Hypocrisy and Safety

So I'm getting ready to start my blog for the week, still in my comfey, sleeping clothes, when Steve calls and says, "Whatcha doin?" and says that he's gonna be there in 15 minutes to go to brunch with Sean and Jeanne.... crap. Sunday is for blogging, relaxing, and tweeting with anyone (bloggers, news people, scientists, porn stars, the whole lot) while trying to wrap my mind around ultimate answers to hard questions. Like "Why do people believe in such bull-shit as God created man" (and what about woman... that always bothered me even though I'm male so you'd likely think I was cool with that notion... nope). Any ways, I get my act together (barely) then it's off to Roseville.

Sean looks much better after the back surgery and Jeanne is such a trooper. After we're done, we walk out (a major accomplishment for Sean) and everyone's words seem to get lost in the rain.. the rain... it makes me contemplative. Then I realize after finishing my work at home how dark it gets so early in Winter. I come back to my sanctuary of a home and begin to realize that my friends have it better than I do in one large regard... they can profess who they are and their belief in NOT believing. I don't dare do that at my work or near my place of employment. If I did, I'd risk being terminated by a crazy, religiously fanatical parent. I use subterfuge and use my Zen Buddhist goings as my out. "Oh no, I'm not a non-believer; I'm a Zen Buddhist." The Buddhism statement is true, but the 'not a non-believer' is not.... I feel like such a hypocrite.

My friends regularly tell me that they understand my situation but it still gets to me. How can I be the co-founder of an Atheist and Non-Believer group but not come out to support it. I let certain friends know but sometimes I just want to shout to the world, "I don't believe in ANYTHING, especially your bullshit notion of God because there isn't any God!" But no, I stay in the 'closet' so-to-speak and let my friends take the brunt for being one of the last and most hated minority groups in America. Someday.... it just sticks in my throat. I hate it.

Then I come across a Science Blog which tries to say the things I want to express. Please read this Blog.

The Heretic and the Infidel

I have a couple of definitions I think we need to work with before I explain my position on naming myself. Let's begin:

[from the New American Dictionary On-Line, color emphasis totally my own]

her·e·tic

NOUN:
A person who holds controversial opinions, especially one who publicly dissents from the officially accepted dogma of the Roman Catholic Church.
ADJECTIVE:
Heretical.
ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English heretik, from Old French heretique, from Late Latin haereticus, from Greek hairetikos, able to choose, factious, from hairetos, chosen, from haireisthai, to choose ; see heresy

her·e·sy

NOUN:
pl. her·e·sies
1.
1. An opinion or a doctrine at variance with established religious beliefs, especially dissension from or denial of Roman Catholic dogma by a professed believer or baptized church member.
2. Adherence to such dissenting opinion or doctrine.
2.
1. A controversial or unorthodox opinion or doctrine, as in politics, philosophy, or science.
2. Adherence to such controversial or unorthodox opinion.
ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English heresie, from Old French, from Late Latin haeresis, from Late Greek hairesis, from Greek, a choosing, faction, from haireisthai, to choose, middle voice of hairein, to take

in·fi·del

NOUN:

1. An unbeliever with respect to a particular religion, especially Christianity or Islam.
2. One who has no religious beliefs.
3. One who doubts or rejects a particular doctrine, system, or principle.

ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English infidele, from Old French, from Latin infidlis, disloyal : in-, not ; see in- 1 + fidlis, faithful (from fids, faith; see bheidh- in Indo-European roots)

Now with these definitions firmly out of the way, I am please, nay, proud to say I am a Heretic and an Infidel (and they are capitalized because for the purposes of this essay I consider them proper nouns... more about this after a moment). I take my pride (if it can accurately be termed pride) in calling myself these things in the same way that the homosexual community has usurped the meaning of the word 'gay' for their own purposes. So too do I usurp the churches terms for my own purposes and take pride in being and Infidel and a Heretic. I reject all religious doctrine, dogma, systems, and principles... I have no use for them and I choose (see 'heresy' ) to find the truth for myself absent of any faith or orthodoxy. Now why do I reject orthodoxy? First define your term again:

[from 1. Wikitionary and 2. Ecce Romani latin course and dictionary]

1. Etymology

From Late Latin orthodoxus, from Ancient Greek ὀρθόδοξος (orthodoxos), from ὀρθός (orthos), “‘straight’”) + δόξα (doxa), “‘opinion’”).

2. From Latin "doxus" to opine, have opinion, or think.

It is one of the fallacies of religion and the nature of orthodoxy that it requires that you think in a particular way; that you have 'straight thinking.' In a word, bullshit. I have always thought that the one of the unstated reasons that people so fervently cling to their faith and religion other than the social aspects is that it tells them how to think about the world bu require that you stay within the rigid framework of the dogma of the faith. In short, your ability to reason outside of a certain 'box' is stunted and so is the growth of your mind. I reject this proposition completely, utterly, and emphatically.

I am forever grateful for the process of science that has freed my mind from the trap of dogma and orthodoxy. Despite all the effort he put into it, my Methodist pastor grandfather was never able to convince me that his church (or any other church) with any type of orthodoxy was a living, growing entity concerned with anything except the perpetuation of its own existence... It reminds me of the functioning of a virus.

I state again proudly and for the record: I am a Heretic and and Infidel.

Oklahoma is DOOMED....

While going through my usual morning reads of the Tweets, Blogs, and messages from my Facebook buds, I went to the Richard Dawkins Foundation website and came across this. It has to be one of the most asinine political moves that anyone has done in that state since.... oops, my bad. I forgot... I'm writing about a midwest state like Kansas. Remember the book titled "What's the Matter with Kansas?" Read the whole article on this idiotic resolution against Dawkins speaking on evolution at U of Ok. and maybe that will jog your memory. 

Then I get a different article after reading the above one on the legislative resolution. The thought that some dim-witted politician from Oklahoma of all fucking places would decide that free speech needs to be "investigated" just about pushed me over the edge to wanting to do violence! (No, no... don't worry. I won't go there). But finally Dawkins had his say:

The Devil's Handiwork

Well, it's a vacation time for me and it's nice because I have time to think for myself and enjoy the erudite pursuits... like YouTube. I came across an outstanding comic: Lewis Black. His best rif is on what is titled on YouTube as "The Devil's Handiwork." Now I am a scientist and am constantly having to define and defend it's findings from crackpots I come across (some of whose children I have to teach and what they are doing to their kids is just plain abusive to their mental faculties). Now Lewis Black does a fantastic job of putting forth what it is that makes me just nucking futs about these people... enjoy:

Sam Harris at the AAI '07 Conference

Sam Harris has been one of the most articulate speakers on the case for atheism and takes atheists to task for their inability to find an intimate understanding of the need for the contemplative state of being. Here is Sam in his own words:


Part 1


Part 2

The Evolution of Suicide Bombers

It has been a while since I have posted and thus I offer my apologies to my readers (all two of you) with more from the Richard Dawkins Foundation. Recently, there was an international conference of atheists in Washington D.C. with the "Four Horseman" of modern atheism in attendance (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens) and numerous other scholars and academics addressing many issues important to everyone in the world. Professor Andy Thompson of the University of Virgina gave a lecture on the origins of suicide bombers and suicide bombings from the ancient times to today which he titled "We few, we happy few. We band of brothers" from Shakespear's Henry V play. Here are the lecture and the Q and A sessions that came directly after the presentation:

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3: Q & A

Godless Awe and Inspiration

I am reminded today, for what reason I am not entirely certain, that religion is not a necessary requirement to be inspired by the Universe. Ah, yes, now it comes to me. One of the young girls who is at my coffee shop while I write this is going to a catholic high school and studying the world's religions. It can be a fascinating study in anthropology... but I have been through that and found every one of them lacking the inspiration that the real Universe gives me.

I lost my 'faith' a long time ago when the contradictions of the ideas of faith came crashing into the reality of the Universe as revealed by science. I am not the only person who has had reality dissolve their faith away. Even Mother Teresa experienced this:

From TIME Magazine Article, August 23, 2007 -

"On Dec. 11, 1979, Mother Teresa, the "Saint of the Gutters," went to Oslo. Dressed in her signature blue-bordered sari and shod in sandals despite below-zero temperatures, the former Agnes Bojaxhiu received that ultimate worldly accolade, the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance lecture, Teresa, whose Missionaries of Charity had grown from a one-woman folly in Calcutta in 1948 into a global beacon of self-abnegating care, delivered the kind of message the world had come to expect from her. "It is not enough for us to say, 'I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,'" she said, since in dying on the Cross, God had "[made] himself the hungry one — the naked one — the homeless one." Jesus' hunger, she said, is what "you and I must find" and alleviate. She condemned abortion and bemoaned youthful drug addiction in the West. Finally, she suggested that the upcoming Christmas holiday should remind the world "that radiating joy is real" because Christ is everywhere — "Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive."

Yet less than three months earlier, in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, that is only now being made public, she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one. "Jesus has a very special love for you," she assured Van der Peet. "[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak ... I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand."

The two statements, 11 weeks apart, are extravagantly dissonant. The first is typical of the woman the world thought it knew. The second sounds as though it had wandered in from some 1950s existentialist drama. Together they suggest a startling portrait in self-contradiction — that one of the great human icons of the past 100 years, whose remarkable deeds seemed inextricably connected to her closeness to God and who was routinely observed in silent and seemingly peaceful prayer by her associates as well as the television camera, was living out a very different spiritual reality privately, an arid landscape from which the deity had disappeared.

And in fact, that appears to be the case. A new, innocuously titled book, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (Doubleday), consisting primarily of correspondence between Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a period of 66 years, provides the spiritual counterpoint to a life known mostly through its works. The letters, many of them preserved against her wishes (she had requested that they be destroyed but was overruled by her church), reveal that for the last nearly half-century of her life she felt no presence of God whatsoever — or, as the book's compiler and editor, the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, writes, "neither in her heart or in the eucharist." "

The article goes on to say:

"Not all atheists and doubters will agree. Both Kolodiejchuk and Martin assume that Teresa's inability to perceive Christ in her life did not mean he wasn't there. In fact, they see his absence as part of the divine gift that enabled her to do great work. But to the U.S.'s increasingly assertive cadre of atheists, that argument will seem absurd. They will see the book's Teresa more like the woman in the archetypal country-and-western song who holds a torch for her husband 30 years after he left to buy a pack of cigarettes and never returned. Says Christopher Hitchens, author of The Missionary Position, a scathing polemic on Teresa, and more recently of the atheist manifesto God Is Not Great: "She was no more exempt from the realization that religion is a human fabrication than any other person, and that her attempted cure was more and more professions of faith could only have deepened the pit that she had dug for herself." "

I must place myself fully with this camp of atheists. We are creatures of habit and I can only guess at the Mother's inner views for sure, but the implication is clear to a skeptic... she lost her faith and could not come to terms with it. I'm sure that she is not the only one. Perhaps, obliquely, it is not unlike the older generation of people who are in fact homosexual but unable to come to terms with it and thus they repress the notion and end up in men's rooms in Minneapolis airports looking to satisfy their mental, emotional, and physical desires that they repress... but this is, again, just speculation.

Here, I speak only for myself. I am fairly certain, upon reflection, that my liberation began when I was about 8 years old. I received a small telescope from my great-uncle Arthur and a book to go with it entitled simply Stars by H.A. Rey. I read about the 'Great Nebula in Orion' and after learning the positions of the stars, one cold December night I took my new instrument on my first tour of the true Heavens. Before my eyes swirled a ghostly green apparition the likes of which I will never forget. If I were a person of 'faith' I might have thought poetically that I had 'glimpsed the face of God.' I did not... instead, I got my first true glimpse of reality. Faith was no longer necessary. Instead, logic and curiosity became my constant companions and they have never failed or abandoned me (unlike a mythical god from the mythology of our primitive neo-cortex that we have yet to abandon as a species). I offer as exhibits to that wonderment and inspiration the preceding pictures at the beginning of this blog. The awe and inspiration of such pictures as these from the Hubble Space Telescope are a greater testament to Nature and the Universe than any work of man... and yet it precisely the work of science and of our minds in search of reality in the raw that has made them possible. It brings to mind the quote some attribute to Christopher Marlow's The Tragic Tale of Dr. Faustus where the doomed wizard states "Vi veri universum vivicus vici"; roughly translated: "By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the Universe."

I'm confused... aren't you?

So I'm looking through my favorite blogs and come across a great YouTube video courtesy of PZ Meyers at the blog Phyrangula , which is a blog on science and politics and anything marginally related. So tell me how you feel after this; are you confused because I am?

A Brief History of Disbelief (Part III)

The Final installment of a roung history of atheism shown on the BBC known as "A Brief History of Disbelief":


Online Videos by Veoh.com

A Brief History of Disbelief (Part II)

This is part two of the BBC's series on Atheism (Sorry for the delay) with parts three and four to follow quickly here after:


Online Videos by Veoh.com

A Breif History of Disbelief (Part 1)

The first time I read or saw Johnathan Miller was from his work "The Body Human" which was subsequent to and concamatent with the television series of the same name as shown on PBS when I was in college. I found if fascinating. But, and this should not be surprising, I was not taken aback that Johnathan Miller is also an atheist like I am. I find it almost an inevitability that the free inquiry into the physical universe will leave one to the conclusion that the notion of 'God' is ludicrous. A few years ago, Johnathan Miller then came out with a set of programs on the beginnings of atheism for the BBC. They are outstanding and very much in the vane of his earlier work. And so, for those who may have an atheistic streak such as I, listen and learn:



A Breif History of Disbelief (Part 1):





Online Videos by Veoh.com

George Carlin on Religion (Cover your ears!)

George Carlin remains one of my favorite stand-up comedians. I remember being in college in engineering going to Cal State Long Beach and going to see him in the fairly new Universal Amphitheater at Universal Studios. It was 1982 (OK, I admit, I just dated myself) and I was never so hard up for air and the ability to breath as I was the night I saw George Carlin for the laughing I just couldn't stop. Here he takes on the notion of religion. His logis is witty, scatalogical at times, utterly profane and exactly the way that most atheists I know tend to see the world. The second video is his take on the Ten Commandments (and here I remind my readers that a previous blog of mine has a list of the New Ten Commandments that I tend to follow). So, here we go... enjoy:

[Warning: Plenty of profanity here.... you have been warned!]

George Carlin on Religion



George Carlin on the Ten Commandments

Atheist Ten Commandments

While doing readings in science verses religion, I came across a web site that was a source for what is termed "The New Ten Commandments" which I prefer to term the Atheist Ten Commandments (but that is a point of view that I wish to push at this point). The reading of these commandments struck me as a perfect example how evolution and neurobiology are far better at explaining the morals of humanity then scripture ever could. The very notion that people get their morality from scripture (and in the Abrahamic religions, a number of people do) is a specious notion. The following is a much better decalogue for this age:

First Commandment: Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.

Second Commandment: In all things, strive to cause no harm.

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

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

Fifth Commandment: Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.

Sixth Commandment: Always seek to be learning something new.

Seventh Commandment: 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.

Eighth Commandment: Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you.

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

Tenth Commandment: Question everything.

In addition here is the website where these can be found with the detailed explanations of each and how to apply it to your life:

The New Ten Commandments

Kissing Hank's Ass

I chose to use images of black holes on my blog for a variety of reasons (almost all symbolic, of course) but mostly because of the reality of the event horizon - that region around a black hole where the force of gravity is so strong that not even light can excape from it. I was hoping that this blog might have a simialr effect on people's minds and attitudes when it comes to confronting their notions of the "divine" and how often that conflicts with the reality of the Universe. A perfect example of this is the logic behind faith and how obviously dangerous it is when it becomes dominant in human societies. And so I give you another YouTube video titled "Kissing Hank's Ass".... enjoy: