Eternity
Whatever is not eternal must have had a cause. Did the universe endure from all eternity? If not, then we must prove design before before we can infer a designer.
I find it very difficult to believe that there exists a super being who schemed to build a universe to yeild an earth for stage to inflict the majority of the human race to torture while knowing the nature of pain.
No, I cannot believe that the universe was created so that he could have a stage for his creatures to suffer while remaining ignorant of any truths that are essential for thaeir happiness and salvation. And, if he did build the universe to have the earth as a stage for man, then he is the most incompentent stage builder to ever live as the earth is but a speck in the universe.
Existance of Life
There has been a number of mass extinctions and rebirths beyond dinosaurs and ice age as research has shown every 62 million years plus or minus 3M years creatures are wiped from the planet's surface in massive numbers. There is no doubting the existence of this cycle of mass extinctions every 62M years. It is clear from analysis of fossil records. But there are other major extinctions and the cycle is a very strong signal for a 26 million year extinction cycle. During the Permian extinction, 250m years ago, more than 70 per cent of all species were wiped out by what research suggests is linked to asteroid collisions and other random events. mass extinctions occur every 62M years a predictable pattern that is striking and compelling. The classical "Big Five" mass extinctions identified are widely agreed upon as some of the most significant.
They are:
The late Ordovician period (about 438 million years ago (mya)) - 100 families extinct - more than half of the bryozoan and brachiopod species extinct.
78 million years later:
The late Devonian (about 360 mya) - 30% of animal families extinct.
106 million years later:
At the end of the Permian period (about 245 mya) - Trilobites go extinct. 50% of all animal families, 95% of all marine species, and many trees die out.
37 million years later:
The late Triassic (208 mya) - 35% of all animal families die out. Most early dinosaur families went extinct, and most synapsids died out (except for the mammals).
143 million years later:
At the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary (about 65 mya) - about half of all life forms died out, including the dinosaurs, pterosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, ammonites, many families of fishes, clams, snails, sponges, sea urchins and many others.Existance of Man
Man is another small change of the DNA strand of evolution. Humans fear death and the first gods were to be feared as terrifying and unpredictable forces of nature in a world of death and darkness.
Later, ancient Egyptians invented gods who lived lives like the people who worshiped them.
Early Gods were not restrained by knowledge to live in an unreachable heaven. Sure they lived invisibly, but in the mortal world.
Man has always sought immortality and has always invented gods to worship for the keys to Afterlife.
Prometheus was the wisest Titan. His name means "forethought" and he was able to foretell the future. He was the son of Iapetus. When Zeus revolted against Cronus Prometheus deserted the other Titans and fought on Zeus side. By some accounts he and his brother Epimethius were delegated by Zeus to create man. In all accounts, Prometheus is known as the protector and benefactor of man. He gave mankind a number of gifts including fire. He also tricked Zeus into allowing man to keep the best part of the animals sacrificed to the gods and to give the gods the worst parts. For this Zeus punished Prometheus by having him chained to a rock with an eagle tearing at his liver. He was to be left there for all eternity or until he agreed to disclose to Zeus which of Zeus children would try to replace him. He was eventually rescued by Hercules without giving in to Zeus. This foundation has been used to create new gods by removing any and all evidence used to falsify the early gods. Knowledge has always been cruel to gods and other mythologies.
Science vs Religion
Increasing knowledge confronts religion and causes any God to become an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance. The gaps continue to shink inversly proportional to knowledge. The only remaining god is one of the remaining gaps.
Science objectively presents its evidence as theories, which must be falsifiable. If theories no longer conform to the evidence, they are modified, rejected, or replaced. Science attempts to falsify its assumptions and will reject implausible explanations. Scientific knowledge approach is to understand the natural world. Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information based on Claude Shannon’s theory. Entropy is a measure of information which quantifies the uncertainty. The theory can be used to provide evidence that everything is random.
Now regress to Biblical based "creation science" that was outlawed from public schools as an alternative or in addition to mainstream evolutionary theory of the biological sciences in 1987. The transformation over a period of time from one species into another is established science. Theory of evolution is the explanation for how that transformation occurs. Fossil evidence sufficiently demonstrates evolution. Compelling evidence results from DNA testing of species. Evolution is a scientific theory with the ability to accurately explain facts observed in the world just as sun-centered solar system of Copernicus and Galileo is a theory.
Evolution is the central theory of biology that explains the presence of millions of fossils and other evidence about the origin of life forms. There is not a tenured biologist in biology departments of top-rated university who does not understand that life on earth has developed through the process of evolution, starting with single-cell organisms.
It took over 200 years before dogma finally came to a cognitive disconnect and accepted scientific evidence that the earth revolved around the sun. Fundamentalists have stolen from science and delayed ignorance by pretending that science suggests intelligent design to reject an otherwise uncomfortable feeling of holding conflicting ideas simultaneously.
The delusional will come to accept the theory of evolution but it may not by as fast as the 200 year resolution to reject the geocentric theory for the heliocentric system but it will happen. Until then, religious creation stories and "intelligent design" will remain as philosophy, religion, or history courses.
How long will it be before Information Theory evidence is accepted? The delusional appear cock-sure enough to destroy the social contract and return us to the dark ages as to accept IT.
Power Worship
Power is freely worshiped with unlimited respect. Placating a jealous god has been man’s history of cruelty and torture where a trembling believer pathetically endures human sacrifice giving his most precious freely in hopes to appease a lust for blood. Man’s respect for power allows him to prostrate himself to worship his god.
It is more difficult to deal with the conceit of delusional men. Passions and self- esteem are sources of error. Fear creates belief in something comforting and faith in heaven for ourselves and hell for our enemies is a delusional fear, a lie man will kill for…
Region is Fear Based
Man who will not admit his own fears nor guard himself by a difficult effort of will against myth-making power can't hope to think truly about matters of great importance, especially where religious beliefs are concerned. Fear is the source of superstition and man's chief source of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom and allows for the pursuit of man.
Science has lessened the belief in magic but delusional faith remains cruel and deadly. A future life may be a more effective way of combating fear than to dread witches. Collective fear stimulates herd instinct and tends to produce ferocity towards those who are not regarded as members of the herd. Fear generates impulses of cruelty to promote superstitious beliefs that justify cruelty. Great fear removes humanity. Man with the courage to die gallantly doesn't have the courage to think he is asked to die for an unworthy cause. Obloquy is more painful than death which is the reason so few men have the courage to dissent from the prevailing opinion in times of collective excitement.
Early European Christians Killed
History up until 1360 revels medieval Europeans desperately tried to hold on to their European Christian roots in Greenland before dying around the 15th century. However, these Christians added history to their Bible lessons when they moved to America as the Leni Lenape. The Indians who tried to maintain their Norse Greenland roots were the Leni Lenape who remained as Christians upon the arrival of the Europeans. American history connects this Greenland history from 1000 to reports in English history during the 2nd voyage to America in 1585.
In 1619 Lord De La Warr III ravaged Leni Lenape villages in Chesapeake Bay during a campaign of total destruction. History books in schools fail to describe the brutal campaign, where 400 of his men dressed in medieval armor carrying firearms, walked through the native villages killing and burning everything. Surviving Leni Lenape are called the Delaware Indians.
With that said, any economically handicapped and aging people will be treated in accoradance with resource scarcities since the physical limits of the earth encounters an economy operating as if no physical limits exist. It only functions when it's growing, creating jobs and servicing debts. Without growth, jobs, and opportunities, the ability to repay debts will disappear. Pain and confusion from challenges in the economy, energy resources, and the environmental predicaments are underway. A dangerous convergence of unsustainable trends in the economy, energy, and environment is occurring as the elite continue to isolate themselves from society. Challenging decades are to come.
Religion is Myth
Religions were born of the myths of primitive peoples of various cultures. As ridiculous as they are, such myths can be perpetuated to the eventual death of the species. A true believer is careful of what they say, what they think, with whom they speak, and of information. Never thinking about existence as it presents itself, never examining their own beliefs to any depth, avoiding information and limited to ideas and knowledge that fits a religious tautology, a circularly reasoned belief system wherein all contradictions, absurdities and basic premises are repressed or are maintained as sacrosanct, carefully shielded from examination or questioning, establishing environments that do not threaten their beliefs though avoidance, restricting their own interactions to others of similar bent, retreating from any source of threatening information. A believer will hear only what they want to hear and steer clear of dangerous thoughts or questions. Believers remove any corrections from learning and growth. A true believer can rarely be helped since they will not face reality reflecting information that would dissolve the delusions. Positive effects attributed to religion are not the product of religion but products of nice people who have areas of very valid insight and knowledge who have a propensity for serving others tend to gravitate toward religion. Empathy for others and a willingness to help is a common human trait or propensity dependent upon perception, not religion.
Religion, like political organizations, is quick to take the credit. Religion uses the natural human impulses as a means to control and manipulate. Many of the positive effects attributed to religion appear to be motivated by the drive to proselytize, to fill coffers, to gain power and to increase acceptability within the society. Oft times a beneficial activity, pursued by church, is simply an acceptable direction in which to invest monies while generating membership. The solace offered is delusional and the unity generated pits the religionist against reality, against the solution to problems and against other groups.
Ultimately, the religion stands as a barrier to social function and meaningful progress. The leadership knows that there is no objective support for religion; that it must be maintained only through blind faith. The leadership knows that the flock must not seriously question, that they must be maintained in a condition of delusion and ignorance or they will lose the faith. They know what must be done to maximize the extraction of monies and services from the believer. They understand the use of emotionality, guilt and fear. The leadership understands the vulnerable aspects of the religion and that they must avoid the hard questions. There are a few ministers of the more isolated churches who maintain their own faith by maintaining their own ignorance, but these are probably a minority. Based on conversations with ministers, there appears to be no small number who justifies the religion in that it fulfills emotional needs of a congregation completely oblivious to any damage wrought by delusion.
Religion generates irrationality, insures devastating ignorance and locks the group into a monolithic posture highly resistant to rational change and pitted against other groups.
As human societies proliferated and increased in complexity, religion became more organized and a power unto itself. People could be made to labor on behalf of religion, making it a means of accumulating great wealth and power. Its influence grew to reach beyond tribal boundaries. Its priests grew to rival the power of kings. Religion generated, and necessitated institutionalizations of untruth. It was, and is, the greatest teacher of falsehood and distorted reasoning in human societies.
Christianity represented a marked departure from Judaism in that it was a religion for the hopeless. It taught denial of the self in exchange for reward in the afterlife. Virtually all of its tenets have the effect of reducing the self-determination of the individual, enhancing the possibility of manipulation and making the individual more vulnerable to exploitation.
The Christ myth was built upon the martyrdom of a person long after the event. During the conflict and turmoil of a degenerating empire, a new religion was fabricated almost overnight. In contrast to the religions out of which it was fashioned, the fabric of Christianity was in place within a few years, largely at the hands of one man, the biblical Paul.
Altruistic and promising a forgiveness of sins and eternal life in paradise after death, the new departure from traditional Judaism spread quickly among oppressed peoples, thriving among the poor and the enslaved, spreading false hope among the hopeless, as it does today. Christianity thrives best in the midst of privation, ignorance and chaos. The essence of Christianity can be found by studying the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew, Chapters 5, 6 and 7, in which "Jesus" talks to the multitude. Every tenet of that address is directed toward weakening the individual and making him/her more open to manipulation and exploitation. It was a message designed to enslave and exploit the ignorant and helpless, involving tenets which would cause the believer to willingly cooperate in the process of his or her own exploitation.
Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire. It ushered in the Dark Ages with its inquisitions and the destruction of non-believers. It caused the destruction of the bulk of real knowledge that Western man had accumulated. Anything which did not overtly espouse Christianity was put to the torch. This loss of knowledge seriously retarded the progress of western man for a thousand years.
A dissemination of knowledge, primarily mathematics, from the Islamic countries reintroduced by the Crusades and the conquest of Spain by the Moors, allowed European man to slowly rebuild the foundations of knowledge, finding some relief from the morass of ancient superstition.
Today a resurgence of Christianity and other fundamentalist religions focus on other-worldliness. As it spreads among our populations, humanity's ability to function diminishes accordingly.
In the United States, a place of people who began as aggressive achievers, thirsty for knowledge and able to solve problems, we are gaining a populace that flees from knowledge.
We watch the gathering darkness of ignorance and superstition, of what could be the coming of a second dark age, should these forces gain the power to govern. For any democracy, nothing presents more of a clear and present danger than cumulative abysmal ignorance of the true believers.
Religion is effective in insuring that a large part of the population of this nation remains ignorant of the real nature of existence and is predominately responsible for our drift into social chaos. Religion and Authoritarian Governing precludes an effective public educational system, preventing vital information and connectively from reaching the text books. It prevents the teaching of accurate and critical reasoning processes, necessary for the rejection of the false and the absurd. It allows or mandates procedures which insure the ineffectiveness of teaching practices, exhausting the system with irrational and unattainable objectives. Such beliefs appear to be the primary force which holds these groups in an iron fist of ignorance and dysfunctionality, unable to progress, with high percentages within the group, having to be carried by the productive elements of the society. Our society will make its collective decision as to which way it will go, whether to regain its respect for knowledge and regain the ability to progress, or to continue its degenerative trek into savage brutality with the destruction of technology and the amenities of living that have been achieved.
We will go one way or the other. There is no middle ground. The pressures of a burgeoning Earth population preclude any condition of stasis.
The Bible
The Bible is man's word of God and is a book of divine treachery, scientific mistakes, historical errors, false prophecies, and comical absurdities a reason for skepticism by tackling the rationale behind the emergence and perpetuation of Christianity, psychological and sociocultural reasons that drive Christians to cling to their beliefs, and illogical methods of argumentation invoked in the defense of the Bible. God's supposed word is a product of human minds, not divine inspiration.
Religious Work Ethic
There is no economic justice and it is understood that there is no scheme of equality which overcomes the population difficulty. Most of the total produce benefits a small minority of the population. Much produce is not even wanted. A large amount of the working population is idle while others are overworked. When his happens, we generally go to war. It may be more harmful for man to believe in a virtuousness of work. Happiness and prosperity of man lies in an organized diminution of work.
Civilization from the beginning toiled for a small surplus above bare necessaries. This small surplus has been appropriated by the warriors and priests. No one would have volunteered to part with the slender surplus in which warriors and priests subsisted. Peasants would have either produced less or consumed more. A sheer force must have originally compelled them to produce and part with it, especially in times of famine when there was no surplus and the warriors and priests still secured as much as at other times, resulting in many of the workers dying of hunger. Someone found way to induce the multitudes to accept an ethic according to which it was their duty to work hard, although part of their work went to support their idleness. This conception of duty has been a means used by the holders of power to induce others to live for the interests of their masters rather than for their own.
The desirability of work is derived from this system but it has not been adaptable to the changes in the modern world. Modern techniques allow for leisure which is possible to distribute throughout the community. The rich should not find it shocking that the poor have leisure. It should be shocking that a man consumes more than he produces. If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, then there would be enough for everyone. It is better than the expectation of overwork or starve. Only foolish asceticism makes man suffer this deprivation. No dying man ever says he only wished he had worked harder. Work is necessary means to a livelihood but it’s from their leisure that they derive happiness.
Harm is being caused by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work. Work is unpleasant and under compensated.
Heretics are Virtuous Men
I do not call him honest by way of distinction, for I think all the heretics I know are virtuous men. They have the virtue of fortitude, or they could not venture to own their heresy; and they cannot afford to be deficient in any of the other virtues, as that would give advantage to their many enemies; and they have not, like orthodox sinners, such a number of friends to excuse or justify them. It is not to my good friend's heresy that I impute his honesty. On the contrary, his honesty that brought upon him the character of a heretic.
Christian Religion come to America (from the works of Ben Franklin)
A Swedish minister having assembled the chiefs of the Susquehanna Indians, made a sermon to them, acquainting them with the principal historical facts on which our religion is founded, such as the fall of our first parents by eating an apple; the coming of Christ to repair the mischief; his miracles and sufferings, etc.
When he had finished, an Indian orator stood up to thank him. 'What you have told us,' said he, 'is all very good. It is indeed bad to eat apples. It is better to make them all into cider. We are much obliged by your kindness in coming so far to tell us those things which you have heard from your mothers. In return, I will tell you some of those which we have heard from ours. In the beginning, our fathers had only the flesh of animals to subsist on; and if their hunting was unsuccessful, they were starving. Two of our young hunters having killed deer, made a fire in the woods to broil some parts of it. When they were about to satisfy their hunger, they beheld a beautiful young woman descend from the clouds, and seat herself on that hill which you see yonder among the blue mountains. They said to each other, it is a spirit that perhaps has smelt our broiled venison and wishes to eat of it; let us offer some to her. They presented her with the tongue; she was pleased with the taste of it, and said, 'Your kindness shall be rewarded. Come to this place after thirteen moons, and you shall find something that will be of a great benefit in nourishing you and your children to the latest generations.' They did so and, to their surprise, found plants they had never seen before; but which, from that ancient time, have been constantly cultivated among us to our great advantage. Where her right hand touched the ground they found maize; where her left hand touched it they found kidney- beans.' …
The good missionary, disgusted with this idle tale, said, 'What I delivered to you were sacred truths; but what you tell me is mere fable, fiction, and falsehood.' The Indian, offended, replied, 'My brother, it seems your friends have not done you justice in your education; they have not well instructed you in the rules of common civility. You saw that we, who understand and practice these rules, believed all your stories, why do you refuse to believe ours?
5 Conditions Present
These five conditions must be present, if someone is to become a more fervent believer after a failure or disconfirmation:
* A belief must be held with deep conviction and it must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer does or how he behaves.
* The person holding the belief must have committed himself to it; that is, for the sake of his belief, he must have taken some important action that is difficult to undo. In general, the more important such actions are, and the more difficult they are to undo, the greater is the individual's commitment to the belief.
* The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently concerned with the real world so that events may unequivocally refute the belief.
* Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognized by the individual holding the belief.
* The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence that has been specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, the belief may be maintained and the believers may attempt to proselyte or persuade nonmembers that the belief is correct.
St. Augustine, the missionary to Britain, wrote to Pope Gregory the Great to know whether married people might come to church if they had had intercourse the previous night, and the Pope ruled that they might only do so after a ceremonial washing. What would Jesus Do "What would Jesus do?" Then he would say “send me 10% of your money and worship my jealous, intolerant ignorance and you can live with me forever, else, I’m going to smite you to hell to burn for eternity for my viewing pleasure”. A man of science forms opinions that change with knowledge but man of theology fixes opinions that never change as he proclaims a philosophy of eternal truths where conflicting knowledge is blaspheme. Man identifies religion as virtuous and the most religious men tend to be educated with a courage to remain virtuously stupid.
In the Beginning
In the beginning, a Big Bang created hydrogen, helium, and lithium. Eventually supernova explosions led to life on Earth after the necessary heat and pressure was available to produce the heavier elements. Compressed atoms created the complex elements such as iron, gold, silver, uranium, and platinum which spewed into space and mixed with new stars producing clouds of nebulosity. The new stars from these nebulas, with their attendant planets, moons, and comets contained the heavier elements and any creatures that walked the surfaces of those planets or moons. The calcium in bones and the iron in blood came from other stellar fusion processes.
