A Better Bible

In the beginning of our current instance of space-time, a big bang occurred. There is evidence for this. Out of the chaos of the initial energy and matter-antimatter annihilation, the remnants formed simple atoms of protons, neutrons, electrons, etc., which were mostly hydrogen and helium. As matter coalesced and compacted, space-time curved into pockets of gravity wells which drew in even more matter into its cores. Giant spinning clouds enabled smaller spinning clouds to compact and form stars. Larger stars formed heavier elements through ever-increasing pressures, and supernovae distributed this amongst the galactic neighborhood. Rocky planets began forming out of the stellar accretion disk while the stars formed. Some of these planets happened to be positioned in orbits that were close enough to the star to have liquid water, and they were massive enough to retain an atmosphere.
One of these planets, orbiting an ordinary star about halfway out from the center of an ordinary galaxy, later became known as Earth. An unusually large natural satellite helped the evolution of life by adding to the sun's tidal forces which allowed marine animals to interact and adapt with the atmosphere and sunlight in tide pools. Marine life began producing oxygen as a by product of photo-synthesis and an ozone layer was formed, helping to shield the surface from too much ultraviolet radiation. The oxygen in the atmosphere combined with the surface rocks to form granite layers of the earth's crust which floated above the molten heavier magma underneath. The earth, having a spinning core of iron and nickel, produced a magnetic field which helps to shield the earth from dangerous outbursts of solar particles whenever the sun behaves violently. Through many ages of geologic time with meteor bombardments, ice ages, plate tectonic shifting, radioactivity, water cycles, and the burgeoning of diverse life, eventually humans evolved large brains and dexterous hands and curious minds.
Humans have developed highly flexible brains that can invent various methods of dealing with the world around them. It is easy to assign agency to unknown behaviors in nature or anthropomorphize animals. Some called the wind the 'breath of life'. Some believed that volcanoes had gods controlling them and that whenever the volcano erupted and destroyed a village, the god was angry with the people in the village. Events in nature that displayed more power than humans had were attributed to mythical godlike beings that could appear as human, but had wondrous powers.
These beings had stories associated with them which the people would pass on from generation to generation, slightly altering the details every time. Some people came to fear these gods, to adore them, and to worship them. They tried to communicate with these invisible beings with fervent prayer. But no clear reply came back. To satisfy this need, some invented the godly responses, told them to others, and even believed it themselves. A few of these learned that there was power in bringing the words of the gods to others. Common folk would revere these gifted men and treat them royally as they were the conduit from which godly words flowed both to and from the god. This ecclesiastical jurisdiction afforded priests the same powerful influence over the masses as did the ruling classes and government. Religion is man-made.

THE HUMANIST TEN COMMANDMENTS (strongly-worded suggestions for living, the kinds of ideas that, if everyone followed them, might make the world a better place all around)

1) You should strive to promote the greater good of humanity before all selfish desires.

2) You should be curious, for asking questions is the only way to find answers.

3) Harm to your fellow human is harm to humanity. Therefore, you should not kill, rape, rob, or otherwise victimize anyone.

4) You should treat all humans as equals, regardless of race, gender, age, creed, identity, orientation, physical ability, or status.

5) You should use reason as your guide. Science, knowledge, observation, and rational analysis are the best ways to determine any course of action.

6) You should not force your beliefs onto others, nor insist that yours be the only and correct way to live happily.

7) If you govern, you should govern with reason, not with superstition. Religion should have no place in any government which represents all people and beliefs.

8) You should act for the betterment of your fellow humans, and be, whenever possible, altruistic in your deeds.

9) You should be good to the Earth and its bounties, for without it, humankind is lost.

10) You should impart your knowledge and wisdom gained in your lifetime to the next generation, so that with each passing century, humanity will grow wiser and more humane.

Final Words:
There is no evidence for an afterlife. Don't live your life expecting a second chance at the end. Wanting to live forever is a foolish notion. Billions of people may disagree with these words, but many younger people may see the truth in them.

Slavery, terrorism, religious extremism, and genocide should not be tolerated. The Christian bible promotes these behaviors. I abhor them.  It is NOT a good book.

Someday, far in the future, mankind may have grown up, putting away its childish ways. Churches still standing will be museums for ancient dogma and belief systems long-discarded. Or, they may be put to good use for humanitarian causes. You can believe whatever you want, but I encourage you to think more than you believe; understand more than you criticize; plan more than you hope, and love more than you thought was possible.

Belief in the Supernatural

I don't believe in the actual existence of God or gods. I do believe in the power of the human mind to create and envision many things that may not be real, but have the capacity to influence a pseudo-relationship with these sensations to a high degree.

It is now known that there are psychological and evolutionary causes of our beliefs in the supernatural. Our brains have several methods for explaining or internalizing the unknown. Fear can be an important aspect of our dealings with mysterious objects or instances that occur in our lives. There was an evolutionary benefit to supposing that a rustling in the bushes might be a carnivorous beast about to attack rather than just the wind. On the plains of Africa, it could have been either one. The young man that didn't snap into alert mode may not have lived long enough to procreate.

When we looked upon our world and wondered why there was lightning, thunder, volcanoes, falling stars, comets, planets, and eclipses, we tried to explain them with concepts we could understand. Having dreamed of invisible beings with magic powers, the prophets and shamans would tell the people of the human-like but invisible gods that controlled these occurrences. They would make up stories which attempted to answer questions like where we came from, how the earth began, and what must we do to prevent catastrophe. Without science, and without the ability to accurately record events as they really happened, these made up stories were passed from generation to generation by the spoken word and later with the written word of the very few learned men.

Today, grade school children understand how quickly and easily a story can be distorted, embellished to the point that little of it resembles the original. And yet, millions of people carry and preach from these ancient texts that have been retold, copied, re-copied, translated, re-translated hundreds of times. They have the audacity to call it truth and even to believe that God, the creator of the universe, was Editor-in-Chief of every instantiation, thus all were correct. Why do so few of us understand how this works?

In recent years it has become possible to artificially stimulate our brains to produce the strong sensation of a god-like presence in the room, or an out of body experience. These so-called 'God Helmets' may become widespread and easily obtained by anyone. These sensations can also be produced chemically. The psychoactive drug DMT is powerful enough to convert non-believers into 'spiritual' persons in just a few hours. I have taken milder hallucinogenics and have experienced a similar feeling. The next day, however, the feeling was gone and I realized it was all in my head.

The fact that we can dream of fantastic places with complex stories, characters, and happenings, presents us with clear proof of the power of the mind to create supernatural visions from right within our brains. The danger therein lies with ascribing truth to these ideas and spreading them to other people as if they were real and universal. In my understanding, submitting any aspect of your life to a 'higher power' is a false way of incorporating 'spiritualism' into our daily lives. In some cases, one can dump their responsibility onto this realm and call it redemption or whatever. Attributing what happens in the natural world or what people do for themselves, or to, or for, others, to a god or an angel or a devil or demon, is wrong on so many levels. And the belief that we will live on after we die is the worst of all of them.

The human species has yet to fully cross this bridge and reject religion for what it really is. Long-standing traditions and cultural power structures serve to prevent us from doing this. But scientific knowledge will help move us along. Some day, perhaps many centuries in the future, nearly all people will have this understanding, and regard the myths, scriptures, religions, and holy wars, as a tragic curiosity of our history.

Life, The Universe, and Everything

[Editor's Note: The title of this piece pays homage to the late great Douglas Adams]

Well, where do I begin. Life for me began around 11:30 PM on June 4, 1957. Before that year, I didn't exist. I was dead in much the same manner as I will be in forty years or so from now.

Afterlife is an oxymoron. Reincarnation, past lives, all that stuff is an interesting thought exercise, but nothing more. If someone can provide the mechanism for a consciousness from a dead being to be transferred to a different living being I'll take a look at it, but since we know so little about the nature of sentience and the 'soul' that I'm doubtful that it could ever be proved. Of course, there are stories and anecdotes about this phenomenon, but nothing more.

Life to me is precious gift that shouldn't be taken for granted ever. It is our one chance to experience, share, contribute, love, and be a part of this great drama of existence on this little planet Earth. Why do we fight? Why do we permit suffering and pain and untimely death? Why do we have more children than we can support and love and educate and employ? Why do we make so many mistakes and waste so much time?

My parents were from the old school. Protestant Christians that wanted a dozen children. When the reality of six children hit them slowly but surely, they decided that half a dozen would be just fine; then they had me. I was an afterthought; a punctuation mark on a family tree that, on hindsight, they were very pleased about. My very existence had odds that would make the Powerball lottery look like a crap shoot.

The fact that I am here now writing this only testifies to the concept that one more child in this world might be better than not. I'm happy to have the chance at life that I have. It's been a wonderful ride so far. But I question the wisdom of some people who have children out of wedlock or do not have the financial resources to properly raise a child to be a well-adjusted contributor to society. But who am I to question anyone's right to procreate? Education in the art of living is sadly lacking in our schools. Our culture is rife with shallow media and poor examples of humanity that it becomes so easy to accept it as the norm.

After learning about cultures and world history, I am faced with a dilemma. While being empathetic with the weaknesses of 'the flesh' and that we humans are driven by emotions and evolutionary traits handed down from our primitive ancestors, my opinion of most individuals currently living is quite low overall.

I know, there are lots of good people out there too, but the few bad ones spoil it for the rest of us.  The fact that everyone now has to take off their shoes at the airport because one thwarted terrorist had a shoe bomb exemplifies how our world has changed since I was born.

Think about this: how much of your life is spent protecting yourself from the dishonest few that would take from you whatever they wanted, perhaps ruining your life just to benefit their own?
 The locks on our doors and passwords on our computers. Do you lock your car in your own driveway? When you go for a short walk in the evening, do you lock up the house? Do we treat a stranger with suspicion long before we engage in trust?

Information; the boon and perhaps bane of our modern world, is a jungle of knowledge and garbage that we must all carefully traverse every day of our lives. Walk into any public gathering area and try not to see advertisements or warning signs. When was the last time you saw some window blinds that didn't have a warning sticker on it because of the choking hazard of the draw string? We think by putting up signs that we are protecting everyone from stupidity - or are we just placating ourselves and saying that it's all we can do?

I am constantly reminded of the bell curve in our population and with the numbers rising, the extreme edges are also increasing in numbers. There might be only one in a million people crazed enough to want to shoot and kill innocent people at random in a shopping mall or movie theater, but given 400 million people, now there's 400 guys out there planning their next massacre.

I suppose all we can do as individuals is try to avoid places where disaster could strike and hope we're not among the unlucky ones. It is important to use history as a perspective lens through which we look at our lives here in the U.S. Other parts of the world and other times in the past, human life has been much harder, much more cruel and deadly. How we survived this long is amazing. I am glad to be living here and now rather than just about anywhere else and at any time in the past. I don't know what the future holds, but all in all, the here and now is pretty fantastic really.


The universe, as we currently know it, was born about 13.8 billion years ago in what cosmologists call the Big Bang. The energy of that penultimate explosion rapidly formed quarks, the building blocks of matter, which then organized into quanta of particles consisting of matter or antimatter which quickly annihilated and much of what was left over became the basic elemental particles: protons, neutrons, electrons which had the dimensional ability to form atoms of mostly hydrogen and helium, but little else.

There was still energy in the remnant of that big explosion, and the clouds of simple atoms spread outward through space-time and began to cool enough that some denser clouds began to contract through the action of the warping of space-time in the presence of mass (gravity) which draws the clouds of matter closer to itself and began to spin. The more compact the cloud became, the hotter it got. Gravity drew in more matter and the clouds formed spheres of dense gas that further compressed the atoms closer together and at higher and higher temperatures. When the pressure at the center of these spheres became so great that atoms were colliding enough to undergo nuclear fusion, a star is born. A million years later the photons, a by product of the fusion process reach the surface of the star and it begins to shine.

The generation of visible light (electromagnetic radiation) has now become a constituent of the new universe as more and more stars are born out of the gigantic swirling clouds called galaxies. Stars form in widely varying sizes and masses. The more massive stars burn hotter and live shorter lives than the smaller red dwarf stars. These large hot stars explode after fusing all their hydrogen into helium, and helium into more massive atoms as the pressure becomes greater and the nuclear fuel starts to run out. Once iron is formed in the core of the star, the balance is broken and the outer part of the star collapse in on itself producing a titanic explosion which blows out all of the massive atoms that the star formed into open space.

Thus, the new stars that form from these supernova remnants contain heavier elements and the accretion disk surrounding a newly-formed star will also contain these heavier elements such as oxygen, carbon, iron, silicon, gold, etc. as well as molecules of combined atoms such as hydrogen and oxygen (water), hydrogen and carbon (methane, other hydrocarbons), and hydrogen and nitrogen (ammonia) and other organic compounds. Rocks mostly of iron and silicates (silicon and oxygen) had the most mass which attracted other materials to it as the accretion disk slowly condensed into fewer and fewer larger massive bodies.

These aggregations of material had enough mass and therefore enough angular momentum to achieve stable elliptical orbits around the star. Gradually, most of the gas and dust from the accretion disk falls into these planetary bodies contributing to their mass and structure. Other smaller massive bodies mimicked the solar accretion disk by revolving around the planets and forming moons. Surrounding the solar accretion disk there forms icy balls of mostly water which occasionally change their orbits (due to collisions or reactions with other massive bodies) to fall inward toward the inner planets and some of them collide with the newly-formed Earth. This may be where some of the water in our oceans came from.


Everything came from basically nothing. Throughout the life of the universe (there's those two words again), the physical laws resulted in more complex atomic, molecular, chemical, and biological arrangements producing all the diversity of the galaxies, stars, planets and even space itself. The concept of 'everything' can be mind boggling if taken in too large a context. What is 'everything' to you?

The Center of Black Holes

data:
Approaching the event horizon of a black hole, time slows down.
Upon reaching the event horizon, time stops.
In black holes, matter has collapsed to a zero point; the matter is gone, but the gravitational effect remains.

suppose:
Going beyond the event horizon, time goes backward.
The farther in, the farther back in time you go.
The center of the black hole is the beginning of time: the big bang.
The center of all black holes is the beginning of this universe, or another universe.
What happens to the light that turns back on itself?
Since the gravitational effect of hyper-compressed matter remains in our space, how can the attributes of this mass exist in more than one physical state? Is it 'waiting' to be 'born' as part of a big bang in another universe?
And what about the slow, gradual dissipation of a black hole's mass? How does that effect these ideas?

And by the way, is the gravitational constant really constant? Or does it change over time? Same goes for the speed of light; has it changed since we first measured it?

Believolution

Nearly all knowledge is partially an act of faith. When we read something or listen to someone speak, we take their words as truth depending on our set credibility of that person and their sources. But true knowledge is cumulative and self-reinforcing. Known facts and concepts about the world are continually revisited and improved over time.
Generally then, today's picture of our world and the universe we live in is an improved view of what we had fifty years ago. When I was a child, pictures of galaxies and comets were in black and white and without much detail. There were race riots, segregation and bigotry. There was unbridled pollution and exploitation of natural resources - like the supply was endless, and the Earth would take our abuse without consequence. How wrong, or at the very least, how incomplete our knowledge was.
It was generally accepted that most people went to church every Sunday, and that this Christian nation had God on our side; that Jesus is the true Son of God; that He would return someday soon; and that all other religions were sadly in error in their doctrine.
Knowledge in these areas has increased; even in the areas of how we might regard religious belief, superstition, the occult, the supernatural, spirituality. We are now more aware of how the mind creates, reinforces, and distributes conflicting belief systems. The preacher's words are just another voice in the cacophony of information we sift through every day.
We cannot go back to the 1950's. Too much has changed. Too many real answers have been found. Too many more questions have been asked. It is literally a different world than that of my childhood. There's no going back.
I was taught that all languages came about because the Babylonians tried to build a tower up to heaven and God caused the builders to all speak different languages so they couldn't complete the project. Each language-speaking group moved away to their own country so they could all speak their own language together. The Italian-speakers moved to Italy, the Chinese speakers moved all the way to China, etc.(Genesis 11:6-9)
It has taken a long time, but I have begun to replace my childhoon learning with evidence-based knowledge. I have faith that evidence and reason will point the way toward better and truer truths.

In The Midst

We are in the midst
Of a young adult universe
Galaxies have matured
With spiral dust from supernovae
And stellar nurseries

We are in the midst
Of a middle-aged star system
After the lightning birth of the sun
The violent shuffling of planet material is mostly past
Our star system is relatively in balance

We are in the midst
Of a planet well suited
To plants, animals, and human life
The weather patterns have stabilized
For the moment

We are in the midst
Of a great age of discovery
The ancient myths and superstitions
Are being supplanted with scientific knowledge
We are starting to understand ourselves and our place

We are in the midst
Of our short but amazing lives
Our brief encounters with just a few of our kind
The expanding family of global experience
The wealth of a changing community

I am in the midst
Of a life more wonderful
More precious than could be imagined
I exist between two vast stretches of non-existence
A brief opportunity to shine my light

Bubbles

Today I went to school like always. I met my buddies and we swam around looking for food and generally hanging out together. When you're with your friends you feel safe. In these Alaskan waters it is best that a fish not let himself get singled out. Large beaks have shot into our world from above and taken some of my friends. It frightens us so we scatter momentarily, then regroup.

This morning things were different. There were very few beaks from above but some strange vibrations coming from below. Some bigger creatures live down there but rarely do they bother us. Then I saw some bubbles. My buddy came over to me and said, "Hey, did you see? There are some bubbles over there, like a wall of them. Can I come over here and swim with you?" "Sure.", I said. "There is plenty of room in this area. Well except for way over that way - looks like more bubbles. Maybe if we go over this way there won't be any."

So we swam away from the bubbles that my friend saw, and we swam away from the wall of bubbles on the other side. But soon this way had bubbles, too! Bubbles are bothersome - I don't like them. We turned around and the other fish were sensing it as well. The walls of bubbles were all around us - and they were getting closer!

Soon the other fish were gathering around where we were, asking questions amid the confusion. "Why are there these bubbles?" "They frighten me." "I'm trying to swim away from them, but they seem to be all around us." "What's happening?!" We were all swimming very close now and trying to stay together but away from all those bubbles! We couldn't see anything but the other fish. As far as I could tell, we were all swimming around in circles. The bubbles were squeezing us together even tighter. What could be causing this? I began to get really scared.

Just then the odd noises from below suddenly stopped. I was getting a bad feeling about this. The bubbles were thinning out a bit and I heard and felt a rush of water coming from below. Then I saw dark walls rising up around me, carrying all of us upward, toward the light. We were all packed together so tight we couldn't swim. For a moment I couldn't breathe and it was so bright everywhere. But the walls came together above us blocking out all light.
I was still bumping into fish in all directions as we went down - deeper than I had ever been. The next moment was only pain. I don't remember anything after that.