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.

Seize the Day...

OPPORTUNITY-How much more precious is this life if we truly believe that it's our one and only chance at existence? The 27 years of personal experience with Christianity led me to essentially waste many, many days thinking that I had all of eternity to make up for any shortcomings. Within the past two years I have had a "spiritual" revolution of sorts within myself that has ultimately led me down a different path to non-theism. To the "Holy Spirit-filled" person out there (which I once believed I was): how do you explain that my life has never been better since this change? My days are filled with a special quality and attribute unlike any I've ever experienced; that THIS will never happen again. Never again will I get the chance to love my daughter and wife and watch them grow with me. Change is natural, it keeps us mentally fit and provides new life, new hope, new aspirations, and ultimately, it keeps us interested. Without change, what else would keep us fulfilled? The believer's primary incentive for life, Heaven, would undoubtedly be a place without change. Of course, the Bible says that we would be transformed and different in Heaven while not experiencing our painful feelings of the flesh, but the Biblical explanation regarding the details of Heavenly life are insufficient and vague at best (possibly due to the authors' lack of imagination, lack of evidence, or maybe the simple fact that there IS no Heaven.) However, one thing is for certain: there would be no bitter to accompany our sweet. There would be nothing worth fighting for, nothing worth attaining, and ultimately, nothing worth achieving. You see, accomplishment defines our lives, and to take this away from us for eternity would be to destroy what makes us, well...US. After a long day of miserable work, the reward is unlike anything that a day of rest could ever deliver.

As a child, eternity in Heaven actually scared me. I thought to myself, eternity means FINALITY, and what could possibly be so great about being conscious for eternity in a perpetual state of monotony? Add all of this to a picture of kneeling at the foot of God forever while singing the same hymns over and over, and it isn't exactly what I would have in mind for an infinite state of existence. Therefore, what is so terribly wrong about simply rejoicing in the fact that we are all just lucky to be here in this life for the brief moment in the history of histories that our short lives encompass? Is THAT not enough to live vigorously, passionately, and most of all, lovingly? While you may need an eternal reward for purpose, a God to tell you how to live and what to do with your time and money, certainly doesn't mean that everyone else does. If you need God to exist to love or live, then how much is your love or life actually worth? The love that I have for my family is unconditional, the desire to treat people fairly is unconditional, and finally, the will to do good to other people is absolutely not contingent upon whether or not a "Divine Surveillance" exists.

If I am wrong, I can at least say this much: I did not live a life in vain. I lived my life as a skeptic in the deepest sense. I asked questions that many believers were scared to ask, but what remains is the fact that I loved, and lived unconditional to a belief in an "eternal reward." I did my very best to filter through every possibility to uncover truth. On the other hand, if I'm right, and the believer that "bet the house" simply displayed their credulity and erringly served what was purported to be the one, true God out of the thousands available for hire, in fact, wasted their one chance at living. They, actually were the ones that lived in vain, wagering on a wishful hope that their simple belief upon a miraculous Resurrection and a malevolent, genocidal Narcissist, also known as the Old Testament's Yahweh, would save them from the ultimate reality.....that when death arrives, we will cease to exist.

“I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature.” ~Albert Einstein

"Blood is thicker than water..."

The German proverb that was first penned by Heinrich der Glîchezære is about more than just emotional attachment to our kin. It's about genetics. The basic unit of life on Earth is the gene. Genes are similar to computer programs because they guide everything from our physical characteristics and traits to our behavior. The reason a person feels a connection with a relative comes not only from their past history of common experience and sacrifice, but also because, quite simply, your genes LIVE inside your relatives, and their "job" is to defend one another. Genes do not "think," but the simple truth is this: genes have built us to protect and replicate themselves. A genes only "purpose" is to copy itself, and to do so efficiently, economically, and effectively. The propagation, multiplication, and competition of genes is what has built the diversity of life that we see in our world today. Genes themselves were built from atomic interactions, and it only took one singular event from the infinite range of possibilities that the elements afforded this chance to start the process of replication as the "ultimate catalyst for life." As Richard Dawkins states in "The Selfish Gene," we are "survival machines" built for the protection and the dissemination of our genetic code. Everything on Earth that's living has a DNA code, even plants. One example of how the process of non-random selection works is this: take a chili pepper for instance, evolution perfectly explains why a chili pepper is hot to our taste. Chili peppers have evolved their "hotness" because the hotter they are, the less likely they are to be eaten, and eaten in terms of survival means their genes die and depopulate. Through random mutations, or "genetic copying errors," chili peppers have evolved this distinguished attribute. Another example is opium. Opium plants have thrived throughout history because of their uncanny ability to soothe pain when ingested. This mutation has enabled opium plants to successfully and abundantly reproduce and replicate for centuries. In other words, this mutation has allowed the opium plant to be SELECTED FOR. The painkilling genetic mutation that this plant fortunately produced was VERY advantageous to its survival, therefore, it has flourished. This is NATURAL SELECTION. Evolution logically explains everything from the dinosaurs to the giraffe to wisdom teeth to skin color. It even explains why it is that when we eat, we gorge. Darwin proposed the heretical idea that all life is descended from a common ancestor, and microscopic analysis of each and every organism's DNA has only confirmed the eye-opening truth, that human beings are not "different." Nietzsche once said, "become what you are." Animal I have become...

ábrase los ojos...

BECOMING-Think about a great song you heard for the first time that you didn't like, but now love. Now, think about how it would be to have never given that song a second listen. The first time I hear a song, my senses are somehow rebelliously bombarded by the unique experience. It's always such a foreign invader to my routine of normalcy, and the unfamiliar newness promotes an overwhelming feeling of unwelcomeness. This sensual barrier, of sorts, leads to what I believe as a lost opportunity for a revolution of perception, and this simple analogy can open up a multitude of doors for a person's self-renewal, growth, or even re-birth.
Revolving the past few years of life and reflecting upon a few of the inadequacies of my foregoing beliefs, it commences to a particular distinguishing point in time when things were altered in my reality forever. It's actually pretty academic to illustrate in short with this simple statement, and I think it sums it up nicely...the moment I learned how to listen, I grew. I always thought I had an idea of what valid, veriacious listening was, but I didn't come to fully understand how important it was until recently. Using the inner-most, extending sense of their meaning, the words "hearing" and "listening" occupy two significantly different territories of perceptual reality, and in my mind, they couldn't be more contrasting in their overall effect even though they are often paralleled onto one another. [For my philosophical friends (probably the only ones to make it this far into the post, lol): it's indulgent to say that perhaps I'm not "listening" right now, and we could infinitely regress about the probability that I, in fact, do NOT think I am wrong at this point therefore I am simply duplicating my previous aberrations in judgment, but I digress, for now, for the sake of our sanity.] Another, perhaps, easier way to explain what I'm speaking of is the assertion that there are distinctly two essential elements in the process of what I call the mind's "revolution"...observation and introspection. Without one, there cannot be the other because without introspection, we wouldn't observe, and without observation, our knowledge wouldn't evolve. In turn, we can use this concept to develop the basics in our pursuit of "experience," and I believe this is fundamentally an important aspect regarding our time here on Earth.
I have developed a new pursuit, a new idea for life. I wish to challenge myself to work diligently at my perception and beliefs about the world. A good premise or "rule of thumb" is this...."think" before thinking. My aforementioned example of music shows us a small, yet crucial and vitally important aspect about learning how to recognize our innate defenses and use it as a "weapon" for growth. Practice "musical Nihilism" because it's such a wonderful enlightenment, and disseminate it to other areas of your culture. Understand that "your way" is not necessarily synonymous with the "right way." Violating this principle leads to the abundant hatred and discrimination that we see in this world so much today. "Different" does not equal "wrong!"
Lastly, understand that to pursue the Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hour rule" is to LIVE! Work hard at learning about the world, and most importantly, learn to "know thyself." What is greater than truly knowing your own inherent tendencies and desires? Is a problem not most easily solved when the variables are KNOWN? The greatest things in life take work, and the reward is proportional to the sacrifice incurred. Once you understand these concepts, the world will open up to you in ways you may have never imagined. This world may be the only existence we ever know so ábrase los ojos. Open your eyes, and LIVE!

A Look in the Mirror...(False Prophets and Failed Prophecies)

REVELATION-With another empty promise in the books that was assured to everyone by end-of-the-world, Rapture touting premillennialist Harold Camping, a wildly unbecoming characteristic of believers from contending denominations and other religions as well has reared its beastly head. Comments about how "stupid," "idiotic," and "absolutely crazy" the people that follow this guy must be are plentiful throughout headline articles, Facebook, newspapers, internet forums, and daily conversation. Obviously, it's a given that Mr. Camping was wrong about his grand prediction, but I want to bring into light the lip service that so many are delivering while pointing out that anyone who could believe in a claim so ridiculous such as Harold Camping's Biblical-based forecast that May 21, 2011 was the date for the Rapture, must be "idiotic." Many of the same people that shout from their self-righteous, "I would never believe such stupidity," soapbox amazingly (at least to me) believe in the following: Balaam's talking donkey (Numbers 22:30), a virgin birth (Matthew 1:18), resurrections (2 Kings 13:21 plus many others), parting the Red Sea (Exodus 14:26), feeding 5,000 people with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish (Luke 9:16-17), Samson killing 1,000 men with the jawbone of a donkey (Judges 15:16), a talking snake (Genesis 3:4), Noah's Ark (Genesis Chapters 6-8), a man walking on water (John 6:19), stopping the sun in the sky for Joshua (Joshua 10:13, even though Earth revolves around the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:5 also mentions that the sun moves around Earth), and human beings living 900+ years (Genesis 5:27 and many others.)

I just have a few questions: are these things not far more ridiculous than someone predicting the end of the world and getting it wrong? What is different from one religion's claims about God compared to someone else's such as Mahatma Gandhi, and his "experiences" with his Hindu gods? What makes him wrong and you right? What makes _____ (insert any God here) real and Zeus a myth? I urge everyone to take a look in the mirror and examine your own beliefs before calling others crazy because it just may be that you believe in some pretty outrageous stuff yourself. However, if you grant yourself the common "exception" regarding supernatural beliefs, that somehow your "miracles" are different from every other religion's "miracles," I'm sure you won't think so. ;)


Additional Note: I would like to mention that I fully support the freedom to believe anything you want. I am simply utilizing the right to voice my opinion the same as a preacher uses her right to voice hers. To sum up my point, people often get offended when anyone criticizes their religion or beliefs, yet they seem to have little problem throwing their own stones and calling others "crazy."

Time is a terrible thing to waste...

SCRUTINY-We are all on an ever-consuming conquest to confirm our beliefs. I have personally come to know the endless barrage of partiality launched upon my search for truth by "confirmation bias," but I’ve learned to recognize this natural enemy of intellectual growth, and I try to do my very best to defend against it. Confirmation bias is my mind's progress-nemesis, and I would love to completely destroy it, but human nature is difficult to contend with. Confirmation bias plays two central roles in our mind: 1)it falsely attributes small coincidences to larger notions of "design"(no, meeting up with an old friend on Facebook that you lost contact with years ago is a likely probability, not a miracle), and 2)it guides our information search to repeatedly "confirm" our pre-existing beliefs. This is why it's so important to take the necessary steps to recognize the way the human mind works. For instance, I believe in taking the time to actually read, research, understand, and ultimately give every opponent's claims a fighting chance to win over my support in a discussion no matter how hesitant I might be toward inspection. Somehow, I don’t feel that the favor is usually returned in many of my own experiences from debate, and I will attempt to explain why that is the case with the points ahead regarding human motivation.

I’ve written about reward-incentive before, and it deserves to be mentioned again because it explains human behavior quite well. If we look into the phenomenon of “faith,” it presents us with something important, and it is the following rather blunt statement: no matter what religion or God one may subscribe to, deeply imbedded behind all of the bull shit, lies something very revealing, REWARD-INCENTIVE. If I may borrow from Gordan Gekko's Wall Street speech, a human being's innate and insatiable drive of and for greed "captures the essence of evolutionary spirit," thus propelling people to believe because they simply expect to be rewarded in return for their praise. Believers expect to spiritually "evolve," and receive a divine "return on investment."

Would Islam and Christianity have over 3.5 billion followers if there wasn't the promise for a reward? I certainly don't think so, and quite possibly, religion wouldn't even exist if it weren't for the "heavenly compensation" that man so wishfully invented many years ago. This, in fact, tells us a great deal about the basis of belief in God. That it is fundamentally GREEDY. At the same time that religion fills our hopes with eternal promises, it also penetrates other areas of life as well. It masquerades as spiritual freedom, however it ultimately delivers its impeding control over its followers. No religion professes to give you something for nothing. Personal sacrifice is involved in some form or another. Whether it’s the surrender of your time, your money, your submission of will, your praise, or the control of your behavior, God requires an enormous sacrifice. Religion also plays another contemptible role in many lives, and this is possibly the saddest of them all: humans controlling other humans, and what better way to persuade the masses to your side than by delivering to them the harsh caveat of an eternal, fiery afterlife filled with anguish if they don’t “agree." (Such an obvious man-made angle used for manipulation and exploitation that is almost too embarrassing to admit that I once believed in.)

A few years ago, a question loomed in my thoughts that subsequently led to the expulsion of belief in God from my personal “theory of life,” and it was this: “Why do I believe in Jesus Christ?” Ask yourself this question, write down the answers (if you have any), and think about it. If you arrive at the place where I was, then you will realize that your belief in God stems primarily from four things: 1) You believe what your parents believe, or 2) believing in God provides you with what you think is an opportunity to live forever, or 3) belief in God in some way gives you "purpose," or 4) you think it's better to invoke Pascal's Wager and bet on God with "nothing to lose and everything to gain." (Looking back, I think #4 was my situation. In the deepest sense, I kind of thought a talking snake was silly, but I was too scared to question the Bible.) I suffered from an incredible suppression of imagination (which is definitely in line with what religion does to a child's mind because questioning the fundamentals of the Bible isn't exactly encouraged in Sunday school), and I held my belief in Jesus based upon three possible conclusions: the famous "liar, lunatic, or Son of God" proposition which is nothing more than a logical fallacy. A three-part false dilemma that fails to even list one very important possibility.....that Jesus Christ never even existed. (I would like to note that even if he DID exist, that doesn't prove he was God.) I was completely ignorant, like most are, to the fact that the most important books of the Bible, the Gospels, are not even first-hand witnessed accounts of Jesus.

No matter what you take from this (possibly with a grain of salt), I just ask this much: ask questions to yourself about your beliefs. Put them to an intellectually-honest test. Seek evidence. Learn about yourself, and most of all, EXPAND YOUR NOITANIGAMI/IMAGINATION. There are many paths to a wonderful, happy life here on this earth, and if you need a book to tell you that it's wrong to kill, then there's nothing anyone can do to help you. The philosophy I'm selling is freedom, not riches in Heaven, and I'm definitely not threatening you with punishment if you don't agree. If you think that you're simply "doubling down" on your wager then maybe you'll reconsider the odds that if there is a God, the probability that you're serving the right one is not very good at all. :0

"No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true." -Oscar Wilde

Living Forever...Transhumanism

IMMORTAL-"Mutant Planet" is a fantastic series on the Science Channel that elucidates the intricacies of evolution by explaining "mutations" and "adaptations." From the Lemurs of Madagascar, to the Kiwis in New Zealand, every species on Earth is in a persistent struggle to simply exist, and the competition is fierce. Each modern species is gorgeously adapted to its habitat, but environmental changes can happen quickly, (e.g. the castastrophic asteroid that destroyed all non-avian dinosaurs 65 million years ago.) As human beings (homo sapiens,) we are a relatively young species on the playing field at approximately 200,000 years, but we have developed a powerful weapon of survival in our short time here on the 4.54 billion year old planet. This "weapon" is SCIENCE. It is our trump card in Richard Dawkin's "evolutionary arms race" that every one of the millions of species here on Earth are involved in by evolution through natural selection. How we will use our species' expanded mental capabilities that evolved in the last 50,000 years is the important question. How far will we propel medicine?

Currently, scientists are researching the "DNA damage theory of aging." DNA damage occurs frequently within each of our cells, but DNA repair processes have evolved to compensate for most of this damage, however through time, DNA damage accumulates, and we inevitably die. Science is rapidly escalating technology and medicine to fight DNA damage. The implications of complete DNA repair processes could lead to the possibility for a human being to live indefinitely. The movement associated with the advancement toward human immortality is called Transhumanism. It predicts that, at the current rate of technological and medicinal advancement of knowledge, human beings may be able to eventually transform themselves into beings with such greatly expanded abilities as to merit the label "posthuman"(1).

Embryonic and adult stem-cell research, in my opinion, are our most important opportunity to advance our physical life and capabilities. Stem cells are found within every multi-cellular organism, and have the ability to renew themselves through mitosis, and differentiate into a diverse range of specialized cells. Therefore, in simple terms, stem-cells bring the potential for us to essentially "grow" an organ in the laboratory. In the future, medical researchers anticipate being able to use technologies derived from stem cell research to treat a wide variety of diseases including cancer, Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, and muscle damage, amongst a number of other impairments and conditions (2)(3).

Of course, these possibilities will invariably produce ethical and moral dilemmas within each of us, but my vision for life is a place where pain and suffering are non-existent. Perhaps, an immortal human body would present more problems for us as a civilization, but at the very least, I feel that science has the distinguished opportunity to be a panacea for all disease. Imagine a life where you could live as many years as you wanted, choose to die if you felt you have served your purpose, and had freedom from the atrocities of something such as cancer. No longer would we have patients on waiting lists for an organ transplant. No longer would we have to worry about our children being born with birth-defects, and possibly suffering for many years. This world would be kind, compassionate, knowledgeable, reasonable, rational, and perhaps most importantly, SCIENTIFIC.



Sidenote: President Obama has been a wonderful spark for the scientific community by lifting Bush-era blockades on stem-cell research funding, and he promotes "scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology." He also stated, "medical miracles do not happen simply by accident(4)."


1. Bostrom, Nick (2005). "A history of transhumanist thought" (PDF). Journal of Evolution and Technology. http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/history.pdf. Retrieved 2006-02-21
2. Lindvall O (2003). "Stem cells for cell therapy in Parkinson's disease". Pharmacol Res 47 (4): 279–87.
3. Goldman S, Windrem M (2006). "Cell replacement therapy in neurological disease". Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 361 (1473): 1463–75.
4. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29586269/

Noah's Ark

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

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."

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

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

Pulling in the Reins

REALIZATION-Over the course of numberous debates and countless discussions with Christians, I have found that the prevailing reason for their acceptance of God's existence is the belief from "personal experience." Many of the conversations go something like this: Me, "well why do you believe Jesus is God?" Them, "I have had so many things happen in my life, I cannot deny the fact that it must be God." Me, "do you believe that these events could be coincidence?" Them, "No, nothing will ever change my belief in God because I have had these experiences." And understandably so, this begs my next question. Me, "well what are some of those experiences and why does it have to be the Christian God that did this for you?" Predominantly, I receive some strange and very vague responses such as the following: "The love that Jesus has shown me is undeniable." "My life has been blessed so greatly." "Jesus has answered so many of my prayers, He exists." And finally, another popular response is, "Um, let me think...." Evidently some experiences aren't that memorable after all. Anyways, it's always bewildering to me how low the bar is set on most people's "miracle gauge." However, it's certainly a wonderful thing when we get what we want in this life, but what I would like to look at for a moment is this: what is self-fulfillment?
It's a matter of fact that human beings have a much better probability of achieving or attaining something when setting a goal. For instance, when a person says to themselves that they want a particular job, a process is set into motion that pushes our likelihood of landing the job into a positive, forward-moving direction. Simply put, when a target is set, the odds that you hit the target increase. This brings me to self-fulfilling prophecy. Many people, through seeing the end-results of certain situations, credit supernatural explanations for something that can be naturally explained by something as simple as our behavior. This "self-talk" leads us to actually behave differently, therefore producing results. It works both ways though, such as telling yourself over and over that you are going to fail will often produce the result of failing the specific objective. However, what I am speaking of is the positive type of the self-fulfillment and the relationship between personal goals and the Christian's "God experience." There are three questions I like to ask when it pertains to purported "miracles":
1. Did you want this to happen?
2. Did you think it would happen?
3. Why did it happen? (If it did indeed happen.)
If the answer is yes to the first two questions, then why could the third answer not reasonably be explained by a causal effect from the first two that was ignited by the God "placebo-effect?" Is it not conceivable that the answer to the question of "why we got what we wanted" cannot simply be the fact that "we got it because we wanted it in the first place and we took action because we believed that it could happen?" Many people are quick to credit God for the result when in all reality, our behavior and forced movement toward achieving the goal is the reason why we actually accomplished it.

The new version of the movie Sherlock Holmes is a superb example of how humans are very hasty in making rash assumptions that events are supernatural when, in all reality, there is a perfectly plausible scientific explanation for the events that transpired.
On a slightly different note that pertains to uncontrollable events, I have personally had instances in life where I have been tempted to attribute a miracle to an important life event that in all actuality, had very good statistical odds of happening in the first place. One example is that my daughter was born prematurely at 32 weeks. Things couldn't have went better for her, and now she is a healthy two and a half year old girl. It was a pivotal time in my life, and I prayed for her. Of course it was a critical situation, and any premature birth should be, but the statistical odds of her surviving was over 90 percent. Now could it at all be possible that God actually had nothing to do with the fact that she survived and that sheer probability played in my favor? I am very grateful that life has given me the chance to be a father, but to unknowingly, blindly accredit an invisible, complex God is rather presumptuous. It is also intellectually dishonest to claim that you have substantial evidence that out of the thousands of gods invented in the history of mankind, your god happens to be the one, true deity and everyone else is mistakenly believing in their "experiences" from their God. Why is it so easy for religion A to discredit religion B's miracles yet everyone is supposed to believe in religion A's miracles? And while we're on the subject, what about these "visions", "voices", "miracles", and "experiences" that people of other religions have had? As in the case of Islam, Muhammad had "revelations" that he honestly believed were visions from God. Many other people from opposing religions also have had personal experiences that reveal to them the supposed truth yet many of them contradict one another. Would an all-powerful, all-knowing creator really send conflicting, confusing messages or would a mind's ability to delude itself be a better explanation? Every denomination's local pastor is telling us that "God told me this" and we should believe him/her and not the other denomination's preacher even though their pastor says "No, God told ME this." Maybe our mind is more powerful than we give can even imagine, and humans have the natural tendency to attribute coincidence to the supernatural. Epileptic seizures can be attributed to the cause of "prophetic visions" where sufferers profess that God spoke to them, but that certainly doesn't make their experiences a universal truth that we should all lay our lives down for, and I think everyone can agree about that much.
To conclude this, when a person says to me that they simply cannot deny the existence of God because He answered their prayer to save their dying grandmother of cancer, it holds no empirical weight with me when their grandmother was receiving chemotherapy treatment. Many apologists say this is God's way of answering the prayer, but do you believe that God denied the prayers of millions of people that died before chemotherapy treatment was invented and still thousands that receive treatment today simply because "the technology wasn't there yet" or that "God's ways are mysterious to man?" I suppose the reason God won't acquesce to the prayers of millions of starving Africans that need only rain to spring their crops to life is because of their sinful ways?

The "New Ten Commandments"

OUTCRY-It's often said that to sum up morality, human beings need not look further than the Bible's Ten Commandments. I'm not sure about everyone else, but I feel that, number one, we can derive our morals without a "holy book" telling us not to slaughter one another, and, number two, does the Sabbath really have anything to do with the way we live today? That is, unless of course, you are Jewish. (Sorry) So what I stumbled upon, in my new search for the basis of what our morality stands for in this age, is the "New Ten Commandments." Actual ideas and thoughts that resonate throughout this era in which we live today, not several thousand years ago. What I found is that I had to look no further than the Atheist website ebonmusings.org. (Ironic, you might be tempted or "programmed" to think.) For the many people that mistakenly believe that we have to derive our morality from a certain bronzed-age book, or even a religion in general, this list proves otherwise.
(As a sidenote to number one, I would like to add that Confucius coined the silver rule which predated Jesus' golden rule by some 500 years. Jesus just reversed the meaning, thus using it in a positive application instead of negatively. Jesus said, "do unto others" instead of the original "do not do to others" as was originally invented by Confucius.)
And now, without further ado: "The New Ten Commandments"

1. Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.

2. In all things, strive to cause no harm.

3. Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.

4. Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.

5. Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.

6. Always seek to be learning something new.

7. Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.

8. Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you.

9. Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.

10. Question everything.

Beside the obvious number one silver rule, number ten is undoubtedly my favorite, but let me ask you this: why could God have not just provided us with this list and save us all of the ritualistic nonsense? How many lives could have been spared if the Jewish, Old Testament God (which happens to be the same God that incarnated Jesus' body) would have just provided humanity with a list like this? No "jealous god" babble. No "remember the Sabbath" sacrament, and especially no animal (or child) sacrifices or burnt offerings absurdity that was a mainstay in the Old Testament? Just plain, simple, unambiguous rules to lead a good life. The Bible made things complicated, which, in turn, led to the thousands of branches of beliefs we have today that do horrible things to one another. This list doesn't. This list doesn't have its own agenda to fulfill that included satisfying God's unquenchable thirst for your attention, time, and worship. This list doesn't "promote by example" war, genocide, women oppression, slavery, and the incarnation of God Himself to kill Himself (as the Son) just to forgive us "unworthy humans" of our sins. Why not just forgive us and save us from the formality? Do we need to see the most gruesome act of child sacrifice ever committed in history upon a Roman cross to believe in You? However sad every fiber of my body may be to say this, I simply cannot believe in a God such as this, and Jesus Christ was my last option.

Sources:

http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/confucius.html
http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/new10c.html

Morality (Sodom and Gomorrah)

IMPURITY-Whatever I thought I knew about morality and religion in the past is very different than what I think today. Many people believe that morality comes from religion and the two are inseparable. Many Christians have this false belief that without the Bible, humans would have never figured out what was "good" or what was "bad." People think that the Bible has delivered upon us the end-all be-all of morality. I truly hope everyone that is reading this really takes a moment to think about this example of what the Bible shows us of morality, and not just morality, equality. This excerpt is from one of my favorite authors and one of the most highly regarded scientists in recent history:

In the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Noah equivalent, chosen to be spared with his family because he was uniquely righteous, was Abraham's nephew Lot. Two male angels were sent to Sodom to warn Lot to leave the city before the brimstone arrived. Lot welcomed them into his house, where all of the men of Sodom gathered and demanded that Lot should hand the angels over so that they could (what else?) sodomize them: "Where are the men which came in to thee this night? Bring them out unto us, that we may know them" (Gen.19:5). Yes, "know" has the Authorized Version's usual euphemistic meaning, which is very funny in the context. Lot's gallantry in refusing the demand suggests that God might have been onto something when he singled him out as the only good man in Sodom. But Lot's halo is tarnished by the terms of his refusal: "I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly. Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing"(Gen.19:7-8).
Whatever else this strange story might mean, it surely tells us something about the respect accorded to women in this intensely religious culture. As it happened, Lot's bargaining away of his daughters' virginity proved unnecessary, for the angels succeeded in repelling the men by miraculously striking them blind. They then warned Lot to decamp immediately with his family and his animals, because the city was about to be destroyed. The whole household escaped, with the exception of Lot's unfortunate wife, whom the Lord turned into a pillar of salt because she committed the offense of looking over her shoulder at the fireworks display.
Lot's two daughters make a brief reappearance in the story. After their mother was killed, they lived with their father in a cave up a mountain. Starved of male company, they decided to make their father drunk and have sex with him. Lot was beyond noticing when his elder daughter arrived in his bed or when she left, but he was not too drunk to impregnate her. The next night, the two daughters agreed it was the younger one's turn. Again Lot was too drunk to notice, and he impregnated her too.(Gen.19:31-36). If this dysfunctional family was the best Sodom had to offer by way of morals, some might begin to feel a certain sympathy with God and his judicial brimstone.


Source: Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. Pages 271-272