Culture is anything we do and the monkeys don't.
- Fitzroy Somerset (Lord Ragin)
I debated whether or not to write this blog. A year ago I wrote the original blog, "Into the Lion's Den: Notes on a Recent Trip" and this trip wasn't quite as eventful by way of anything religious. There were of course times religion crept up in conversations with my family as most of my family are devout Christians. My mother's side of the family is very moderate and not so dogmatic in their everyday life. My father's side is different. They go to church anytime the doors are open and my father is very strict on censoring his lifestyle to fit what he thinks Jesus want's from modern human beings. For example: We were watching a commercial where the character eating the sub sandwich said "damn it". My dad grunted and said, "Is this really necessary to cuss in a commercial? So ridiculous!" and gets visibly angry. I hadn't even noticed, but I'm also an atheist with no moral compass.
I usually visit my family in the Midwest U.S. in January. It's the best time of year to fit it in between school and work. However, I've always hated going back in the middle of winter. This year I timed my trip near my mother's birthday and in autumn, where the leaves are at their peak of bright colors. I am glad I did because I enjoyed a hike through our family's farm and a bicycle ride with my father through a scenic bike trail right along the Mississippi River. It was breathtakingly beautiful and reminded me that I live in a very bland surrounding here in Vegas. The desert is so brown (except of course at Red Rock or Vally of Fire). I miss trees more than I can even tell you. I literally hugged one one at a park in my dad's hometown. It was a large maple tree. Such beautifully efficient biological machines. And I'm a liberal hippy so it's just what we do.
I took a red eye flight out of Vegas that left at 11:30pm. When I finally arrived in St. Louis I rented a car and drove to my mother's house a couple hours away. I was exhausted from not getting much sleep on my overnight flight. The drive seemed to take forever and as always I kept a close lookout for deers creeping up on the side of the interstate and highways. When you don't have much sleep figments show up in the corner of your eyes as you drive. Ghost deers are there one minute, then not there the next. Ghosts, aliens, angels, demons all these things people say they "see" ... well this is what they most likely are. Figments of the brain. Tricks of the eye. Same goes with "ghost deers". This can get nerve-wracking as you feel the need to brake when you "see" these spirit animals. Unless I'm wrong and there really are such things as ghost deers. Maybe not just humans become ghosts but so do animals when they die. Only problem with this is the numbers seem somewhat staggering when you account for all the species of animals that have ever lived on planet earth. I would say the next dimension is quite crowded by now to say the least.
Anyways, I went to go get flowers to give to my mother for her birthday at the local grocery store next to her home. The flower selection was so pathetic I paced back and forth staring with clear dismay at the dead, wilted flowers in dirty water. I couldn't bring myself to hand my wonderful mother a plastic bag full of compost. Here mom, here's rotten trash. But at least it's chilled trash (the "flowers" were in the cooler.) I decided to skip the flowers and go to her house afterwards. She hugged me and we laughed, talked, and enjoy each other's company as we went out to a favorite local restaurant to eat lunch. I had a delicious "ponyshoe" (if you don't know what that is look this up!) Afterwards I was able to catch a few hours of sleep after the meal.
When I woke up my mom's boyfriend had arrived after getting off work and we went out for dinner. I had some sushi and we had a great time conversing over our Japanese food. We went to a movie in the evening and went back to St. Louis to see my mom's boyfriend's sister. While visiting at her house we started randomly taking each other's blood pressure for the hell of it. Everyone gasped as the reading on mine came up. It was extremely high. At first we thought it was a mistake, then after a few more tests the concern became real as we knew that I needed to probably go to a doctor right away. We decided to wait til at least the next morning (Saturday) to see if it got any better. It did, but by not much. My blood pressure was taken as we were getting ready to go to my family's farm. We were rushed for time and decided to go to a clinic to see what was going on when we got back from the wiener roast at the farm.
Needless to say I was nervous, as we all drove to the family farm an hour away from my my mother's and her boyfriend's house. She was worried too of course and we talked about nothing else the entire trip there from what I can remember. When we pulled in everyone was there: my two uncles and their wives, my grandma and granddad, my granddad's cousin (who is the co-owner of the family farm). This is a great piece of land with many acres, some of which is wild (my family often rents out to deer hunters during different seasons of hunting), the other is some working farm land. It was great to learn the history of the entire property that has been in my family for a few generations. I spent time moving from lawn chair to lawn chair, with a plate full of salad and raw veggies (as I was avoiding the red meats that were abundant), chatting with each of my family members. I had such a great time and walked away for a private walk in the woods to take some pictures and to soak it all in.
There is a memory here. A memory I will never forget. After my walk alone in the woods, and my tree hugging, my mom and her boyfriend joined me for a walk in a completely different direction. It was that time of year in the Midwest where it begins to snow colors. We were all surrounded in giant, blindingly-bright red and yellow leaves falling slowly around us. The sound was like rain falling but slowed down, as leaves crunched beneath our feet. The temperature was in the 60's. It was the perfect. In space and time. With my family. My mom leans over to me and says, "It's almost impossible to force yourself to soak this in and really remember this." I said, "I know."
After the walk we said our goodbyes, packed up our casseroles, and headed back to my mom's and her boyfriends house. On the way back we stopped at the local clinic to get a diagnosis on my high blood pressure. The doctor explained though it is alarming he didn't want to admit me to a hospital or anything, so he prescribed some heart medication, told me to keep track of my blood pressure readings, schedule an appointment with my personal doctor, and that was that. I had been unhealthy for several months (eating fast food, and not exercising at all) so I have went back to a near vegan diet, low salt and sugar, very very little alcohol and caffeine, and exercising.
I won't lie, the whole ordeal with my blood pressure and heart medication sort of put a damper on my time with my mom and dad. I was talking with my dad about how complicated the human body is and keeping it alive, but how resilient and fit to adapt and survive many environments, when my dad stopped me and said, "Well, we don't have control over our own death. Only God controls when we die. It is in His hands ultimately." I just stared at him, giving him almost, but not quite as blank of a stare as I gave him when he said and I quote, "One time mom (your grandma) prayed to find her keys, and guess what? She did!" This deserved only a blank stare. There are these levels in which one should be when it comes to reasoning skills where even the most mild of skeptics reside. With this quote I could tell at least at this moment my father was not there. We all say silly things, maybe this was just something that he spewed off without really thinking about, where to me it stood out drastically.
Sunday was church day. As it always is to my father. I skipped adult Sunday school and went just for the morning service. I shook the hands of the Christian greeters as always, as I walked in. The music was playing while people were taking their seats. I always get Bible anxiety when going to this church. My dad is in the choir so he is actually not sitting in the pew when I arrive, so I inevitably have to sift through all kinds of Bibles placed randomly in empty pews (he usually sits in the back left side of the church though which helps narrow down my options). Luckily I remember what his fancy leather Bible cover (with embroidered cross emblem) looks like. If he ever changes Bible covers I'm screwed. I locate it and sit down. A few stragglers come in and recognize me and shake my hand. We stand to sing in the worship songs.
The choir is extremely small. The entire church seems to get smaller with each visit. There are so many empty chairs in the choir. The songs are song (one with some weird Lion King African beat), the announcements, the releasing of the choir happens within 10-15 minutes. My dad shakes my hand and smiles. He's glowing red with what I can only interpret as joy to see his son after a year. Or maybe it's high blood pressure. It runs in the family unfortunately. After the choir has been released the entire congregation sings a few more worship songs as words are projected on screens. I am not singing, mostly due to the lyrics of the song that I don't really agree with. My dad leans over and asks if I know the songs. I say, "Yeah, some of them, but some I don't know." He always asks me that and I never sing worship songs anymore since I know longer worship anything or anyone.
As usual a lady from the church sings a solo song before the sermon. It never fails - off key, and off tempo. We all somehow get through it and wait for the pastor to take the pulpit. The pastor didn't preach, but instead introduced who would be - A missionary to St. Louis, MO. That's right. You read that correctly... A missionary to St. Louis, MO. His name is Chris Highfill. He was once a youth pastor at Seminole Baptist Church in Springfield, MO. He explained that he had been "called by God" to take the gospel to St. Louis because it didn't have enough churches. His mission is to go and start multiple churches in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He follows his introduction with a very cheesy YouTube video of his new ministry. I searched desperately for this online to be able to paste it in the links section at the end of this blog entry but could not find it anywhere.
His sermon was centered around Matthew 5:13-15. This is all about Christians being salt and light to the unbelieving world. Chris went on about how much he HATES darkness (I was thinking oh dude, grow up! There's no such thing as monsters in your closet or imaginary friends you can pray to). He explained to us hat salt is a preservative .. thus we (Christians) preserve the world because we are people of God. I wanted to be like .. what about me or my dad? He has high blood pressure due to too much salt intake among other things, so could Jesus really be saying too much Christianity (salt) is bad for the world? I'm writing that sermon and preaching it in atheist church soon. Mark my words. It will be after I write my Harry Potter sermon - taking whatever passage I want from the book and twisting it to fit some narrow point of view that sounds all religious. Play this game with any book. It's fun.
Missionary Chris also made some completely false statements like.. "We all know that things have been getting worse and worse in this world. More disease, death, starvation, violence. This is prophetic showing that Jesus is coming very soon." I wanted to raise my hand and say, "In Steven Pinker's new book Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined he presents loads of evidence to the contrary." A lot of the specific points Chris made are things that have actually gone down significantly or gotten better so to speak.
Chris Highfill goes on to say he was a news junkie. He said he likes to watch the nightly news on NBC with Brian Williams. I heard a few faint grumbles in the congregation. I thought, "Oh seriously? ... Come on!" Then he said, "I like to watch the liberal news too so that he can know 'what the enemy is up to'". So that got a good laugh and small applause (not by me.) After this gem he goes on to compare sin to cancer, actually retracting that statement and saying it is worse than cancer. Right. Looking at a woman's cleavage and lusting is worse than pancreatic cancer. Got it. I could barely handle the sweeping generalizations that the entire audience lapped up (since he was the "man of God expert" authoritarian figure).
As usual I let me mind wonder. I started to think about what a missionary is. My friend (who grew up in the same environment that is now an atheist too) once told me of a memory he had sitting in these same pews some Sunday. The speaker was a missionary to Australia supported by this church. He said he remembers thinking to himself that missionaries are really just scamming naive people in the congregation to fund their extended family vacation. It's not like this missionary was living among the Australian Aborigines in the middle of nowhere. He was living in Sydney living the good life, eating well, sleeping comfortably. One can easily see through this nonsense. It's not that hard, even as a child. I also entertained other ideas like flipping the script with the whole missionary mission of religions to promote their dogma. This would be Atheists infiltrating churches and giving the congregation an alternative way of thinking of reality. Maybe teaching evolution along side Creationism in the Sunday School classrooms for kids and adults. This is something (not quite to this extreme but in some sense) that Atheist Experience's host Matt Dilahunty is doing by being invited into various churches in the Texas area and having a discussion on religion.
"Every head bowed please. Every eye closed." The sermon by a moron for morons came to a close and the inevitable raising of the hands if you either "Have been living in sin and need to be saved by Jesus blood." or "Are a Christian but have backslid and need to correct your walk with Jesus." We stood up, music played (altar call time!) The pastor waits like a good shepherd at the front of the church waiting for the stray sheep to come to him like little lost lambs. An elderly lady went up as the pastor hugged her and prayed with her. I yawned. We were seated. Offering was taken where for once my dad didn't put anything in the offering plate as it passed by. I found it odd that after the offering instead of dismissing in prayer the Pastor changed it up a bit and just said simply, "OK. You're dismissed." So cold so quick. And we left.
On the way out I shook the hand of an old family friend - Steve. He recently had a stroke and was showing small signs of it as we talked with him and he shook my hand weakly. I had to use the restroom downstairs. The small church building was also where I spent 12 years of my education (unfortunately) as a child and teenager. After using the bathroom I explored the gym with it's new rubber court. It used to be carpet. The adult Sunday school teacher noticed me reminiscing and said, "Boy, I bet you have fond memories of playing basketball here." I responded with, "I sure did. I just wish we had this floor instead of the carpet. I have vivid memories of nursing my millions of rug burns on my knees each night after a game or practice." He laughed and I shook his hand.
On our way out my dad showed me some reconstruction going on with the building and I said, "Cool." and we were off to go get some food. It's hard to eat healthy at Golden Coral buffet but I did my best. I notice what seemed like half-human half-pig creatures the size of rhinos shoveling food at a rapid pace into their mouths. The plates were like troughs and the sounds were pig sounds. I was actually so appalled if these creatures would have made eye contact with me they would have seen me staring at them with my mouth wide open. And I have high blood pressure. Maybe there is a god and maybe he's just an asshole.
My dad and I had a good conversation at the dinner table. Again, I made him laugh so hard he nearly choked on his food. He was in tears of laughter. I wanted to explain to him the "irreducibly complex design" of the human trachea tube as a choking hazard doesn't point to an omniscient deity but rather evolution by natural selection, ... but I didn't.
I wanted to quote what I had just finished reading on the plane ride there:
The uniquely configured vocal tract of humans also carries a substantial cost. In all mammals, including apes, the space behind the nose and mouth (the pharynx) is divided into two partly separate tubes: in inner one for air and an outer one for food and water. This tube-within-a-tube configuration is created by contact between the epiglottis, a gutter-shaped flap of cartilage at the base of the tongue, and the soft palate, a fleshy extension of the palate that seals off the nose. In a dog or a chimpanzee, food and air take different pathways through the throat. But in humans, unlike any other mammal, the epiglottis is a few centimeters too low to contact the soft palate. By dropping the larynx low in the neck, humans lost the tube within a tube and developed a big common space behind the tongue through which food and air both travel to get into either the esophagus or the trachea. As a result, food sometimes gets lodged in the back of the throat, blocking off the airway. Humans are the only species that risks asphyxiation when we swallow something too large or imprecisely. This cause of death is more common than you may think. According to the National Safety Council, choking on food is the fourth leading cause of accidental deaths in the United States, approximately one-tenth the number of deaths caused by motor vehicles. We have paid a heavy price for speaking more clearly.
from: The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease by Daniel E. Lieberman
Some design.
We went back to his house where I studied for my chemistry exam while he went to sing praises to an ancient desert Jewish god. While I was studying about valence electrons and their configurations, I thought to myself how I should come up with a mock website that deals in "Theistic Chemistry". If there is such a thing as Christian biology/geology = creationism, why not "Christian chemistry"? The Bible gives descriptions of heaven and hell (these mystical supernatural places that apparently have elements derived from the natural world). Heaven has streets of Gold. (Au: Atomic #79) and Hell is a "lake of fire" (Fire is a result of a chemical reaction called combustion and consists usually of Oxygen: Atomic #8, Nitrogen: Atomic #7, water vapor H2O: 2 Hydrogen: Atomic #: 1 and 1 Oxygen, and Carbon Dioxide: 1 Carbon: Atomic #6 and 2 Oxygen.)
The next day I went with my father to meet up with my uncle and aunt. My dad brought two bikes. The plan was to ride our bikes from the lodge of the national park we parked at to Grafton, MO to meet with my aunt and uncle to eat at the Fin Inn (a local seafood restaurant along the banks of the Mississippi River). We started early and I bundled up with a winter coat, gloves (which were my dads), and stocking cap to keep warm.
The bike trail through the blindingly bright autumn trees was breath taking. I can't explain to you how living in the desert for several years shapes your orientation to boring brown. Red Rock canyon is a gorgeous geological wonder full of color, but in the game of color trees always win. The leaves, my god. Their were black walnut husks scattered all over the paved trail. In some instances it was almost dangerous to ride your bike through them. My dad looked back and said, "Don't worry we'll get a plastic bag in Grafton and gather some to take back and eat." I have a memory here, on the bike trail, with the wind on my face, and these black walnuts and red and yellow trees, just me and my dad that will last me til the day I die.
I stopped multiple times to take photographs of the beautiful landscape. Somewhere, sometime, in all of the oohing and awing I dropped the glove I had borrowed from my dad. Also, I apparently left my Ray-Ban sunglasses my girlfriend had given to me in one of the multiple antique stores we went into once we reached Grafton, MO (where ironically I was shopping for a gift for my girlfriend). My dad called my aunt who said they were running late and we had arrived in Grafton early so we killed time by eating fudge at a local fudgery.
My dad and I arrived at Fin Inn early and were seated near one of the large aquariums where the large fish swim by you creepily watching you eat. My dad was in the restroom when my aunt and uncle arrived. My uncle is a very jolly man constantly making jokes. Usually not always funny but sometimes he can make me laugh. For example, when we went back to the fudgery to get more desert after our meal my uncle walks into the place where the young girl behind the counter greets him. He says hello and she asked, "OK, what can I get for you?" and he immediately responds with, "OK, well we'll start here with taking all this money here from your tip jar and thank you." then starts to pretend to grab from the jar and walk away. I know this isn't funny but for some reason I laughed pretty hard at this as the girl behind the counter just stared at him not knowing how to react.
My aunt is a very beautiful women who has aged well because she is deeply interested in organic food and eating healthy, non-processed foods. Both however are very devout Christians (Baptists) who are more open about it than anyone in my family. In fact during the meal my aunt follows something my uncle said with a jovial, "Oh, well, Bruce remember what pastor said last Sunday in his sermon on walking the narrow path." I don't recall the exact "lesson" she was referring to but it was something along those lines.
I always get "prayer anxiety" when I have a meal with my aunt and uncle. My father for some reason doesn't "say grace" before meals anymore, but my aunt and uncle not only still do that but often reach for their neighbor's hand to hold while praying. It's fine if they wanted to pray, I have no problem with these rituals if that's what they like, but what I do have a problem with is praying myself. Atheists don't pray obviously (unless of course you happen to be an atheist that observes Ramadan, but that's an exception to the rule.) My uncle Bruce almost always points to either me or my brother or my father and says, "OK, how about you say grace for this meal?" He's one of those dominant alpha males too, who is always taking charge and delegating tasks. I was sweating with nervousness. I didn't know what I was going to do. I was not wanting to come out as an atheist in front of my entire deeply religious family, in front of these fish, before our meal of fish. It's just something I wasn't prepared to do. At least not then or there.
I chickened out. The pressure was too much. As my blood pressure rose, I jumped up while the waitress was setting the plates of food in front of us and escaped to the bathroom. I came back and luckily prayer had already been said. I am not sure if they "blessed" my food. I would say, no as it was kind of bland. It wasn't a bad piece of tilapia but I've had better. We talked about our lives and Bruce mostly dominated the conversation with stories of my aunt and him taking salsa classes and all the grandchildren. My brother and I are the black sheep in the family, not just because we aren't Christian anymore, but because we don't have the typical white American modeled life. We both are not married and we both don't have children. Dinner was fun and afterwards went for icecream at the same fudgery. My uncle shook my hand but I found it kind of sad that my dad's side of the family refuses to show any sort of emotion. They do not hug. My dad never hugs or says, "I love you" to either me or my brother. My aunt never even got out of the car after dropping us off at our bikes to give me a hug. She waved from the car and that was that.
We rode the bikes back to the car where sure enough I found my dad's black glove that I had previously lost on the paved trail. I stopped to pick it up. My dad and I had a laugh about that. Not too far after this I did something stupid. I tried to take pictures with my digital camera while also riding my bike. I slightly applied the brakes with my left hand (which were the front wheel brakes) and I went flying over the handlebars like some elementary school accident. It all went in slow motion. The fall wasn't terrible. I bruised up my knee, scraped up my palm and my camera, but ultimately just got the wind knocked out of me. My dad rode on completely unaware that his oldest son just wiped out behind him in a pile of black walnut husks and awe-inspiring colorful leaves. I got up, brushed myself off and rode on.
We stopped once more to gather black walnuts as my father promised. We tried smashing them against the sidewalk, splitting some of them open. We tasted them. Wild black walnuts have a very unique taste. A mixture of sweet and bitter, but good. This is another memory I have booked marked in my mind. Another one would be when my father I and spent the morning I was leaving cracking open our found black walnuts in his driveway. We spent hours on it, using a pocket knife to surgically remove the delicate nut meat. This was our breakfast that day. When thinks like this happen, as bizarre as they are, I know they are real moments in time that define my life with my family. Times that must be seared into my recollection to be pulled up someday in the distance past as I'm sitting, old and useless in a hospital bed. I want these memories to flash before my eyes when I die. I can only hope it isn't flashes of the terrible things I've done, or the mythical places of torment like a lake of fire I was indoctrinated with as a child.
Once at the car I discovered that I had once again somehow lost the very glove I just found. There is no God!!! On the drive back to my dad's house somehow misconceptions of certain social issues got brought up. I think I've mentioned this before. I do enjoy talking with my dad, even though I don't agree with him regarding politics, religion, or social issues. Unlike my mother he doesn't just say, "I don't want to talk about these things." He will engage me in conversation, even if it is just a few minutes before he or I change the subject because it's becoming unbearably uncomfortable. One of the misconceptions I told him is this misconception of probabilities. The news media shows nothing but negative things so it's totally understandable how most people in this country have irrational fears. I explained the fear of terrorist attacks is unfounded statistically. I shared a recent Steven Pinker interview where he says the odds of a person in this country dying of their pajamas catching on fire is more probable than dying in a terrorist attack. This fact appeared to mildly offend my father as he quickly responded with, "Well, 9/11 was terrible! I can't imagine how terrible that would be. To look out that window and have to decide whether to burn to death or jump to your death." I said, "Yes, it was terrible. I never said it wasn't."
Then somehow our conversation turned to Muslims which I was instantly angered over. My father made some ridiculously generalizing statement like, "All Muslims just want to kill Americans because if they become a martyr they get hundreds of virgins." I explained I thought this specific doctrine of reward in heaven was completely absurd, but not all Muslims are jihadists. I wanted to explain to him my Ramadan experience and how wonderful I found some of the practices of the devout Muslims to be. The early morning prayer, the meditation, the giving to the poor, and pushing your body's physical boundaries during fast to cleanse yourself (a process that most definitely lowered my blood pressure). But I didn't. How does one exactly explain to their fundamentalist Evangelical Christian father that he is an atheist who participates in the rituals and practices of Islam?
Juxtapose my father's generalizations with a song from his choir that he was practicing later that night for their upcoming Christmas Contata. The song was titled "When a Savior Dreams". Let's start with the title itself. What does a supernatural being dream? In the song the lyrics talk about God dreaming (the baby Jesus) sleeping in the manger. Let's work through the logic of this: So this implies God needs rest at all? I was under the impression that the only time he rested was on the 7th day of creation some 6,000 years ago? Does a Savoir go into R.E.M. sleep? What about delta sleep? Does Yahweh ever get sleep paralysis? Celestial snores? Omniscient apnea? I am sensing another field of Christian "science" coming on: Theistic Polysomnology! Who's with me?! But I am forgetting an obvious. God the father and God the son (baby Jesus) are two separate entities and also the same entity. This logically holds up to me. What about you?
There chorus of the song is, "I wonder when a Savior dreams, can you hear the angels clapping their wings?" Such an odd image this conjures in my mind. My father doesn't apparently connect his personal irrational beliefs in angels and demons with Muslim doctrines on getting rewarded with virgins in heaven. The truth is right in front of him if only he would let go of everything he knows to be true. How depressing when I put it that way.
In the last few hours I spent with my dad we spent it as we always did, having peanut and butter and chocolate ice cream from Baskin Robbins. I started having weird pains in my heart. I felt like it could be from the medication. My face was bright red and I felt flushed and a little light headed. I was pretty scared for a minute sort of questioning whether or not to have my dad drive me to the emergency room or just let it pass as it could just be my body getting used to the new medication. While I sat there deciding my dad licked his ice cream cone like a little kid, lapping away at it fervently, honing it into a perfect cone. He was blissfully unaware of what was happening inside of my body and I kept it that way.
So my dad did the same thing as his sister did and stayed in the car as I was climbing out to leave and go get into my car in the parking lot. I looked at him dead in the eye and said something to him I don't think I've ever said, "I love you dad. I really do." He looked at me and said harshly in a manly voice, "I love you too, Brent." I got in my car, collapsed in the seat, and wept. I cleared my eyes as I pulled away and drove along side my father for a minute until I took the interstate.
I was able to see my mom during her hour lunch break. We relaxed and had a cup of coffee while saying our goodbyes. My mom cried and I said with my quivered lip, "I love you mom. I really do." And she said, "I love you too, Brent. So much!" And just like that I was driving back in my rental car to the nearest airport in St. Louis. I dropped the car off, boarded my plane and opened my notes to study for my chemistry test once more.
I missed my connecting flight on the way back, which was a complete nightmare. It was like a scene from some Tom Hanks movie, where I'm running to the gate only to find they had shut the door and the plane had just taken off. I don't even remember what my blood pressure reading was and I was so angry at American Airlines (never fly with them. Ever! they suck!) They made it near impossible for me to make it in 5 min. to my connecting flight across to the other side of the airport and through security once more (for some stupid reason). Anyways, the next flight out was 5am in the morning. It was 10:00pm. I sat back in a chair, charged my cell phone, and closed my eyes to try to breathe. I slowed my heart rate down finally and thought for one second, - maybe if I wasn't a godless atheist I wouldn't have missed this flight and had to spend a night alone in a freezing airport. Then I thought, .. nah. That's stupid.
I finally made it back safely to Vegas with some notes on my trip and some memories stored away in my brain. I enjoyed my visit. On my way back home, I continued reading in the book The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease by Daniel Lieberman,
Every religion has a different explanation for when and where our species, H. sapiens, originated. According to the Hebrew Bible, God created Adam from dust in the Garden of Eden and then made Eve from his rib; in other traditions, the first humans were vomited up by gods, fashioned from mud, or birthed by enormous turtles. Science, however, provides a single account of the origin of modern humans. Further, this event has been so well studied and tested using multiple lines of evidence that we can state with a reasonable degree of confidence that modern humans evolved from archaic humans in Africa at least 200,000 years ago.
The ability to pinpoint the time and place of our species' origin comes largely from studying people's genes. By comparing genetic variation among humans from around the globe, geneticists can calculate a family tree of everyone's relationships to one another, and by calibrating that tree, estimate when everyone last shared a common ancestor. Hundreds of such studies using data from thousands of people concur that all living humans can trace their roots to a common ancestral population that lived in Africa about 300,000 to 200,000 years ago, and that a subset of humans dispersed out of Africa starting about 100,000 to 80,000 years ago. In other words, until very recently, all human beings were Africans. These studies also reveal that all living humans are descended from an alarmingly small number of ancestors. According to one calculation, everyone alive today descends from a population of fewer than 14,000 breeding individuals from sub-Saharan Africa, and the initial population that gave rise to all non-Africans was probably fewer than 3,000 people. Our recent divergence from a small population explains another important fact, one that every human ought to know: we are a genetically homogenous species.
This got me thinking of my trip, my family, what I know, what they know, who and what they worship, where they spend their time, what I do with mine and I suddenly felt more alive, simply for reading that passage. The things I learn from science give me such elation, such joy to realize I'm learning something that is real. These things really happened. I'm getting closer to the truth more than any ancient book of fairy tales could ever get me. I only wish the same for my family. I wish I could rightly express how much good science has brought to my life compared to religion.
As put better by a YouTube atheist Phil Hennes,
When I compare what scientific knowledge has done for me and what religion tried to do to me ... I sometimes literally shiver. Religions tell children they might go to hell and they must believe, while science tells children they came from the stars and presents reasoning they can believe.
This discovery that we are all essentially Africans should have also ended racism the day it was discovered. If you have a family member that is racist you should show them the passage above. Racism is based in scientific ignorance. Period. Learn as much as you can about the natural sciences. Teach your friends and family as much as you can as well. The more informed we are about our history as a species the better we are equipped to combat ignorance, racism, and harmful religious dogma.
In that last hour that I spent with my mom in that coffee shop near her work I brought up a lot of things about my dad. I told my mom he finally said he loved me and how much fun we had. I also let her know how much fun I had with her and her boyfriend, my grandparents, and aunts and uncles. We talked about how hard it is to live so far away from your immediate family and how much we miss each other. I also brought up how my dad said us, humans are not in control of our death. When God wants us to go, we go.
I began to say, "That's what's wrong at the core of what dad believes. Faith. Not taking control of your own destiny, etc." but my mother interrupted me saying, "But now God also doesn't want us to robots either, he gives us choices... etc." I realized what she was doing. I know it probably pains my mother to know that I'm an atheist, as it does many people who are out atheists in a religious family. She didn't want to follow that logic to it's natural conclusion: we live in a cold, indifferent cosmos with no cosmic purpose or plan for our species. As desolate or empty as that may sound, it is where the evidence points. In fact, as I pointed out earlier there is just as much evidence for an UNintelligent Designer as there is an Intelligent one. This brings logically to the only rational conclusion: There is no designer. But as you have seen things still matter. I am still a (what I would consider) highly intelligent, walking, talking bipedal ape communicating and having emotional connections to other walking, talking bipedal apes. How more amazing is that than any fairy tale?
I experienced the beauty of autumn in the Midwest with all it's tree color and black walnut litter. I felt the cool breeze on my skin as I took a walk, past maple trees, old oak stumps, sunlight illuminating each yellow leaf all on a property my family owns. I experienced what it is to be a human animal. We have evolved to crave high calorie food. Our distant ancestors in the Savannah through Africa needed as much high calorie food as possible as food sources were scarce due to climate change and plate tectonics. Our bodies still crave these foods but since the advent of agriculture and our highly advanced technologies we now have an abundance of high calorie food and we still eat it like it was going out of style. I know this is what contributed to my heart condition. I know this, because I know the history of the human body now. No supernatural nonsense required, just straight scientific data.
I experienced the love and joy of my family as a highly advanced, walking talking ape. We (a bunch of bipedal apes) laughed because it relieves stress and helps lower blood pressure. We rode bikes (exercising to advance our health) through forests near the Mississippi River. I looked through old journal entries about various girlfriends, and fake movie posters I created taking me back to being a kid -- to another time when I felt like a whole different person. We enjoyed film, we discussed current affairs and we ultimately bonded as healthy families do. All of this and still I'm an ape. All of this and still the cosmos is without purpose or plan. All of this and still there is no god. And somehow when you let go of all this unfounded peripheral baggage we are allowed to focus in on what really matters:
Those we love most:
Our family.
Meet Chris Highfill:
http://www.seminolebaptist.org/#/about-us/staff
Visit the Fin Inn Restaurant in Grafton, Illinois. (where the fish watch you eat their relatives)
http://www.fininn.com/
Listen to "When a Savior Dreams":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sly2FPRlefY
Meet Matt Dilahunty: (his YouTube channel)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/HCs-YqGDJ8-lo
Read: Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker's:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/better-angels-of-our-nature-steven-pinker/1100480675?ean=9780143122012
See how science can save your soul:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6w2M50_Xdk
Read: The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease by Daniel Lieberman:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-story-of-the-human-body-daniel-lieberman/1114918051?ean=9780307379412
Visit your local Baskin Robbins:
(just kidding. I'm not putting a link to Baskin Robbins)
