42ES4XXK8iXz02Necg5W9c#v=onepage&q=dreaming%20simulated%20reality&f=false
However unlikely the possibility of any of this happening or have happened is irrelevant to the fact that it IS possible. Just think for a moment about the video game "The Sims." We have already created artificial intelligence that can simulate and project our behavior as a species, and it can give us valuable feedback for the choices to be made about our own future. What better way to test the future than by a simulation? This brings me to my main point and that is Oxford University Professor Nick Bostrom's "simulated reality hypothesis." It states the following:
i. It is possible that an advanced civilization could create a computer simulation which contains individuals with artificial intelligence (AI).
ii. Such a civilization would likely run many, billions for example, of these simulations (just for fun, for research or any other permutation of possible reasons.)
iii. A simulated individual inside the simulation wouldn’t necessarily know that it is inside a simulation — it is just going about its daily business in what it considers to be the "real world."
Then the ultimate question is — if one accepts that the above premises are at least possible — which of the following is more likely?
a. We are the one civilization which develops AI simulations and happens not to be in one itself?
b. We are one of the many (billions) of simulations that has run? (Remember point iii.)
In greater detail, his argument attempts to prove the trichotomy, either that:
1.intelligent races will never reach a level of technology where they can run simulations of reality so detailed they can be mistaken for reality (assuming that this is possible in principle); or
2.races who do reach such a sophisticated level do not tend to run such simulations; or
3.we are almost certainly living in such a simulation.(1)
Many have proposed that our universe is much too old (13.75 billion years) to have NOT evolved life that is far more technologically capable than our own, yet many of us never give this possibility a single thought.
Furthermore, another idea for reality that envelopes the ideas from the movie "Inception" is the "dream argument." It states that:
A futuristic technology is not required to create a simulated reality, but rather, all that is needed is a human brain. More specifically, the mind's ability to create simulated realities during REM sleep affects the statistical likelihood of our own reality being simulated.(2)
If my purpose holds, then by now, you will have at the very least become skeptical of what you think you know about reality because it could very well be false. I concede that we may never know for sure what constitutes "real," but let us use our creativity to guide us to truth, and maybe some day, our children's children will innocently laugh at our ignorance.
Sources:
1. http://www.simulation-argument.com/matrix.html
2. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=bttg3B5CZOIC&oi=fnd&pg=PA96&dq=dreaming+simulated+reality&ots=iPQG-evOVr&sig=_7NT_42ES4XXK8iXz02Necg5W9c#v=onepage&q=dreaming%20simulated%20reality&f=false
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
No Such Thing as "Why"
ACCEPTING THE IMPROBABLE-This one, basic concept, for many years, I simply never even thought of...
If the universe is too complex not to have been designed, then God is also too complex not to have been designed. A creator-god would never be something simple or, more importantly, something simpler than the universe. If this god is at least as complex as the universe, then it needs a designer and a creator at least as much as the universe does. Believers allow an omnipotent creator God, which is infinitely more complex than our universe, off the hook and say that such a complex being doesn't require a designer itself, yet still use the fallacy that our universe is evidence for this far more superior being.
My overall point follows; wouldn't the simplest explanation plainly be that "the universe just happened", and after 11 billion years, and with a billion billion (literally) planets in space, single-cell replicators of life were destined to develop somewhere out of all of those possible elemental combinations and then evolution by natural selection (which is supported by massive amounts of undeniable scientific evidence) guided us to where we are 2 billion years later? Instead, we complicate matters with an all-powerful God that just "always existed" and chose to be invisible to us. Just think about this for a moment...if you were God, would it not just be absurd to create human beings only to remain physically hidden from them? That's like choosing to have a kid and before they see you, you move to outer space and watch their entire life from a surveillance camera.
http://atheism.about.com/od/argumentsagainstgod/a/design.htm
If the universe is too complex not to have been designed, then God is also too complex not to have been designed. A creator-god would never be something simple or, more importantly, something simpler than the universe. If this god is at least as complex as the universe, then it needs a designer and a creator at least as much as the universe does. Believers allow an omnipotent creator God, which is infinitely more complex than our universe, off the hook and say that such a complex being doesn't require a designer itself, yet still use the fallacy that our universe is evidence for this far more superior being.
My overall point follows; wouldn't the simplest explanation plainly be that "the universe just happened", and after 11 billion years, and with a billion billion (literally) planets in space, single-cell replicators of life were destined to develop somewhere out of all of those possible elemental combinations and then evolution by natural selection (which is supported by massive amounts of undeniable scientific evidence) guided us to where we are 2 billion years later? Instead, we complicate matters with an all-powerful God that just "always existed" and chose to be invisible to us. Just think about this for a moment...if you were God, would it not just be absurd to create human beings only to remain physically hidden from them? That's like choosing to have a kid and before they see you, you move to outer space and watch their entire life from a surveillance camera.
http://atheism.about.com/od/argumentsagainstgod/a/design.htm
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