Fundamentally Flawed - The role of believing what you don't understand

It's a Saturday night get-together:  Our friend Jan clumsily trips over a bright orange flip-flop that someone left in the living room floor.  She embarrassingly falls, much to the chagrin of everyone at the party, yet stumbles to her feet without a serious injury.  We express how sorry and empathetic we are about the situation as she's bleeding and laughing about the situation. Fundamental attribution error subconsciously invades our minds like an unknown virus that has seeped in and spread throughout the defensive pores of our "psychological skin."

No one would believe that this could've happened to them.  Tripping over a bright orange flip-flop at a party including our closest peers?  This social audition that we use, unconsciously or not, as a networking platform for a better life rules our mindset.  Whether it relates to our profession or just our instinctive will to be impressive and un-phased by our surroundings, we like to look like we are better, or at least as competent as others around us.

The point of the story is analogous to a bigger picture.  One that tells something so much more important than an accidental, unfortunate tale of a friend that had an embarrassing moment while at a party among their peers.

One always thinks that he/she has an idea of what it means to be someone else.  Recently, in California, a law was passed to allow transgendered human beings to choose which sport (male/female) that they would like to participate in as well as which restroom to use based upon which gender they feel that they belong to.  Somehow, this law is, in some American's eyes, "ridiculous," and has caused a "shake my head" reaction.  

Pinpointing back to the 1960s, in which I, fortunately enough, was not an African-American living at the time, the song remains the same in most respects today.  Sadly though, the general public that is against the "transgression" of being transgendered, bi-sexual, homosexual, or just down-right unsure of their place in this world, has taken over the fore-front voice in our State.  

Oddly enough, some of these people have children that were born with birth-defects that have permanently imprinted their lives with something that they cannot shed (at least for now, they're not within the scope or reach of medical science) yet they do not mind condemning those that were born with a slightly different "social or physical condition."  They somehow do not see that we are comparing apples to apples in this discussion, not apples to oranges.  

The 1960s ring heavily and with an ironic tone that carries the reminder that we cannot judge simply based upon what we do not understand.  We cannot adjudicate based upon skin color, superficial characteristics, or pre-conditioned biases that have been programmed within from our ignorant ancestors' misguided principles about what they believed to be "truth" while they did not even know what a gene was.  As oblivious as they were to the truth of biology and ecology as they were, they absolutely do not get a pass for their behavior that was completely based upon prejudice, chauvinism, and bigotry as they treated those unlike themselves as anything but what their Christ had condoned.

Now, to the point:  The Native American saying of "walking in another person's moccasins" rings throughout.  Ubiquitous to the madness.  It's transcendent in its' expression, explicit in its' meaning.  To judge a person negatively simply because they were born with a phenotypical trait is to fundamentally err in basic logic.  When you have no ability to choose what "form" or "shape" you were born, irregardless of the political correctness behind it, means that we have absolutely no basis to stand upon when making statements or judgments denying which bathroom or which sport one can choose to participate in.

Until you, my friend, have been born "differently," and have any inkling of an idea of what it means to be "abnormal" in this society that we live in, I think it would be wise to withhold your typical Biblically-based assumptions and rhetoric regarding your beliefs about a human being's righteousness and ultimately what bathroom or sport you think someone should have the right to choose to be in.

Reconnection

AWAKENING-It's been several months since I've written a blog entry, and not much has changed, at least, philosophically within myself so obviously nothing has been accomplished here, at least from my perspective, for quite a while now. With the combination of getting my Bachelor's degree in Business and putting my primary efforts into my career in finance and family time, I feel like I have achieved very much in other areas of my life, but I have been and always will be interested in discussing and progressing not only my intellect in areas such as theology, science, philosophy, etc. but also yours.

At many points over the past few months, I was struck with ideas that provided that all too familiar initial spark that's usually needed as the catalyst for a new thread, but it just never happened, and I apologize if anyone has been deeply saddened (haha) by my blog's absence. Now for you others, the wonderful, much needed adversaries who like to antagonize, play Devil's advocate, or just plainly argue with me, I will be back shorty to continue my efforts to dialectically pursue a mutual understanding of what we all may agree to be an idea or set of ideals that we would call "truth."

Until then, I ask of you this: Initiate the spark yourself. Whether it be starting your own blog or asking me to discuss and dissect a certain topic of interest to you, just do it. Phil Knight got it right when he created Nike's slogan. Be a doer!

The Resurrection of Jesus/Logic...

ASCENSION-Recently, I have taken an interest in studying the four gospels of the Bible in much greater detail than in previous attempts. After all, the cornerstone of Christianity is based upon these books and in particular, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. To find inconsistency within this pivotal section of the Bible's central message would be to devastatingly (from a believer's standpoint) discover the perception of complete fabrication. While I have read and studied the gospels many times in my life, in this instance, I sought to read them with a set of "new eyes" that are free from intellectual dishonesty and confirmatory bias. I implemented a new approach that questioned the validity of the books' context in a sensible, judiciously logical way.

The results: I have uncovered several contradictions that rise to the surface of my concerns, but for the sake of time and space, I would like to delve into what I consider the most important and obvious flaw that reveals much about the credibility value of the book of Matthew's account as acceptable and reasonable "evidence." The central thesis to this topic will be from Matthew 28 which gives an account of the resurrection of Christ, the most important event in the Bible.

Matthew 28:2-4 states, "There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men." This verse conveys to us that the soldiers guarding the tomb had witnessed, first-hand, that the resurrection of Christ had indeed come to fruition. Keep note of this.

Matthew 28:11-15 proceeds to inform us that the guards traveled into the city to explain the miraculous events that they had witnessed and to give an account to the priests. Subsequently, the priests went on to convene with the elders and "...devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money." Verse 13 tells us that the priests declared to the guards, "you are to say, his disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep." Verse 15 states, "So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day."

So the obvious first question to ask is: How much money would it require for you to conceal the fact that you had just witnessed, with your very own eyes, that Jesus Christ had indeed been resurrected from the dead? And that he truly was, as he had been proclaiming, God incarnate.

The Bible is instructing us that we should unquestionably be impressed and be willing to lay down our very lives for this Truth of truths, yet these guards were so unstirred by the most profound, impactful event that has ever happened in history (remember that they, themselves witnessed this event) that they accepted a BRIBE to cover up this revelation. They didn't fall to their knees, repent, and become transformed, willing martyrs for the "Truth" they had witnessed. No, they DENIED the Miracle of all miracles by securing a bribe and lying about it which would undeniably, by Biblical doctrine, condemn them to Hell for all of eternity.

Therefore intrinsically, either these guards were not at all compelled by this entire sequence of miraculous events, or Matthew was simply not forthright and truthful about his account which would unequivocally expose the Bible as a work that was fundamentally fallacious.

One popular defense of the guards behavior is, "well, the guards were going to be put to death if they confessed the truth." But this argument holds absolutely no merit because the guards and priests would be choosing infinite suffering, money, and surviving a few more years on Earth in lieu of eternal life when they purportedly possessed indisputable, eyewitness evidence that Jesus Christ was in fact what he said he was! Not a lunatic, not a liar, but the Son of God!

In conclusion, this account is embarrassingly fallacious, inconsistent, and completely irrational to anyone that is willing to put aside their preconceived beliefs that, most likely, their parents programmed into them to protect as indisputable truth.

"Human psychology has a near universal tendency to let belief be coloured by desire." -Richard Dawkins

When your freedom becomes another's pain...

A simple fact that we should all be able to personally attest to is that software, movie, and music piracy is out of control. Innovation and economic fairness are being suppressed as a byproduct of this behavior. With that being said, it's understandable that measures are being proposed to discourage intellectual property theft, and with the recent proposition of the Stop Online Piracy Act, individual freedom has been resurrected to the top of our everyday thought. Freedom of speech and personal liberty has been juxtaposed with the protection of intellectual and entrepreneurial property rights. My claim is that this is a far more complex and diverse issue than many people are recognizing and deserves a much deeper analysis. Without an adequate understanding of both sides of this issue, we are not equipped to make any rational, beneficial decisions about this type of legislation. With this post, my simple aim is to promote imaginative, productive thought into this debate.

We must understand that the complete liberation of personal behavior may not be valuable to the maximization of human well-being. It can quickly become invasive upon others' rights, and it can easily destroy the fabric of all objective fairness in any society. Sam Harris asks about this problem in The Moral Landscape: "Should I be able to film my neighbor through their bedroom window and upload this footage onto YouTube? Should I be free to publish a detailed recipe for synthesizing smallpox?" One could also ask if it's acceptable that "personal freedom" allows one to teach their children how to build and detonate nuclear weapons. And down the rabbit-hole we fall even to the depths of granting one the personal freedom to, by any means necessary, fulfill their personal desires even at the expense of another humans' rights and possibly, even to the peril of their own. We have to take into account the possibility that one person's unsubstantiated, misguided delusion could propel humanity into a "less happy" state of being. Therefore, we have to guard against it.

It's my belief that the actions of inhuman totalitarian regimes in the past century have propagated a fear that is eclipsing our judgement on this issue, and many are rushing to a conclusion that "absolute personal freedom" is perfectly conducive to overall human flourishing. In reality, there are no simple resolutions for this problem, but a line must be drawn. For this line to be revised or even removed entirely should be a scientific effort, not a political or philosophical one. As Harris' thesis states, we must make it a scientific, unbiased effort to promote the increased well-being and overall happiness for everyone. With innovative neuroimaging techniques, perhaps we can build a world in which theft, murder, and lying are eradicated. This is undeniably one of the most important matters of any society, therefore, with every fiber of my being, I urge you to research the far-reaching effects of this legislation. Perhaps we can look to science, as Harris believes, to discover the ways to maximize well-being and personal liberation for all.

"Free Will" is an illusion...

SIMULACRA-So what exactly made you read this? Your brain unquestionably made a calculation as to whether or not you should click on the link or simply do something else with your time. At this moment, while you're reading this sentence, your brain is ardently at work registering the variables and alternative courses of action that it may wish to take instead of continuing on with this post. The answer to "why" (or more befittingly stated as "how") you chose to read is within a practical reach, but of course, without looking any further, many of you will credit your action to nothing other than your very own "free will." However, I would like to entertain the idea that perhaps there is a better, more accurate elucidation out there for as to why/how you are reading this, and just perhaps, you aren't really "free" in this sense at all.

Firstly, every action you take, every thought you have is fundamentally rooted in a desire to achieve your WANTS. You cannot control what you want. If it is not possible, as I believe, to change or even remotely manipulate our "want-system" (due to our inherited genetic makeup combined with our individual life experiences), then we are constricted by this "hunger" for our entire lives, and we will continue, as we always have, to fulfill our WANTS above all else in life. For instance, if you chart out, on a piece of paper, a question such as, "Should I go to work today or not," then you will find that there is a matrix that flows toward the answer as to why you will or will not go to work that is much more deeply embedded in this system of wants than you might presuppose. You may be saying, "Well, I still have a 'choice' as to whether I go to work today or not." You may be very surprised that you actually do not. You see, the want-system was built long ago as a by-product of evolution by natural selection, and it determines every desire that you were born with. (The hard-determinism/causality view.) This mechanism seeks incentives to fulfill your wants to in-turn successfully propagate your genes onto the next generation. This system has been constructed over millions of years and involved the success/life/failure/death/well-being of billions and billions of living organisms, and it has shaped our genetic makeup to simply WANT certain things that are merely repercussions of the circumstances that have built our brains. If you admittedly ponder with the utmost intellectual honesty whether or not you actually had a choice to attend work, then you will discover that the only reason you seemingly possessed this "phantom" choice is because the want-system gave rise to your desire for money to feed yourself (that is, of course, if you needed the money for food. There could be innumerable reasons.)

Every single action you take can be linked to some sort of want that you have. Different wants may exist between individuals because genetic makeup combined with previous life experience varies to produce virtually an endless number of results. Everything from smiling at your children, to giving money to a local church can be explained by this system, and I challenge anyone to give me an example of an action that you could ever take that violates the want-system. There is nothing, absolutely nothing that you will ever do in your life that will contradict your want-system. Even if you think you are doing something that you do not want to do such as working 40 hours every week at a laborious job, you are misled because you are behaving to satisfy this mechanism.

Our want-system includes the things we need such as food and water, but also, it is imperative to understand that it includes the pleasurable things we do in life that we classify as hobbies/reward seeking behavior. Of course, by incorporating new information into our brain, inputs such as reading a book, or even reading this post could dictate a change in our want-system that could very well transform our views/beliefs/actions and lead us down a different path. But one thing is for certain, you CANNOT CHOOSE TO CHANGE WHAT YOU WANT. It is our genetic code that includes everything that is US. Therefore in effect, there is no room for such an idea as "free will" because we are bound by genetics and life experiences that we have inherited in this world.

In the opening, I asked about the reasons for you choosing to read this. Perhaps you were completely on the fence about clicking the link. This would be a case in which you say that you cannot make up your mind, and it appears to be a 50/50 balance as to whether you will click the link or not. Therefore, this would be a perfect case in which "free will" would exercise its' authority and prove itself. But actually, it only proves that you do NOT have a choice because you would simply be waiting for a thought to spontaneously arise without having the conscious ability to choose this thought in order to shift the balance in one direction or the other, and in actuality, this thought would come from neurological processes within your brain that YOU HAVE NO CONTROL OVER. Much like the processes that guide thousands of vital biological systems within the body, why would the brain be any different?

I assure you that one thing is for certain.....if you're reading this right now, then you WANTED to read this, and there was never a choice to be made at all.

"We do not cause our causes." - Sam Harris (The Moral Landscape)

Faith in the Invisible = Evidence Unseen...

...or is it simply nonexistent?

Why do you believe what you believe? I used to never ask myself this question. I always thought this would somehow equal doubt, and I viewed doubt as a sign of weakness. Now, I can tell you this much is true: doubt is a sign of strength, and mistakes are how we learn.

Think about this for a moment......REALLY try to get out of your daily way of thinking about what you think you know, and try to think about the reasons you have for your beliefs regarding things you aren't for sure of......like INVISIBLE things; things that science has yet to observe. With this post, I'm simply asking that if you ARE a believer in supernatural things such as Karma, faith, miracles, God, or even Santa Claus, just think about these two analogies for a bit.

An explanation for our existence does not necessarily have to be answered by a belief in a "Supreme Creator" and definitely not an "in our own image" God......Instead, think about the infinite number of planets out there and the possibility that when you play with odds like "infinity," you'll win the lotto at some point......

Exhibit A: Sleeping Beauty...she wakes up and hears of the incredible odds her hero survived to reach her. At first she might suspect divine intervention or a miracle from above unless she realizes that others might have made the attempt to wake her, and she wouldn't have known about them. In fact, given the odds, she would be correct to conclude that her hero is most likely not the first knight to beat such staggering odds. (There COULD be others, "aliens.")

Exhibit B: Imagine a revolver that holds a billion rounds, but there is one chamber that is empty. You attempt to shoot yourself, but the empty chamber happens to be the one aligned so that you are spared. Was the cylinder somehow "finely-tuned" for your survival by design? It would seem like it, unless you learned that a billion other civilizations had already died trying the other chambers. Undeniably you're still lucky, but there is no miracle, no "Designer."

The "truth" (let's say there is such a thing) of existence could very well be as simple as this: asking a question such as, "Why are we here?" or, "What created the Universe?" is like asking, "What is North of the North Pole?"(Stephen Hawking). I wonder, do these questions even HAVE answers? Here is my "faith," my "belief"...I think that limiting our existence to a question that only creates more complicated, complex questions is to defy logic. To say, "the Universe is so complex that it must have been created," is to add complexity to the question: "Where did the Universe come from?" Because by stating that a VASTLY more complex, intelligent being like "God" was just "always here," is FAR more impossible than merely saying that "the Universe just happened, no explanation needed." This defiance of logic keeps me up at night because it forces me to ask myself whether I'm missing the "truth," or that I've actually found it.



Always keep in mind Occam's Razor: "The simplest explanation tends to be the most likely."






***A special thanks goes out to my youtube friend Rupert Von Schnauzer for entertaining and enlightening my mind with these analogies.***

Reinvent your will...

DISCLAIMER: I wanted to do something different, but I have to warn you that this is poetry embedded in a message, so accept it for what it is. This, like most poetry, is art, and it's not created to be a quick or easy read. There was a lot of work put into this, and there are hidden, subtle things that may take a few reads to catch or understand.

Escalation is my resuscitation. The elevation of this glorification will never satiate the level of frustration I have with my dream, of which I seem, to believe that the hope of a perfect life will never come to fruition with me......but wait, there IS hope.....a paradigm shift, trust it. This life is an opportunity to tread loudly and cross your Ts with Vs to form a weapon that we need the most; a pitchfork to slay the system that controls us. Remember this pain though, and use it, because we wouldn’t feel the real that steals the very soul that we hold onto....this is life, our one chance for change, and we CAN rise above takin’ the low road from the blows that we get from below! What are we searching for? Surely not a whore that’s been found throughout history so many times before. The only rule is that there ARE none, and we’re tired and done with the system enforcing a certain way to behave in these times that we need to betray! The machine that oversees can be overcome, out of its aim to tell us how to live and what to do, but with whom do we have the nerve up to serve up the all-coming enemies that think they know the switches to pull to guide our inner bull...our will. Our savior is hope, our smoke..our high, the remedy to the anti-bitch that tells us we'll inevitably choke, but we know that we won't, because through sacrifice we'll persist till the party insists that we leave because we've broken enough rules to engulf the fool that believes in this illusion of rules. And now I'm gonna tell you a secret, so always keep it: without a god to blame, never feel one ounce of shame for this pain that you feel every day that makes you go insane. Always remember, there will never be another person that's hurtin' so bad that they can't express their own dream to find the piece/peace inside that we're all searching for.......REINVENT YOUR WILL, so we can steal back the wheel back from the machine that is driving our lives.......

Truth has two parts: discovery and acceptance.......consider part one DONE.