Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Big Fish and Life Lessons

Recently, I have seen a lot of talk about how atheists respond to death, how they grieve/cope, and the advantages of religious beliefs. Many people, not myself, think that religion gives people any easy way to cope with the loss of loved ones. Religions typically prescribe the conditions of an afterlife and everyone assumes that their loved ones end up in the "good" portion of the afterlife. "Knowing" that the deceased have gone to "a better place" gives religious people solace - supposedly. I think most atheists overrate how placated believers are by the existence of a pleasant afterlife. We all still feel a vast sense of loss and thinking that your loved one is in a better place does not yield any less tearful nights (In my opinion). The sense of loss is still there, and nothing but time really closes the pit. If an afterlife does exist, then most people end up in the "bad" portion - irregardless of anyone's thoughts.

Big Fish, the movie, actually lays out an incredible concept: you are a sum of your stories. Just as the father lived on, so too to each of us go on to an afterlife consisting of the legacy we left behind, stories, memories, physical objects, anything. We live far past our life-spans in the "collective consciousness" of mankind. When an atheist losses a loved one we still need to grieve, but no more than our religious brethren. We posses the memories and the stories of those who passed. Simply remembering or sharing them brings the deceased to life and we can learn (over much time) to appreciate the joy they gave us and come to terms with the fact that they left their mark - their story is written, they have become the big fish. They will no longer grow and over time their stream will dwindle, but there is no reason to be more hurt by a loss than a religious person would be.

Of course if there was an afterlife that was paradise everyone would be ecstatic, we'd cherish death. However there is no good evidence for one and almost everyone is skeptical, otherwise we would happily embrace death and celebrate the passing of loved ones (some eccentric people do).

I may expand this later.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Leaving Jesusland

My last quick post.

NOFX hit home with their 2006 song "Leaving Jesusland", which luckily you can listen to below!
The lyrics are located immediately below that.  The current Mosque outrages across America really highlight the homogenized close minded country that Jesusland is creating.  The John Stewart post and this post go hand-in-hand.  



Lyrics:

We call the heartland not very smartland, IQ's are very low but threat levels are high
They got a mandate, they don't want man-dates, they got so many hates and people to despise

In the dust bowl, cerebral black hole, the average weight is well over 200 pounds

I hate to generalize, but have you seen the thighs, most haven't seen their genitalia in a while

Maybe that's why they're so pissed at us

They're all jealous we're having better sex

Queers, transgends, and lesbians, vegans and vegetarians

All you brownish red and yellow ones come out and join us on the coast

No longer svelte, they gotta punch new holes in the Bible belt

They've blown out the fire under the melting pot, the red blood of America is starting to clot
No compromise, no sight thru others' eyes, they're just flies spreading pieces of shit
You gotta emigrate, stop living in hate, what makes this country great is dwelling on either side

They don't want visitors in Jesusland

They want life bland and canned in the fatherland

We want people with college degrees, drug use experience and STD's

People with open-minded philosophies, come hug California trees
Cultural revolution now, neo-conservatives run outta town
We're gonna burn Orange County down,
And then we're off to Riverside, Bakersfield and Fresno too, then we're comin' after you

The fear stricken, born again Christian, they got a vision a homogenized state

Texas textbooks, Bibles, and prayer books,
They want them memorized, but don't want you to think

They don't want visitors in Jesusland

They want life bland and canned in the fatherland

Punk Rockers and emo kids, people doin' things the church forbids

Buddhists, agnostics, and atheists we're moving out of jesusland
Art students and thespians, (excluding country) all the musicians
We want all hookers and comedians, nihilists are welcome too

No longer svelte, they gotta punch new holes in the Bible belt

John Stewart - I Worship You

I will be short on time/energy for these next two posts, so both are going to be incredibly simple.
Hooray for me.

I have been a fan of John Stewart for quite some time.  He may be on comedy central but he criticizes important parts of American society and shares his views (in a comical manor).  John Stewart is usually brilliant and I wish more people would take watch/listen to him instead of the awful real news they feed off of.

Watch this brilliant clip where John addresses the 'Mosque at ground zero' and elsewhere in America for that matter.
Let me know what you think.

www.thedailyshow.com


Tuesday, August 10, 2010

The Soul Problem

Do you believe humans have souls?
Have you ever seriously considered the ramifications of such a belief?

For starters I would assume:
  • Everyone has one unique soul
  • Your soul can and does interact with your body
  • Your soul is within you from the time you are a zygote
I assume the first point is the most readily accepted by the religious community.  The second point is vital because otherwise your soul does nothing; it just is.  A soul that simply exists and never interacts is a useless entity containing no information about your personal self that many people attribute to souls: personality, morality, emotional response.  The third point is important to what I will be saying, here it is interesting to note that religious people are unclear on when the soul enters the human body.  Since many people oppose abortion because it is taking a life and the fetus 'has a soul' I decided that the zygote stage was a good time to obtain your soul.

Soul Arithmetic
1 + 1 = 1     -------     The case of the chimera and the vanishing twin: 
  Sometimes two zygotes merge and become one, a chimera, or one fetus is absorbed by the other or by the mother, the vanishing twin.  In both of these situations it seems two souls are moving into one body.  Can one person obtain two souls?  Or does one soul disappear to go to limbo or heaven or hell?  That soul didn't get to experience anything and clearly should have never been created; unless it fuses with the other zygote/fetus' soul.  Perhaps the fetuses do not yet have souls, maybe a soul is endowed at birth - this is the only easy remedy to this crazy soul addition.
 
1 + 0 = 2     -------     The case of the monozygotic twin:
  Monozygotic, identical, twins emerge from one single zygote.  The zygote splits in two - does one soul become two, are they each one half? Maybe a new soul is suddenly conjured up, but one of them received a soul first.  Why wouldn't god simply avoid the whole awkward situation and avoid creating identical twins?  Maybe souls are not placed into zygotes, but fetuses can be re-absorbed.  Man, soul addition just makes no sense!

If souls are not obtained until the fetal stage, then they follow a funny rule of waiting until a stage arbitrarily defined by man and abortion is fine until the fetal stage.  If souls are absent until birth, then abortion at any stage should be acceptable, I mean the developing human has no soul!

Soul Meets Body
 How does your soul interact with your body?
Typically we assume the interaction point is within the brain - I mean a soul might interact with your hand, but to what end?  (It would certainly be amusing to coin the term 'soul-job',  Are you looking at porn?  Nah, just getting a little soul-job!).
Back to the issue at hand (no pun intended) - the soul must change something in the body to interact or there is no interaction.  For you soul to guide you, either in action or in thought, then it must cause some neural movement.  No conscious/subconscious action takes place without brain activity.  For the soul to interact, something material must be influenced by something spiritual.  The spirit must supply energy to move a material part (even if it is only some neurons).  In doing so the soul is adding energy to the physical universe.  The most basic principal of physics, conservation of energy, has just been violated.  Over time and over the entirety of the human race this soul/body interaction would lead to a lot of additionally supplied energy.  I side with physics on this one - sorry.

Maybe the soul doesn't do anything?  Well congratulations, you have a useless soul.  It's ok though, you probably don't have a soul.  If the soul was the center of personality, morality, emotional response, of all that makes you - you, then we would expect that brain damage would not significantly alter all of those areas.  However, brain damage can significantly alter all of them, it can make you think you are an entirely different person with a different background who will sincerely have completely different emotional responses.  It would seem that such a person's soul has even become drastically confused/damaged.

I'm sorry (not really) but there is just no solid foundation for the naive belief in a soul.  Besides, when you talk about your soul - you sound dumb.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Everything Begins with Banging

Animals, plants, the universe - in a way they all start with banging.
I am only going to talk about the universe for the time being. The universe is thought to have begun with the big bang. I for one believe that most aspects of the inflationary big bang model are correct. However, our public school system does a piss poor job of explaining it and I feel the need to explicate the subject.

The Inflationary Big Bang Model:

About 15 Billion years ago the Universe was extremely condensed with all mass and energy compressed to some type of singularity. The Big Bang is thought to have been an expanding singularity or it could have been a planer event like an expanding horizon. We cannot possibly observe the state of the universe before the big bang. We can view light far enough away to see about 13.5 Billion years into the past.

We know the universe is expanding, this can easily be tested. Extrapolating backwards from an expanding universe gives us the infinitely condensed start of the universe. The big bang started - possibly due to an instability in the Higgs Field (See Brian Greene's "The Fabric of the Cosmos"). When the big bang started, the universe was homogeneous. It was a collection of high energy and high temperature exotic particles. The universe rapidly cooled and hydrogen could form. Hydrogen was the only element until the universe cooled further and nuclei could form (this took about 3 minutes). There were small local inhomogeneities which had a slight gravitational pull and started developing the clumpy universe that slowly evolved toward the universe we have today.

There was no space for the universe to expand into, the expanding universe is the space. The inflationary model says that the universe expanded rapidly, all distances increased by a factor of over ten to the ten million! The rapid inflation helped spread energy differences and make the universe more homogeneous overall. It also lowered the energy density of space so high energy particles like gravitons could no longer form. Inflation also gives an explanation for the small inhomogeneities that lead the the first clumping of the universe. Quantum uncertainty principles dictate that there will be small fluctuations in say energy or position. The incredibly rapid inflation essentially stretched the quantum fluctuations to create small inblances in the uniform universe where gas begun to clump.

The clumping gases eventually lead to stars and galaxies etc etc.

Inflation is perhaps the most important part of the big bang and it is not mentioned in school. If you absolutely need a reason for everything and ascribe god to anything science has not yet explained, then all god or gods are needed for is perhaps setting off the big bang and maybe (doubtful) starting life. A god that has only done that is very hands off and does not fit the description of any god(s) praised by humans.

People ask, "what was here before the big bang?" This question is nonsensical as the big bang created our time. Before the big bang there was not time; time's arrow started pointing forward from the big bang. Sorry.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Nature: The Goddess

Sometimes you witness something so profound you stop and gaze in awe.

Nature constantly astounds me - I revel in her beauty.

What is even more incredible is that such beauty arose without a creator. Such beauty is inherently natural, it is a property of matter to form beauty.

Or maybe as a creature constructed from matter and part of nature I am bound to be drawn to her. Anyway, here is some porn for your natural self:

 



Thursday, August 5, 2010

Fun Fact: Contradictions

     According to the Skeptics Annotated Bible website [See Links Page] the Bible contains 456 contradictions within its text.  These are not counting any contradictions that the bible may have with historical texts or reality in general (for example the value of pi).  Many contradictions are little things, such as the number of sons Abraham had:

Hebrews 11:17
By faith Abraham when he was tried, offered up Isaac, ... his only begotten son.
Genesis 22:2
Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, ... and offer him there for a burnt offering.
Genesis 16:15
And Hagar bare Abraham a son: and Abram called his son's name, which Hagar bare, Ishmael.
Genesis 21:2-3
For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son is his old age .... And Abraham called him Isaac.
Genesis 25:1-2
Then again Abraham took a wife, and her name was Keturah. And she bare him Zimran, and Jokshan, and Medan, and Midian, and Ishbak, and Shuah.
Galatians 4:22
Abraham had two sons; the one by a bond-woman, and the other by a free woman.
 
     The Koran on the other hand contains 31 contradictions.

     The book of Mormon contains 3 contradictions.  However the book of Mormon is shorter and is also fairly new to the website.  It may not be done racking up contradictions.

     Seems as though the writers of the Bible didn't care to closely read the rest of the Bible.  Funny, I thought the writing of the Bible was guided by god?  Maybe he enjoys contradictions, like reasonable faith.  Did I just type that?

Monday, August 2, 2010

Curse of the Imaginary Friend

Many children playfully create imaginary friends, but these friends tend to only last a couple minutes. Many adults create a permanent imaginary friend, god. To an atheist our world seems stricken by a massive mental disorder in which people project their desires onto an abstract being in order to give their life guidance. Our species is so imaginative that people become bitterly afraid of the unknown and feel lost without a grand purpose. To quell their fear and assign purpose people create an imaginary friend, but at what cost?

Looking at history we can find instances in which religion/god(s) have both helped and harmed humanity. Perhaps religion has played a strong role in bringing people together to build civilizations. However, humans have progressed to the point where their imaginary friend(s) are no longer a necessary glue and are rapidly becoming burdens. How many people turn to a god because of their ineptitude in dealing with reality? How many people place a spiritual entity before their fellow man and their family? God is never seen he interacts mysteriously, mysterious in that we must first assume belief in him before being able to see his hand in the world. If we assume no god exists the world appears in perfect agreement with us. God functions in the same way as an imaginary friend or many scientific views, by changing the theoretical assumptions we completely alter the results.

If god(s) exist, why would they choose to remain so amorphous? If the god(s) honestly love humanity they could live amongst us or at least regularly appear to offer guidance. Humans would still have free will - god(s) would merely offer input on important topics, helping us provide food/shelter for all, avoid war, and combat disease. However, it seems that any god(s) is(are) not all powerful or intrigued by needless suffering. If we assume god is an imaginary friend he can only act through people. Delusional humans feel empowered by their projected friend and harm humanity by slowing important progress (medical, scientific, moral) or even reversing progress (banning gay marriage, overthrowing governments an enforcing inhuman policies leading to poor quality of life - as in Afghanistan).

When cured of the imaginary friend we can put humanity before spiritual entities, leading to an enriched quality of life. If god were real you would expect those of us who do not recognize him to suffer in some form. But without an imaginary friend we still have motivations, morality, love for one another, everything a religious individual has - except for valuing faith over reason. Without a god we do not feel empty or lost, we do not need additional solace when we lose loved ones, we do not need a meaning for life. I would argue that my life has greatly improved since abandoning faith.

There are people who do good in the name of their imaginary friend. That good is coming from their own decisions and convictions. Without god they are still fully capable of doing the same good. Doctors Without Borders is a secular organization that gives medical aid to impoverished people in underdeveloped nations. God fearing people do the same, only they spend a lot of money on scriptures and a lot of time preaching. They go seeking to convert while healing and they may spread inaccurate information about STDs by not delivering honest information about condoms and slowing the spread of AIDS. Think about what god has done for you, think about how your god compares to the biblical god. Everyone forms a god that fits their life and who helps them in ways that they could have helped themselves (really you do help yourself). Why do you feel that someone with a different holy book and different god(s) is less correct? Do you not realize that they observe the same healing, the same amount of 'miracles' that your god provides?

Those of use without imaginary friends are frightened by the amount of you who do have them. Presidents, Generals, Senators, all these people have power and responsibility and yet many believe creationism over evolution and seek god's approval more than their constituents. How do we build a better tomorrow while clinging the the superstitions of 2,000 years ago?