The Proof is in the Pudding

I would like to lead off with saying that Patriot Day is a ridiculous name for the remembrance of the terror attacks that happened on September 11, 2001.  I'm sure that we can come up with a better name than Patriot Day, until then I refuse to call it Patriot Day.  That being said I will go into the blog.

As most people in the United States were doing today, I too was recounting the tragic events that occurred this day 10 years ago.  My wife was pregnant with our first child and we were wondering what kind of world she would have to grow up in.  I, like most people, felt for the first time a sense of uncertainty.  The United States has always had a natural protection in both the east and west with the Atlantic & Pacific Oceans respectfully.  During World War II the Japanese had so few attacks on the west coast we can count them on one hand.  The closest the Germans got to the east coast was sinking a few ships by submarine attacks in a few harbors up and down the coast, no real onslaught on the general population.  Our sense of security was shattered in a matter of moments that September morning when 19 Muslim extremists high jacked 4 jetliners and turn these massive flying objects and transform them into the true weapons of mass destruction.  We all know this story so I won't dwell too much on this part.

What I want to reflect on is the extremists that performed the act.  ANY individual that can take a "sacred text" as being literal instruction rather than just a simple guide or historical reference (not that it would be reliable for that either) is no more than a sheep and that is exactly what the religious leaders want.  Please take note that in the opening of this paragraph I did not say Muslim extremists because there are extremists of all shapes, sizes and religious convictions.  We are quick to forget the tragedy that shook Oklahoma City in 1995, the number of abortion clinics that have been bombed or the doctors that have been murdered because they perform abortions.  We are no strangers to home grown terror being performed in the name of God.  This is the same thing that happened September 11, 2001.  Whether you refer to your god as Yahweh or Allah, it is the same "God".  The difference comes down to which prophet you follow.  Jews believe that their messiah has not yet come to Earth while Christians believe that Jesus was the messiah.  Muslims branch off a bit following the teachings of Mohammad who, like Jesus, assented into Heaven in an extravagant light show.  The point here is that these three major religions that are at odds with one another all come from the same founder in Abraham.  It is safe to say that the majority of Christians would find it absurd if I came running out of the woods saying I found evidence of a lost tribe from Israel, also finding golden tablets containing stories of Jesus coming to America and that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri.  Despite how ridiculous Christians see this, there are two people vying for the Republican nomination for president in the 2012 election, but heaven forbid that a Muslim attempt to run for president, we are a Christian nation.  Another example, if I run around saying that I am the second coming of Christ one of three things could happen; 1) most likely I will be locked in a padded room 2) I will gain followers like the apostles and have an entourage go around to spread my lunacy to others or 3) I get shot by an extremist for offending their religious belief.

I have met many Christians and Muslims in my time on this planet and I can say that they are both considerably polite and pleasant individuals.  They chose to be good people.  I would like to think that goodness is an innate human trait that we give more credit than what is due to religion.  Religion is a man made concept to help explain the inexplicable.  That was fine and dandy 3000 years ago when science wasn't developed, but now that we do have a scientific process to question and a method to test to come to a conclusion, do we really need religion?  There has been more harm done in the name of religion throughout history than any other cause.  The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition covered three centuries and spanned to the New World, Hitler (a baptized Catholic) wanted to rid the world of the problematic Jews, Milosevic followed the genocide plan in trying to rid Bosnia of the Muslims, nearly a million innocent people in Rwanada killed for being from a certain tribe and the Catholic priests and nuns helped, the Taliban and Ayatollah have set the Middle East region back centuries by taking literal translations of the Qur'an to heart, and finally the tragic events of 9/11.

I am far from the praying type.  I am a humanist and hope for the best for everyone.  I never wish harm to come to anybody because I feel that nobody should endure any agony.  John Lennon said it best in "Imagine";

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for Today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

This was the dream of one man.  I too imagine a world without religion.  We are not a mass amount of heathens running a muck creating chaos, we go about with our ordinary lives, living for the day.  I leave you with this.  We are cousins killing cousins.  We are all humans no matter what our beliefs are.  We put too much value into religion and yet have no evidence of any deity existing.  We are brainwashed from the time we are baptized to believe everything our elders say about religion and never to question it.  It is this indoctrination, in ANY belief system that hurts society and causes tragedies that we remember on this day.  Here is an alternate view of what our world would be like without religion.

The Truth is in the Numbers

Omnipotent - Having unlimited power; able to do anything
Omniscient - Knowing everything

These definitions are from the Oxford English Dictionary online.  These are two adjectives often used to describe  Yahweh.  Richard Dawkins in "The God Delusion" makes a great point that a god that is both Omnipotent and Omniscient is contradictory.  If that god is Omniscient, he knows of EVERYTHING that is bound to happen, yet billions blindly pray to him seeking personal gratification (which is rather selfish) and hope that the Omnipotent god will answer their prayer.  If the Omnipotent god does answer this selfish request, this action ultimately cancels out the validity of the Omniscient god; one cannot be both.

The second point I wish to touch on tonight is the idea that this Omnipotent god created a vast universe, so vast we're still searching and finding new items that boggle our minds, and that we're the only life that he created.  Let's talk this through; we reside in the outer edges of a swirling arm of the Milky Way galaxy.  Our eye in the sky, known as Hubble, has opened up the celestial doorway to a vast number of galaxies that were all unfathomable a mere century ago.  We know that there are billions upon billions of stars in the billions of galaxies that are now estimated to populate this universe.  Our solar system requires just one star, a single celestial body at the center of it all and we are fortunate enough to be at a favorable distance from it so we are not cooked like Mercury or Venus and also have the advantage of massive gas giants of Jupiter and Saturn to thwart impending asteroids from coming too close.  We have an ideal setup in our little nook of the universe, but to think that we are the only life in this chemistry lab known as the universe is very primitive, and to think that God is the creator of it all is a very lazy answer.  The odds of someone winning the Powerball Jackpot is 1 in 195,249,054.  Everyday new planets are being discovered just by gauging the wobble of distant stars from the gravitational force that planet has on the star.  It is highly unlikely that we as a species will map every star system in the universe in any of our lifetimes, but I would say that the odds of winning the lottery are right in line with life being elsewhere in the galaxy.

As a nation, we need to revitalize our sciences once again.  After World War II, we smuggled in some of the great minds from Nazi Germany and thrust America into the Superpower status we now enjoy.  Sadly, conservative Christian fundamentalists see science as an attack on religion and are doing everything they can to prevent science from being taught to its fullest in schools.  Science is there to ask a question, and through testing, experimentation, gathering evidence develop an answer.  Religion is the lazy way out (why is the sky blue?  Because God made it blue.  It has nothing to do with the light being scattered by the atmosphere).  Religion and faith, if we let it, will impair this once great nation.  Yes, we have the freedom of religion, but that does not entitle for the Conservative Christian Core to force their beliefs on the rest of society.  Religion and faith are personal beliefs and should be kept as such; I want my children to learn of evolution, not idiot design. I want my children to be able to ask why and be able to go into a library to find an answer in a science journal, not rely on a book with contributors who had their own personal agendas in writing stories from other stories of the time and then a group of men gather to select which ones will be best to be the Word of God.

In the Defense of Marriage

Today the U.S. Census Bureau released the statistics of marriage and divorce from the year of 2009.  It turns out that married couples in the South, often referred to as the Bible Belt, have a higher tendency to divorce than those married couples in other regions of this vast nation.  This coming from the same region of the country that is overflowing with Bible thumpers that lobby on family values and fund politicians to represent their conservative ideology putting up the largest opposition to the support of gay marriage.

I can say that I have been happily married for more than 10 years now and I do reside in the South, Tennessee to be exact.  I can proudly say that the actions I take are what is best for my family and myself.  Any decision I make I take into consideration any outcomes not asking "What Would Jesus Do?" but more along the lines of what implications will this have?  I live by the Laws of Nature not by silly text that has been mistranslated over centuries upon centuries to be accepted as the Word of God.  The point I make with this is best summed up with a quote from my brother; "No one is more miserable than a southern white middle-class Christian conservative".  I am proud not to be bound by the dogmatic theocracy that burden many of "souls" traveling this land.  I truly feel that the dogmatic stigmata we are drowning in today is poisoning our society.  Avid believers try to find every justification in their Holy Book to denounce what their neighbor does and fail to look themselves in the mirror and denounce the hair cut the got which is strictly forbidden in the same Holy Book.

Now, onto the defense of marriage.  This is what we need to do to fix our divorce rates in the South. allow homosexual marriage.  Follow me on this; if we allow homosexual marriage, by default there will be more women (aside from the homosexual women) for the newly divorced men to pick from, allowing procreation to take place giving these new love birds another chance at happiness.  With fewer opponents on the mating scene trying to hide their true homosexual beings, the pickings will be ripe for the heterosexuals.  Just like in nature, the top ram gets first dibs on their mate, the same can be true for the South (just leave the head butting to the beer cans).

Another way to look at this news is that the South is so deep in the closet that we're finding next year's Christmas presents.  Deep down inside the cockles of their souls, white Christian conservative men have discovered they cannot beat the gay agenda, so rather than beating why not join them?  Okay, I guess I shouldn't have said beating them, maybe defeat them.  White Christian conservative men cannot find satisfaction, no matter how many women they marry (i.e. Newt Gingrich) so they keep defying the tenth commandment about coveting they neighbors wife.

What I propose is that we allow gay marriage.  This will increase the number of marriages we have to tally next go around offsetting the increasing number of divorces that miserable white christian conservative middle class men are revolving through the courts with.  Massachusetts and Vermont, just to name two states, already allow gay marriage and have lower divorce rates than us in the South.  They realize that the more marriages there are, the more balanced the divorce rate will seem.  It's simple law of averages...wait, most southerns wouldn't even get that, sorry.

http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acs-13.pdf
http://www.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/08/25/divorce.bible.belt/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1

Acceptance

For countless centuries, human inhabitants of this planet called Earth had a geocentric state of mind.  They believed that the Earth was the center of the universe and everything, including the sun, orbited around this small spherical body.  There were a few observers through the years that started to truly study the sky and began to lay the pieces of the puzzle out to construct.  Copernicus was the first to put the puzzle together by coming out and saying that the Earth orbited the Sun.  Later, Galileo invented the telescope to observe far off celestial bodies, and with this was able to examine the paths of orbiting planets and moons and confirmed what Copernicus had stated.

This concept went against everything that the church believed.  As a matter of fact, Galileo was excommunicated from the Catholic Church, but kept his strong faith in God.  Over time, with insurmountable evidence, the church finally adopted the heliocentric construction to our solar system.  Now, almost five centuries after Galileo left this planet, science is in an ever heated battle with religion yet again.  This time it is dealing with how life came to be on this planet.  Science shows steady changes to species over time so those species can adapt to their environment and ensure their thriving through time (barring any major catastrophe).  These small, steady mutations are the basis of evolution, or the survival of the fittest.  There are countless species of birds on this planet all with different designs beaks, wings and feet.  Some have webbed feet to allow them to tread through water easier, others have talons to grasp their prey while they fly.  Pelicans have an expandable pouch to scoop up water with fish so they don't have to land to eat where as the seagull does not.  These are variable traits over time to allow these different species to survive and thrive.

Yes, it took the church many of years to accept the fact that we are not the center of the universe, eventually they will come to the conclusion showing that evolution is a fact and not a belief.  Galileo never gave up his faith, but stood by the scientific evidence of the heliocentric concept.  Why is accepting what Darwin observed blasphemous?  We see changes in our own species over time.  We as a species have gotten taller over time.  George Washington was 6 feet 2 inches at the time of his death, that was considered tall for his time, today that is average.  We are adapting, height is a favorable trait to have, it shows dominance.  Accept the fact that evolution is out there, we all evolve, we're just waiting for you.

A Choice...

We encounter scores of choices on a daily basis; what shoes to wear, what to get to eat on lunch, should I pass the cop on the interstate if they're going below the speed limit?  A lot of these are minimal and seem like they won't impact our everyday life (unless you read up on Quantum Theory, but that's well beyond what this is going into).  We have choices galore here in the United States, most people choose to believe that science is absolutely wrong when discussing the fact of evolution.  I don't mind one bit having an intelligent conversation in regards to creation vs. evolution, the validity of The Bible or how hypocritical many practitioners of religion appear to be, but there are places that are appropriate for these discussions, and I'd say that ninety percent of the time work is not a good place to have a discussion on topics such as these, a better choice could have been made.

Homosexuality is not a choice.  It is a biological anomaly that has changed the face of the modern world.  In 1993, President Clinton initiated an Executive Order banning gays serving openly in the military with Don't Ask, Don't Tell.  One may argue that this would not infringe on any civil rights, but I wonder how many conversations were held between troops about how much they enjoyed the dancers at one of the many exotic bars in a military town, or the hot piece of ass they got from the club over the weekend.  This is flaunting heterosexuality in the open and this is perfectly acceptable, despite the fact that these were the same practices in Sodom and Gomorrah before the Lord rained down fire and brimstone.  It took nearly 20 years for our society to realize just how wrong Don't Ask Don't Tell was and urge the government to take action.

Now to say there is a "Gay Gene" or not is a bit ridiculous at this point in time.  Yes, we have decoded the human genome, but not one gene stood out, what we did find upon further research is that 60% of the sample did share similar genes on 3 different chromosomes (read here), simply put homosexuality is no more a choice than how tall you are.  Homosexuals have pheromones and hormones just like heterosexuals that stimulate their physical attraction to others, it's nothing that can just be prayed away, no more than crabs, lobsters and swine can be prayed away (more of God's abominations).

Another thing, if you're going to say that your ancestors are Adam & Eve, not monkeys and then an hour later agree with someone saying that human species started in Africa millions of years ago, either you believe the Bible is open to interpretation and flawed by man or are blindly following what you are being taught.  You are free to choose what your beliefs are, but there are irrefutable evidence that life on Earth is far greater in age than six thousand years old like the Bible teaches; we don't find human, let alone chimp, remains with dinosaur remains in the fossil record.  Evolution is not an attack on faith; faith and worship falls into a societal belief system (often examined in Social Studies classes) while fossils, rocks, carbon and everything surrounding us down to the molecular level can be physically examined (often studied in a science class).  This is why evolution is taught in science compared to creation, or it's new cool nickname Intelligent Design.  With the scientific method, you work to the answer, not give the answer and work from it.  Intelligent Design, Creationism and sadly Flying Spaghetti Monsterism have no place in science books.  Evolution may be a trick from the Flying Spaghetti Monster to test our faith, but since there has been a great decrease in pirates as global warming increases, there are fewer prophets out there to spread his noodly word to the masses.

The bottom line is that we are all brothers and sisters on this floating rock ideally placed far enough away not to be scorched by the sun but still close enough to benefit from the heat it puts off.  No matter what you study, we all come from a common ancestor whether it be Adam & Eve or rely on scientific proof showing our decent from chimpanzees.  There are millions upon millions of genes that can be activated and deactivated over time.  Whales have the gene to grow legs, we as humans still have the gene to grow a tail.  We don't see whales walking with legs or humans wagging their tails out of excitement because these genes have been turned off biologically to benefit the survival of the species.  So whether you are black, white, yellow, brown, heterosexual, homosexual, transgender, intergender or just have questions, stop the hate and ignorance.  We are all citizens of this planet, not by choice but by chance and we're all here for the same reason, to make the best of what we're given and survive.

The Sanctity of Life

Last week in Orlando, FL a jury acquitted Casey Anthony for the murder of her daughter.  The majority of Americans cried foul at the verdict.  Granted there was a lot of suspicion in this case, first and foremost the month that Caylee was missing before the authorities were notified.  Every individual brought to trial in the United States has the right to a quick and speedy trial granted to us by the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the Untied States. The defendant is also innocent until proven guilty.  This last section is the most important detail in this case as the prosecution failed to provide reliable physical evidence tying Casey to the death of her daughter. We can blame the jury all we want, but they executed their civic duty as instructed by the court.  It was the prosecution that dropped the ball on this, not the jury.

Where the real crime lies in this is after the verdict was read.  The family of Casey Anthony, Caylee's grandparents, embraced Casey jubilantly.  This little girl left this Earth three years ago, she would be getting ready for kindergarten this summer, but there has been no mention of the family asking for the authorities to continue the search for the real killer.  We can debate all we want now whether Casey killed her child or not but we will be wasting breath because Double Jeopardy prevents her from being tried for the same murder again.  Nobody saw it suspicious that Casey's father attempted suicide not long after Caylee was reported missing and found on his property?  Now Casey is off scott-free and is being made offers for her story.  She is going to become rich off the blood of her child who is still seeking justice as she lies in state in the ground rather than growing up playing with Barbie dolls and Legos.

A few days later there was a baseball game in Arlington, TX.  Josh Hamilton caught a routine foul ball and being the final out of the inning, he tossed the ball into the stands to give a fan the opportunity to get a ball at a game.  Those not familiar with the layout of the field in Arlington, the wall in right field, where Josh Hamilton was playing that day, is about 18 feet high and there is a gap between the wall and the stands, so the stands are about 20 feet up from the ground.  As the ball was making its way to the stands, a father at the game with his 6 year old son was trying to make the day all the more special for his son by catching the ball.  He lost his balance and tumbled head first over the railing between the bleachers and the wall hitting the concrete below.  Tragically Shannon Stone died in this fall.

In this incident media outlets kept airing video of this one man falling to his death as his poor son looked on.  Rather than being respectful to the family of the departed, media outlets were only looking for ratings with the shock factor.  Today is 7/11/11 and this video is sadly still on YouTube for the world to see.  When American prisoners were being decapitated by terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, the media did not show this out of respect to the families, but this video is still available online to be viewed.  There is no doubt that this child will be scared for life from witnessing the death of his father and yet media outlets showed this video and made money off of it.

The crime in these two incidents is the potential for profiting off of the loss of life.  If Casey was truly innocent why hasn't she urged the police to find the true killer rather than trying to strike a book deal with the diary she kept in prison or advice book?  Ratings numbers are not as important as the well being of a child and family that tragically lost their father in a freak accident.  Profiting off another's loss is the true crime people and this is what needs to stop.  I hope one day we'll be able to see this.

Your Days are Numbered

Okay, Genesis explains to us that it took seven days for God to create everything from the spiraling galaxies in the sky to the grass in my back yard.  We can also find later on in this collection of fables that Jesus went into the desert for forty days and was tempted by the devil with food but did not eat (Luke 4:1-2).  When presenting the question on creationism versus evolution creationists tend to use the arguement that a day for God could be different for us, but is Jesus not God?  How can forty days be measured significantly different than seven days?  Either the time keeping of the time was inaccurate because Rolex and Bulova were not around in Switzerland yet or we can take it for what these are, myths.