I finished Richard Dawkin'sThe God Delusion. Excellent read. Witty, lucid and insightful, he really describes how superstitious thinking does a number on culture at both the personal and institutional level.
One interesting aside from his book, he talks about how most people had "invisible friends" in childhood. He posited, randomly, without a heck of a lot of validation, that atheists didn't have such childhood friends, hence had nothing to transfer cultural myths onto when they hit adulthood. I bring it up because, recalling my childhood, I didn't have imaginary friends either.
I had imaginary armies
Vast, sweeping hordes of jackbooted, helmeted monstrosities that swept out of the alien Northlands, trampling all resistance underfoot. These hordes were met on vine-strangled fields, in decrepit cities, or on abandoned, alien moons by small, brave hearted bands of gallant defenders, marshalling inferior forces and second rate equipment into bold, last ditch efforts to defeat the demonic death dealers and save civilization from the darkness and despair that would descend in defeat.
[a]n idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?
I rummaged around in the box of horrors in the back of my mind and posted:
That science and superstition cannot, for long, peaceably coexist.
That eventually superstition, under the guise of religion, orthodoxy, absolutist political partisanship or some mixture therein, will plunge the world into sectarian feuds that it simply can't recover from, causing the eventual extinction of our species.
It was either that or Cthulhu was spying on me thru the angles of my condo, biding his time until he eats me.
There is no such thing in my view, of "iron-clad solid fact" coming from the empirical sciences. Modern science provides the most tenuous of all knowledge with regard to certainty and the most incomplete with regard to the totality of being. Next up on the rung in terms of certainty, is philosophical speculation, and finally Revealed truth is the most certain.
I find it curious that efficacy, repeatability, sustainability, benefit, boon, safety, and value are all inversely correlated with this view.
Now, be quiet. I have to fix lunch before everyone else gets here. The menu? In honor of his Carboness, the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster we will be having burritos. I don't get the connection either. But our job is to simply spread the Noodly-Ones enlightenment and understanding wherever we find ignorance, not to question his Pastafarian food choices. Take it up with the Great Meatball in the Sky if you don't like it.
That reminds me! Everyone! Everyone! Your attention please!
Dammit. Hitchens didn't cause a fight. Instead he was erudite, intelligent and damn inspiring. Well, there's still Penn & Teller in the afternoon, as well as the science panel at 4:30.
In any event, it's been an enlightening morning so far. I'll have details soon.
Now I must go get chicken wings before they're all gone...
Another Quick Note at Dinner
Man, my mind is blown. I've got a pile of notes from all the presenters that I'm going to try to enter tonight. I realize I haven't even finished last night's entry, but in the interests of not falling too far behind, and because the gracious Dr. Meyers has routed a few folks over here, I'm going to plow ahead and move on to what happened today. I get as far as I can before I head for the sheets. At least you'll get a flavor of everything, even if I cant get everything that happened down tonight.
BTW, I write fiction for a living. I get paid to lie truthfully about the Truth. If you want to be sure everything relayed here is 100% exactly as it happened, read this guy instead.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence so for now I must conclude that we are on our own. I will not exist far longer than my brief time here and will not waste my brief existence dogmatically preparing for an eternity I'm convinced I will never see. That would surely be the greatest waste of my precious short gift of life.
Somehow though, I don't think this will put an end to the belief in haunted houses, ghosts, gods and all manner of other things that go bump in the night.
Here's a quickie experiment, Warren, for your post-modern, "If I believe it to be so it must be true" therapeutic style/personal world view.*
1) Orient yourself towards the nearest load-bearing wall; brick, concrete, steel, doesn't really matter, just something tough and strong.
2) Step back several feet from that wall.
3) Bend at the waist, perpendicular with the floor and your face now leading your body.
4) Close your eyes.
5) Repeat over and over again the following: "The '...essentialist conceptual framework...' that walls are solid is no '...more valid than the one that says...' walls are '...malleable...' because of my thoughts. Therefore, the wall in front of me isn't real; I will pass through it without a scratch. '...I echo Beck regarding Ellis and state dogmatically this is true.'
When you firmly believe this to be true...
6) Run full bore into the wall.Let me know how it goes.
It only gets better after that.
*Dr. Throckmorton maintains that if people say they've changed their sexual orientation from straight to gay they should be believed at face value, because, in his experience, such things really do change if you say that have.
Scientologist Tom Cruise revealed that he is much older than the forty three years he has spent in his present body.
Tom Cruise noted that he is "old beyond reckoning." What's more, his current life is "probably one of the least satisfying" he has led.
"I was much happier in previous existences when I wrote plays, composed music, conquered nations, discovered continents, and developed cures for diseases," said Tom Cruise.
As is often the case, because of the abuse she suffered in her life, she's moved on to inflicting abuse on others. According to the article, after she finishes off Evolution she's going to leave her mark on Sex Ed. ("Today Evolution, Tomorrow the World!")
Once upon a time this was even pointed out to her:
"'For instance,' I was half playing as I continued, 'I used to be a heavy drinker and abused drugs, but my relationship with Jesus radically changed my desires and even physical addictions. How do you suppose that could happen without a sovereign, all-powerful and loving entity?'
"Some girl from the back spoke up in a 'valley-girl' accent," she continues. "Chirping like an irritating bird, she said, 'Well, maybe it was a transference of addiction.' At first I was upset that she would belittle something so miraculous, likening my relationship with Jesus to my relationship with sin. But then I guess I was addicted to Jesus. I needed him worse than I needed drugs. I considered it a good thing to be addicted to serving, loving, worshipping, and examining Jesus. I had to have Him, for without Him I preferred death."
Obviously, she was sick the day they discussed "Irony."
She would go on to demonstrate her love and worship of the baby Jesus through such choice comments to the youth group she led as:
"I chose to expose and give away a precious part of my soul as I haltingly shared with them how 'my wakeup call was his finger in my vagina."
Do you have to call ahead of time to the front desk for that or can you set it up yourself?
Further demonstrating the healing power of her new religious drug -- and a desperate need to claim any power for her previously powerless self -- she'd later go on to:
...accuse her third generation Latino-American opponent for her school board seat of being an illegal immigrant ("I find it appalling that a person can break the law and enter the country illegally and end up as mayor," Morris told the Associated Press.) It worked, she trounced the guy in the polls.
...calling the FBI after an Arab American documentarian asked her questions about her behavior and views, which also worked because it scared the poor fellow away...
....and billing the county for over $2,000 in expenses from her Miami trip to a magnet school conference for her magnet-less district. Didn't work so well. She got caught.
Her statement to the media after the scandal broke?
"No amount of media bullying can take from the good people I serve the vision and knowledge gained from the conference. God says avoid the appearance of wrongdoing. My dad says that if you want to know the character of a man, look in his billfold. I prefer to take the higher ground."
Of course my, dear. Of course.
I say, if you want to know the character of a person, look at what they do on entering public office: do they further the community good, making health, welfare, education, and social services better for those they serve, or do they use the opportunity for self-satisfaction, psychological masturbation, self-delusion, and the ceaseless "fucking-over" of those who get in their way?
If the former, then they've learned from the mistakes and the pain of their lives. If the latter, then they're just angry, frightened souls only now with better ways to throw their pain spawned shit on ever larger numbers of undeserving people.
With all the controversey surrounding Intelligent Design that's been bubbling forth of late, and having gotten only one side of the issue from sites like Pharyngula and the Panda's Thumb, I decided that I wasn't being intellectualy honest enough in poo-pooing this budding science, especially given that some 400 or so scientists have come out in favor of ID. They must know something, right? Therefore, I decided to exhaustively research the subject by delving deeply into it. After a two minute Google search, I beheld the truth:
Through their power -- and their deviousness -- the Sirians found that"...a Reptilian and a human could be combined to form a working organism." Good NED!*, the horror:
...Mammals and Reptiles are not native to Earth. They originated on separate planets.....[M]ainstream evolutionists cite that because the human genome has a Reptilian base sequence, this is "proof" that we evolved from Reptiles. However, in reality Reptilian and Mammalian genes are provably INCOMPATIBLE under normal circumstances, demonstrating that they DO NOT originate on the same planet. Therefore, the only way they could end up in the same living organism in such enormous relative ratios is via genetic engineering.In fact, at the moment, even mainstream Earth-technology is incapable of successfully splicing a Reptile with a Mammal in any large relative ratio of Mammalian to Reptilian DNA (or vice versa).
It wasn't the Christian "God" that created us initially, but "...what could be called the Angelic Hierarchy under the direction of God-Mind (other words are applicable. no religion applies to this process)."
At our core:
In all Earth-species, 97% of the DNA is the same. This is called "Junk DNA" by mainstream science, though they are finally beginning to realise that it has a function. Besides containing many backup sequences which can be activated to bring about adaptations (evolution).... this 97% of our DNA also codes for the reality in which we reside, the structuring of the relation between our soul-personality and physical reality, and the higher levels of ourselves which exist in the astral and in hyperspace.
Professors like Orac have been blocking off the true knowledge DNA+ and our origins! They've been keeping the truth from us!
Bastards.
He and all the rest of the "professors" aren't in league with silly "atheist secular humanists" -- that's just the cover story -- but rather the Illuminatus:
In reality, there is not much truth to the idea of independent government in Europe or America anymore. These governments were always mafia/Illuminati controlled, but now it is far more centralised than before. Once, we had Hapsburg Illuminati infighting with Rothschild Illuminati. Now there is far more cooperation among the Illuminati because they know that the NWO is growing near.
Bastards.
They've all been keeping secret the truth that:
[o]f the remaining 3% [of our DNA], 50% is similar in a banana and a human, and the next sequence in order is Reptilian, then mammalian with some horizontally transferrred genes. Of what is considered the ´human genome´, which consists of about 30,000 genes, 223 or so genes are horizontally transferred genes. About 20% of the human genome is Reptilian. The rest codes for the aspects of molecular and cellular structure which is the same in plants and animals...The genes cannot all be linked to bacteria, because most of them come from aliens or from animals...
The Bastards.
Intelligent Design has revealed that this insidious plot by our alien overlord masters -- and their professorial cronies in the "Darwinian" community" -- have failed to reveal to us that
[the] incompatibility of DNA is the reason why 50/50 hybrids shapeshift rather than looking like a blend between the two races. If two humanoid species are hybridized, the result is a blend between the two, with both DNA sequences activated simultaneously. If two races of incompatible genetics are combined into a hybrid, this hybrid either ends up with a core personality which exists hidden in the implicate order and does not manifest, or, if it is a relatively equal split, this hybrid gains the ability to shapeshift between the two races from which it was hybridized.
...only a small percentage of the Illuminati are shapeshifters, such as Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip (Duke of Edinburgh), Baron Guy de Rothschild, George H.W. Bush, David Rockefeller, etc. The rest are mostly people with a somewhat higher percentage of Reptilian DNA than usual which have been recruited by the Illuminati as a result of bloodline, lack of morals, what have you--everything the mafia would look for. Mafias in general are a Draco type of cultural creation, and most of the major ones are controlled by the Illuminati. Most intelligence agencies are as well, including the CIA, KGB ("FSB"), Mossad, etc.
The Bastards. The Bastards.
Because of my new found beliefs, I won't rest until Intelligent Design is taught in schools across the country. We need to make certain that our children -- even those with shape-shifting abilities, Reptilian DNA, or under the pernicious influence of our Illuminanti/Mafia/KGB/Wal-Mart Masters -- know their real origins and not the make believe story those "scientists" (BASTARDS!) propagate.
*Non Existent Deity
+They've also kept the truth of DNA from us, that "in its physical form (DNA) is not the absolute form of DNA. In its absolute form, DNA is a series of hyperspace archetypes (language) that exists in a non-physical state."
In the recent upgrade to MT 3.5, about 12 months of entries between 2004-2005 were corrupted. The back-up files still exist. It's just going to take me a while to enter them again. Until then, there are quite a few "gaps" on these archive pages.
With today being Christmas, and with all the wars and rumors of wars, nuclear attacks and biological devastation looming ever closer on the horizon, I just wanted to let everyone know that we're going to be okay because the Star Kids are here to lead us to a brighter future:
...They go by many names, such as Star Kids, Indigos or Crystalline Children. Whatever they're called, believers say this group of prodigies started appearing about 30 years ago and may now make up as much as 90 percent of the population under ten. They also exhibit strange side effects, like a higher resistance to pollutants but an increased sensitivity to sugar and food additives.
These are babies born with an inherent knowledge of art, language and spirituality, possessing an impressive wealth of wisdom. Some will even go so far as to say these kids are not only prime candidates for the gifted and talented program, but the next step in human evolution...
...The peculiarities of Jake and Jan (their families asked that their real names not be used) were apparent from an early age. As a toddler, Jan sometimes spoke using her own language. Instead of "cookie," she would say "cookah" and refused to call a sandwich anything but a "phonic." Odder still, she didn't begin speaking until she was three years old. For Jake's part, he had trouble grasping the concept that he was not in charge. "He has to be told," Jake's mother says. "He doesn't think he needs permission." Spence noticed a similar idiosyncrasy in her granddaughter. "You have to coax her to do her homework," she says.
As proof of Jan's exceptional talent, her grandmother pulls out an example of her artwork, a crayon drawing of a rainbow, stick family and M-shaped birds flying in the sky. "Most all of her pictures are rainbows," Spence says, noticing a theme running throughout her work. She feels that must have something to do with Jan's ability to see auras. She also points out the plant Jan drew with watermelons, pears and other fruit growing on it. "God told her that was how plants were going to grow."
Jan doesn't quite agree. "I just made it up," she says...
Skeptics frequently talk about Occam's Razor. They use it to choose between alternative explanations for something, especially where no one alternative has been either proven or disproven. But what is it?
Many people will tell you it says, "Choose the simplest solution". But it doesn't say choose the simplest solution. Opponents of Occam complain that it will not necessarily help you choose the correct solution. But Occam's Razor does not pretend to choose the correct solution. So what is it and what is its point...
You guys checked out Taken, the new Sci-Fi series about alien abductions, conspiracies and family secrets that premiered on Monday? It's really good, really cool and really awesome. I love this stuff.
Of course, what I don't like, is that it becomes further grist for the "alien abduction" religion, the modern day equivalent of the old fairy stories and demon visitations that our ancestors were so fond of -- and also made religions out of. Much like the birth and evolution of the Mormons, the, evolution of aliens, with its ever deepening and solidifying back story (brought to you by the medium that I love so, films & movies) is yet another case study in the formation of fantastic beliefs. It's little different that the birth of Christianity or the development of Buddhist or Taoist ideas over time. (Oh, and don't get me started on The Sci-Fi Channel's recent behavior in playing into conspiracy theories...)
As a writer, its wonderful to think that a simple story could take hold so deeply in the human psyche. As a psychologist, its fascinating to chart the development of those stories down through the years (or the millennia). As a Humanist and skeptic, it's sad that stories that speak to the wonder, the potential, the greatness in us, become so convoluted and rigid that, in time, most of them trounce the very ideals they were invented to celebrate.
I've had a few people write to me over the last few months -- some curious, some snarky -- about what does it mean to be a skeptic? Some have thought being skeptical is a way to set myself up as some expert, raining on everyone else's parade but my own. Others have asked about being skeptical about skepticism -- why am I not?
Well, I think the best definition of what Skepticism is and is not was written by Michael Shermer over at the Skeptics Society
What is a Skeptic? What does it mean to be a skeptic? Some people believe that skepticism is rejection of new ideas, or worse, they confuse "skeptic" with "cynic" and think that skeptics are a bunch of grumpy curmudgeons unwilling to accept any claim that challenges the status quo. This is wrong. Skepticism is a provisional approach to claims. It is the application of reason to any and all ideas, no sacred cows allowed. In other words, skepticism is a method, not a position. Ideally, skeptics do not go into an investigation closed to the possibility that a phenomenon might be real or that a claim might be true.
When we say we are skeptical, we mean that we must see compelling evidence before we believe. Skeptics are from Missouri the "show me state. When we hear a fantastic claim we say, "that's nice, prove it."
Skepticism has a long historical tradition dating back to ancient Greece when Socrates observed: "All I know is that I know nothing." But this pure position is sterile and unproductive and held by virtually no one. If you are skeptical about everything, you would have to be skeptical of your own skepticism. Like the decaying subatomic particle, pure skepticism uncoils and spins off the viewing screen of our intellectual cloud chamber.
Modern skepticism is embodied in the scientific method, that involves gathering data to formulate and test naturalistic explanations for natural phenomena. A claim becomes factual when it is confirmed to such an extent it would be reasonable to offer temporary agreement.
But all facts in science are provisional and subject to challenge, and therefore skepticism is a method leading to provisional conclusions. Some claims, such as water dowsing, ESP, and creationism, have been tested (and failed the tests) often enough that we can provisionally conclude that they are not valid. Other claims, such as hypnosis, the origins of language, and black holes, have been tested but results are inconclusive so we must continue formulating and testing hypotheses and theories until we can reach a provisional conclusion.
The key to skepticism is to continuously and vigorously apply the methods of science to navigate the treacherous straits between know nothing skepticism and anything goes credulity. Over three centuries ago the French philosopher and skeptic, Rene Descartes, after one of the most thorough skeptical purges in intellectual history, concluded that he knew one thing for certain: Cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am.
But evolution may have designed us in the other direction. Humans evolved to be pattern-seeking, cause-inferring animals, shaped by nature to find meaningful relationships in the world. Those who were best at doing this left behind the most offspring. We are their descendents. In other words, to be human is to think. To paraphrase Descartes: Sum Ergo Cogito I Am Therefore I Think.
Fine, but that still doesn't answer the question about being skeptical of skepticism. Well, I think in that sense, people have confused ordinary skepticism, which posits that claims require evidence and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence with philosophical skepticism which is the position that absolute knowledge and certainty is impossible to determine.
Or (roughly but not exactly), while some might maintain that there is no way of really knowing a wall to be solid (philosophical skepticism), I'm fairly certain that I could prove the solidity of said wall by having three fairly large men from Gold's Gym hurl said philosophical skeptic headfirst at the wall. Between the resulting thud, the fracturing of bones, the nerve endings firing as a result of massive trauma and a spectrographic display of stress at the impact point of nose and mortar crease, doubts as to the wall's structure could readily be dispelled.
Philosophical Skepticism traces its origins back to Sextus Empiricus in the 1st Century CE. PS is actually a rather gullible and unreasoned approach to knowledge. It is frequently seen as being synonymous with sophistism which is explaor
Thus, Gorgias ostentatiously answered any question on any subject instantly and without consideration. To attain these ends mere quibbling, and the scoring of verbal points were employed. In this way, the sophists tried to entangle, entrap, and confuse their opponents, and even, if this were not possible, to beat them down by mere violence and noise.
They sought also to dazzle by means of strange or flowery metaphors, by unusual figures of speech, by epigrams and paradoxes, and in general by being clever and smart, rather than earnest and truthful. Hence our word "sophistry": the use of fallacious arguments knowing them to be such.
Early on Sophists were seen to be of merit as people of superior skill or wisdom, as we find in Pindar and Herodotus. We learn from Plato, though, that even in the 5th century there was a prejudice against the name "sophist". By Aristotle's time, the name bore a contemptuous meaning, as he defines "sophist" as one who reasons falsely for the sake of gain..
Ordinary skepticism, of the "show me the money" kind, does work. Evidence for claims can be read, evaluated, compared and decided on. ESP is all well and good, but the fact is that there is no testable and repeatable phenomena that stands up to scrutiny. While it's possible that ESP is true there is no evidence to date that it is. Given what we know about how the world works, it seems unlikely that it will ever be validated. Same holds true for miracles, channeling, astral projection, alien visitation, gods, angels or W's ability to eat a pretzel unassisted by two Secret Service agents and a medic.
Okay. Maybe I was just making that bit up about astral projection.
Clairvoyant, n. A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron � namely, that he is a blockhead.
Homeopathist, n. The humorist of the medical profession.
Homeopathy, n. A school of medicine midway between Allopathy and Christian Science. To the last both the others are distinctly inferior, for Christian Science will cure imaginary diseases, and they can not.
Palmistry, n. The 947th method (according to Mimbleshaw's classification) of obtaining money by false pretenses. It consists in "reading character" in the wrinkles made by closing the hand. The pretense is not altogether false; character can really be read very accurately in this way, for the wrinkles in every hand submitted plainly spell the word "dupe." The imposture consists in not reading it aloud.
A small Swiss study has found people who believe in the paranormal have higher levels of dopamine in their brains. The chemical is a neurotransmitter associated with pleasure and addiction.
High levels are also associated with people who pick out patterns where there are none and who find significance in coincidence.
A drug which increased the production of dopamine in the brain was given to 20 self-confessed believers and 20 sceptics.
It made the sceptics act more like the believers did before they took the treatment
Again from James Randi's page. This is a graduation speech given by
Lindell Lucy on Friday, May 24th, 2002, at Corning High School in Arkansas (population 3,000.) Just picture a small town in the south of Arkansas, flowing with traditional values, eagerly awaiting this graduation presentation from a 6'1, star basketball playing, National Honor Society holding, Boston marathon running, son-of-the-south.
This is it. We're finally graduating. For most of us, this day marks the biggest change in our lives. It's the end of everything we've ever known, and it's the beginning of everything we've ever wanted. We're all about to go our separate ways, about to leave each other and our families; we're all about to grow up, about to become individuals, about to pursue our dreams. We have numerous decisions to make, and we have so many opportunities. The world is changing fast, and we're changing even faster. Ten years from now, there's no telling what we'll each have made of ourselves. The possibilities are endless.
I could go on talking about our potential futures, but I think everybody knows what's ahead. So, instead of talking about possibilities, I'm going to talk about some things that will hopefully be much more important than that. I'm going to speak about the search for truth and about making the most out of life.
There are times when it's inappropriate to question things, but in general, never stop asking why. Also, don't rely on another person's word. Don't rely on a book. Double check everything. Find out first hand. If you want to know truth and if you want to know it with any amount of certainty, then you have to find it for yourself. It's not something that can be given to you. Always keep your mind open to new possibilities. But never let anyone scare you into believing anything, and don't pretend to believe. Don't be afraid to be different. If you know inside yourself that something's right, then stick to it, no matter if the whole world thinks differently. You'll never be happy trying to be someone you're not.
Realize that not everybody has the same beliefs, and respect that. You can never know exactly what another person has experienced. In our world, there's Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism, Christianity, Taoism, Judaism, and about 10 other major world religions, and within these religious groups there are thousands of different divisions. Edward Bulwer-Lytton once said, "Truth makes on the ocean of nature no one track of light; every eye, looking on, finds its own."
Meaning doesn't have to be found in ancient texts though. In fact, it doesn't have to be found at all. The physicist Richard Feynman, who won a Nobel Prize for his work in quantum electrodynamics, put it like this:
I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit, but if I can't figure it out, then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't have to... I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me.
Living a religious life is relatively easy. You already know what you're supposed to do. Your life purpose may be to please a certain god or gods here on Earth so that you may enter a place of eternal happiness after death, or it may be to break a cycle of reincarnation in order to "become one" with the universe. But whatever religion you may choose to accept, you will always have the comfort that what you're doing here on Earth isn't a waste of your brief and precious life.
But what do you do if you choose not to give your life to religion? What is your goal when you view the universe as meaningless and completely independent of some mysterious supernatural force? That's a good question; it's one that many people are afraid to answer, but it's one that I'll try to answer.
Accepting a reality without "meaning" can be extremely hard. It can make you feel insignificant, confused, lost, and alone. You have no books, no people, no gods to tell you what to do or how to live your life. All principles, decisions, and meaning must come from within yourself. It's very easy to get caught up in thinking about why things happen the way that they do and how meaningless it all is: laughing, crying, talking, loving, learning, experiencing, everything. You view all your own actions from an evolutionary standpoint, as mere behaviors that evolved because they benefitted the species. Sometimes you can get so caught up, dwelling on how pointless everything is, that you lose all motivation. Your thoughts can become your entire life. You may feel trapped by your own existence, and at times you may even believe that bringing death upon yourself is the only way out.
So how do you deal with that? Well, you don't deal with it. The universe is meaningless; you accept it, and you forget it. "So what" if we popped out of nothing, or if we're only one of an infinite number of universes or histories. There are psychological, evolutionary, theoretical, physical, chemical, natural explanations for everything. You can spend your whole life thinking about it, being an emotionless machine, being dead to the world, or you can live. You can feel. You can learn. You can meet new people, try new things, and see new places. The thrill of experiencing is what makes life worth living, and this world is plenty big enough, and complex enough, to keep you occupied for a human lifetime.
When a beautiful girl looks deep into your eyes and smiles, don't think about the chemical reasons behind your increased heart rate and quickened breathing; don't think about the evolutionary reasons behind your attraction to the girl. When a friend tells you a funny joke, don't think about the meaning of "funny" or the behavior that laughing evolved from. And if someone close to you dies, don't think about the reality of death or the reasons for crying. Just smile at the girl, just laugh at the joke, just cry over the loss, just appreciate the moment. Feeling happiness, and even pain, is much better than not feeling anything at all.
There are reasons for everything. Sometimes those reasons make you feel like you don't have control of yourself, but you do have control. You can keep yourself from laughing if you understand why you're laughing. You can keep yourself from crying. You can keep yourself from loving. But don't control it. Just accept that emotions are meaningless, and that everything is meaningless, and just feel. Don't fight nature. Go with your instincts. Don't try to be strong. Don't try to be too smart, too tough for nature. Sometimes it takes a stronger, wiser person to be weak. Life is love and hate, happiness and sadness. Life is emotions. Life is feeling. Without emotions, you might as well be a robot. You might as well be dead. So live. So feel. Don't think. Feel.
In the end, we're all going to die anyway; the outcome is inevitable. So, look at things like this: you're here, and you'll be gone soon. You may be gone tomorrow, and when you're gone, you'll be gone for good. So live right now, because you're never going to live again. It all comes down to the old saying, "Is the glass half empty, or half full?"
I could go on preaching to you, but I won't. I've got plans at the lake. I've got plans to feel the sand between my toes and to feel the warm sun on my back. So let's hurry up and graduate and get out of here. Thanks teachers, parents, and everybody else. Thanks for the great memories, class of '02, and good luck with the future!
There is still hope for the future, my friends. Mr. Lucy, with luck, will play a great part.
But Edward, a 32-year-old native of Long Island, has not fessed up to all of his talents. As it happens, he is more than a psychic medium; he is also a master statistician. The smoke and mirrors behind his self-professed ability to communicate with the dead is a simple application of the laws of probability. Basically, if you keep trying something whose results are independent, your odds of getting your desired result increase.
I'd been saying that in "holy writ" there was no reference to angels having wings, that the wings were the invention of 14th-century artists who started out differentiating between human figures and angel figures by placing tiny butterfly wings on the shoulders of the latter, wings that eventually grew into full, white or multicolored, bird-like wings. Well, this young man and another student � quite rightly � challenged my statement. So here's the "facts" on this mythology: the Cherubim and Seraphim, two of the nine celestial orders of divine, benevolent, spiritual beings, are defined as having wings. Angels, however, the lowest of the nine orders, do not have wings. The differences between angels and the winged guys, are very evident; you can tell 'em apart right away. A cherub is a chubby infant style of being, and a seraph (member of the very top rank of these critters) has either four or six wings. Think what a flutter that would work up!
Shaun Brannan of Edinburgh, Scotland, sent us this message during our Thursday night Internet Webcast. He relates an interesting event, one that might have been snapped up by eager believers, but had its ghost laid quite effectively....
Thanks for the really great webcast. Despite having to get up at 2am to listen to it in Scotland, it's well worth the tired yawns at work in the morning. I thought you may be interested in a little tale which illustrates the point that people will accept any baloney psychical and mystical interpretation of what turns out to be, very ordinary events.
A friend of mine comes from Surinam and he related to me this little tale. While watching TV, he popped into the kitchen only to find that the TV had switched channels. He took no notice of it, but this began to happen every night. As soon as he popped out to the kitchen, upon his return the TV had changed channels. While he was happy to accept that maybe the remote was playing up, his wife was convinced that a poltergeist was playing tricks on him.
She called in the local priest, who came in and blessed the house, claiming he could sense an evil presence. The local witch doctor also called in (for the equivalent of $200 an hour) and performed various magical rituals to cleanse the house.
However, the mysterious channel changing continued. My friend decided to set up a webcam to see if he could spot anything unusual. And lo! and behold! the solution to the mystery was revealed.
He wasn't alone in the house!
However, he did not film a poltergeist. He filmed his unsupervised cat jumping onto the couch and flipping the remote around like a toy! And sure enough, this hammering from the cat would cause the channel to change, a simple explanation no one had thought of. Pity it cost him $200 plus a webcam to get the solution, though.
I ask you to consider how many "remarkable" events like this have occurred, which have never been so properly investigated. These are fodder for the media, who can manage to prepare a 30-minute TV special based on an "unexplainable" miracle that will be eagerly embraced by believers and pass into the lore of the wondrous. Yet, here we have a man who really wanted to solve the mystery, and did. We can only wonder if domestic bliss continued for him following the mundane solution.....
This same terminology was used for each of the first six days of creation. That verse, Genesis 1:5, is part of what leads me to believe that this section of the Bible can and should be taken literally. Literally to mean that God created the world and all that is in it in six literal 24-hour days...
I'm an engineer by trade and that training causes me to believe what I learn through and from science. But that training and those "beliefs" sometimes get in the way of God's truth.
Genesis 1:5 clearly ties night and day, as we know it, to a literal day of creation. Science tells us that the earth has been around for "billions and billions of years" to quote Carl Sagan.
Science is wrong.
And that's tough for me to believe because to do so, I have to admit that the claims and assumptions upon which science is based are incorrect. And that's tough, in part because I don't understand all of the science involved.
But I do understand that God requires me to believe - to have faith in Him and His Word. Even when I don't understand everything there is to understand, I need to have faith and believe.
Religion is a funny thing. At its best it allows our indomitable spirit to stand fast against odds overwhelming and depressing. It also calls people to the highest aspirations imaginable. The sadness, though, comes from religion's equal, if not stronger, ability to blot out our capacity for reason, to truly understanding the magic in the natural world, for the understandable, but impossible, goal to be always "right."
"I'm choosing death because South Korea has to go far to compete with the Latin American and European teams. I will be a ghost and the 12th player on the pitch and do my best for our team," police in the southeastern city of Pusan quoted the note as saying.
Seems as though my fair California politicians, seeking to get votes instead of actually dealing with a problem, are looking to raise the age at which one can legally buy tobacco in California to 21. The reason? Because research says that if you haven't started smoking by the age of 21 you aren't ever likely too. Brilliant misuse of science there folks.
Instead of...I dunno...raising the price of cigarettes outside of a 14-17 year old's reach, which studies have shown have a dramatic impact on stopping teens from smoking we're going to create yet another new milestone in our ever widening path to "adulthood" in society.
It's par for the political course in making sound bites over sound policy. In my adopted state, we believe you are perfectly capable of understanding your actions to commit a felony at 14, but can't figure out if you really want to have sex with someone you like until you are 18 and most definitely can't understand that you are killing yourself with cigarettes until you are 21. Believing the myth that young people are out of control as well as a danger to themselves and society, we'd rather pass, or try to pass, dumb and draconian laws that cost much less to implement than the alternative.
It's a hell of a lot easier to lump young people into one monolithic, hormonally challenged and vaguely "retarded" (meant in the coarsest way possible) class than to provide the education, understanding and a resources necessary to allow them to become thinking, purposeful adults they can be. The former requires an investment in television and print advertisements. The later, an investment in the Future.
Didn't get a chance to post something about the masterful Stephen J Gould, a great popularizer of science and the theory of evolution. James Randi, in this weeks latest edition of SWIFT provides these quotes from Gould's long and distinguished career:
Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview � nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.
The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.
No rational order of divine intelligence unites species. The natural ties are genealogical along contingent pathways of history.
The fundamentalists, by "knowing" the answers before they start (when examining evolution), and then forcing nature into the straitjacket of their discredited preconceptions, lie outside the domain of science � or of any honest intellectual inquiry.
I think those are rather fitting, given our current struggles with fundamentalism both here and abroad.
People have asked me on several occasions how I can be a skeptic and an atheist and still be moral. Well, outside of a long explanation, this is a pretty good summation:
Skepticism's bad rap arises from the impression that, however necessary the activity, it can only be regarded as a negative removal of false claims. Not so... Proper debunking is done in the interest of an alternate model of explanation, not as a nihilistic exercise. The alternate model is rationality itself, tied to moral decency � the most powerful joint instrument for good that our planet has ever known.
(Some have also asked, in light of my poor culinary and stylistic skills, how I can possibly be gay. My usual reply?
Hey folks, I almost forgot my weekly plea to go check out the latest issue of SWIFT, courtesy of James Randi. This week, there's a great article on why "fundementalists" who survive snake-bites 'aint all that, the turth about "spirit particles," bad faith in polygraphs and the latest on the debacle around "alternative medicine."
The latest edition of Swift, James Randi's weekly debunkings of psychics, is on line here. In this issue he covers: Miracle Fizzles in Spain, Another Stupid Patent, Quackery in Savannah, Sidewalk Levitation, More Geller on Football, Dowsing Homeopaths (?), UFO Replaced by Meteorite, Ph.D. Nonsense, and Peter Hurkos re-visited...
Gregg Easterbrook writes at beliefnet about being upset at folks who discount every miracle in the Bible outright, rejecting hands down all the various magical and divine miracles that occur throughout it's pages.
He writes The dogma of this new anti-religion is that all reports of supernatural power must be fraudulent � not that there are doubts or questions (there surely are), but that belief must be phony. This attitude is itself an article of faith, as surely as it is an article of faith to believe that Jesus is God�s child.
From the tone of his article, he seems to be quite upset that anyone would claim hands down that Moses's staff didn't turn into a bigger snake than Pharaohs' sorcerer's did, or that the Red Sea wasn't parted, or that Jesus didn't walk on water. After all, honest skepticism would seem to indicate that it might at least have happened, right?
Carl Sagan wrote something to the effect that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. It's actually not that hard of an argument to grasp as the simpler version of "prove it" is regularly used to verify traffic accidents, medicine, house values and if little Suzzie beat the bejesus out of little Sam.
So too, in regards to miracles, "prove it" isn't a rejection of that something happened, but rather a way of saying "Haven't seen it happen before, show me how it could have taken place." It supposes that we live in an understandable world, where we can grasp the meanings, the reasons and the why's to things.
If someone walks on water it's going to take more than a few guys, 40 years removed and re-written over the course of 1900 or so years to attest to the veracity of the event. In light of the fact that today we know how easily people are mistaken or lie or fib to promote their causes, it's not wrong or bull headed to remain highly skeptical of the claim until its shown to be true.
So far, every miracle and magic that's been put to the test -- double blind, randomized and as free of bias as we know how to make it -- has failed to hold up. This includes speaking to the dead, levitation, cold fusion, UFO abductions and miraculously surviving a snake bite. While it's always possible that some new, super extraordinary event will come along to shake things up, so far that hasn't occurred. If it does, then you can claim "I told you so." Until then, it's not "anti-region" to ask for proof behind an extraordinary event. It's just common sense.
If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war... Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of "facts" they feel stuffed, but absolutely "brilliant" with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change.
In this week's edition of SWIFT the JREF's latest debunkings include: More Deserved Lumps for Edward, Astrology Buffs Red-Faced, Astronomy Buffs Excited, Frederick the Collector, A French Fraud, Investing in the Stars, Medium Measurement, and Mom Shipton
"Science Fiction" by Chris Mooney After spending half a billion taxpayer dollars, alternative medicine gurus still can't prove their methods work--how convenient....
Well, I guess if I really wanted to make money, I'd change my name to some vaguely new age sounding, Native American bastardization, grow a beard, and swear up and down that if you buy my special 25-cent pieces at $500 a pop, you're energy would be "balanced."
One more thing. Wetlog also links to an article on some new wonder water here.
If you read the article, there is nothing to Dr. Beckett's claims except the testimonials of several people whose medical backgrounds we know nothing about, sheep whose life spans are above the norm but not beyond it, and the claimant's personal views that fly in the face of every repeatable study into the origins of aging, DNA and genetics.
It'd be nice if there was something to his claims. However, so far it reeks of hucksterism and pseudo-science. If Beckett wants his claims validated, he's going to have to do the work.
My bet is he doesn't.
For more information on all the variations on the magic water scams follow this link.
"A man walking along the high road sees a great river, its near bank dangerous and frightening, its far bank safe. He collects sticks and foilage, makes a raft, paddles across the river, and reaches the other shorre. Now suppose that, after he reaches the other shore, he takes the raft and puts it on his head and walks with it on his head wherever he goes. Would he be using the reaft in an appropriate way? No; a reasonable man will realize that the raft has been very useful to him in crossing the river and arriving safe on the other shore, but that once he has arrived, it is proper to leave the raft behind and walk on without it...."
The great Zen Master Kuei-shan asked his student, Yang-shan (who was to become an equally great teacher) "In the fourty volumes of the Nirvana Sutra, how many words come from demons?"
Yang-shan said, "They are all demon's words."
Kuei-shan said "From now on, no one will be able to pull the wool over your eyes."
James Randi has a wonderful bit about Scientology's e-meters here You can find out how a device assembled from about $13 in parts sells for about $5000 to the faithful.
Oh, excuse me--typed that wrong. The E-Meter isn't available for sale but merely for a donation of that amount.
Say what you want about Scientolgists, but at least they are honest about buying your way into heaven...
Well this won't help. Los Angeles Times: FBI Security Reform Sees More Use of Polygraphs Polygraphs don't meaure anything. Well, they do measure changes in blood pressure, respiration and breath rate, but there is no evidence that any of these correlate with telling lies. Basing increased security at the FBI on a device that doesn't work wont protect us from the Robert Hansenns of the world. Just ask the CIA, whose Aldrich Ames passed every lie detector test he was ever given. Read more about polygraphs here.
HokiePundit You know, something just occurred to me. I'm sick of the "I'll only believe in God if he proves himself uncategorically to me" argument against belief in general and Christianity in particular.
The above is actually rather ironic, in light of the demand for proof the Apostles demanded when Christ appeared before them in the upper room. The writers of the Gospels knew that something approaching proof was going to be required, after all, it had been 40 years or so before anyone putpen to paper and actually wrote down what supposedly happened on those fatefull days. Indeed, they progressively made the Ressurection story more and more fabulous, with more and more witnesses thrown in, just to deal with the problems of time and the nature of their claims. The earliest versions of the Gospel of Mark had a great, Rod Serling ending to the passion play, with a rolled away stone, an empty toomb and a little boy telling the stoppers by that they'd just missed Jesus. Another generation later, by the time The Gospel of John is written, we've got a bunch of angels in the air, a gagle of women who've seen him on the road and an assembly of apostles able to stick their fingers in the holes in Jesus's hands.
That's acutally pretty close to Hollywood writing if you ask me. No subltely. Easy to understand by even the simplest of souls. It sells tickets today and, obviously, did so then as well.
Ug. One more time for those who weren't listening: Intelligent Design is just Creationism in a shiny, new package. It still isn't science. Read about the latest attempt at installing a screen door on a submarine here .
Well, not really beaten. But he and his ilk bilk people out of time and money by playing on grief and sorrow. If you don't know how they acomplish this "speaking with the dead" bunk, read here on the art of Cold Reading.
