messiestobjects

In Another Universe, This Post Is About This Universe. (Where This Post Is About Another Universe, Where This Post Is About This Universe...∞

I want to do a book report on Brian Greene's new publication in the worst way, but I'm not sure that I am capable of it. I used to read popular science books quite regularly, and I'd realized that it's been years since those days at about the same time that 'The Hidden Reality' caught my eye. As I was going through it I realized that reading, and keeping pace with, popular science texts is a skill which must be practiced, especially if one is not particularly well trained in physics.

That's not to say that he doesn't do a great job of explaining the concept behind 9 different types of multiple/parallel Universes quite engagingly; he does. It's more that, once I put the book down for a few minutes after every couple of pages to think about the implications of whatever mind-blowing concept he's introduced, the particulars begin to drain away because my poor little head is not lately used to holding on to the strange and complicated concepts behind Infinity, Relativity, Quantum physics, and String Theory.

However I'm going to try because I feel that my motive in writing about this book is more an effort to hang on as best as I am able to the understanding of a beautiful dream that fades quickly after waking than an attempt to convince anyone else to read it. Of course after completing that last sentence, I've sat and stared at the book cover for about ten minutes trying to figure out how to start. Sigh.

So here then; let's begin with the apology. Mr. Greene himself goes to great lengths in the book to make the reader understand that, at the moment, no versions of the multiverse which he posits are actually provable with hard data, and therefore may fall slightly outside the boundary of science. I say slightly, because though their detection may currently lie beyond our best detectors, they are in fact unavoidable outcomes of certain aspects of science which ARE scientifically sound, mathematically speaking.

As a comparison, when Einstein published his theory of General Relativity the technology available at the time was not capable of disproving his math. He came up with that theory using creative visualization, math and perspiration. And whatever other tools of genius he had at his disposal. But he himself did not go out and measure the Cosmic Background Radiation which ultimately helped to prove his theory correct. Now I'm not comparing Brian Greene or any other String Theorist to Einstein, (and neither was Greene in his book) merely the scientific process itself which is at work here. If you follow the math it leads to amazing places which, more often than you might think, describes the cosmos as it is in reality, even though it may also lead beyond all common sense. So this exploration of the side effects and the possibilities of infinity, string theory and math is extremely valid science, even if in the end it turns out that they've missed something and there are other things at work. You have to explore every avenue if you want to find out what's actually out there.

So why bother getting all excited over Parallel Universes if there's a chance it's inaccurate? Because it's exciting. And because, all things being equal, it's probably not inaccurate. It is currently science's best guess, much as Relativity and Evolution once were, and therefore worth a lengthy consideration.

So I'll start with the multiverse which I understand the most clearly, naturally. He calls it the Quilted Multiverse and here is how it works: There is some question in the cosmologist community whether the space that we inhabit is either very, very, very freaking large but ultimately finite, or whether it is in fact infinite. It all depends on the overall shape of the universe, which we don't yet know. (It's important to have a good grasp of the concept of infinity for this one, which I am lucky to have in some finite degree thanks to Rudy Rucker. His book 'White Light' is a rollicking exploration of infinity, and with extremely visual storytelling really helped me to glimpse what mathematicians actually mean when they use the term infinity. I highly recommend it.)

At any rate, If our Universe in fact turns out to be infinite (as the current trend of thought among cosmologists apparently believe is the likeliest scenario) then there is almost certainly another messiestobjects out there, writing up a book report about a publication by Brian Browne, (the last name of the author perhaps being the only difference between that Earth and this one) and positing some strange world where a version of himself is typing up a book report on a publication by a Brian Greene. In fact, there would be an infinite amount of Earths out there, that look just like ours. And there would be an infinite amount of other possible Earths as well. One, perhaps, that was solely inhabited by shrimp. Or one with no shrimp. Let your imagination go wild, like mine!

The reason why this would be so is simply statistical. Matter is evenly distributed throughout the visible Universe on very large scales. What that means is, you can take a really big box, say about 100 million light years cubed and chunk it down here, then weigh all of the matter in it. Then pick it up and chunk it down over there, again weighing all of the matter. Do this in several locations throughout the Universe and you will find that each box-full of matter will weigh in at about equal amounts, and it will be so all throughout the Universe. The idea here is that while matter may be evenly spread throughout an infinite Universe, there is a finite amount of forms that matter can take.

So the implication of this is that matter, as much of it as there is, can only arrange itself in so many ways. It's like a deck of cards; there are 52 cards in a deck, and 52 cards can be arranged in 10⁶⁷ unique ways. That number fully written out is 80,658,175,170,943, 878,571,660,636,856,403,766,975,289,505,440,883,277,824,000  which is obviously a really huge number. However, once you have arranged those 52 cards in that many unique ways, the cycle will repeat and you will start to get duplicate arrangements. Of course, some arrangements are more likely than others, so you will have odd random assortments of cards duplicate more often than you will see the deck fall out completely arranged from aces to Kings in all four suits, but as unlikely as that is, it will happen eventually.

The same is true for the arrangement of matter. In the entirety of our visible Universe, there are about 10¹⁰¹²² possible particle configurations. Which again, is a totally inconceivable number yet is definitely a finite number. Once you've reached every possible unique combination, the patterns will begin to repeat, and repeat infinitely. Thus, messyobjects is out there, messierobjects, and even an evenmoremessiestobjects, all trying to say hi to me right now. Since our brains and life experiences are nearly completely identical and in some cases absolutely identical, I can say hi to them and they've received the message! I know this because I've received their message, having sent one myself. We're totally braintext messaging across the infinite light years right now. They say hi back, and ask how's the wife and pets and I say oh, the same as yours, pretty much. ad infinitum. (Of course it's not a very interesting conversation, having identical thoughts and all, but there's always a downside.)

Whew. That was the first and easiest version of a multiverse in this book, and believe me they get far more difficult to grasp. The existence of the Quilted Multiverse depends only on discovering the shape of the Universe we currently reside in without calling any of the more unproven forms of science into the matter, but it is important here to note that Brian Greene and other String Theorists did not go out looking for multiverses. They did not read some ridiculous New Age drama and say "Oy, how can we finagle the math to come up with parallel dimensional portal-thingies in order to dazzle the public?" No, the attempt to understand actual observed phenomena through the framework of String Theory led them mathematically all on its own to many other different types of possible multiverses.

The Inflationary Multiverse, which better fits the definition of a multiverse in my extremely humble opinion, is one in which bits of our universe break off and inflate into bubble universes of their own, our Universe having broken off from another "larger" one at its own birth. There are also the Brane, Cyclic, Landscape, and Quantum types of multiverses. I like the Quantum Multiverse; it basically goes back to the Schrödinger's Cat thing, and Quantum uncertainty.

(jpeg of a print by Jie Qi) In case you are not familiar with Schrödinger's Cat, it is a Thought Experiment designed to help one visualize how Quantum Particles behave. The way it goes is, you put a cat in a box, close the lid, and have a radioactive atom timed to decay and open a flask of poison. In the quantum world, there is an equal possibility of the decay happening and causing the cat to be dead or alive when you open the lid. Until you open the lid, the cat is actually in an uncertain state, being both alive and dead at the same time which would be an unsettling thing to witness, I'm sure. The traditional outcome of this little game is that when you open the box, the probability wave collapses and the cat becomes one or the other. Thus the very act of observation determines the ultimate quantum state. (For a more accurate and less confused rundown of the thought experiment in mid-twentieth century science nerd jargon, visit the wikipedia page on the subject)

This is weird. But this type of behavior has been observed in quantum particle physics, hence the Quantum Uncertainty Principle and it does not apply to the world of things of our size, only to the realm of the very, very small. There is a gap between the quantum scale and ours where Quantum Theory breaks down and reality then becomes guided by Newtonian physics and Relativity. If you add String Theory math to this experiment, you can bridge the gap and in fact the cat is actually both alive and dead for realsies, in two different universes! Long, complex, nearly-incomprehensible-to-a-non-String-Theorist story short, the reason that Quantum particles behave so oddly is that we are seeing them play out every possible state of existence across a multiverse.

As an interesting aside, that particular multiverse explanation is where the idea comes from that every time one makes a choice, universes diverge and a separate reality for each choice carries on it's course. It may sound a bit hippie or New Age-ish, but if String Theory turns out to be correct, this in fact may actually be happening, right now, right next to you.

Another multiverse is the Holographic Multiverse, which is conceptually easy, but also very hard to explain the whys and wherefores of. This one is due to the nature of information and how it is stored in the universe, and when looked at closely begins to look a bit as though all matter as we see it is actually a projection of another type of matter on a distant quantum dimensional surface. In this multiverse all of our actions, in fact all interaction between all forms of matter everywhere is a shadow play. We're hand puppets. Don't ask me to explain the science though. It has something to do with Black Holes, very tall drinking straws, and math. Beyond that, I haven't retained a thing. Damn it.

The final multiverse of the book is the so-called Ultimate Multiverse, a distinction earned due to a new twist on the Anthropic Principle, which is the idea that asking the question "How is it possible that our planet, our very universe have the conditions necessary to bring forth life?" is meaningless because life evolves in the place to which it is suited. In other words, we are here both to ask the question and be the answer. I like this one for purely philosophical reasons, as it's an (yet another) answer of sorts in the debate between religion and science, at least for a certain set of debate points. The religious often like to point out that the Universe, Life, and Everything are far too complex to have "just happened" which is about as far as their understanding of the sciences of Cosmology and Evolution usually go. A very sad, limited viewpoint indeed.

At any rate, the Ultimate Multiverse answers the question of why the Physical Laws of our particular Universe are just right in order for galaxy, star, planet, and life formation to "just happen". Because in an infinite multiverse, where every possible Universe that can exist does exist, one with our physical laws and conditions for life merely becomes an inevitability, not a miracle. Therefore there is no "why" of existence, merely the statistical likelihood of it. You'll note that the Ultimate Multiverse differs from the Quilted Multiverse in the sense that, with the latter, there may be an infinite set of volumes with repeating particle configurations, allowing for infinite versions of themselves, however they are all still set in the same Universe as we are and subject to the same physical laws, merely separated by distances too large for any technology to ever cross. The Quilted version answers the question of why there is life on Earth, but does not answer the why of the overall conditions in our Goldilocks Universe and its particular laws of physics being just right in order to allow life to come about in the first place. The Ultimate Multiverse does, however. It states that while there are Universes like ours with just the right amount of density for galaxies, stars, and planets to form, there are also an infinite amount of stillborn ones. Our Universe is the Royal Flush that comes along once in a blue moon... or rather once in a Blue Iteration.

There are solid mathematical underpinnings to the Ultimate Multiverse, as well as for all of the others, but I'm not going there. If you want to try to understand them, or any of the other concepts, I suggest that you pick up a few popular science books and get cracking. 'The Hidden Reality' is wonderful, but unless you've already attempted to come to grips with the ideas behind Relativity, Infinity, or Quantum Physics, you might want to get a more basic picture of the Universe first. 'Cosmos' by Carl Sagan is an excellent place to start for basic Cosmology, that Rucker book I already pimped for Infinity, and Brian Greene's earlier work 'The Elegant Universe' is a great introduction to String Theory. So get busy with the head scratching, braniac!

Another great way to contemplate infinity, by the way, is to obsessively-compulsively watch fractal zoom videos. I've posted about fractals before, here and here. I don't know how, but I'm sure that fractal math figures in to multiverses somehow. This one magnifies the Mandelbrot set 10²⁷⁵ times, and ends up at a copy of itself. Apropos.

 

An Atheist Rant Which Those Whose Hands Are Over Their Ears May Wish To Avoid.

"Rational arguments don't usually work on religious people. Otherwise, there wouldn't be religious people."

-Doris Egan, House M.D., The Right Stuff, 2007

I haven't done a nice long insane rambly sea ranty in a while, and tonight I inexplicably find myself in the mood. Perhaps being stuck in Fort Bragg for three weeks in a row where there is nothing much to photograph has something to do with it, but perhaps also I can lay the cause on the doorstep of religion, my favorite whipping post.

For those of you who are facebook friends of mine, this is no surprise; other than my photo of the day, about all I've been doing over there is posting links to anti-religious videos, blogs, and news items. I've been feeling up for a fight lately. The problem is that my adversaries, those who put authoritarian belief in front of rational discourse ain't got much fight in 'em. You can't have a dialogue with those people because they haven't got a brain to stand on. Perhaps that is not fair; they do actually have brains but they've been quite thoroughly trained not to use them. I should know, I used to be a member.

In order to believe in the existence of God, any God, one must have faith. Faith is the belief in something for which there is no evidence. Fine. When I wipe my bottom after disposing of bodily waste, I use the first knuckle method. Since you will never witness this yourself, you'll have to trust me that it's true. You might not even know what the first knuckle method is, but what's important here is that it exists. I know, because I made it up. BELIEVE me when I tell you, I've felt it's presence. So you see, I have belief in certain things which can only be witnessed by an individual on a personal basis. However, if you choose to ignore my account of my VERY personal ass-cleaning method, I'll completely understand. In fact, if you want to pretend I never said it, so much the better. That's exactly how I feel about your god damned religion.

So, by expressing a belief in God, for whom there is no evidence, you've put yourself in an awkward position. More awkward than the first knuckle method in fact, difficult as that may be to imagine (don't imagine it!). You've aligned yourself with those who wish not to believe in reason. Reason, of course, is the primary tool of the mind. But this is the nature of faith, the very definition of it. "Set aside your reason, saith the lord, and believeth in this shit in this book right here. And do this not by your own impulse, but because these dudes who got that book from some other dudes, who are now dead, tell you it's the truth." Can you feel the presence of the lord in that logic? Amen!

I must say that my own progress towards rationality has been long and hard. I believed, and the illogic of the Lord did not sustain me. I searched for the Lord, and did not find him. Instead I found some used book store philosophy which slaked my thirst better than vitamin water for a time, until that too became as coca cola. Then, after discovering Carl Sagan and Joseph Campbell, I settled into a comfortable agnosticism where science was the only possible language of God, if he existed. I spent a while there, but all it took was a logical argument by a friend I've never met to convince me of the liberating joys of atheism.

If there is one thing I've learned from all of this, it's that one side will almost never convince the other. An atheist speaks the language of reasonable discourse and the religious speak the language of authoritarian "knowledge". An atheist can be convinced to change his mind on a subject through strongly reasoned logic and hard evidence, and a theist can be convinced by an impassioned emotional plea and hypnotic crowd techniques. Never the twain shall meet, as reason and faith go 'round and around and around.

One of the most overused and incorrect arguments against atheism is that one is simply switching a belief in God to a belief in no God. This is a false understanding of the situation. Atheism, in it's strongest sense, is a lack of belief. Were actual, hard evidence to come to light that God truly existed, atheists would still not become believers-in-God, they'd become knowers-of-God. In other words, we don't believe in an all-knowing deity for the same reasons we don't believe that thunder is really Thor going bowling. Because it's nonsense and there is far more evidence against religious dogma and a creator than there is evidence for it. In fact, there is NO evidence for it.

When I was a member of the Christian cult, there was a lot of talk about "knowing God" and "feeling his presence" and "answered prayers". I always wondered why, as fervently as I prayed to Jesus and as badly as I wanted to be on the side of Heaven, why did I never feel or sense those things? Why did Jesus talk to the crazy old cat lady, or the Pastor who had an affair with his daughter's best friend's Mom, or the self important and exceedingly boring old usher guy, but never to me? I was earnest, I was in need, ready to be called to battle in the old "Onward Christian Soldiers" sense.

Finally I figured it out, when I reached a certain age and began to fumblingly learn how to utilize the logical part of my brain. None of those people feel or sense those things. They want to, they try to, they convince themselves with certain self-hymnotic techniques that they do feel them, and then they go to church and Praise Jesus or Allah or David Koresh or Fred Phelps loudly in order to continue to convince themselves and those around them that they are one of God's chosen. It was the biggest scam in history, perpetuated mostly in ignorance by it's own victims; the true meaning behind my favorite fable, The Emperor's New Clothes.

"Officer! That Man Stole My Wallet!" "Don't Like It? Go Live In Cuba, Socialist!"

"The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments."
-William H. Borah

It's a lie, you know. Airport security. A shameless, bald-faced ridiculous lie. (What does it mean to say someone is a bald-faced liar? Does that phrase express a distrust of the beardless?) I travel a lot for work, as you may have noticed, and I've actually gotten to the point where I often momentarily forget what city I just arrived from when checking the baggage claim board. "Did I just come from Cleveland, or Los Angeles? Oh yeah, no, San Francisco, it was a direct flight this time."

My point only being that I'm pretty slow in the head when traveling, and it's taken me this long to catch on to the scam; I woke up thinking about it this morning. Part of my travel preparation ritual includes a few things, including wearing slip-on shoes, a plastic belt buckle, and bringing four packed bags; unfortunately I travel heavy due to all of the work items I have to bring, as well as a backpack for my camera and lenses... and my big tripod. I check two bags (don't worry, I'm a Silver Elite flier, no charge for check-ins) and carry on my camera bag and a small book bag with books to read, my mp3 player, my netbook, and sundry other items to keep myself occupied during the endless travel time. SO, my point being, I carry my camera bag on the plane with me, which has a large metal tri-pointy-ended-pod strapped to it, and the TSA security agents DON'T BAT AN EYE.

I've often wondered why that is, exactly. Especially considering that items you are not allowed to bring include, well, water. And you can bring liquids, but they have to be in 3oz bottles AND sealed up in a ziplock baggie. Why? What the hell difference does it make to ziplock them? If you are sneaking acid on a plane to dash in the face of an airline attendant, what the hell difference, security-wise, does it make to have to zip your liquids up in a baggie? A terrorist can train to hijack a plane and fly it into a building, but somehow a ziplocked baggie that he packed himself is going to give him trouble?

And then I realized; it's a smokescreen, a ziplockscreen. (I've often thought about how 90% of all security is mostly for appearance, especially after living in the IZ in Baghdad, to make you scared first and then to feel like you're being kept safe, not to actually make you safer) Anyway, in the aftermath of new and ridiculous airport "security" rules, they banned water. Water. To include all liquids, to make it look good. Then, when they realized that travelers were getting pissed because this meant they could no longer bring their toilet kits on board, especially now that they're charging all you non-elite fliers for baggage check in, they had to backtrack a little and allow toiletries with a few completely nonsensical security precautions, designed solely to save a little face and perpetuate the no water policy; I mean, you can bring 3oz of water on board, but that's not enough for a thirsty traveler. It's all about the water.

Because once I clear security, the first thing I do is head to a kiosk and buy a large bottle of water for my flight. For like $3.00 to $5.00. Because arriving for flights two hours early, layovers, and flight times can take all day, and you've got to have water. AND, airport water fountains are few and far between, and anyway the water always tastes rather rancid. And once you're on the plane, the flight attendants come by once, maybe twice if you're lucky or on a longer flight, with tiny little cups of water. Not enough. I wonder how much the rise in bottled water sales in airports has been since the implementation of, um, dangerous water rules at TSA checkpoints. I also wonder who is the biggest supplier of bottled water to airports across the country. I suspect Halliburton. But then, I suspect them for a lot of things, so take it with a grain of salt. Also, have you noticed lately how much tiny little travel bottles of liquid products cost lately? Sometimes, almost as much as the regular sized ones.

It seems unlikely, I know, to the untrained eye that TSA security is designed mostly to pick your pocket at the airport, especially when they're nominally there to protect you from terrorists. But little things like heavy pointed metal tripods Vs. bottles of water, the nectar of life, something everybody now has to BUY, make me suspicious. That, and everything in the news now is about the fight against greed in the health care industry. The more I read, the more obvious it is that corporate America is out there finding new and improved ways to pay off the US Government to legalize creative pickpocketing by targeting products which a human body can not live without. The fact that water and health care are now considered products is a God Damned tragedy, and disgusting. I honestly don't know which side Obama is really on, but in reality, it doesn't matter. Whether or not he wants to help, the cards are stacked against him, and he seems unable to break down the drug company lobbyists. Especially since, you know, he's dealing with them as though they were a legitimate part of the Government, and not tossing them out like the shills they are.

The Fact Of These People's Existence Makes Me Want To Be A Cutter

So okay, GoDrex posted this YouTube, and then Julie did, and I commented on it, and now I have to post the video, because I can't stop thinking about it and it inspires a constant state of weird otherworldly incredulity in me, because I think it accurately represents the thought processes of most people who actually think another Republican administration is a good idea, and because this was a convention in Bethlehem, PA, near where we live, and it's embarrassing and I can't wrap my head around the fact of these people's existence.

I'm re-posting my commentary from Julie's page on it here and expanding on it, because I need to get it off my brain before it freezes in this expression forever.

Does that first guy know that 25 out of the 43 American Presidents were lawyers? And that it's actually sort of an advantage to understand law if you're going to be in a political field? Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer. John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe and John Quincy Adams. Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, James Polk and Millard Fillmore. Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Chester Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley. William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and William Clinton. (I know that's only 23, I can't find the other 2.)

European socialist is a buzzword with these people. (Instead of buzzwords, I’m going to start calling them FOXwords) Like Terrorist. Why is European Socialism bad, exactly? Because of all the free health care? I particularly find the “I think you’re stupid” guy quite illuminating.

Why am I stupid?
“… uh… because… that guy gets elected, he hangs around with terrorists.”

Who’re the terrorists?
“Obama”

So… Obama hangs out with himself?
No just kidding, I get it. I know what he means, it’s just that he doesn’t know how to speak properly, or form a logical or coherent thought. What he means is, Obama is a terrorist because some guy he sort of knows did some crazy shit when Obama was 8. And that's a more accurate understanding of the situation than even FOX news was able to tell him to think.

As cogent and insightful a point as this guy makes, I have to wonder, with all of the black men in prison, and all of the “suspected terrorists” at Guantanamo Bay, is it very likely that had any politician or policeman or spook at any time throughout Obama’s life even had the tiniest shred of real proof that Obama might have actual terror affiliations, isn’t it likely that he would never ever ever ever nerver never nev been allowed anywhere near any sort of elected office in the USA ever?

Or maybe FOX news and every dumb piece of crap that believes this Rhepublican Rhetoric has proof in a shoebox under their beds that Obama really is a terrorist that the guys over at the CIA doing his background check somehow missed.

“Get a Job!”

What does that even mean?! How do you know they don’t have jobs? Because they’re exercising their political right to protest? If you’re basing the fact that someone is at a political rally because they don’t have a job, then what are you doing there? Maybe you should get a job yourself? But oh wait, you can’t because Bush screwed up the economy so badly that the jobless rate is skyrocketing and competition for work is heavier, and you’re about to attend a rally for the guy who wants to continue the same policies.

“Go to Russia!”

Go to Russia? Because… people aren’t allowed to politically dissent in Russia (which isn’t exactly true anymore, but we’ll let that one slide because you obviously haven’t thought out your statement anyway) and you think that people who dare to dissent with your Republican knee-jerk non-views deserve to get shipped off to Siberia… which would kind of make you more like a Communist than an Obama supporter/McCain protester could ever dream to be? And as far as the whole "Commie/Faggott!" slur goes, I think we all know which political party has had more of those types outed from it. Plus, Joe McCarthy was a Republican Commie hunter, and I think it's probably widely agreed now that he was the biggest Commie of them all. I mean sure, not technically, but his tactics certainly were not American nor were they Democratic.

I think that by telling someone who disagrees with you at an American political rally to go to Russia, you’ve officially chased your own tail and deserve to be impounded for being dumb as a dog and not on a leash.

And ACORN? How the FRICK is ACORN, a community-based organization that advocates for low- and moderate-income families by working on neighborhood safety, health care and other social issues, responsible for our current economic crisis? Hey check out this picture and story of McCain with... that's right. ACORN.

And for God's sake people! Obama is NOT a Muslim, (not that being a Muslim is automatically terror-worthy) nor is he a terrorist, or affiliated with terrorists! Again, CIA background checks! They're pretty thorough. They'd have caught it by now, and Obama would be in Guantanamo. Palin, on the other hand, had the hands of a Witch hunter laid on her. Now, Olbermann is a tad histrionic, but if you're not one of those finger-in-your-ears Republicans, singing "God Bless America" to block out opposing viewpoints and spouting party FOXwords as substitutes for logical argument using fact and proof, this is something you need to watch. I mean, those types need to watch and understand it more than anybody, but they've got their fingers in their ears, you see.

 And I could go on and on, but the fact of the matter is, people like those in the YouTube video believe what they believe because they want FOX news to tell them what to think and say so that they don't have to hurt their little brains trying too hard to think about it themselves. No amount of logical argument or fact checking or proof is going to sway them. God, I hope America is smarter than I give it credit for this election day.

And Along Came A Transrealist

I picked up this book relatively randomly a few weeks ago. Stuff of this nature always piques my curiosity because I like both science fiction and popular science. (Also, I saw it sitting next to a new book of transcripts from some lectures that Carl Sagan gave in Scotland in 1985 which has recently been published by his wife, which is what originally caught my eye.) It's a book of essays by various pundits about what humanity could possibly look like if we were still around in, well, Year Million.

It's not overall a great book; I mean, I thoroughly enjoyed it but it's a bit stale in many ways. Naturally, it's difficult for anyone to guess what even the very near future is going to look like. For instance, go into a Starbucks on lunch hour in any major city, listen to a conversation that the nerdy computer types are having about the drudgery of their IT jobs, and try to imagine what that conversation would have sounded like to you back in say, 1985. I'm sure even Carl Sagan would have been like, "What the crap are you maniacs talking about?" Words that mean one thing back then have taken on whole new meanings in light of technological advances, so to a 1985er, the words might even sound familiar, but the ways in which they were being put together might remind him of a conversation in a particularly dire lunatic asylum. For instance: "I was trying to download some music files onto my cellphone, but Apple's damn proprietary iTunes system keeps messing me up. I've got to figure out a way to hack that shit." Think about what that sentence could possibly mean in a pre-home computing world. It's English, but it's nonsense.

Stanislaw Lem actually wrote a really excellent book on that subject called "Return From The Stars", which in a nutshell is about a Spaceman who returns to Earth after a 100 year mission only to find that he doesn't understand anything that is going on. Looking at the problem in reverse, I just re-watched that fabulous David Mamet movie, Glengarry Glen Ross, which is about the cutthroat business of real estate sales in, I assume, the late 80's early 90's. These salesmen kept having to make telephone calls to potential sales leads via pay phone, and in one Scene Jack Lemmon is calling his family and telling them he won't be able to be reached later and I kept thinking, what? Why are they bothering with pay phones? Can't he be reached by his cell? Major plot hole. It's amazing to me how anachronistic those pay phones seemed, and that it took me a beat or two to catch on to the time frame. I think it was the combination of familiarity and a decade of perspective... I've seen that movie before and all the actors in it are pertinent to my adolescent movie experience, yet give it ten years and whammo, weirdness.

So you can see, the idea of trying to look a million years into the future seems at first glance a bit useless. One major technological advance and wham, everything changes. But in a weird sort of way, looking a million years into the future might actually be easier than looking a decade into the future. You have to ask larger, less precise questions such as, Will we have colonized other planets, or entire galaxies by then? Will our energy source be entire suns, entire star clusters, or dark energy itself? Will we be human, something more evolved, or will our personalities be downloaded into huge programs in which our thought processes will be in effect immortal, and capable of computations greater than our current meat-brains can presently conceive? Well, all of these possibilities are addressed, of course. Some of the essays are more successful at getting the points across than others. But here's the reason I really loved this book:

There are about 14 essays in this book, and the first 10 are all asking questions along these lines. Futures are spun out for us that to a Borg seem like heaven. We have deconstructed entire planetary systems and turned them into so-called Dyson Spheres: technological monstrosities made of "computronium" which would make the Death Star run away with its tiny little tail between its legs. We turn ourselves into gigantic computer minds, more capable of exploring the infinite Universe than in our present, limited meat bodies of mortality. All of which are not necessarily impossible ideas, they just seem to us now as that airplane seemed to those people from the last of the uncontacted tribes in South America. Or perhaps they are impossible; it's a book of speculation, after all. But then, along comes chapter 11. And who is it written by? Why, none other than the greatest speculative mind of our time, Rudy Rucker. I haven't said it enough lately; I love that guy. He is the great-great-great-grandson of the philosopher G.W.F. Hegel. Not that that matters; his own body of work is genius. He's a well respected mathematician and philosopher in his own right. But I've written enough about him in the past, so I'll spare you.

Except that, his essay in this book is why I love the book and why I think he's the greatest, in a nutshell. All these impressive, impossible to fully comprehend, yet fundamentally bleak views of the future of humanity, and along comes a transrealist. His essay is about how all of that mechanical technology is a real downer and totally beak. It's a great book because it shows the real value of genius, standing him up next to the more mainstream and dull views of the status quo. I'm going to quote him now:

 "Ultrageek advocates of the computronium Dyson-shell scenario like to claim that nothing need be lost when Earth [or any other structure] is pulped into computer chips. Supposedly the resulting computronium can run a VR (virtual reality) simulation that's a perfect match for the old Earth. Call the new one Vearth. It's worth taking a moment to explain the problems with trying to replace real reality with virtual reality. We know that our present-day videogames and digital movies don't fully match the richness of the real world. What's not so well known is that no feasible VR can ever match nature, because there are no shortcuts for nature's computations. Due to a property of the natural world that I call the "principle of natural unpredictability," fully simulating a bunch of particles for a certain period of time requires using a system using about the same number of particles for about the same length of time. Naturally occurring systems don't allow for drastic shortcuts."
Natural unpredictability means that if you build a computer-simulated world that's smaller than the physical world, the simulation cuts corners and makes compromises, such as using bitmapped wood-grain, linearized fluid dynamics, or cartoon-style repeating backgrounds. Smallish simulated worlds are doomed to be dippy Las Vegas/ Disneyland environments populated by simulated people as dull and predictable as characters in bad novels."

So basically what he's saying is, the physical matter of the Universe is already the most complicated calculation there is, and that any desire on our part to harness it for our own small needs is rather ugly and in the long run diminishing. Not that he doesn't predict amazing possibilities for our future. Due to the high calculation potential of every bit of matter, he predicts something he calls Hylozoism, from the Greek, hyle, matter, and zoe, life. He believes that, given a million years, we'll find a way to wake matter up. As in, making it conscious. So that we can communicate with it. You'll actually be able to talk to walls, and it will be more productive than talking to politicians. He even has a plan for it, involving bending certain spatial topologies utilizing the extra dimensions of space. The benefits of waking matter up are enormous, and too much to go into, but they involve the possibility of teleportation, matter duplication, etc. This is a book report, not the Cliff's Notes. Suffice it to say, Rudy paints a much more incredible, surreal, no, transreal, view of the future, and on top of it, shows how it's just as conceivably possible as the deader versions of the typical futurist. If I could buy stock in Rudy Rucker, I'd grab every share I could, because I have a feeling that his ideas are going to be around for a long long time.

"Lately I've been working to convince myself that everything is a computation."

"It's tedious to watch something very obvious being worked out, like a movie that's not particularly good and after about half an hour you know how it's going to end."

"It's soothing to realize that my mind's processes are inherently uncontrollable."

"If you think of your life as a kind of computation, it's quite abundantly clear that there's not going to be a final answer and there won't be anything particularly wonderful about having the computation halt!"

"Computations are everywhere, once you begin to look at things in a certain way."

"Unfortunately our nation, nay, our world, is run by evil morons."

  -Rudy Rucker

Addendum: He Who Has Ears, Let Him Hear

"The United States is a Christian nation founded upon Christian principles and beliefs."
-pres George W. Bush

"The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian Religion."
-PRESIDENT George Washington

"I do not find in Christianity one redeeming feature."
-PRESIDENT Thomas Jefferson

"The Bible is not my book, nor Christianity my religion."
-PRESIDENT Abraham Lincoln

"A just government has no need for the clergy or the church."
-PRESIDENT James Madison

"I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end... where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice."
-PRESIDENT John F. Kennedy

"I don’t know that atheists should be considered patriots, nor should they be considered citizens".
-pres George "Daddy" Bush

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand they do less easily move against him believing that he has the gods on his side."
-Aristotle

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."
-Seneca

"We admit of no government by divine right....The only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed"

-William Henry Harrison

"The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum"
-Havelock Ellis

"Civilization will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest"
-Emile Zola

"Nature and nature’s laws lay hid by night

God said "let there be Newton and all was light"

-Alexander Pope

"Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?
Then he is not Omnipotent.
Is he able but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is God both able and willing?
Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing?
Then why call him God?"

AND
"Why should I fear death?
If I am, then death is not.
If Death is, then I am not.
Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do?
Long time men lay oppressed with slavish fear.

Religious tyranny did domineer.
At length the mighty one of Greece
Began to assent the liberty of man."

-Epicurus

"There is in every village a torch and an extinguisher: the schoolteacher and the priest."
-Victor Hugo

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the reasoning of a single individual"
AND
"To command their professors of astronomy [or even, gasp, evolution] to refute their own observations is to command them not to see what they do see and not to understand what they do understand."
-Galileo Galilei

"All the religions are based on the concept of God as a senile delinquent."
-Tennessee Williams

"The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not."
-Eric Hoffer

"Those who seek consolation in existing churches often pay for their peace of mind with a tacit agreement to ignore a great deal of what is known about the way the world works."
-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshiped anything but himself."
AND
"Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but self expect applause; He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and keeps his self-made laws."
-Sir Richard Francis Burton

"To believe in God or in a guiding force because someone tells you to is the height of stupidity. We are given senses to receive our information within. With our own eyes we see, and with our own skin we feel. With our intelligence, it is intended that we understand. But each person must puzzle it out for himself or herself."
-Sophy Burnham

"What about the statue in California currently said to be crying bloody tears? Why worry about the alleged weeping of a plaster effigy when so many actual human beings have reason to cry?"
-Anna Quindlen

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
-Steven Weinberg

"A cult is a religion with no political power."
-Tom Wolfe

"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring."
-Chuck Palahniuk

I Bring You The TEN [CRASH!] Um, FIFTEEN Commandments!

"There is in every village a torch and an extinguisher: the schoolteacher and the priest."
-Victor Hugo

The Athiest’s Commandments from ‘The God Delusion’ by Richard Dawkins. The first ten are from a website he found while researching his book, then XI through XIV are his own additions, and XV is mine, as well as the comments in brackets.

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

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

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

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

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

 VI. Always seek to be learning something new.

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

 VIII. Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you. [But don’t let them get away with faulty reasoning without a fight. Besides, maybe they’ll prove you wrong and that’s good too.]

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

 X. Question everything.

 XI. Enjoy your own sex life (so long as it damages nobody else) and leave others to enjoy theirs in private whatever their inclinations, which are none of your business.

 XII. Do not discriminate or oppress on the on the basis of sex, race or (as far as possible) species.

 XIII. Do not indoctrinate your children. Teach them how to think for themselves, how to evaluate evidence, and how to disagree with you.

 XIV. Value the future on a timescale longer than your own.

 XV.  Patriotism is a lie. Religion is a lie. God is an unknown. [Patriotism and Religion are not even compatible, and yet most Patriotic Americans are Religious too. Here, I’ll prove it:

 a) Patriotism = My country is #1, above and beyond all others, right or wrong.

  b) My Country is run by old rich cowards who want our young idealistic men to kill for their comforts

c) Religion says thou shall not kill. [even if that commandment is the only part of the Old Testament which actually says that, because otherwise God sanctioned quite a lot of killin’ and rapin’ in those days.]

  d) Therefore, Patriotism & Religion can not go hand in hand. Yet somehow, when combined in the mind of deeply uncritical people, they do.

I’m not saying I'm an atheist. But I am saying that I share a lot more in common with an atheist than with religious thinkers these days. And here's the reason. One time in Church, I remember my pastor doing that whole thing where he says that a lot of people out there in the world will try to tell good Christians that the Bible is full of lies and contradictions. His response to the congregation? "Well I'm here to tell you that the Bible is NOT full of lies!" Brilliant, carry on, Pastor. What? That's all you got? Huh. Anyway I think I related this story in somewhat more detail once before, here.

But the realization that I eventually came to is that belief in God is fundamentally, in the mind of religion at any rate, an insidious and lazy way of avoiding the issue of Life, The Universe, and Everything. What I mean is, one thing that many religious types use to try to convince people that evolution is bunk is the idea that the world is too complicated, too amazing, too wonderful to have all just happened by random chance, it must have been created. (Here's a YouTube I will NEVER get tired of, which is a prime example of that sort of reasoning. If, of all horrors, you find the banana argument compelling, please watch this one also. Thanks again, GoDrex! )

First off, anyone who has taken the time to attempt to understand evolution would never say that. Evolution is anything but random, which is part of its beauty and power. Secondly, all they've done by this argument is show a lack of logical thought. SO, you're saying that the Universe is too complicated and "well designed" to have just happened? So, there must be a Creator. Well then, logically, any possible Creator has to be larger and more well designed than the object of his creation. A hammer and anvil do not forge a blacksmith, for instance. Therefore essentially all that this argument has done is to push the question back a step and in reality, magnify it. Rather than believe in the apparent existence of a complicated and evolved Universe (based on verifiable fact), you'd rather believe in the apparent existence of an even larger and more complicated, magical Creator.

I'm not saying that definitively there's no God, which is why I'm not an atheist. (Although according to Dawkins' scale of atheism, I am a 5th or 6th degree atheist, with a 7th degree atheist believing absolutely %100 in the non-existence of God. I will always leave room for the possibility, if not the probability.) I'm just pointing out the weakness of logic in the Religious mind. And I AM saying that IF there's a God, he's not the God of that great work of fiction, the Bible. I think that IF there is a Creator, the only thing that he really gave us are our hearts and our minds, which are very effective tools when reason and logic are applied, and I think he'd be very disappointed in Religion.

For anybody who has read 'The God Delusion', it's apparent that I've used much of Dawkins' material here. In my own idiosyncratic way, of course. But I feel that it's a book which has provided me with a clear way of thinking about ideas which I've held for a while.

Basically what it all boils down to for me is this: Religious apologists have NEVER been able to prove the existence of God or the veracity of the Bible through either Science, logic, or reason. Which makes sense according to the Fundamental Religious version of "logic" anyway; it's all about faith, regardless of the facts. (Dinosaur bones were purposefully planted there to test our faith.) So why do they keep trying? Why do they want Creationism, sorry, Intelligent Design, taught in science classes? Science is about verifiable fact, religion is about faith. You don't see scientists banging on the doors of churches, trying to force Sunday school teachers to teach evolution. Although, the inevitable backlash has already begun with the likes of Dawkins. He's tired of Religion's interference in the world of reality, hence the book. It's time for the Religious to accept that faith is based on nothing verifiable, and that they are welcome to it. 

And his main points are good ones; You don't need Religion to be moral, brainwashing children with religion is immoral (Christians don't call it brainwashing when they do it, but what else would you call it when, in a different religion such as Islam for example, brainwashed children grow up to steer planes into buildings in the name of their faith?), and he (and I) would be the first one to believe in the existence of God should there ever be proof of his existence. In the meantime, people should stop fighting, brainwashing, and killing each other over minor differences in opinion as to his nature. Something tells me that should your particular version of God turn out to be the real one, he'd still be very pissed at you for adhering to such nonsense and calamity. Unless of course you're Jewish. The Old Testament God was an asshole.

On a final note, I want to reiterate what I believe to be Dawkins' most imperative point in his book: There is no such thing as a Christian child, a Muslim child, an atheist child, or a Buddhist child etc. There are only Children of Christian parents, Children of Muslim parents, Children of atheist parents, and Children of Buddhist parents etc. Until children are mature enough to have weighed all the facts and decide for themselves, they are only children. After all, no one says that their child is a Marxist, or a Democrat, or a Communist. It's ok to wait until the child is of age to decide for itself what its political leanings are, and the same needs to be true of religion.

The Attack Of The [inso]Maniac Brain

I have this problem with not being able to fall asleep the night before I travel. It never fails. It's actually extremely inconvenient. I think it's somewhat related to being excited about going somewhere, however it doesn't really even matter where I'm traveling to, or what for. For instance, I wound up getting about three, maybe four hours of sleep last night even though technically I went to bed at a somewhat reasonable hour.

I've been in Virginia for the last week for work, in a town right outside of Washington D.C., and today I'm driving home. That's right, I couldn't sleep because I was too excited about getting in my car and making the five hour drive back home. Granted, Virginia has been rather dull; no cool pictures or stories at all, and most of my free time this turn around has been spent playing Dragon Warrior IV on a Nintendo emulator on my work laptop, and also I really like my apartment. It has my coffee maker and my nice big TV. But still.

The worst part is that I'm not even hitting the road until later this afternoon... I have about 6 hours of work to do first. That's right, I couldn't sleep because I was very excited about waking up at 6:30 am, packing up and checking out of my hotel room, then coming to work for 6 hours before sitting behind the wheel of my boaty car for 5 hours, all to get to a place I've been to many times.

The night before I went to Thailand last year, I had trouble sleeping. That I understand. Thailand is exciting. The night before I flew to Iraq for the first time in '03... well, I arrived in that country pretty damn exhausted from severe lack of sleep. Understandable for many reasons. But every work trip I've gone on or come back from... seriously. It's twisted, because I think it's important to be well rested before traveling, especially if I'm going to be driving, but for some reason my body insists on having this inappropriate reaction to impending activity.

I think that part of the answer lies in the fact that I'm, not worried exactly, but perhaps you can call it being in "Mental Planning Overdrive" mode. I'm mapping out the next day's schedule over and over so that I don't forget anything or do anything wrong, and it's not like it's even on purpose, my brain just does it automatically, and seems to care little if the process exhausts me, leaving my body in less than prime condition to carry out it's Machiavellian little travel schemes.

I think that one conclusion that can be drawn from this is that our brains do not solely act under our control, even during the waking hours; they can and do act as computers which carry out previously input programs. For instance, I almost never need an alarm. If I want to get up at a specific time the next day, I just think about it before retiring, and I'll generally wake up on or up to an hour before that time, depending. I think that comes from a fear of being late for things, ingrained into me through many embarrassing experiences. On travel days, I set an alarm anyway, because my brain is notoriously treacherous when it's tired.

I can hear you asking by now, "So what? This is a stupid post." All I have to say to that is, Yes, yes it is. But I'm rather tired, I've got a long day ahead of me, and I found myself with a small window of time this morning and nothing to fill it with until I noticed that it's been like 2 weeks since I last posted. So this is yet another result of feeling obligated to post when you've got nothing much to say.

I Was Fated To Choose To Write This Post In An Idiosyncratic Manner

There's an old conundrum bandied about in philosophical and spiritual circles about whether or not our lives, the universe, and everything are driven by free will or are pre-destined. I believe the Catholics like to call it pre-determination, which is the specific opinion that God has chosen all of our destinies, made all of our choices for us.

Leaving out the existence of God or lack thereof argument for the moment, this has always struck me as an idiotic and short-sighted position on the matter for religious types. The whole point behind the oldest Christian moral, that of Adam and Eve, is about giving man a choice between happy-go-lucky gardening in Eden or the loss of their innocence in exchange for cold hard knowledge. In other words, the very first choice in the Bible that was given to man by God was to do as he will; ignore the fruit tree as commanded, or eat some and suffer. That's what I believe what the kids are calling free will these days is. God wanted to see what Adam was made of, so he gave him a choice. So I really don't understand where all this religious pre-determination nonsense comes from. Probably some crusty old robed dude with a superiority complex sitting in the Vatican thinking up ways to justify his job.

Leaving pre-determination behind as anachronistic and moving on to the more philosophical aspect of the question, known as pre-destination, we begin to tread more logical ground. Pre-destination makes more sense to me as an idea because of some of the revelations of modern science, actually. Namely, the fact that Einstein discovered that Time is in reality not something that hasn't happened yet, but merely a 4th dimension. In other words, Time is quite possibly all of a piece; what we consider the past, present, and future are extremely subjective and actually may conceivably exist in the Universe all at once, and we are like mites on a round table or cavemen on a globe, too small to see the shape of it, but destined to travel in circles while believing we walk in a straight line. In other words, everything that ever was, is, or will be, exists right here and now, but our little minds are not large enough to perceive more than a tiny bit of it at any particular instant, which we call the present. By this logic, our futures have already happened and there is no changing them, and this is where the more philosophical side of the pre-destiny of our lives argument comes from. And you can still blame God if you want, or shake your hand futilely at the sky and rail against unpersonified fate. Whichever tickles your angry fancy.

Of course, logically, this breaks down for me also. The fact that our futures have already happened, are happening, or will happen, doesn't really mean anything. In other words, even if the future is all laid out, so are the choices we made at those points in our destiny. If the future is as set in stone as our past, well, you made your choices then, you're choosing to read this now, (sorry about that), and you will choose in a moment to get up and get more coffee. I've never understood why pre-destination has to cancel out free will. Just because the future exists doesn't mean your mind isn't there also to perceive it and make those choices.

I think it's just an outdated religious question that got out of hand, and a good example of people who think that they are logical not being logical. There's no reason to think that just because the future exists means that we didn't get to choose how it unfolded, barring any more data on the matter.

If you're wondering why I seem to be using the word logic a lot (See? I can get it right from time to time!) lately, it's because I'm apparently an INTJ and that's allegedly just how we operate, according to Personality Theory. So, now that I know that, I've spent a lot (See? I did it again!) of time thinking about logical conundrums. So, do I think logically because I choose to, or pecause Personality Theory (or God, or Fate) dictates that I should, hmm? Am I even thinking logically? I think that most people think that they think things through, so, it's entirely possible that I'm deluding myself.

One thing that I think that I am fated, predestined, or just simply chose to be is the kind of person that likes to play Devil's advocate. I often like to argue with people whether I agree with what I'm arguing for or not. Usually I do it just to irritate my friend Scott, but I enjoy the argument for argument's sake, also. I'll never forget the time when I turned my Mom's face pastier white than snow could dare to dream to be; I must have been like 1 or 2 years old, tops. I realize that that is an awfully young age to have such a vivid memory of, but if you'd seen the look on my Mom's face, you'd never have forgotten it either. I remember thinking, in a vague sort of way, that I wanted to get a reaction out of her just to see what would happen. We went to church every Sunday, where there was a lot of talk about God, and Jesus, and all that, and being so young I liked it all. Good vs. Evil was a concept I appreciated and I liked Jesus well enough. But again, I was looking for a reaction, and I remember walking into the kitchen and very innocently stating to my mother in a sweet little 2 year old boy voice, "Mom, I hate Jesus."

Well, I got a reaction all right. I hadn't realized it would be such a controversial statement. I remember being shocked by her anger and by what I didn't recognize at the time as her own shock and fear; I believe I actually thought she would think it was a funny joke. You know, two-year old humor. It took a long time to convince her that I didn't really mean it, which was really hard because I don't think I had the words at my disposal to explain myself at that age. It was a very strict lesson that arguments about ideas are not always well-handled by others, and also taught me that I sometimes enjoy getting a reaction out of them, regardless.

An Impassioned Argument Using Not Only Logic, But Mixed Metaphors And Guts, Too.

I think I've got it aalllll figgered out, man.  I know why stupid people always seem to win out in this world, why logic has left the building. It's really quite simple. Say two people are having an argument about something. Anything. For instance, who can run faster, Superman or the Flash? Or who would win in a fight, a Caveman or an Astronaut? Or whether Ann Coulter is a mutant or not. Anything. Say one of the people involved in the argument is an intelligent, logical being. A Rational, as a sop to Miss Luongo's personality theory obsession. Convinced that conclusions ought to be reached with actual facts taken into consideration, each step of the argument followed by the next logical step, based on actual evidence. Say the other debator is... well, less rational. A Guardian type. Convinced that little niceties such as good conclusions based on logical thought are less important than following what your gut says is right, because we all know that following your gut is always such a good idea. Passionate argument is proof enough for them.
In the immortal words of Howard W. Campbell Jr.:

"The truth of your leader August Craptower, and those like him, will be with mankind forever, as long as there are men and women who listen to their guts instead of their minds."
                    -From Mother Night

August Craptower was a leader in the neo-nazi community in Kurt Vonnegut's little morality play there. August Craptower, George Bush, same thing.

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that say these two are having an argument. The logical one states his case. He won't usually be all impassioned and heartfelt and all up in people's guts because he feels that the logic of his case, the obvious rightness of what he's saying based on rational thought, will shine through and people will get it, and as long as the people listening aren't totally evil they'll agree with him because he's right. I'm not saying that the logical person is infallible here, only that when he's thought things through clearly, he tends to firmly believe he's on the side of right, and based on fact and evidence, or lack of actual evidence of nuclear weapons in Iraq thereof, feels that any other course of action is insane. The Flash can run faster than Superman, because DC comics has made a point of that many times. The Flash can go so fast he vibrates through walls. Superman can fly faster than the Flash can run, but that wasn't the question. Ok maybe there is no logic there, really, but you get where I'm coming from.

So, the logical guy makes his case, and steps back, knowing that after the evidence he's presented, there can be no argument, unless new facts are brought to light which he then will have to deal with. Then the less logical, yet more impassioned Guardian type steps up. He is also convinced of his rightness, but not because of any facts or evidence, excepting perhaps the tidbit that of course God created the world because look at the banana! (It was made to fit a Man's hand (or a monkey's...) and has a natural pull-tab, like a soda can! You can't evolve something like that! (Except that actually, man has cultivated the banana for centuries, making it what it is today, somewhat showing how evolution can work at an accelerated pace, but never mind that bit of fact.))

No, he's convinced of his rightness because he feels it can't be any other way. Of course Saddam is evil and has Weapons of Mass Destruction. He's all dark skin toned and has an evil laugh, and besides, G.W.B. wouldn't lie to us, not the President! He's more than a man, he's God's chosen leader for the greatest nation on Earth! Of course God is on America's side, otherwise we wouldn't be so powerful! He's on our side, just like he was on the side of history's other greatest empires, like Rome, and Egypt... oh wait, they don't usually take the logic that far, you know, because then they'd have to change their opinion. No, the illogical side of this argument will do whatever it takes to win the argument, because he feels right. He'll use facts that are perceived, he'll even make shit up, take things out of context and use them to prove his view of things. And the other guy, the logical one, will tend to sit back and laugh at the other guy's antics, because obviously he's an idiot, and nobody's going to buy that junk... Except of course, that they do.

Why? Well, my rather simple theory is that, since the greater part of the human population are these so-called Guardian types, sheep in other words, they will believe whoever talks longer and louder. Look at that guy, they say, he is so heartfelt and he won't shut up. Obviously he believes what he's saying. That whistleblower over there, who used to be a weapons inspector in Iraq, only offered a cold assesment that he found no WMD. But this guy, he knows that there are weapons over there, if only we keep looking! And he's never even been over there, so that shows you the strength of his conviction!

Logical people don't seem to believe what they're saying, because they offer things as cold fact and then stop talking once they've reached their conclusion, because once an actual case has been reached based on facts, there's really not much left to say. Illogical people seem to believe what they're saying because they never shut up and get louder and louder and more O'Reilly about it, and because they never seem to reach an actual logical conclusion, feel the need to make up for it with volume and heart. And the sucker that is the human race eats it up.

It's all very sad, but based on this fact alone, I'd say that the human race doesn't have a whole lot of time left. As races go, that is. The inevitable conclusion to a race gone with the Pied Piper is extinction. Unless lemmings learn to actually use their minds and not only their guts.

Anecdotal Evidence To Support My Claim Of Superior Knowledge... You'd Eat It Up If I Performed It Live To A Catchy Gospel, Rock Or Rap Tune!

While I'm waiting for inspiration on the eternally boring question of what to do next with my life to strike, as it has been so kind to do in the past, I am always on the lookout for new things to blog about. It helps keep my sanity, you see. In that rather pitiable spirit, here is something I woke up thinking about this morning; the why and wherefore of religion. So yes, if you are not in the mood for another rant on messiestobjects' tired, banal views on religion and why it's bad for you, feel free to bail now.

I often worry about publicly talking about my views on religion, because I know that my family, who are devout Christians, care about me and therefore worry that my soul is condemned to a fiery eternity for saying such brash things as I tend to do. The problem is that I know that no amount of discourse will ever bridge the gap between what they believe and what I believe, and so I tend to keep my mouth shut and avoid the topic. The fact of the matter is that people, once they reach a certain stage in their lives, and have given the matter serious thought and/or credence in their lives, are almost never capable of changing their minds. There's actually scientific evidence somewhere out there about the hardening of our minds as we get older, although don't look to me for details as it's something I read a long time ago. Something about our neural pathways being wide open when we're babies, gradually becoming more solidified or defined as we apply words to objects, and later becoming downright jungle elephant paths in our brains as we ascribe our beliefs to ideas. In other words, the more times you tread a path, the easier it is to follow that same path the next time you go that way. It's very hard for even the most open minded person keeping pre-set personal beliefs or perceived truths out of our rational observations as we get older. But that's really not the point of this.

I thought that this time, rather than expounding on why I think religion (Not God! I think I've been rather clear on the difference in my mind in the past.) is not only false but unhealthy, I would rather explain how I came to these ideas in the first place. Not that I'm special in regards to my beliefs; lots of people share them. I just feel I have a unique perspective, being a reformed religious type rather than the offspring of godless academics.

I was born and raised a Christian, and generally speaking I think that in some ways it did me good. Or at least, I believe I have a highly sensitive view of Good Vs. Evil, and I think that's a good thing. I also don't believe it's unhealthy to walk around with the constant feeling that somebody is looking over my shoulder, whether it's true or not. It can be a valuable mental trick. The first time I started doubting was at a Christian rock concert I went to with a church youth group. The performer was a guy that went by the name of Carmen, whose stuff I actually liked. I had a tape of his; I was probably 13 or 14 years old at the time. Anyway, we were at this concert and he had been singing his tunes, with no band... lip synching. But whatever; at the time I didn't know that was cheesy and nobody seemed to care anyway. But he would stop every once in a while and preach a little bit, and there were two things in particular that he said at one point that just kind of made me go, "ummm, really?"

The first was minor, as indicators often are, but it made me think a little bit. Apparently The Grateful Dead were playing that same night at another venue up the street, and Carmen was all like "Let me tell you, The Grateful Dead may be sinners who think it's cool to be dead, but tonight we here are grateful to be alive in Jesus!!" Much cheering ensued. But I was kind of like, and I didn't even know all that much about them, but I knew enough to know that they didn't actually want to be dead, at least not in the sense that Carmen was saying. He was saying it like they were willful emissaries of Satan or something. In their Wikipedia entry, it says that they chose the name in this manner:

The name "Grateful Dead" was chosen from a dictionary. Some claim it was a Funk & Wagnalls, others, the Bardo Thodol (Tibetan Book Of the Dead), but according to Phil Lesh, in his biography (pp. 62), "...Jer (Garcia)  picked up an old Britannica World Language Dictionary...(and)...In that silvery elf-voice he said to me, 'Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?'" The definition there was "A song meant to show a lost soul to the other side."

So, it was really pure hippie bullshit, but hardly Satanic. This statement of Carmen's, when I thought about it later, made me begin paying attention to preachers and to begin the realization that most of what they say is off the cuff and full of assumptions. They often, especially at that time in the 80s, called things Satanic which they merely didn't understand or was associated with things which they found personally distasteful. It made me realize that they often didn't really know what they were talking about, which is a shattering blow to a religion that claims to have knowledge of the truth of the way of things. If you can't back up simple statements of fact, why should I take it on faith that you know what you're doing in other areas? Faith belongs to God anyway, supposedly, not preachers.

The second thing he said, later that night, was a larger issue for me. Towards the end of the show, when he'd just played his biggest hit to a crowd of young screaming christian rock idolators, (And I admit, I was one of them. I loved that song.) he bellowed out, "I can feel the spirit of Jesus here with us tonight! Can you feel the holy spirit in the room? He's speaking to all of us, can you feel his love, right here right now!!?" And, as my fist was in the air and everyone around me, tears of joy in their eyes and answering with a heartfelt "Yes! I feel him! I feel Jesus!", and I, about to join in and add my agreeing sentiment, had an odd sensation. I was still for a moment, and kind of quietly thought to myself, (and I'm paraphrasing, of course; it was a long time ago in a mindset far, far away. But I remember very well what was going through my head in spirit. Snicker.) "Jesus? Huh. Actually, what I'm feeling is awe for the rock star that just lip synched that awesome song and got my fist pumping and adrenaline rushing, and has even made me feel good about being a Christian since I'm in a large group of people that feels the same way and we're all cheering for Jesus, but one thing I don't feel, and have never felt, actually, is anything spiritual. It actually feels a lot like that time I got all excited and heart-full when Luke Skywalker blew up the Death Star. That made me SO happy, and that's the kind of elation I'm feeling right now, so, unless Jesus had something to do with the destruction of the Death Star, and said destruction was a spiritual event, I don't think that what I'm feeling right now is him in the room."

Now that I'm slightly wiser, I can add even more significance to that event. It was a rally, pure and simple. The theatrics and speeches that those guys use is no different than, say, Hitler's Nazi rallies. Or the Republican party rallies. It's a leader taking advantage of the psychology of mob mentality, and getting the crowd all worked up into a frenzy, and directing that energy in a desired direction. Jesus is not actually in the room, folks. The emperor is wearing no clothes. This doesn't in and of itself mean that what is being preached is bunk, (The Reverend Horton Heat, Martin Luther King Jr., John Lennon, The actual message of love preached by Jesus himself, (which you can hear if you you read closely between the lines) for some examples) but I think it's important to be aware when age-old crowd control techniques are being used on you. In other words, if the leader is being honest with his agenda in such a rally, he's trying to passionately convince you of the logic of his argument, not passionately trying to beat you over the head with a scary dogma.

Anyway, for some reason, that night my mind opened up a little bit to more rational thought and always afterwards I applied a much more critical eye to what was going on around me. It's not like all of a sudden I ceased being a Christian. In some ways I always will be; you can't really escape your roots, and anyway I have never confused the sins of men, even self-proclaimed spiritual men, with a failing on God's part. One of the facts of nature that I will always hold dear, in my slowly hardening neural pathways, is that men are quite capable of committing acts of good and decency without invoking God, and men are capable of choosing to commit the most heinous evils without needing Satan as a scapegoat. People make their own choices, plain and simple. Blaming Satan or thanking God, or vice versa, is a cheap and easy way of avoiding responsibility.

I remember, one time in church, I was listening to the pastor give his sunday sermon; He was addressing a germaine issue: "Some people say that the Bible contradicts itself. They say that the Bible was written by men, and is not the true word of God. Well folks, I'm here today to tell you that those people have been misled by Satan, and that they are liars! The Bible does not contradict itself! It is God's word, handed down to us by his prophets, and it is the truth!" I kept waiting for him to expand his argument, but that was all he had; a bald statement containing bold word stresses. I kept thinking to myself, That's it!? That's Christianity's argument for itself?! And for the record, there was no paraphrasing there. I remember very clearly that day, and what he said. It felt like an extremely disingenuous thing to say... basically he was saying, believe that the Bible is the literal truth and word of God, because I say so, AND so does the Bible itself. So there. Which struck me as rather circular and unproductive logic... That's pretty much what all the religious leaders are saying, all the time.

Another extremely revealing experience I had, I've already blogged about here.

Anyway, this is a conversation I've been having with myself for a very long time now, and I could go on and on, but those are a few of the more important moments which made me switch gears a little bit. Basically, I've come to the conclusion that in order to come to grips with God, the Universe, and Everything, one has to distance oneself from the religions of men, because they are a framework for misdirection, power, and corruption. If there is a God, then love and understanding come from him, not religion, and not men's inane preachings. If there is not a God, then love and understanding come from chemicals and neural pathways. If there is a God, then there is only one thing which he gave me in order to understand him. Not the Bible, not Pat Robertson, not even Jesus. Men took control of those things, and handed them down to me the way they wanted me to see them. No, what He gave me is my mind. We have this amazing tool which is capable of rational thought, and the application of that tool has yielded more knowledge about the nature of the Universe than any preacher or prophet ever has. If there is no God, well, thank evolution for my mind. If there is a God, He invented evolution. Either way, it's all good.

Now that I'm done preaching, for the moment, I'll leave you with a YouLube that I found of that Carmen song I used to love so much, as performed via Lipsynch by some church kids. I'm kind of cringing about the fact that I used to like this song... I remembered it as being much cooler. I can only offer extreme brainwashing as an excuse. Anyway, in this video, God is a bearded girl, so, enjoy! ... or not. I myself had to stop it just a few minutes in, or I was going to cringe myself into a fetal position.

No Humans Were Harmed During The Writing Of This Blog Entry.

My friend DK posted something on her blog recently about the absurdity, well, of alot of things, and seeing as how she's smart, and funny, and the filthiest potty mouth ever to grace the internet, we tend to agree on lots of stuff. She also makes it a habit to acutely deflate my supposed big head, which I know she does out of love and so I reciprocate by saying how great she is, which I suspect is also the basic cause and effect of her fan abuse popularity on MySpace, but I digress. She brought up one point in particular that I have actually been mulling over recently, and seeing as how I am back from D.C. and don't have much else going on at the moment, I figured I'd blather on about it myself for a bit.

Something I've always thought was funny is the progression of word sensitivity. (Keep in mind that the progression of word sensitivity is the subject here, not individual words.) For instance, and obviously I'm not condoning usage of the word here but it's a fine example, take the word Nigger. I believe when it was first used, it was nothing more than a descriptive term. The root of it comes from the latin word niger, which merely means black. Meaning initially it was not necessarily an offensive word. Of course that changed very quickly: It became an emblem for slavery, being used in an extremely ugly manner in most cases. When the world began to care about racial sensitivity, Nigger became less socially acceptable, and was replaced among the concerned with Coloured. Honestly, that was a more genteel way of describing black people for a time. Then it was Blacks, and currently it is African Americans. But think about it. Obviously if you call someone a Nigger, you're taking your life out of your own hands. If you say coloured, it's also really dangerous, having extreme Southern superiority overtones. Now, calling someone a Black isn't necessarily a beating offence, but if there wasn't some sort of discomfort with that term, they never would have invented the African American. Even now there are people who kind of intake their breath and go "ooohhh" if you say African American. It's just a matter of time before that one goes bad.

I think that what this trend is indicative of is that people don't realize that what they find offensive isn't so much the word itself as the arbitrary singling out of the subject material. Think about it. In what sane mind can calling someone a black be considered gauche? It's purely descriptive! Only if you're using the term in a singling out or hateful manner should it be frowned upon. So my point is, don't use it as a hateful word, and it won't become one.

Nigger has become a curse word, in much the same manner as the word shit, and so should be taboo. At one time, shit was merely a descriptive term. In many other places in the world, it still is. Germans do not consider sheisse to be an unusable word. They use it as an expletive, sure, but in polite society would be not much different than our "shoot", or "aw heck". But in America, with our mythological prim and proper past, somewhere along the line it became a censorable dirty word. That is how curse words are born. Words of descriptive use which describe something that someone finds too offensive for thought.

This makes me think that people who go {breath intake} "ooohhhh" at something as innocuous as black, or African American (which is a silly term anyway for lots of reasons), or Indians (as opposed to American Indians), or whatever, are really the ones who are singling those people out in their minds and are uncomfortable with the idea of black people or Indians or whatever as a whole anyway. These are the people that try too hard to be comfortable around black people, because they're not comfortable, because there is some inner, perhaps even unconscious, racial conflict going on there.

I know it's unfair of me to be so blasé about this, but you know, I don't care if someone uses a racial epithet against me... yes yes I'm white, and the only good ones against us are honkey and cracker, and those are kind of lame, but what I'm saying is that those words carry no weight because there is no offense against white people so bad that it makes people too uncomfortable to use the terms. Because our whiteness is not a taboo subject. So nobody cares about racist white terms. If there were no racist issues against blacks, nobody would care what descriptive terms were used for them, except perhaps the N word, because of the history.

Words are only painful because of the meaning behind them. When the meaning behind them becomes universally recognized as offensive, they become curse words. If such innocuous terms as 'black dude' must be whispered, it's because you are using it to say something derrogatory, not descriptive.

DK's point was about the use of PC terms, and how ridiculous PC terms are. PC terms hide the user's own un-PCness behind a facade of insincerity. Not always, of course. I understand the genuine desire not to offend people. But sometimes the genuine desire not to offend is only hiding the real problem, or lying to them. I just like to think about where PC terms come from, where they're going, and why they're being used. Ultimately, the distaste of curse words and taboo subjects is the fear of the object itself.

Anyway, here's a picture from my Washington D.C. trip. Click on it to go to the rest of my D.C. photos.

You're So Vain, I Bet You Think This Post Is About You. Well, It Probably Is.

Morality. It's a sticky question. Take a favorite party ethics question: If you could go back in time and kill Hitler before he got his hands on any sort of power, would you? Yes yes we've all heard this one but bear with me. So, before Hitler got power, let's translate that. Would you choose to make his mother have an abortion? Kill him when he was a baby? A young boy? A student? A depressed beret-wearing drop-out from art school? (Ok I'm not sure he ever wore a beret, but Hitler as disaffected art student cracks me up.) Or do you wait until he's actually done something evil, so he knows why he's being murdered by time-travelling history buffs? You don't want to be likened to George Bush's bumbling pre-emptive personality, after all.

I think that most people would answer that question more or less the same. Wait until the famous Munich beer hall putsch, follow him home that night, drag him into an alley and club him. My only point with all the baby Hitler stuff was that you need to carefully assess the question before making a statement on who, when, and with what you'd consider actually killing a person, whatever his crime. But, the thing is, there are very few people who consider themselves moral that would actually decide to let him live. Well, not the type of people who would hang out at the kind of horrid party where such hackneyed questions were being asked, anyway. But you know, killing someone is pretty heavy stuff, especially when the question is asked of an individual. State-sponsored killing is much tidier, because it's harder for any one person to accept the blame if things get fouled up with death-row victims post-execution such as, say, new evidence leading to innocence. For the record, I am most certainly not suggesting Hitler was innocent.

Now take it a step further. Say an interstellar time traveler (which is actually redundant because due to the vast expanse of space and the Universal speed limit of light, all interstellar travellers are also by definition time travellers. But we're talking about one of 'em coming back to our time from the future, and from far far away, a much trickier proposition than bland 'ol interstellar forward time travel. Have I lost anyone to sleep and drool yet? Or merely lost cool points? If I haven't yet, I'm certainly about to...) shows up at your doorstep and tells you that the human race itself is sort of the Hitler of the Universal community. One day, far in the future, our ancestors take power from the Galactic government and send all of the dirty credit-hogging three-nosed Heebajaxers to concentration death planets, and then move on to the rest of the dirty job-stealing immigrant aliens. According to this interstellar whistle blower, you will be in a position in 5 years to start the nuclear war which will end the human race, thereby saving the future of the universe. (I'm assuming they can't find anyone else to do the job but another human. I don't know why, so don't ask. It's a stupid blog-party question anyway.) Would you do it?

It's essentially the same question as the Hitler question, but, you know, on a bigger, geekier scale. Instead of being asked to kill another human being and saving millions of human lives, you're being asked to kill billions of humans and save gagagooglegazillions of extraterrestrial lives. And you're a human with a moral code, so, do you side with the human race out of loyalty and wish your great-great-great grandchildren well in their galactic killing spree, or make the same decision that your moral Hitler-killing code told you to make? Maybe it's not really such a hard question, because you know, it's kind of silly, but it's a thought experiment. And before anyone asks, no, I am not on any pretty-colour hallucinogens, although I think something I ate at the Macungie diner earlier today might not be agreeing with me. These are the things I think about when sitting on the can and questioning my own moral code and decisions, that's all.

POST SCRIPT PIX: Gary posted a link to the below photo in the comments, and I have no choice, due to cosmic moral obligation, but to add it here. Because it's awesome.

I Was All Like, Yeah, And He Was All Like, Nuh-uh, And I Was All Like, Dude, Yeah-huh

I was over at Cosmic Variance yesterday and got into a small discussion with the guy who wrote this post about Richard Dawkins, and after going back and forth a couple of times (comment #s 66-70 & 72-73), was rather solidly given the "talk to the hand, buddy". I'm not sure if it's because I was not being clear enough in my argument, or if it's just that I'm an embarassing moron to have show up on your science blog and blather on about a subject which I have no degree in...
The gist of it was that I initially posted a comment saying that I don't understand atheism any more than I understand religious certainty, and that I felt that the more reasonable philosophy for a rational person (which I assume scientists generally are) to assume is agnosticism. Atheism, to me, is every bit as much a belief based on no empirical evidence as [pick a religion] is. I've never understood how anyone, especially scientists who require proof of everything, can say that God does not exist, end of story. There is no proof that he does and there is no proof that he doesn't! How can you prove that God does not exist? You can't! And Mark (the writer over at CV) came back with a more delineated definition of what atheism meant to him: "Atheism means that you do not believe in god, not that you will say with absolute certainty that one does not exist."
I looked up atheism on wikipedia, and sure enough, most atheistic philosophers assume that definition. Which really kind of throws me for a loop... that statement makes no more scientific sense than the idea of religious faith, which atheists spend so much time bashing. What that's saying is that you believe that God does not exist, not that you know. So then atheists, by that statement, really are the exact opposite side of the coin from religious wack-os, with about the same amount of rationality! Both sides are stating a belief about God or the lack of one, with nothing empirical backing either up.
When I tried explaining that, and that agnosticism seemed a much more rational approach for a scientist, he didn't seem to get my point (which is likely my own fault; my reasoning seems clear to me but I'm sure it's muddier than I think it is, half the time) and didn't acknowledge that he, by using that definition of atheism, was stating a belief. Instead he said that he felt uncomfortable with "beliefs", and that on the subject of the currently unprovable, he'd rather state "I don't know" and then try to figure out the truth... Then I pointed out that that is exactly what agnosticism is! Agnosticism means simply, lack of knowledge. I said that we were actually in agreement, and that we were just approaching the same conclusion from different sides... then he never responded to me again. There are of course many possible reasons for this, the most likely that he was simply getting annoyed with me. I admit, were I in his shoes and some snot-nose was trying to out-comment me on my own blog, I'd snub him down right quick also.
But it's a discussion which has many facets and I'm really intrigued, which is why I'm having trouble shutting up about it.
The thing about agnosticism is, of course, that like atheism, it can also have a couple of different interpretations. I think that Mark and other sciencey smart-guy types tend to shy away from agnosticism because it does have certain religious overtones. Gnostics were an early sect of Christianity that purported to have an insider's spiritual knowledge; Agnostics chose the name for themselves precisely because they want to say that they do not have any such luck. However, some people that call themselves Agnostics believe very firmly in God, but that any knowledge of such a vastly superior being is currently unknowable to the likes of us hairless apes. That's probably why certain rationals prefer the moniker of atheism, because while they won't say with certainty that there is no God, they prefer to have the cloak of what seems more likely in this Universe to them as being the case, the disbelief in God, keeping all possible distance from any sort of religious flavoring whatsoever.
To me, Agnosticism means that maybe there is, maybe there ain't. If he wants me to know, he'll tell me. If I don't hear from him, well, we will just have to wait until all the facts are in. Meanwhile, I don't need religion to tell me to be nice to other people (well, at least not to kill or actively harm them... being nice is often a tall order in the face of the ignorant) regardless of what they choose to say they believe the truth to be, and Agnosticism won't stop me from knowing that evolution is a fact or from eagerly awaiting any news about more great scientific discoveries that open more doors to the Universe for our tiny, hungry little brains.
After reading about the many different types of agnostics on the wikipedia page, I'd have to say I'm a Weak Agnostic, but that I prefer the alt-term of Open Agnostic. As I said on CV, The Universe is God, science is his means of communication, and it is a scientist’s duty to follow wherever that may lead, whether it proves that God is intelligent or accidental. (Ok I just added a few bits there... I'm always editing myself. It's a problem.)
I am willing to be wrong about any of this... I don't in fact have a degree on this subject and it's not like I've read anybody's thesis on atheism vs. agnosticism... chances are, they're identical viewpoints with different tones. Atheism just sticks in my craw (what's a craw?) because it seems to me to be an irrational viewpoint shared by a large group of people who are in most other matters extremely rational.

The World Is Full Of Tools

So, what with the fact that I have uploaded all of my pictures from Istanbul, Cappadocia, and my tour of the South Aegean region, and typed in descriptions of each one, not to mention the other day's post and now this one, you might think I seem to have more time on my hands than a traveller should. Well, I'm back in Istanbul with a few days to kill, and while I'm still making it out there everyday, I have seen most of the city, and so I'm taking advantage of the good internet and downtime to catch up on a bunch of stuff.
One thing I've noticed online in the last few days is an upsurge in the scientific community against religion, starting with a really thoughtful post over at Cosmic Varience, and then today an article on NY Times which I just finished reading and is the cause of this out-of-travel rant.
Of course, we've been hearing alot of this noise from Richard Dawkins recently since the publiction of his book, but it seems to be stepping up a notch in the rest of science-land as well.
In the post on CV, Natalie Angier basically states her disatisfaction with scientists who wail about the whole Darwin/Creationism controversy, yet fail to step up to the plate against the scientifically ludricrous Virgin Birth. She feels that it's Science's duty to tackle all forms of such preposterous false beliefs. Have some balls, labcoats! Put Occam's Razor on Mary and see what theory you can dredge up there!
Then today, the NY Times article discussed a forum that occured earlier this month at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., where a bunch of scientists brought out the idea of spearheading a movement to Evangelize science against religion. There were differing views among the scientists attending, with Dawkins and like-minded god-haters basically wanting to have Christian Concentration Camps along with Bible, Koran, and Book of Mormon burnings laughing all the way, while other more even-keeled scientists wish to press forward with the age old technique of testing hypothesis, re-testing, then showing the world proof of the veracity of science with cool toys like paved roads, penicillin, rubber gloves, and home theatre systems, and eventually staging a remake of the 'ol Baal vs. God play, where Elijah (I think it's Elijah, someone else will have to fact check for me 'cause I'm on a roll!) mocks the Baal worshippers and says ok, if Baal is so great, tell him to make it rain! So they pray to Baal and weep and gnash and of course no rain comes. Then Elijah says, "Yo! Yahweh! Bring on the water!" And it dumps buckets of water and the Baal freaks freak out, only this time the scientists will be all like, okay God and Allah freaks, you guys pray to your grand high poo-bahs for a better video digital compression format than DVD, and we'll apply our science, and see who gets one first.
The reason behind all of this recent push for science to begin a more active fight against religion is, of course, due to the recent outbreak of the evils which religion has caused in the world, not to mention the very many evils caused by religion in the past. People like Dawkins think that if religion were done away with, the world would go all shiny and everybody would have spacecars and candy and live for a hundred years.
Here's my problem with all of that. Now, I am a great believer in science. I will agree with Dawkins insofar that if you're not, you're retarded because even the Amish need to churn butter, a very scientifically advanced dairy farm achievement. Well okay, it was advanced several hundred years ago or whatever, but it's still science. If you really believe that science is evil, go live in Cappadocia, but away from the main population of more advanced cave-dwellers, please.
The problem is, that in reality it is NOT religion which causes the larger of the world's evils. Oh sure, witch burnings, being afraid to sail off the edge of the flat Earth until thousands of years after the Greeks already knew the world was a ball, yeah. Totally religion. But the real problem isn't religion. Religions generally ask their followers to be nice to each other, it's just that their followers usually miss the point. "Each other" means, you know, everybody in the world, not this thing where it's taken as only your fellow Sunni muslims, and kill all the rest. The problem is people. People screw up religion, starting with people who only want to use religion as a means to power. The catholic church probably needs to be abolished. I despise the catholic church. Not because I hate god, but because the catholic church hates God; they've totally obliviated everything that Jesus had to say about real spirituality. They are the Pharisees reborn.
I'm afraid that getting rid of religion, much as Jesus abolished the old rules of Judaism, and Mohammed made a few addendums, and then so did Joseph Smith... well you see my point. There will rise up a science cult and people will still kill each other for scientific heresies. As long as there are people in the world who desire power over other people, there will be a way for them to get it, and if not religion, than something else. Religion is a tool, just like Science or Democracy or Communism. They all sound good at the beginning, but they can be used however the user wants. It's a baser human nature to be very very nasty to other humans in order to get to what they want.
I'm not saying that science shouldn't shed some light on some of mankind's fuzzier notions... Evolution is, I'm afraid, a fact, and I think it's important to teach it over Creationism... it's an old argument, but Evolution doesn't rule out God. I don't think that Science can or ever will. Science is the greatest, most effective tool we've ever come up with for understanding nature, but to a spiritual person, God is above and beyond the reach of nature. God's tool to make the universe could easily be Evolution.
But a war against religion is sort of self-defeating. What science really needs to concentrate on is George Bush's brain, and how it got that way. Also the Pope's. Rush Limbaugh's. Osama what's-his-face's. Michael Moore's. And Richard Dawkins'. And how to weed this us vs. them mentality out of the human race, you know? Make sure everybody gets up above that spinal cord thinking thing which Einstein pointed out as our main problem these days. Or at least make the Us, smart, creative, compassionate people, and the Them, power mad, intolerant, blind  freaks. Weed 'em out, yo.

A Treatise On The Origins Of Religion And Political Movements

About ten or fifteen years ago... I'm not sure exactly when, but my brother and sister were very young; maybe 8 and 6 respectively, or somewhere around there. Anyway, at the time I was sitting in our living room, probably reading, anti-social bookworm that I was in those days, and my sister Katie was sitting by the entryway playing with one of those mid-size inflatable beach balls. My brother Peter came around the corner through the entryway and inadvertently kicked the ball out of Katie's hands, sending it soaring down the hallway. They both went after it at the same time, and as they were running down the hallway it quite accidentally became a race and they began laughing hysterically because they both realized it had been an accident, and they'd reacted the same way to it... I don't remember who got to the ball first, or maybe I didn't see, but by the time they got there they were laughing so hard with the shared experience that it didn't seem to matter who "won". They had just invented the greatest game ever for the two of them to play together.
So the next step of course was to re-create it. Once they finished falling all over themselves laughing, they gleefully ran back to the main entryway where Katie sat down with the ball and Peter went back around the corner. He "stealthily" came back and "accidentally" kicked the ball down the hallway again, and they both ran after it laughing. By the third or fourth time they played this marvelous new game, they began taking more serious note of who got to the ball first, which of course led to rules about what position Katie would be in when the ball was kicked, so that they had an equal chance of reaching the ball on time. By the fifth time they were no longer laughing, but still having fun, and another rule was added about no pushing or tripping, and perhaps another stating that once the ball was kicked, they had to each count to 3 seconds before running, and then the ball had to be thrown rather than kicked to better control the distance and final destination of the ball as kicking it could unfairly send it closer to one participant's side than the other's, or worse yet, break a lamp and get Mom angry.
By the tenth time they did this, they were arguing about a questionable rule, and whether it had really even been broken, and it seemed that the fun had gone out of it, yet the competition to see who the ultimate beachball-chasing champion was drove them to keep playing. At some point around the fifteenth game, a real fight broke out as one participant had committed an illegal offsides and wouldn't admit it, at least according to one witness, but the ref had unfortunately had his head turned at that moment. When they realized they didn't actually have a referee, they asked me to settle their dispute, but I told them I was reading a very important treatise on 20th century literature and could not be bothered, although of course I was watching closely and was quite secretly amused.
By the twentieth game, it became not so much a game, or even competition, as a full-out ice hockey-style brawl in the middle of the living room floor, at which time Mom came out, did a little yelling of her own, and sent them to their respective rooms.
This is a true story, with little to no embellishment, and it is an event which has been stuck in my mind for most of my adult life. I don't mean to embarass my younger siblings, who were of course very young at the time and behaved in a manner identical to that of children all over the world... but it illustrates something about human nature which I've never forgotten.