We Are Not Broken
I read a lovely blog post. It is about people with disabilities. Please read it.
My comment on this:
I grew up with a learning disability. I was teased, bullied. But I’ve succeeded beyond what any of those people who made fun of me, or even most of the teachers and guidance counselors could. My son has autism spectrum disorder. Family, friends, strangers in the supermarket, all would try to tell me how to handle him, how to raise him, how to “fix” him. He is not “broken”. He never was. He is his own person. He is my son.
Something From Nothing – Why It Doesn’t Matter If God Exist Or Not
Where did the universe come from? This is a question that has taunted humans probably since we first became sentient.
Most of the attempts to answer this question over the millennium have come from religion, but in the past 20 years or so, real progress has been made in physics to answer this question. Science seems to say that the universe could have been created from nothing.
The renowned physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawkin has postulated that the universe could have arisen from fluctuations in the quantum foam. Others, such as physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss, in his new book, “A Universe From Nothing”, suggest something along the same lines.
I’m not going to go into the science since it is far beyond my capabilities. I’m also not going to get much into the religious and theological arguments. What I do want to look at is a basic, simple premiss: we, as humans, don’t understand time.
We experience time in a linear fashion. This means that we have memories of a past, experience the present, and have expectations of the future. Therefore time, to us, seems have a past, present, and future. Physicists call this phenomenon The Arrow of Time, and due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, as well as other factors that involve mind-numbing math, it always flows in one direction.
The most important thing about time, and the hardest one to wrap our heads around, is that time is not separate from space. Time and space are inextricably linked and are collectively referred to as space-time. Time can not exist without space. One of the consequences of this is that time has only existed as long as space has.
Space-time, and the universe it’s self, began, as closely as we can currently work out, 13.7 billion years ago in the Big Bang, from a singularity (a point of infinite mass), similar to the singularity in the center of a black hole (in fact, some scientists postulate that our universe exists inside of a black hole, but that’s a post for another time).
Scientists have a pretty good idea of what happened as the universe expanded back to about 10^−11 (one hundred billionth) seconds after the beginning of the Big Bang. What happened before that time is unclear. Here, at the very beginning, as in the heart of a black hole, the laws of physics as we know them break down. Nothing inside the singularity can be glimpsed from the outside, but we should be able to, theoretically, go back to the very instance of the beginning. We are close, and the more we study sub-atomic particles with tools like the Large Hadron Collider, the more we are able to learn about these very earliest moments.
The important thing to understand here, for the purposes of this discussion, is that time did not exist before the Big Bang. Since time did not exist until the moment the universe began, the question, “What existed before the universe?”, is non-sensical. This doesn’t mean that there wasn’t a “before”, it is just that our minds are incapable of conceiving that particular state of things. It most likely was not a time, or a place, or an anything that we can define in terms that human language can express. Only mathematics can express this situation and translating those mathematics into human language is likely impossible, simply due to our innate inability to grasp a concept that literally doesn’t exist in our universe. We just don’t really, and can’t really, understand time. We are trapped in the flow of time, just as a leaf is trapped in the flow of a river. Traveling helplessly onward.
Therefor from my thinking, asking ”What existed before the universe?”, is meaningless. Wether it was created, or if it sprang into existence due to some fundamental laws of physics that we don’t completely understand really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that once it was in existence, everything in it has been subject to laws of physics that are, as far as we can see, so deeply woven into the fabric of space-time that they can not be broken.
The upshot of this means that our universe is self-contained and is subject to those laws. This precludes the existence of a personal God: one who can answer prayers and perform miracles. If there is a god, then it is entirely outside of the universe, and as such, unable to influence, or even know of, anything within it. Hence, worship or prayer to it is useless, except as a way to give ourselves solace if we so choose.
Call it god; call it a quantum fluctuation; call it George, it really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we are here, if only for the very briefest of moments. Let’s make the most of it.
Be Good For Goodness’ Sake
Telling someone that they shouldn’t steal or murder or rape because if they get caught they will go to prison is not teaching morality. Similarly, telling someone that they shouldn’t engage in these same types of behaviors because the will got to hell is not teaching morality either. What it is doing is teaching that these behaviors are bad, not because the are intrinsically immoral, but because there is the risk of negative consequences.
This type of thinking ignores the real effect of immoral actions: that they harm others. That crime, deceit, and violence robs a person of a part of their humanity. It attacks one of the greatest truths ever put forth by the human mind: that we all are created equal, that we “are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” (1)
True morals should be based on this principle. They should also be based on empathy and love for our fellow Homo sapiens who we share out planet with. By holding up threats of punishment, either in this life or a mythical one beyond it, we dehumanize each other and desensitize ourselves to the humanity within others.
This mindset can lead to disdain of those who are seen as violating some peoples’ personal or religious morals, many of which are inhumane, insensitive, and inhumane.
The same holds for being moral and doing good deeds for others because we empathize with their plight. We should do kind things not expecting anything in return, but because it is intrinsically the right thing to do. To only do good, be it giving to charity, doing a favor for a friend, or giving a blanket to a cold homeless person just because we expect a reward in heaven or to boost our status within our social circles reeks of callousness. These types of people do good not because it is the right thing to do, but because they are greedy for reward. When they give to charity, help at soup kitchens, they are often thinking not of those who benefit from their deeds, but of the benefit to their social status and/or their eternal reward.
Santa Clause, that fictional character of Christmas cheer, summed up the true basis of morality: be good for goodness’ sake.
(1) The Declaration of Independence
are created equal, that they are endowed
The Newtown School Shootings – When There Are No Reasons
After the horrifying shootings at the Newtown, CT school, Bryan Fisher, Director of Issues Analysis for the American Family Association proposed that God could have stopped the shootings, but didn’t because apparently it was God’s way of saying:
“Hey, I’d be glad to protect your children, but you have to invite me back into your world first. I’m not going to go where I’m not wanted. I am a gentleman.”
A Gentleman?! Fisher’s “gentleman” god sounds more like a child throwing a tantrum because he didn’t get what he wants. A gentleman doesn’t sit by while 20 children are killed in cold blood just because he wasn’t picked for the team on the playground. I will tell you who does act like this: a coward; a sociopath; a sick and twisted, sadist.
Fisher’s god is an iniquitous and malefic thug. A god who can stand by and allow 20 innocent children be massacred is not a god worthy of praise or worth following. If such a god does exist and wishes me to believe, never mind support, that the innocent must die for the sins of the guilty, then I will proudly stand before him and tell him to kiss my ass and to send me to hell. I’d rather spend an eternity in hell than give the slightest support to such a evil creature. I thought that Jesus was the innocent one who was supposed to died for all of our sins, or did he just not get it right and now God feels that he must allow tiny children to die instead in order to pay for the supposed ills of our society? Where does God’s mercy and forgiveness come into all this? Apparently it doesn’t.
The fact is that 20 innocent children and 7 adults are dead. They aren’t dead because God is punishing us. They aren’t gone forever because of homosexuality, secularism, evolution being taught in our schools, or Obambacare. There is only one reason that they are dead: because a man walked into to the school and shot them. Period.
I’m not going to try to make this a sermon about gun control, or better access to mental health care, or any other political or social issue. That is something that we, as a society, must decide to do something about (or, as is often the case, do nothing).
We like to try to place blame when terrible things happen to us. We can’t stand the thought that something so horrific could happen for no reason as all. The reality is that nature doesn’t care and the universe doesn’t care. They just are. We, on the other hand, can and do care. Instead of seeking a reason beyond the the simple one stated above, we need to care for each other, help each other, and most importantly, cherish each other, every moment of every day. We must stop worrying about what comes after this life and focus on living each day as if it were our last, because, as we’ve been seeing far to often lately, life can be taken from us in the blink of an eye.
The Tea Party – American Taliban
The Tea Party is the most dangerous threat to the American way of life and to American liberty its self than anything we’ve seen since the era of McCarthyism over 50 years ago. I’d say that they are an even greater threat. At least during McCarthyism we still held education, science, and technology in high esteem. In fact, it was science and technology that was going to save us from the communist threat. McCarthyism was a political motivated by a real fear of communist expansion (but that still didn’t justify the restriction of rights that occurred).
Fortunately, the majority of Americans do seem to believe in working together for a common goal and the common good. Unfortunately, most of them believe that we can accommodate the Tea Party and their ilk. The reason for this, I believe, is that most of these “other” American are Christian and this makes them reluctant to criticize other Christians. They buy into the anti-islamic, anti-atheist, anti-secular rhetoric of the Tea Party because they either don’t see the real threat or they are afraid to speak out. This is the same thing we saw in the Islamic world after the 9/11 attacks: the vast majority of Muslims abhorred there radicals who perpetrate acts to terror in the name of Islam, but they were afraid to speak out for fear of being branded an infidel or of breaking islamic unity.
The majority of Christian in this country are accomidationis. They believe that radical Christians can be reasoned with; can be accommodated; that compromises can be reached. Nothing can be further from the truth. Radical Christians, along with all religious radicals, can not be reasoned with or accommodated because for them this is a holy war, a fight against good and evil. As long as they believe that they are doing God’s work, nothing can make them compromise in the slightest thing.
Today, however, science and technology are viewed with great suspicion, even outright hostility by the religious right. This time, in contract to McCarthyism, the perceived enemy of the Tea Party crowd isn’t a foreign threat, it is other Americans. And unlike most of those within the secular movements, they have no room for compromise. You are either with them or against them. You can’t debate or argue them into changing their positions. Like most everyone who’s world view relies on blind faith and religious righteousness, they will never yield and never give up.
This is why I constantly speak out against religion being forced on us. This is why I continue to highlight the dangers and evils of religious thought and religious dogma that are passed off as patriotism. This is why I always try to highlight the delusion that is theism and supernaturalism, or magical thinking.
People use religion to foster hate and division. Those who are ardent believers can rationalize away any evil up to and including murder. If they are allowed to have their way, which they are getting more and more often, they would have this country become a Christian theocracy. Anything that goes against their religious laws will be punished, those of other religions will be discriminated against. Don’t believe it? Just google “christian theocracy in america”.
It is sad that the Tea Partiers had to take the Tea Party as their name. It is an insult to all those who took part in the actual, historical tea party. Those patriots fought for freedom from tyranny, not for the tyranny of a theocracy. They should have rightly called themselves the American Taliban, because they are no different in their aims of creating a Christian nation than the Taliban in Afghanistan are in creating an Islamic nation there.
The Horrors Of Salvation – Part 2
Yesterday I talked about the horror behind the story of Noah. I had considered expanding on the concept horror embodied in the idea of sacrifice found in the Bible by also talking about the who Jesus story, but decided to just keep it simple and stick to Noah. I saw a comment on the Noah post that made me wish I had talked about Jesus.
It’s sad to hear that this is what the message of Christianity is becoming about. Dead religion will tell you one of two things about God…(1) He’s schizophrenic (He loves you but He hates you) or (2) He’s mysterious (nobody can figure Him out). But here is Jesus, who arrives later on as the Messiah. It is in Christ where God’s nature is revealed, and He is a God of Love.
Things may still be unclear about the Bible and there seems to be a lot of contradictions on God’s nature. But, the Cross made a significance, a proof, to how much God loves us (John 3:16). Hope that helps!
Comment by tacticianjenro | September 2, 2012 | Reply
His argument is one made by many Christians to negate the nastiness of the Old Testament: that God suddenly became a merciful and loving god once he sent Jesus (or became Jesus, the Bible is a bit confusing on that point) to save us all.
Even if you grant that this argument is valid, the whole idea of sacrificing someone, someone who is supposedly innocent, is just as horrible and depraved as anything in the Old Testament. Sure, it’s just one guy, not every person on earth, but the number of those sacrificed isn’t the issue. The issue is the need for a blood sacrifice at all.
I was raised Catholic. I could never understand why God required a sacrifice to free us from sin. If he is all powerful, why not just forgive our sins and be done with it? The priests explained to me about Original Sin. That didn’t make any sense to me either. Why would God punish every human who ever lived just because the first two people sinned? Why not just forgive Adam and Eve their sins? Or if He couldn’t find it in his all loving heart to do that, why not just strike them both dead and be done with it? He’s God. He could just make more.
The idea that Jesus, the only son of God, the innocent lamb, had to die just because the rest of us were sinning bastards is insane. That isn’t love, it is sadistic and cruel. Worse, it is pointless. If God is all powerful, then either forgive each of us our sins or smote us, don’t go killing your only son, especially when he doesn’t deserve it.
The idea that the god of the New Testament is now a loving, merciful god as opposed to the angry, vengful god of the Old Testament; that he is somehow a new and improved god, is absurd. The sacrifice of Jesus is no different than asking Abraham to kill his son, or the killing of all the first born of Egypt. It is just as cruel, just as horrible and depraved.
The fact is, God, both the old and new versions, is a dick, pure and simple.
The Horror Of Salvation
I saw this drawing on DeviantArt today.
While it is outwardly whimsical, at second glance it is full of horror.
The Story of Noah’s ark is often told as a story of salvation. God has saved Noah, his family, and two of every creature from a world wide flood. He sets them down in a new world with the sun shining and a rainbow in the sky. It is given to us as a story hope and a lesson in God’s unending love for us.
In this story, God decided to destroy his creation. It is claimed that he did the because humans had almost all become sinners, loving nothing but sin and debauchery. So he decided to destroy them all, all except Noah and his family, who loved him and we good and decent people.
What is overlooked in this story is the complete horror and incomprehensible death and destruction that was perpetrated by a vengeful, capricious god who thought nothing about wiping out almost every living thing on earth. Even if you accept that everyone but Noah and his family were sinners, were they all so completely evil that they all deserved death? Even if you accept this, what about the animals? Were they all sinners as well?
What this artwork shows is a glimpse of the horror of the wonton death and destruction that this “loving” God visited upon his creatures. What about all of the people? Can you imagine seeing millions of bodies floating in the ocean, stretching from horizon to horizon? What this reveals is utter destruction and death on a scale unimaginable perpetrated by a vengful and evil god, one who’s anger is far greater than his love, and who requires destruction and death in return for salvation.
This is the unacknowledged and overlooked horror of religion. That message is that God will save us. What is unspoken is that he is saving us from himself.
Dehumanizing Atheists
This vile piece of hate came to my attention the other day:
Atheists are not technically human beings (they have no soul) therefore they are not protected by our nations laws and bill of rights.
Now, based on his other tweets, TeaPartyTony is nothing but a hate spewing, racist, misogynistic jerk. I try to avoid these types, but what made this stand out for me was the part about Atheists having no souls.
Given some of Tony’s other tweets, he expects to see atheists burn in hell, but here he says we have no souls, so I guess we can’t go to hell. I doubt Tony sees the conflict between his two statements, but then again, I’m guessing that he probably doesn’t care. In either case, he is putting atheists in a class of people who he considers to be subhuman.
This tactic of declaring those who you dislike as less than human goes back into antiquity. We like to think of ourselves as good people, or at least as adhering to some kind of moral code. To hurt or kill another human goes against most peoples’ moral code, so when they find themselves in conflict with others outside their group they have to find a way to rationalize the hate they feel. They need to make their opponents less than human, less like them. This allows them to resolve the cognitive dissidence that they have to grapple with by treating another person badly.
Religion has a very effective way to dehumanize people. It can claim that the hated group either have no souls, or more commonly, have souls that will be tormented in hell forever. In this way, they become not so much less human, but less worthy of being treated like humans. Using religion to dehumanize someone is even more effective than the usual method of just calling someone inhuman. By claiming that their god has decreed that the hated person(s) are damned, all responsibility for hating, persecuting, hurting, and killing another human begin falls on the god, not his/her/its followers.
It is a very insidious, and very effective, way to justify treating others as less that deserving of the same rights that you have.
Atheists are not technically human beings (they have no soul) therefore they are not protected by our nations laws and bill of rights.
What I Learned In Church Today
I went to church today because my son was in the choir. I haven’t been to church for a long time, and not a Catholic one for even longer.
Having been raised Catholic, the service itself was familiar enough, even after all these years, that I could ignore it. The sermon, on the other hand, I listened to intently. When I used to go to church, even as a kid, I remember always listening to the sermon. I listened and I thought about what the priest had to say. Today was no different.
He talked about desire. There was some very well thought out and interesting points that he made. He explained how desire run amok can lead to greed and he used the international banking crisis as an example. I couldn’t agree more. Here was a perfect example of greed and how it can affect millions. Here was a very humanistic call for equality and a curb on selfishness and the policies that promote it. He contrasted that to a desire to do what is right for everyone.
This would have been a perfect sermon, but then, of course, he pushed that aside and said that the real positive role of desire is to know and see God. Damn!
This is where myself, and humanists like me, see the great difference between our goals of those of religions. We seek to promote the positive aspects of humanity, like channeling our desires to do good for, not just ourselves, but others as well. While most religions do see this as an important task, it is secondary to a desire to please God. As far as I can see, this is just as selfish as the desire for personal gain. It is replacing the desire for money and possessions with the desire to gain wealth in an afterlife that may not exist, and which certainly does no one here on earth any good
Now, if desiring to gain points in a possible afterlife leads you to do good here on earth, great, but there is still a selfishness to this that I thin can, and does, lead easily to arrogance. Many believers use this thought of reward in heaven to make themselves, in their eyes, better than those who either don’t believe as they do or don’t believe at all. This can easily lead to the extreme of believing, and worse, telling those people that they will burn for eternity in hell. This dehumanizes those who disagree and breeds hate.
Most humanists, on the other hand, believe in doing good for others simply because it is the right thing to do. They expect no reward, no glory, just the satisfaction of doing what’s right and helping others. All without judgment, arrogance, or hate.
Chick-Fil-A, Last Call
The Chick-Fil-A brouhaha had highlighted a real inequality in our society. That inequality is that religious institutions in general, and Christians in particular, feel that they have some special rights that imbue their beliefs with some kind of untouchability. There is an arrogant sense of entitlement that permeates their thinking and ideology which is inherently unjustified and invidious.
For those of you living in a hole for the past few weeks, gay rights groups called for a boycott of Chick-Fil-A because it’s owner said that his company operates by Christian values and one of those values tradition marriage. While he said that Chick-Fil-A does not discriminate against homosexuals in hiring or service to their customers, it believes that homosexuality is wrong and a sin. He was well within his rights to express this view. What he does not have a right to is to expect that others wouldn’t be outraged by his expression of his beliefs.
Unfortunately, other Christians didn’t see it this way. They were outraged that gay rights supporters called for a boycott of Chick-Fil-A. They claimed that it’s freedom of speech was being infringed upon and they called for those who supported Chick-Fil-A, and “traditional marriage” to go eat at Chick-Fil-A.
They seemed to feel that they were entitled to have their beliefs respected, but ignored or disrespected the beliefs of others.
Of course, they did not mention their calls for boycotts of businesses that support gay rights.
One Million Moms organized a Facebook campaign protest this week in response to JC Penney’s decision to hire DeGeneres, who is openly gay.
One Million Moms’ expressed their wrath agaist DC Comics because of their story line for their character, The Green Lantern, who was revealed to be gay. It wasn’t just One Million Moms, Alan Caruba, of Canada Free Press, called for a boycott as well. The same with Marvel Comics for showing a gay wedding. They also called for a boycott of Toys R Us for carrying the comic book.
Christians also called for a boycott of video game maker Electronic Arts, for adding characters in same-sex relationships to its games.
And how can we forget the rainbow Oreo?
Where was the outrage that these businesses were being targeted for boycotts for their stance on gay rights? Where were the supporters of gay rights claiming that these business’ right to freedom of speech was being threatened by the boycotts? Where was the call for those who support gay rights to line up at Toy’s R Us, or JC Penny to show their support for these businesses?
They were nowhere because these business and their supporters know that anyone has a right to call for a boycott of their products if they don’t agree with their stance on gay rights or any other issue. They where nowhere because there isn’t the sense of entitlement that exists within the Christian community that their beliefs should somehow be above reproach and ridicule.
Christians like to claim that there is a war on religion, that their beliefs are being infringed upon by actions like the call for a boycott of Chick-Fil-A. They have the arrogance to believes that they are somehow a persecuted minority.
The fact is that Christians make up something like 70% of the population of the U.S., hardly a minority. Theiy have their prayers recited at public ceremonies across the country, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution; they have their beliefs ingrained in our culture.
Religious establishments have a sense of entitlement in our society that is unwarranted and they get outraged when others insist that they be treated just like anyone else.
As John Stewart said:
“You have confused a war on religion with not always getting everything you want. It’s called being part of a society – not everything goes your way,”
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