Imaginary Friends
August 21, 2010
Just the other day I received an email from my grandfather entitled, “How would you introduce Christ to a room full of people?”
I just find these things silly. Why does God need someone to introduce Himself? God is all powerful and all knowing, and they claim He’s longing to have a relationship with me. Even so, He won’t come down to my bedroom and appear before me. Surely it’d be simple for Him to do so, but no. Instead He needs his faithful messengers to introduce Himself. And how are these messengers instructed to do so? They read cryptic passages out of the Bible on how He committed suicide on a cross in a bloody sacrifice in order to bridge a gap which He himself imposed between us. I’m also instructed to take part in cannibalistic rituals, symbolically eating his flesh and drinking his blood in remembrance of the event.
“Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd, and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.”
- Voltaire, in a letter to Frederick the Great.
“Could a being create the fifty billion galaxies each with two hundred billion stars then rejoice in the smell of burning goat flesh?”
- Ron Patterson
I get tired of talking about religion, but at the same time I have to because it’s so widespread; it’s everywhere you look. Many years ago I too was caught up in religion.
So many people claim that God talks directly to them. Whenever you start confronting them with facts, evidence, and inconsistencies in their beliefs, they always fall back on that unquestionable fail-safe, “Well, God talks directly to me. I know He’s real. Nobody has to tell me.” They claim to receive divine revelations through prayer.
Being famous, Richard Dawkins frequently receives letters regarding these issues. Sometimes they claim to have contact with aliens, or believe wholeheartedly that God speaks directly to them. He responds by sending them a letter requesting the solution to a difficult mathematical proof which hasn’t yet been solved. If God (or super-intelligent alien life-forms) really does have contact with them, surely He can tell them the answer. As expected, they never can answer because it’s all in their heads. If you think God speaks directly to you, I’d ask you the same question. Ask God to tell you how to unite Einstein’s general relativity and the equations of quantum mechanics. If “God” can’t tell you that, you’re talking to your own mind, not God.
“Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte
As an interesting side note, if Dawkins asks them the answer to a moral dilemma, they always have an answer. Otherwise, no.
People live their lives with their imaginary friends, and I don’t know about you all, but I’m tired of it. I’m tired of seeing women wrapped up head to toe in black garb in the middle of the summer heat-wave. I’m tired of hearing about people stoned to death for petty things. I’m tired of arguments about some stupid mosque being built near ground zero. I’m tired of the conflicts in the middle east. I’m tired of holy wars being fought over irreconcilable doctrines believed in blind faith. I’m tired of being preached to from my family members. I’m tired of arguments about whether or not we should have a tablet of the ten commandments in our courtrooms. I’m tired of debates on whether or not we should have “In God We Trust” on our money. I’m tired of Christians wanting superstition taught in schools. I’m tired scientists needing to justify their every action to people who don’t even remotely understand their research. I’m tired of seeing gays mistreated. I’m tired of new-age mystics spreading superstitious nonsense.
“All thinking men are atheists.”
- Ernest Hemingway
I’m just tired of religion and mysticism. Period. Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism… all of it.
“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.”
- Jesus Christ, Matthew 10:34
Just look at what modern biological research is heading toward. Watch this video of Craig Venter touring Richard Dawkins around his genetics facility. We’re mapping the DNA patterns of all the different species on this planet using super-computers. We can clearly see how all life is related. Even if there wasn’t a single fossil on the planet, and there were no other forms of evidence for evolution, we would still clearly know that evolution is true because we’d see the common threads within the DNA sequencing. We can see the common ancestry and links between species.
One day we’ll be able to create any life-form we wish just by using the proper DNA sequence like a strip of computer tape. DNA is an instruction set on how to build a body and we’re coming to a deep understanding on how that process works. We’re literally on the verge of that right now. We’re doing it for small simple organisms already.
When I watch that video I’m in absolute awe. What amazing research! I look at the flaws within my own body, such as my poor vision, and think about how wonderful it’d be if I’d been born with perfect eyesight. I think about how nice it’d be if the circulation in my hands and feet wasn’t poor. I think about the headaches I get from the poorly laid out blood vessels behind my eyes. Now imagine if prior to being born my DNA was examined and all of those problems were removed during my development in the womb! It’s incredible!
We as a society can fund this kind of research, or we can continue building tanks and missiles for the power-hungry bastards running our governments. I think it’s obvious the direction we need to take.
How long are we going to be held back by superstition and stupidity? Will religious zealots end up burning down Venter’s facility like they did the library of Alexandria? We have the power to fix this cruel world. Day by day we’re coming closer and closer to doing so. It’s likely that within my lifetime we’ll be able to carefully examine each person’s genetic genome and custom tailor medications for their body. Medications will no longer be generic but will be created by complex computer programs tailoring the medicine to the individual. Then again, we can turn back to faith-healers and prayer.
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Are We Near The End Of The World?
August 8, 2010
We may well be nearing the end of the world, but not for reasons found in the Book of Revelation or the Mayan calendar. I share the opinion of Dr. Stephen Hawking:
Here’s is the video’s transcript:
“I see great dangers for the human race. There have been a number of times in the past when its survival has been a question of touch and go. The Cuban missile crisis in 1963 was one of these. The frequency of such occasions is likely to increase in the future. We shall need great care and judgment to negotiate them all successfully, but I’m an optimist. If we can avoid disaster for the next two centuries, our species should be safe as we spread into space. If we are the only intelligent beings in the galaxy, we should make sure we survive and continue. But we are entering an increasingly dangerous period of our history. Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years let alone the next thousand or million. Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward looking on planet Earth but to spread out into space. We have made remarkable progress in the last hundred years, but if we want to continue beyond the next hundred years, our future is in space. That is why I’m in favor of manned, or should I say, person-ed, space-flight.”
- Stephen Hawking, Big Think
With aggression, if we do not abolish national armies and our conflicts between nations, we’re likely to destroy ourselves in war. At heart, wars have always been a form of organized theft. They came into being when mankind first began settling into small towns, and nomadic raiders came to steal their grain and livestock. They’ve been with us ever since.
“… unless and until mankind have achieved the security of a single government for the world, everything else of value, of no matter what kind, is precarious, and may at any moment be destroyed by war.”
- Bertrand Russell, Authority and the Individual
Because of our innate inclination toward selfishness, and our tendency to steal the property of another man via aggressive force and legal maneuvers, I’m wary about large concentrations of power of any kind. When you look at our massive governments, they’re monstrosities full of bribery, theft, and pillaging of the people. Historically that’s nothing new. The ambitious and power hungry always seek control of governments because they offer a monopoly on the legal use of force. Considering the legal use of force is so important, I would like to see most all political power of this kind flushed back to state and local governments. That way people could feel more involved and in control again. I’d like to see the democratic process extended into many other aspects of our lives, not just the political arena.
I oftentimes find myself entertaining almost radical libertarian ideas mainly because political change through the normal political process forces people to do things at gunpoint. I don’t like that. When a man fights for change in the government, what they’re really fighting for is a law allowing them to force their fellow man to do things at gunpoint. If people don’t comply with the law, they’re fined, thrown into jail, and face other serious punishments. I try to advocate freedom as much as possible, so I’m leery of the use of political force to change the way other people live. I believe in changing people through argument, being a living example, and letting people come to their own conclusions on how to live. I don’t like to use force on people because you can’t change a person’s opinions by forcing them to do things at gunpoint. You can only temporarily change their actions, but tensions will build. Eventually that will explode on you. We’d be wise to listen to Pascal,
“We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.”
- Blaise Pascal
Powerful political positions represent, at heart, the ability to use force to get your way. I find this incredibly dangerous, so I personally feel that if the most powerful positions in government were rather petty, local, and offered nothing but the capability to actually serve the people, half of our problems would go away right there.
It’s very difficult to exploit citizens at the local level. As long as you have transparency, people would be able to see where the money is going and it would all make sense to them. Citizens can drive around town and see their tax dollars at work, and know where their money went. Their leaders would also be far more accessible. That’s the way I think things should be.
At the local level, your vote would count. And if you wanted change, you could go around town talking to people and actually make a difference. You could go to your barber and say, “Can you believe what our mayor just approved of? He’s wasting our tax dollars. We need him out of there.” You could stand outside the grocery store handing out fliers talking about corruption which people relate to and understand. Then the politicians, who live in that same town, would have to confront the people they’re exploiting everyday. When they went to get their haircut, they’d have to face that barber who they’re cheating. That is so much better than our world today.
I like the idea of states having a lot more power than the Federal government. Take healthcare for instance. If say the state of California wanted a socialist style healthcare system, whereas Alabama wanted a more market driven healthcare system, both states could have it how they wanted. Then we the people could see both governments in action and let them compete to prove which is better.
Personally, I feel the state should provide healthcare to all its citizens, as well as provide for all secondary education needs. I would move to a state which offered this. It’s certainly not a tax I mind paying. But other people feel differently, and it’d be nice if they could live in their own state with other like-minded people.
If you allowed citizens to freely move between states and cities, if one state government became corrupt you could move to another state which treated you better. It offers more diversity and puts states in competition with each other. People would leave corrupt states, which would force them to get their act together. It would also relieve a lot of the tension which is out there.
There’s a nasty cycle to selfishness and hatred. When mankind became a social animal his instincts developed in such a way to hate those who cheat the system. Most of us live honestly and don’t exploit those around us, but there’s always those who try to cheat the system. We’re wired to hate these people. That’s to give us motivation to change things or boot them out. This leads to violence, unfortunately. The exploited seeking revenge operates off the same principle.
There’s always violence when people are wronged and mistreated. Capitalism without a social safety net is filled with wrongs. People work hard to get an education in a certain trade which then gets cast along the wayside with changing times. What’s a person to do when their job is no longer valuable, is replaced by machinery, or even worse, when it’s outsourced? We need systems to help people get back to work. We also need retirement plans which aren’t reliant on the caprice of the stock market and Wall Street. And anyone who isn’t appalled by the vast income inequalities is just blind. I could talk about capitalism and its flaws all day long.
I do know one thing – we’ll never have a peaceful society if we don’t provide security to people. We all need a degree of security. The world’s a far too lonely and dangerous place. We need to look out for one another. Our economic system is just terrible.
I recently was watching a documentary and they were talking about the Incas. There were no starving or hungry in their society. Everyone was provided for. I don’t see why we can’t have that today. And you know what? When you talk to people they all feel the same way. They say, “Yes, we should all look out for one another.” But what holds us back? Why does that never happen?
Well, there’s always someone who believes that helping each other out is going to destroy us all. I’ll be first to admit that helping others is a subtle business. People abuse the system, no doubt. The thing is, not having these sorts of social safety nets is a more dangerous than dealing with the few people who take advantage of it all. If we moved our social programs to the local level, I think we could cut down on a lot of the abuses.
Just last weekend I was visiting my parents, who are very religious. They were watching John Hagee, a fundamentalist Christian. He got behind the pulpit and said, “The Bible has a lesson in economics we have forgotten. If you don’t work, you don’t eat.” He was talking about entitlement programs. I just shook my head thinking, “Here’s the rich TV preacher, millions of dollars in the bank, flying around in private jets, himself not doing anything productive for society, just running his mouth spreading superstition, advocating wars and intervention in the Middle East, and calling everyone else lazy and not entitled to unemployment benefits after losing their job in a recession, looking for new employment.” Then he pretends he’s spreading the love of Christ. Please. These are the sorts of reasons intelligent people can’t possibly respect these religious zealots.
Here we have a new college graduate, who just spent the last decade studying to prepare for a job, and for whatever reason can’t find work. Then Hagee walks up to this downtrodden individual and says, “You’re lazy. You don’t work, you don’t eat.” Then he waddles off to his jet. That’s how people are and we wonder why there’s so much bitterness. That’s the cycle of greed and hatred. You don’t care about anyone, and because you don’t care about them, they don’t care about you. With Hagee, there’s no love in that man. He’s completely devoid of compassion. Jesus teaches to help the struggling man along the wayside, but his so-called followers are Spartan war-mongers. If the Bible is true and there is a final judgment, I wouldn’t be surprised to see guys like Hagee come before God who then says, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” A shocked expression comes over his big plump face and the demons drag him off to hell as he exclaims, ‘Jeeeessssuuuuusssssss’
Selfishness and violent aggression are not mutually exclusive; they’re inextricably bound together in a cycle.
If we were to have a global government, modeled like our national governments are today, our feelings of insignificance and helplessness are only going to increase. Here in the U.S. I already feel completely insignificant. I don’t feel in control at all. My vote is drown out by the sea of people out there. Imagine how bad it would be at the global level.
If we do have a global government, we need to make sure it has very little power. I want most of the power to reside in the individual cities and small states. Even the big cities are too big for one man to govern. I would want a big city like St. Louis broken up into 50,000 or at most 100,000 people sectors. I want people to feel in control over their lives and be free to live or work anywhere in the world. We should not be subject to exploitative politicians who hide in their distant offices.
I could never imagine my hometown raising an army and attacking some other city. The people who run local governments are just normal everyday people who actually do care about you. It’s mainly the scumbags in the federal government who are up to no good. I want their power taken away from them and national armies abolished.
There are some deep questions to consider as well though. Take science research. Institutions like NASA and the NSF need funding at the national level. So there are some exceptions, but in general, I want most all power and tax dollars collected and spent at the local and state levels. Other issues include environmental concerns and overpopulation. Those things will probably have to be enforced from above. Our current population would require 1.5 Earths to sustain itself. We have to change.
All in all, I’m very open to different solutions to the problems of aggression and selfishness in society. I think the central problems though are these massive governments and big corporations. I would move to a state which forces these corporations to provide full benefits and sound retirement plans to their employees. There also should be much more profit sharing, and far less profits for Wall Street tycoons.
It’s all very depressing, however. There’s a very high probability that mankind will exterminate itself within the next few centuries. That very thought sends me into such a deep despair, I sometimes don’t want to get out of bed in the morning. These issues regarding the environment, corrupt economic systems, superstition, religion, and scientific literacy are not trivial. I think they literally represent whether or not the human race will survive. If we don’t solve them, we’re done for.
Blind faith has to be replaced by reason based on empirical observation. That way our conflicts in beliefs can go away and be rooted in principles which are proven to work. We have to start taking care of our planet and stop abusing it. We’re going to have to live in harmony with it, or it’s going to kick us very hard in the rear, and may well boot us off to extinction. If we can’t come up with an economic system that works, there’s no way we’ll have peace. We can’t have a world where 95% of all the wealth is concentrated in the hands of 1% of the population. We also can’t have industrial super-powers living right next door to third-world countries. These nation-state borders have to go down and humanity has to unite. It’s obviously a broken system.
The fundamental premise in capitalism basically says, “What can you do for me? Why should I do something for you?” and if you don’t have something to offer in return, there’s no “free lunch”, as they like to say. That whole line of thought has to go. It causes all the miseries and struggles mankind faces in this world.
I feel strongly that the world needs to live like the scientific community does. They share all their research, are completely open to critique and change, have a deep respect for truth and empirical observation, and most of them go to great lengths to educate the public and their students teaching them everything they know. It’s a very open-doors endeavor, where everyone is encouraged to get involved.
Capitalism on the other hand, everything’s about control. In order to stay on top, you have to keep your technological research a secret, so that your products remain superior to your competitors. It’s a tooth and nail struggle to stay on top, constantly battling for the almighty dollar. If you lose that battle, and you don’t have some money saved up, you’re literally cast out onto the street and left to rot. If there’s no safety net, you’re left to die, literally. It’s a matter of life and death whether you can compete on the marketplace. If you lose, you’re cast out into abject poverty. Or, you have to work for one of the big corporations which exploit you, offer you no benefits, work you until you’re old, and then cast you aside. With just a matter of changing times, you can end up losing your job, and lose everything you’d worked your whole life to accumulate. You end up defaulting on your loans (which were cooked up out of thin air), and you lose your home, your car, and your means to provide for yourself. As for the profits, they go to a few Wall Street fat-cats, who don’t even do the work. I agree with Einstein that this is the main reason for conflict in this world.
The economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers the members of which are unceasingly striving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor — not by force, but on the whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules.
- Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?
In this same article Einstein talked about man’s relationship to society,
I have now reached the point where I may indicate briefly what to me constitutes the essence of the crisis of our time. It concerns the relationship of the individual to society. The individual has become more conscious than ever of his dependence upon society. But he does not experience this dependence as a positive asset, as an organic tie, as a protective force, but rather as a threat to his natural rights, or even to his economic existence. Moreover, his position in society is such that the egotistical drives of his make-up are constantly being accentuated, while his social drives, which are by nature weaker, progressively deteriorate. All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. Unknowingly prisoners of their own egotism, they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.
- Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?
I agree with him that our world is much too self-centered. We live for us and us alone. Our entire way of life encourages this and we hope the invisible hand is going to guide us to prosperity. We can’t have a world directed primarily by selfish principles. We probably need worldviews which are more collective in origin, but of course, everyone will disagree about what direction we as a society should go.
If I were to identify how we should live, I think a good role model would be Bertrand Russell. Listen to his own life self-evaluation at the age of 84:
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy—ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness—that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what—at last—I have found. With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved. Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer. This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.
- Bertrand Russell, What I have lived for
If we were to develop those same passions of love, the pursuit of knowledge, and compassion for those less fortunate, I think the world would transform dramatically. Whatever changes we make to society, I believe strongly that those will have to be the guiding principles.
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A Deep Insight Into Violence
August 6, 2010
This is definitely one of my favorite quotes of all time:
“However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead.”
- Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker
When you look at all the violence and cruelty in nature, you can’t help but be disgusted. Whether it’s birds chomping away at the insects, big fish gobbling up the little fish, or lions hunting down the peaceable grazing animals, it’s worth asking why things are this way. What possible purpose could such madness serve?
I’ll let you in on a surprising secret — that very cruelty is what led to our awareness of this world!
The nature of life on planet Earth revolves around DNA. Each time an organism has offspring there are random mutations. Sometimes there’s a large mutation, and other times the mutations are far less noticeable. Either way, they’re there. DNA based life-forms have the property that they replicate with minor mutations. As the first cells came together, they began forming more and more complex structures and organisms. Let’s take a look into how such structures formed.
The first thing you have to understand is the sheer age of everything around you. The universe is 13.7 billion years old. Our planet is over four and a half billion years old. Evolution began not too terribly long after our planet formed. Various chemical processes led to the first cells forming which had the property of replication, similar to bacteria. They replicated in the waters and with each new generation there were slight mutations. Cell colonies started to form, and this process eventually leads, over billions of years, to the complex organisms which you see all around you. Colonies began competing for resources.
In a finite world, there’s only so much to go around. All lifeforms on the planet have to compete for whose design will live on. DNA is a sort of computer program with instructions on how to build a certain type of body. There’s only so much space on this planet, and only so many atoms to use, so nature is undergoing a long process to determine which design gets to use the available resources.
In evolution by natural selection, various environmental pressures weed out less well adapted designs. A lot of people find evolution a crazy idea because they think, “How could something as complex as the eye, or the wings of a bird, come about by random chance?” People who say these things don’t understand natural selection at all. Evolution is a far from random process. The small mutations in each organism’s offspring are pretty much random, but what’s not random is the fact that the environment weeds out the less well adapted designs. Though there’s not a set direction in evolution, not all directions are allowed. The bodies that evolution constructs slowly over time, piece by piece, minor modification by minor modification, have to be able to withstand their environment. They have to hold up under planetary conditions. For example, they have to be able to withstand the temperatures, hold up under the pull of gravity, and not come undone by the blowing winds or the swirling currents.
The vast majority of designs evolution cranks out are no good. The thing is, those garbage designs were eaten by predators, died early in their youth, suffocated, baked under the sun, starved, were ripped apart in the waves, died of sickness, tripped and smashed their heads on the rocks, and so forth. They didn’t reproduce and so their random mutation goes away while the better designs live on and reproduce further. The tree of life started a little bud, but it was cut off there. It never developed into a full branch. Nature constantly weeds out the duds and only “designs” adapted to the environment survive. That’s why everything appears so well constructed for its environment.
So although people are tempted to say, “How could all this have just happened by chance?”, in reality it didn’t just happen. You’re seeing the end result of a long process and what’s around you are the winning designs. But just because they’re winning designs does not mean they’re perfect. There’s flaws in everything when you examine it closely.
Just look at the human body. It’s a mess. In the interview below, Richard Dawkins is speaking with a physician who talks about how badly the human body is designed. I enjoyed it when he showed our eye’s blind spot. Our eyes have a very bad flaw. The wires within the eye are placed in front of the light detection rods and cones, which is the worst possible design choice. Creationists like to use the eye as the profound instrument which could never have come about by natural selection. The thing is, when you realize the flaws in the eye’s design, and how eye designs differ from one species to the next, you can’t deny that our eyes are products of natural selection. These are the sorts of things discussed in the interview. (This is part 1 of 5. If you want to watch the others, right click on it, say ‘Watch on Youtube’ and then watch the other parts which will be there in the sidebar):
A loving God would have never created a body which is so susceptible to disease, so prone to injury, and so fraught with pains.
Now to get to the crux of this post.
Predators serve a very specific purpose in the evolution of our nervous systems and consciousness – they weed out those who are less aware of their surroundings. The predator and prey model led to a sort of “arms race” between species forcing evolution in a direction toward environmental awareness. Without this system the likelihood of evolution producing life-forms, piece by piece and modification by modification, who are highly aware of their surroundings, is next to nothing.
Our awareness became fine tuned in our search for food and evasion of predators. Those designs who couldn’t see well didn’t eat, and so they died off. Those who couldn’t move quickly were caught by predators and so were less likely to survive and reproduce. Those who weren’t very smart couldn’t catch prey and weren’t able to evade their craftier predators. These sorts of selection pressures led to the construction of highly nimble body constructions and large brain capacities. Without that system, we never would have developed our mobility or conscious awareness.
If life exists elsewhere in the universe (and I’m quite sure it does), and if they have a high degree of awareness of their environment, and a high degree of intelligence, they probably underwent their evolution under a predator and prey model on their planet. Their life tree probably isn’t based around DNA per se, but will almost certainly use something similar. It’s very likely that many, if not most aliens are violent and dangerous. If they’re really advanced, in order to survive and not blow themselves to bits during their technological development, they had to learn how to live peacefully. As for others, they’re likely violent.
It’s my guess that advanced aliens would be peaceful but would have no interest in us at all. They’d be so far advanced that we’d pretty much consider them gods. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had such a deep understanding of physics that they could create realities around them at their whim. Maybe they can control entire universes, or even modify the laws of physics.
Just look at the progress between us and a chimpanzee. We’re only slightly different in DNA and just look at how much more intelligent we are. That’s a very small difference in the eyes of evolution. Imagine evolutionary progress over a period of a billion years. Just look at how far science is taking us now. Look at the exponential progress. Even within the next 10,000 years, we probably won’t recognize humans. Their bodies will be modified genetically and merged with the technology around them.
Violence and the struggle for survival may well be just a temporary phase in the development of intelligent life-forms by mindless natural processes. Cosmologists now believe that the beginnings of our universe began with random quantum fluctuations. The empty space all around us teems with random activity. Maybe that whole plot from then to now is just to produce intelligent beings who then take control over their environment from then on, carving their universe how they like it.
I’m hopeful that planet Earth is slowly leaving the “age of violence”. We’re on the verge of taking control of this planet and will, in time, change how everything works to our preference. Biological evolution is being replaced by societal evolution and changes in states of mind. Changes in our physiology, at this point, won’t do much to promote our survival. As for growing a bigger brain, we won’t be able to do that. Women won’t be able to deliver children with huge heads. We’ll have to either grow our children in the lab, or modify them after they’re born, implanting technology into their brains. But don’t get too excited, we’re a long way from totally changing the order of things here on Earth.
But enough about all that. To conclude this post, remember that everything has a purpose. Nothing in this world is random, not even its cruelties.
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The World’s Overpopulated
August 4, 2010
I just got done watching a Richard Dawkins interview with Dr. Aubrey Manning. Toward the end they shared thoughts on the future of humanity. Dr. Manning feels things are going to get much worse before they get better. Research indicates that our current lifestyle and treatment of the planet is completely unsustainable. It would require 1.5 Earths to support our current population. Obviously things can’t go on like this indefinitely.
Next their discussion moved into soil erosion, pollution, mass extinction of species, and other things which are of great concern to me. It brings me comfort to know I’m not the only one saying these things. I thought I’d provide the video as a warning to tell you that I’m not the only one.
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A Reply To Tim
August 2, 2010
Tim commented on my post from the other day:
Well, all I can say is that you can’t let a few idiots change your view of a whole people. It really shouldn’t be a secret by now that I am a Christian. I believe we should teach free thought however. You can’t make a believer by telling them these lies. I love to study apologetics. “The flood messed up the dating,” really? The correct response would be that dating is in no way exact or reliable, but I digress. This bothers me because it fuels beliefs that all christians are just close minded idiots. Look at the site answers in genesis. There are really some great minds there. On your last post you warned about accepting science as absolute truth but in this one you claim evolution to be undeniable fact. I doubt I know enough to change your beliefs, however. Just curious, what do you think of Pascal’s wager?
I replied to this comment, and thought it worth sharing as a post all in itself.
> I believe we should teach free thought
I also believe in free thought, but when dealing with religion this can easily be misconstrued to think that we should tolerate any belief system and not care about what’s true. I believe with time our school system should produce intelligent human beings who have learned to think critically. They should cross their arms and always ask, “Why should I believe this?” They shouldn’t believe things in blind faith. They should demand reasons and logical explanations for things.
It’s exactly like a court of law. If you’re asked to serve on the jury of a murder trial, your mindset should be, “I don’t know if this man is guilty or not. I’ll wait until the evidence is presented and then decide.” We all know it’s wrong to believe someone guilty or not guilty just by looking at him. You’re innocent until proven guilty.
In the same way, I think it’s wrong to believe things in blind faith, which is what religion tells us to do. I’m the exact opposite of a religious person. I withhold belief saying, “I don’t know” until someone proves to me why I should believe. I suppose a religious person will tell me, “Just look around you. How could all this have come about by accident? The birds, the bees, the flowers… How could the human eye just pop out of nowhere? There’s proof all around you.” Well, this isn’t an easy topic. There’s really so much to discuss. If we really want to get technical, I suppose the first major bone of contention is what constitutes sufficient “proof” to justify a belief. That’s a very difficult and long discussion. Unfortunately, I don’t think arguing all that would be the most effective thing to do.
Instead I’ll briefly lay out what I believe, and a give a few reasons why I believe it. I find it important that every belief be supported by empirical evidence. What is evidence? Evidence is something I can perceive with my senses, reliable observational accounts, or something I can infer from the laws of this universe which have been proven through reproducible experiment and observation.
Now this sounds like common sense, but it really isn’t. Hardly anyone lives this way. Imagine if someone asks us, “How many teeth does a horse have?” I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t know. What do we do? Maybe someone else knows, so we go around asking people for answers. First we find a religious priest. He thinks about it for a moment and then says, “I’m not sure. Let me pray about it.” He locks himself up in a chamber and prays for a few days. With time he comes to a revelation. He tells us, “It was revealed to me by God that a horse has 10 teeth.” Later we find a bishop who says, “No no, your priest friend was mistaken. Good sir, God revealed to me that the horse has 12 teeth, just as the tribes of Israel were 12 in number.” Then we travel the world and find a robed foreigner in a cave someplace. He pauses for a moment, says a prayer in Latin, lights some candles in a geometric figure, dances around in loin cloths, and then says, “Yes. Yesssss. It’s been known since ancient times that a horse has 26 teeth. See! It’s written in the ancient scrolls which I dug up.”
I don’t know about you, but I could care less what some old book says, or what these priests feel was revealed to them by revelation. You know what I’d do? I’d say, “Ok guys. Let’s go find some horses and look for ourselves. Let’s do some observations.” Then I’d open up their mouths and count them. You know what I’d find? All the religious people were full of it. I’d find that young horses have 24 temporary teeth, whereas adult female and male horses differ in teeth count. Adult females have 40, whereas males have 42 teeth.
The observation process would go something like this. I’d open up the first young horse’s mouth and say, “Hmm. 10 teeth. Tim, write that down. Horse 1, age: young, 24 teeth.”
Imagine if shortly after our first observation a sceptic asks us, “How can you be sure that every horse has that number of teeth?” If this were all the observations we could make, we would simply say, “We have opened the mouth of one young horse and counted its teeth. We found it to be 24. We don’t know if every horse has the same number of teeth.” That’d be the end of the discussion.
But being good scientists, this issue is of great concern. We decide to continue our observations, finding 10 different young horses. We find them all to have 24 teeth. Then the same sceptic asks us again, “How can you be sure that every horse has 24 teeth?” We would say, “Well, we’ve observed 10 different young horses and they all have this same number of teeth.” In the strictest sense we could say no more, but as a general rule, we’d feel more certain than we did before that young horses have 24 teeth. But the sceptic argues further, “Where do you get these young horses? Are they all from the same location? How do you know that the number of teeth don’t differ one location to the next?” So we do more experiments, taking horses not just from one location, but from all over the world at random. They continue to have 24 teeth.
Say we observe 100,000 different horses from all over the world. At this point are we certain that young horses have 24 teeth? In the strictest sense, no we’re not. Who knows, maybe with the next horse we’d find its young offspring to have 26 teeth. Who are we to say? But with more and more observations and experiments, we seem to get closer and closer to the “truth” of this question.
If people would follow this method, all the irreconcilable arguments would end. Christians say, “Jesus created the world. All of you heathen need to read the Holy Bible and believe whats found in Genesis in faith. And by the way, God demands that you live this way, go to church, and say these prayers or you will burn in hell forever.” Hindus say, “No. Shiva is God.” Wouldn’t it be nice if these arguments could finally come to a close? But that won’t happen.
Before long the Christians and the Hindus start to fight. Christians are convinced that Hindus are going to hell, so they better stop them from spreading before others end up in hell as well. Even if Christians aren’t this way today, the pious Christians of the past would kill others who believed differently, viewing them as a sort of plague on the soul.
Then as the Christians waged war on the Hindus for the souls of men, we’ve always had the Muslims with their own conceptions of Allah. Their prophet had a different revelation about the origin of the world and God, and so they raise an army and go to war. Everyone’s out killing each other, and for what?
I’d like to say humanity has moved past this, but that wouldn’t be true. Just look at the Middle East. This is exactly how they live. One group has their holy book, another group another, and they blow each other up for religious beliefs. Just look at the Time magazine cover of that poor woman whose nose was chopped off. Or read our history of Western civilization. There’s been countless wars fought over religion and beliefs.
And you know what Tim? The arguments between these groups can never be settled. Never. It’s impossible. Why? Because they don’t care about evidence. Truth to them is not observed evidence through experiments and observation. They’re told to believe in their holy books with unwavering blind faith. They’re told that if they don’t believe in the contents of that particular book, they’re going to hell (or something else terrible will happen to them).
It’s like when Richard Dawkins interviewed Pastor Ted Haggard. Haggard said (paraphrased), “We as evangelicals embrace the scientific method. We believe that with time, and as more and more facts come in, we’ll learn more and more about how God created the heavens and the Earth.” Do you see the problem? He doesn’t begin by crossing his arms saying, “Prove it. I don’t believe things until they’re proven to me.” He instead says, “This book is true and it’s your job as scientists to prove this book untrue before I’ll disbelieve it.” It’s the opposite of how you’re supposed to be. Then when Dawkins said, “Do you acknowledge that the Earth is 4.7 billion years old? Modern scientific method proves this to be the case.” Haggard replied, “You see what you’re doing don’t you? You take evidence from a small section of the scientific community and assert that as fact.” He pretends he’s interested in scientific evidence but he’s not. Whenever scientists make observations which don’t line up with his belief system he denies their credibility. I suppose he could say I’m doing the same, so let’s just get into some specifics.
> The correct response would be that dating is in no way exact or reliable
This is simply false. Different dating methods, such as radiocarbon dating, or potassium-argon dating, all have different degrees of accuracy depending on which is used. The situation determines which methods can or cannot be applied, but when they can be applied, they are precise and reliable. They date things within relative time windows. Some are more accurate than others. But if you’re going to deny the methods and their accuracy, proving them would require some complex science, which I don’t really want to do. So instead of discussing all the different dating methods, I’ll make a convincing argument for evolution without all that. I don’t need fossil records to show you how evolution works.
Let’s discuss dog breeding. Everybody knows about dog breeding. Say we have a group of German sheperds. We breed them and we get a bunch of little puppies. Within those puppies we find two runts. We separate those from the main group and breed them. They in turn have runt puppies. Not all, but at least some of their puppies are runts as well. I’m not going to go into a deep discussion of genetics. Obviously inbreeding is a problem you have to face, but to keep it simple, you take the runt puppies and find the runt of the runt litter. You breed that with another runt. You repeat this process over many generations. Eventually you end up with dogs which might as well be considered their own species. In fact, the pet dogs which you see today were selectively bred using this method. My high school mascot was the bulldog. This particular species of dog doesn’t exist in the wild. It’s completely “artificial”. Its head is so large it can rarely even be born without human intervention. By selective breeding over many generations, you can take two wolves and end up with bulldogs.
“Dog breeding is the practice of mating selected specimens with the intent to maintain or produce specific qualities and characteristics.
Dogs reproduce without human interference, so their offsprings’ characteristics are determined by natural selection. Domestic dogs may be intentionally bred by their owners. A person who intentionally mates dogs to produce puppies is referred to as dog breeder. Breeding relies on the science of genetics, so the breeder with a knowledge of canine genetics, health, and the intended use for the dogs attempts to breed suitable dogs.”
Is this just speculation? No. There are detailed logs going way way back hundreds of years showing different dog breeding. Dogs have been bred for all kinds of different characteristics. Over many generations, you can end up with dogs nothing like their parents. With time, you can selectively breed them for all kinds of different appearances. They change so much that they’re their own species.
Darwin took this same idea but added the struggles of survival to the equation. Unlike our artificial dog breeding where we as humans decide which dog types live on, which have offspring, and so forth, in nature those best suited to their environments live on. Those who can escape predators, catch prey, resist disease, digest their food, and so on, live on and reproduce. As for the others, they die off. That’s what evolution by natural selection means.
So is evolution a fact? I feel quite confident it is. To deny it is to deny scientific evidence. I’m just as certain of it as to the number of teeth in a horse’s mouth. Did God create a bulldog? No. There are no ancient fossil remains of bulldogs. You can also look through dog breeding logs and see how they created the bulldog. Read this post on the bulldog, and look under ‘History’:
The term “bulldog” was first mentioned in literature around 1500, the oldest spelling of the word being Bondogge and Bolddogge. The first reference to the word with the modern spelling is dated 1631 or 1632 in a letter by a man named Preswick Eaton where he writes: “procuer mee two good Bulldoggs, and let them be sent by ye first shipp”. The origins of the Bulldog are vague with some sources suggesting it developed from a cross of three different breeds: the Pug, the Mastiff, and a breed of Spanish dog. The name “bull” was applied because of the dog’s use in the sport of bull baiting. The original Bulldog had to be very ferocious and so savage and courageous as to be almost insensitive to pain. In 1835 dog fighting as a sport became illegal in England. Therefore, the Old English Bulldog had outlived his usefulness in England and his days were numbered in England. However, emigrants did have a use for such dogs in the New World, resulting in the original Bulldog’s closest descendant, the American Bulldog. Back in England, they proceeded to eliminate the undesirable ‘fierce’ characteristics and to preserve and accentuate the finer qualities. Within a few generations, the English Bulldog became one of the finest physical specimens, minus its original viciousness, stamina, strength, speed, and intelligence.
It has been theorized that bulldogs were bred in England as a cross between the Mastiff, the Pug, and a breed of Spanish dog, although this genetic origin is debated.
In the 1600s, bulldogs were used for bullbaiting (as well as bearbaiting)—a gambling sport popular in the 17th century with wagers laid while trained bulldogs leapt at a bull lashed to a post. The bulldog’s typical means of attack included latching onto the animal’s snout and attempting to suffocate it.
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In time, the original old English bulldog was crossed with the pug. The outcome was a shorter, wider dog with a brachycephalic skull. Though today’s bulldog looks tough, he cannot perform the job he was originally created for, as he cannot withstand the rigors of running and being thrown from a bull, and cannot grip with such a short muzzle.
The oldest single breed specialty club is The Bulldog Club (England), which was formed in 1878. Members of this club met frequently at the Blue Post pub on Oxford Street in London. There they wrote the first standard of perfection for the breed. In 1891 the two top bulldogs, Orry and Dockleaf, competed in a contest to see which dog could walk the farthest. Orry was reminiscent of the original bulldogs, lighter boned and very athletic. Dockleaf was smaller and heavier set, more like modern bulldogs. Dockleaf was declared the winner that year. Although some argued that the older version of the bulldog was more fit to perform, the modern version’s looks won over the fans of the breed because they proved they were equally as fit and athletic in the walking competition.
You can see that through selective breeding they were able to change bone structure, leg length, snouts, temperaments, and everything else.
Am I supposed to sit back in denial and say, “I don’t believe these breeding logs. I don’t believe these historical accounts.” Well, I suppose people wouldn’t have to believe our logs of horse teeth count either. That’s their choice. But it’s silly that children are being taught in school to believe in an ancient holy book, written by primitive tribesmen with little science knowledge. Half of what’s in the Bible is proven to be wrong. It’s completely wrong. Bulldogs were not created back in Genesis as male and female. Half of these artificially bred dog species would never survive in the wild. It’s wrong. Flat out wrong. That’s what infuriates me about this entire situation. The evidence is overwhelming. There’s mountains of it.
I get angry that you haven’t been taught about dog breeding in school, and have never been asked to think about it. These truths should be just as obvious to you as 2 + 2 = 4, but they’re not being taught to you. They weren’t taught to me either. When I was young, I searched for truth in the Bible, just like you are. The problem is, the truth’s not there.
When I was just getting out of high school I began to search for the truth. You know what? The first time I picked up Darwin’s Origin of Species I was almost scared to read it. I thought the devil was going to try to convince me of all the “lies of this world”. There are no lies in that book. It’s a science book of logs and observational accounts combined with a very plausible account for the origin of species. Darwin just slowly walks you through scientific observations talking about things like dog breeding and asks you, “How could this possibly work if creationism is true?” He talks about different species and how they’re spread about different islands. He talks about the environments he found during his world travels and how the animals were adapted to the unique situations there. It’s a fantastic book.
And as for evolution by natural selection, it’s pretty much beyond doubt that that’s how it works. In nature there’s a limited food supply, different species compete for the food, and those strongest and best adapted to the environment will win and have offspring. Those offspring in turn compete further, and so it all goes. And when you study the Earth and its processes you see how weather changes over long geological time periods, and how continents drift, and so forth. That means environments would be changing over time, making some species more well adapted to the changes than others. Animals would have to migrate and such, competing in new environments for food. Some species would die off, while others would have what it took to survive.
I’m not sure why you’re denying the fossil record, which shows all of thisy. When you study Earth science you see how sedimentary layers form over time in lakes and seas. I can’t understand why you won’t acknowledge the physics of radioactivity even though it’s completely proven in laboratories. We can even create subatomic particles in the Hadron collider. This stuff is very well understood. It’s not theory. It’s well proven science. What you’re doing is denying the number of horse teeth even though there’s been countless different horses observed. But if you want to deny all that, ok. I don’t think you can deny that those fossils are VERY VERY old. You also can’t deny that, in general, those found in deeper layers are older than those found in closer layers to the surface. After all, it takes time for each layer to form, and layers stack onto one another with time. The Earth surely much older than a few thousand years old.
Here’s a few questions for you to think on. If Adam and Eve were both white, for example, and if evolution is impossible, how did we end up with different races? And why, historically, have those races been confined to different areas of the Earth? Why aren’t Asian characteristics of yellow skin and slanted eyes evenly distributed among the Americas, Western Europe, and Africa? Why are native Africans dark black with oily black hair while Caucasians have light skin and say brown hair? How can you explain that?
If you believe in evolution it’s not so mysterious. By the very fact that these groups lived within certain geographic areas, they created isolated breeding populations. Over a long time, human appearances began to slowly change. They began to evolve independently by selective environmental pressures and other slight random changes. But unlike the dog breeding, one particular characteristic wasn’t isolated, so the changes weren’t as dramatic. Originally we came out of Africa, so we have a common root, but then we migrated into Europe and Asia, and eventually the Americas. The differences from one race to another are very slight, but they are there.
> On your last post you warned about accepting science as absolute truth, but in this one you claim evolution to be an undeniable fact.
Well, as mentioned, I’m as confident of evolution as I am anything else. As for the post on quantum physics, you’re misunderstanding the purpose of that post. That’s probably my fault for not writing it well enough. What I’m talking about is people who believe in supernatural hocus-pocus, and try to justify it using quantum physics, which has nothing to do with all their new-age nonsense.
I was talking about how men have always believed that if their faith is strong enough they can lift mountains and throw them into the sea. They can cure diseases just by faith in a deity or even themselves. Most new-age movements are just repackaged religion. I was saying quantum physics doesn’t prove this to be possible. In fact, I think it says the opposite.
If all the men in the world prayed that the sun wouldn’t come up tomorrow, I wouldn’t be the least bit worried about it. In fact, I’d love to make a bet with them. Get all the religious folks together and tell them to intercede in prayer for the economy, or to wish the sun away. Tell them to wish mosquitoes into oblivion. None of it will change anything. The sun’s not going anywhere. Pray all you want to, it won’t change things. The atoms of the sun operate off the laws of physics, not beliefs in people’s heads. The same applies to the viruses floating through your body. In most every case, you can’t cure sickness and disease through thoughts in your head (unless it’s something like emotional sickness, depression, etc. all of which can pose physical health problems).
There are complex observer effects in quantum mechanics, but I feel they’re being misinterpreted by these people. They try to exploit the window of uncertainty and claim now that “all things are possible to him that believes”, which I don’t agree with. I’d say, “all things are possible to him that understands”, but understanding requires a worldwide effort among scientists all over the world. Faith and wishful thinking won’t solve our problems.
> What do you think of Pascal’s wager?
I don’t agree with it. It’s found within his book Pensees. He argues that we have nothing to lose by believing in God. He also argues that if the Bible is correct, you’ll get to live in heaven for all eternity and live in bliss. What do you have to lose? Why not just believe in God?
I would argue the exact opposite. I think you have a lot to lose and considering that most of what’s in the Bible isn’t true, I have my doubts that heaven exists. Since time immemorial, gods and deities have always been the gods of the gaps. When something can’t be explained, or something is unknown, God or various deities are ascribed to be the cause of the phenomenon. This keeps you in ignorance and keeps the human race from progressing. Since that’s the case, we have everything to lose.
Take the origin of species. At first this was attributed to a miraculous act of God. Then we discovered evolution and God is pushed a little back. A lot of Catholics nowadays believe in evolution. They say God invented the laws of physics in such a way that evolution is possible, and would create mankind eventually. The origins of the Earth were ascribed to God, until we learned about astronomy, astrophysics, and the formation of solar systems, and then we learned that the Earth didn’t form like that. It formed at the same time our sun did around 4.6 billion years ago. Rocks, gas and other debris stuck together and eventually formed the planets.
If you believe the planets formed one day by an act of God, then you don’t search for answers. But if you start to ask questions, such as why the planets rotate the way they do, why Jupiter and Saturn are so huge and gassy, why planets closer to the sun are rocky and small, etc., you’ll start to see how it all works. When you ask why the atmospheres are composed of the particular gases they are, and so on, you will learn how it all ties together. If you just say, “We can’t know the mind of God, or why he created things the way he did”, you learn nothing. Religion will keep your mind in ignorance. It stops you from asking questions when you need to question everything.
Let’s go further. The laws of physics must be arbitrarily created by God for the purpose of giving life to mankind? Right? Is that true? Well, if you believe that, you’ll never be able to understand string theory and the multi-verse, which shows how the process of compactification gives rise the laws of physics in each particular universe.
Do you see the pattern? God gets pushed back, but in every single instance He was nothing but a stumbling block keeping people in ignorance, thinking there’s no possible way to explain why things are the way they are. Science seems to be indicating that everything can be explained, it just takes time. That’s not to say there’s simple explanations. String theory is a beast. What I am saying is if we keep working at it, we’ll be able to expand our knowledge and hopefully make better sense of things.
You have a lot of faith in God. I’d recommend you put that faith in yourself and believe that you can understand this world. Keep digging. As Einstein said, “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.”
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