1. Jesus or Nothing? How about Jesus Died for Nothing? / 2. Ghosts Are People Too! (2 Blog Shorts)

1. Jesus or Nothing? How about Jesus Died for Nothing? 

As I've mentioned many times in previous entries, I was raised in an Evangelical Christian home. The specific denomination was Baptist. Most people in my life (family and friends) did and still do even accept young earth creationism. Now, most of these people, I think I can safely say, haven't done their homework. Most reject the entire theory of evolution or at the very least when applied to our species. So it's safe to say these well meaning Baptist Christians reject something they haven't taken the time to learn the basics of. That being said, we know that in those that are educated in the sciences will accept the validity of the theory of evolution (even when it deals with human origins). Well, simply because it is probably one of the strongest theories in science (with so much evidence to support it no scientist really questions it anymore)

A few years back I stumbled across an NPR article and interview titled "Evangelicals Question the Existence of Adam and Eve". In this article we meet Albert Mohler who I was introduced first to me by my friend who is the dean of a Christian college (I have mentioned him before). Albert Mohler was once his boss. Albert Mohler explains here

http://www.albertmohler.com/2011/08/31/adam-and-eve-clarifying-again-what-is-at-stake/

that if Christianity let's go of a historical Adam and Eve then Christianity is done. I couldn't agree more. I think many would agree with this too on all sides of this. Some Christian theologians have tried desperately to reconcile a metaphorical Adam and Eve in several different ways all of which are refuted by renowned biologist Jerry A. Coyne (author of Why Evolution Is True) here:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115759/adam-eve-theologians-try-reconcile-science-and-fail .

Of course if one is at all familiar with not only the theory of evolution by natural selection but specifically the origin of homo sapiens we understand there is no such thing as "the first two" of any species. Obviously "divine magic" has no place in the field of paleontology, but it is well understood by those who have looked at the evidence that it is impossible for there to have been a historical Adam and Eve. We know too much about the human genome, we know too much about species populations, radiometric dating of bones, teeth, etc to accept the Adam and Even story as a literal, historical event. There simply could not be a historical Adam and Eve.

As Christian apologists do what they do best and search everywhere for ways to bend the real worldview provided to us all by scientific evidence to fit with their specific dogma from Scripture, more and more evidence is piling up on our ancestors and our closest relatives. The picture of our past as a species gets clearer ever day. Just read the scientific journals. The professionals in their fields are pulling back the curtain on our origins. What isn't in the scientific journals is a historical Adam and Eve.

If you haven't noticed yet, one of the most difficult things to do is to get any of the New Christians to name specific problems they have with the scientific evidence paleontologists, geneticists, biologists have presented for the origin or our species. Why? A good amount I would say do not know enough of the science to speak to human origins, but others must know to accept the science (from the majority of professionals in that field of study) is suicide for their religious worldview. Once you open the door to the evidence on human origins (as Darwin has already done for us over a hundred years ago) you shoot your theology in the foot before you can even introduce a Savoir to the mix. This is where Mohler and I agree completely. So what's the option? Well, Mohler doesn't seem to ever give specific scientific evidence to counter the claims made by professional scientists (since he apparently knows more on the subject, enough at least to reject it as false). We see the dodge. The deflection is in full color.

Mohler and many Evangelicals like him will go down with the ship and that's precisely what they've done and are continually doing. It's ongoing. I just spent almost six to seven months reading and discussing a book called The Atheist's Guide to Reality by Alex Rosenberg with my good friend (the Dean of a Christian school I have already mentioned). In our email exchanges he explained how he thinks atheists do not have a moral framework in which to base anything. Basically, embracing atheism leads to nihilism. He has even written a book (in which I will review soon) called Jesus or Nothing with this very theme. However, it seems to me if the framework for your entire religion hinges on a historical Adam and Eve and science has conclusively proven that there was no such two people then cannot the same thing be attributed to your worldview? Where is a Christian's theological framework to their worldview if Adam and Eve never existed?

Without Adam and Even, as Mohler points out, we have no original sin. We have no atonement for the sin of humanity without a historic Adam and Eve to commit the first sin. We still debate whether Jesus was a real person let alone died, and rose again and all this. Even if these things could be historically proven conclusively (and don't let any Lee Strobel-like apologists tell you that it has been, because it hasn't) that still is meaningless without Adam and Eve. Forget Jesus or NOTHING, if there was no historical Adam and Eve (which we have solid scientific evidence to prove there was not) then Jesus died FOR NOTHING. And he must have (if he even existed) because the evidence shows there was no Adam and Eve.

See, we don't even have to talk about why an all-knowing, all-loving/wrathful bipolar Patriarchal God needs to shed the blood of himself/his son (like following some ancient cult spell or curse rulebook) to die for this one species of ape to knock Christianity to its knees. See, we don't need even get to the reality of talking snakes, donkeys, and bushes to take out the blood cult most call Christianity. Christianity was destroyed by Darwin over a century ago. Move on.

Check out my friend's book Jesus or Nothing here:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/jesus-or-nothing-dan-dewitt/1116874863?ean=9781433540462

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2. Ghosts are People Too!

I just came back from a very fun family vacation (with my girlfriend, my brother, and my mother and her boyfriend) to Southern California and Catalina Island. We had a beach house that we rented and relaxed by the ocean for a week. On Catalina Island we all laughingly (I think.?) said it would be a fun idea to go on the local ghost tour. Well, obviously it was going to be a joke. It was essentially a tour of the main street of the city of Avalon as the tour guide told ghost story after ghost story. At one point I said to my mom, "Maybe at this point the tour guide should just tell us when we get to a building where there wasn't a haunting."

My brother laughed as he downloaded the "ghost locator" Iphone app that the tour guide told us to download.  We located multiple ghosts. Each giving a very vague message. One happened to be located once exactly on top of the tour guide (thus we concluded she was probably a ghost, ... obviously). The tour guide explained the 7 layers of paranormal dimensions and instructed each of us to take pictures .. "You very well may pick up some orbs!" She said (AKA ghosts - which are very tiny circular dead humans apparently). My girlfriend caught a couple dust or water particles on camera in a few pics. I am skeptical of the orb thing. Did I need to say that?

Anyways, we all had a good laugh and that was that. We stopped at the gourmet coffee shop near where we were staying and gathered around the table to tell our own ghost stories from our past. I had a few myself. One was when I was in college in Missouri my friend John and I worked at a resort where we cleaned up and set up banquets for various corporate events or dinners. It was an exhausting job that wasn't worth the money and kept us there sometimes til 3am. This resort was said to be haunted. We discovered this at orientation. Apparently someone of some significance to the resort in the early 1900s had a daughter that killed herself by jumping of this cliff near the building that was eventually called "Dorothy's Presence" (which was eventually turned into a gift shop. Ghosts are good capitalists). The human resources employee giving us the tour during orientation said many guests of the resort have witnessed Dorothy's ghost (clothed in her 1900s original white party dress and hat). 

One night around 2:30am or so John and I were taking a quick smoke break out the back of one of the many buildings at the resort while out of the corner of my eye I caught Dorothy. A woman dressed in an all white dress slowly walking down into the woods nearby. She appeared somewhat transparent, and floated while she walked. I screamed very loud like a little girl and literally jumped sky high then clung to my friend John. He was confused because he didn't see it. However, my story as convincing to me as it was (at the time) was not as convincing as a few others presented by my family. One story involved multiple people witnessing the same supernatural event. Needless to say, I was the only supernatural (ghost, angel, demon, etc) skeptic around this table. I used to believe in angels and demons when I was a Christian. I am no longer a Christian (as my mom and her boyfriend still are and admitted that night specifically to belief in such supernatural things as angels).

I am also confused by Christians that profess a belief in ghosts and also adhere to Christian dogma (which is when you die you either go to heaven or hell.) This isn't even a purgatory situation - since my family isn't Catholic, nor if they were would ghosts describe what the Catholic church teaches on purgatory. Aren't these contradictory beliefs? You can't be in heaven or hell and still roaming around knocking over lamps and opening and shutting doors randomly after you die. Also, why are we so prone to assume these ghosts are humans that have died. If death (afterlife) is essentially the same "experience" as before life  - just nothingness (which is what I believe) then if we were to take the next step to believe in these ghosts why couldn't they be "pre-birthed" humans? Confirmation bias all the time everywhere with us fallible apes.

Carl Sagan once wrote that yesterday's demon possessions are today's alien abduction. He's right, though angels and demons still exist too for some. No one talked of aliens (at least as we can tell by the literature) in our distant past. The supernatural beliefs have shifted and evolved over time. Each claim (whether it be ghost sightings, demon possession, guardian angel sighting, alien space craft sighting, or alien abduction) should be taken on a case by case basis. I am pretty confidence in saying most accounts can most likely be explained by natural phenomenon.

It's easy to piss people off, or even offend family and friends when you attack their beliefs regarding something they witnessed or a story of someone close to them witnessing something supernatural. It's so personal, it's a very deep subjective experience in some cases. So a skeptic has to somewhat be careful on what one says. I mostly kept my mouth shut during these conversations. I expressed my disbelief and no one pressed me on it. Maybe I should have expressed more, but like I said, it's a touchy terrain to tread down with the people you love most.

I vividly remember my aunt telling me a story when I was young about her son's guardian angel. My cousin was very little and my aunt was driving down the road while he started choking. (which, by the way, I would like to interject is a pretty good example of "UNintelligent design" within our "made in the Image of God" species) Anyways, she immediately pulled the car over into an abandoned parking lot. It was late, she said, no one was around. She tried desperately to get my cousin to spit out what was keeping him from breathing. To no avail. Out of no where -- she explained -- a man in an all black suit pulls up in a limo, jumps out, grabs my cousin and performs the heinrich maneuver. He spits out the piece of food he had lodged in his throat. My aunt grabs my cousin, in tears, hugging him, asking him if he is OK. She said after a mere few seconds she looks over to thank the man that just saved her son's life and sure enough... he was GONE! He had completely disappeared - thus, ... her conclusion: guardian angel. I shared this with my family around the table as we sipped our coffee and ate our dessert.

You probably are a good enough skeptic to pick apart this story for what it is. And hopefully a good enough skeptic to pick apart my own personal "ghost" experience I mentioned above. What my aunt concluded from this event doesn't have enough evidence to support her conclusion. The entire experience is riddled with issues and variables. This is the same aunt that recommended my father read Pastor John Hagee's new book about the "blood moons" signaling certain Biblical events soon to come. She also recommended he read the "dying and going to heaven" bestselling books - A child has a near death experience about arriving in heaven, a neurosurgeon has the same near death experience (well, only same in the way that they confirm what they already knew prior to their near death experience - which is the Christian religion and stories in the Bible talking about heaven. They are not similar experiences in that one is flying on a giant butterfly while the other is explaining how everyone is a little kid in heaven.) The neurosurgeon has more credibility than a child obviously so Eben Alexander's book Proof of Heaven holds more weight among believers BUT the loveable kid's story is just so much more cute since it's a little boy's experience, which made it sell more copies. Seems we collectively prefer cute kid accounts of "after death" experiences over a scientist's "after death experience". Check the sales numbers.

Life isn't simple. Being a skeptic and thinking scientifically and philosophically are noble and best attempts to get at the underlying truth to our reality. This is all we have. The best tools are our reasoning capabilities through our own conscious experience. We are easily tricked, easily superstitious (just ask a sports fan). We use phrases like "Lord willing," or "knock on wood" or "pray for me" or "wish me luck". Why? None of it makes actual sense in the cosmos we know. We aren't affecting the outside shared reality of the universe with our minds here. We're not all a bunch of Professor Xaviers here from Xmen.

I should have stood up at the table and proclaimed loudly, "I used to believe in a god, demons, angels, aliens, ghosts, etc etc but I no longer accept claims without sufficient evidence to support them. ESPECIALLY extraordinary claims such as something like witnessing the supernatural happening! It feels good to tell ghosts stories because we have evolved a social set of playfulness and fear and struggle and the LOVE of stories that channel these things. That's it. Can't that be enough?! ... Can not that be enough?!" Then I could have slowly sat back down after the diatribe to crickets and

 .. "DUDE COME ON! .. why you always have to ruin the fun?!"
I think I chose wisely in retrospect. Haha!

In the car on the way back I argued that in the United States we need to invest more in education. I didn't want to go off course talking about how the department of education wastes tax payer money through various programs that bog down the system and so on as my mom's boyfriend took the conversation. What I meant by this was according to the polls asking basic questions to the citizens of this country we are embarrassingly ignorant of all sorts of subjects in mathematics and sciences. This is why we need shows like the new revamped Cosmos series to educate the people of this country. When polled almost half the citizens of this country do not accept the theory of evolution. Don't get me started on climate change. There are people that claim to know more about certain specific fields of science (such as the climate change and evolution deniers) than the majority of scientists. Think about that for a second. That's insane. And if you have ever listened to talk radio, watched a debate with a young earth creationist or turned on Fox News you will see these people are proud of their ignorance. Sad. Do what you can to educate those that are ignorant of these things that are well accepted in the scientific community.

"The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the ignorant are full of doubt." - Bertrand Russell

Check out Catalina Island Ghost Tour if you ever visit Avalon:
http://www.ghosttoursofcatalina.com/

Everything In Moderation: What I've learned about Religion and Atheism in My Own Life (A Blog Short)

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. 

Proverbs 22:6

Train up a heavily religious indoctrinated child and he/she will either stay in "the religious bubble" or become an advocate for Anti-theism (or at the very least an agnostic or atheist). Not always true of course, there are exceptions, but moderation seems to be the key. I looked for verses to fit the moderation theme I wanted to do for this blog, but none would fit with what I was talking about, so unlike most Evangelical pastors or I will not just snatch a Bible verse and make it fit to the point I'm trying to make. Indoctrinate a child (as in the documentary "Jesus Camp"- style) and you will either see a "Jesus freak" or "devout Muslim" or "Elder in the Church of Jesus Christ" or (name your religious zealot)... OR a God Delusion reading, Christopher Hitchens citing Anti-theist. It's not nurture vs. nature. It's a little of both actually. Read Stephen Pinker's "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature". It's the power of cultural evolution and neural conditioning working together.

The majority of my friends that were brought up with moderate or mild religious dogma mixed with a  healthy dose of science, philosophy, and history in the public school system usually don't think much of these things. I would consider them Apatheists:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatheism

One of my friends was raised in that environment and is an atheist but considers this question long settled in philosophy years ago. Which it was. Christian apologists just refuse to accept it. I mean what is religion if it isn't constantly moving the goal post to make the evidence "fit" to your faith? The New Christians (I have a few friends in this group) who are more culturally literate, fashionably creative, graphic design savvy, and open to liberal ideas such as gay marriage. Well, some are. Some of my New Christian friends just ignore the question. Usually anything difficult gets ignored in conversations. Denying homosexual the same rights as heterosexuals is uncomfortable to talk about for those that seem so progressive in their faiths otherwise.

But we are needy creatures, emotional beings that appeal to emotion, and religion (at least Christianity) is probably 90% emotion (as most of it's followers are ignorant of the Bible, and most use pleas to emotion to convert people to their faith *See move "God's Not Dead") and the rest theology, history, etc. We are pattern seeking mammals, that find "doing science" or I should say thinking scientifically about the most things difficult to say the least. Just ask a person on the street to name the first 6 elements on the periodic table or what a day or a year actually is. Doing science is hard, thinking scientifically is not easy. It's not directly obvious to us in our everyday life. We take gravity for granted. We come up with conspiracy theories with no evidence to support them. We always pick the easiest routes. Most prefer stories. Most prefer Father figures behind the curtain of this cosmos. One that watches and cares for you. (Ignore Somalia - You see, that can be explained because Satan owns this particular planet now and the risen Jesus will come again after waiting for his cue in heaven on the Mt. of Olives followed by a lake of blood of his opponents... anyways, it gets complicated. All true tho!)

I always say that the academic discipline of complex Biblical apologetics can be summed up by just a few simple concepts: All the bad/evil in the world can be attributed to sin due to "the Fall" of humans. This apparently goes for 99% of all species that have ever lived going extinct. - Man's sin. We are assholes, clearly! Our single species allowed all other species (that's right, 99% of all the species that have ever lived on planet Earth) to go extinct. Oops. Also, slavery wasn't REALLY slavery in the Bible. So ya know... The All-Knowing Perfect Moral Lawgiver letting us know it is OK (and even mandated in some verses) for human beings to own other human beings. But don't mix fabrics! Gross!

But that's off topic.

I had a recent face to face with the reality of the religiosity of my family. My father was hospitalized a few months ago. He stunned me over the phone as I'm still trying to deal with the severity of the situation. He had to get blood transfusion, he was bleeding internally and was in need of surgery to attain a diagnosis. As he's telling me all of this I'm in the break room at my job, still frozen in shock as he gets off the phone my dad says "please pray for me, son!" It didn't even register what was happening as I'm saying "Um, sure.. Ok dad. Please take care and call me as soon as you know anything. I'll come home ASAP." Did I pray for my dad to a God I don't think exists. Of course not. But as usual ... it prayer is useless and doesn't matter. You'll see why...

My aunt came to take care of her brother while he was still unsure what was wrong with him. She stayed with him overnight at the hospital. My dad has always been close to my aunt. She is his youngest sister of the two. She is also extremely Christian. She is very devout in her faith. I have mentioned her and my uncle before in previous blogs entries of my trips back home. She is vocal about her Christianity. They were very excited to see "God's Not Dead" movie together and she was pushing John Hagee's bullshit bestseller "Four Blood Moons". I always roll my eyes when I say that or even type that title. It's just a natural reaction to these "non-fiction" books on Biblical prophecy being fulfilled. How can this be believed by a thinking person in 2014?! I mean seriously?! Do people not have a single ounce of skepticism in their body these days?!

My dad came through surgery with flying colors and I'm happy to announce the cause of the internal bleeding was nothing too serious and is manageable with medication. Of course they called and texted me with the great news, attributing this great news with God and his grace and mercy and so on. I just thought ... how sad. The poor doctor who performed the surgery. The scientists, biologists, human anatomists, medical doctors of the past that made all these great medical discoveries to be able to perform such a surgery weren't even mentioned at all. How much money and time and brain power went into the education of these smart people and how do they not get even a simple sentence in a text message saying "Thank these amazing doctors for what they do to give us this great news!"? Us humans are so disconnected with reality. The greatest accomplishments are taken for granted and attributed to the invisible Father in the sky. While at the same time rich snake oil salesman pastors get rich and respect by saying lunar eclipse are prophetic by pulling shit out of their ass. How sad. How pathetic.

It has been brought to my attention multiple times that the reason I even have this blog or vent or rant so much in emails or in conversation about religion is because I was raised so strictly in fundamental Christianity. I was sheltered from everything secular, well as much as could possibly happen. A few non-Christian rock bands or movies would find their way into my childhood/teenage years, but not many. I grew up late. I became an anti-theist in my twenties after two full years of Bible college, and as I've settled down a bit in my 30's, I still enjoy a good rant on religion from time to time... obviously.

So everything in moderation. Of course when I have kids they will more than likely be brought up atheists as I have no religion to promote to them as they grow up. I will teach them religion and how some people believe this: Christianity (most of your family) and how some people they may know believe this: Islam. And so on... My son or daughter will most definitely be shown the spectrum of the history of religion (the dead ones) as well as the lasting modern religions. They can make up their own mind in regards to believing it or not. The approach will be educational though not indoctrination like my past. That is nonnegotiable for me. I don't believe in brainwashing children with any dogma unsupported by evidence. I think everything in moderation is smart. So if you must indoctrinate your child, maybe don't do it quite like I was, don't surround your child with ONLY your religious belief. Give the kid options. Never smother. That's what being a smart parent is about in my opinion. I think some people in my own family would even agree with that now in hindsight.

Religion as a natural phenomenon is just as fascinating to me as art or music. It's history, its origin is beautifully human. It's unique (as far as we know) to our species. Doesn't mean it's all true. Of course not. They ALL can't be true, but they can all be untrue. That is simply another reason why I don't believe in God.

And now I feel that I must pull a Marc Maron here by ending this blog entry waxing poetic with a self-centered evaluation: I am guilty of living a life drastically outside the rule that "everything in moderation is for the best." Whether it be alcohol use, tobacco (in my past), obsessively collecting books and movies, blogging, or obsessing over religion or atheism. I have been told by the person that is the closest to me that I should really try to find a way to strike a balance in my religious/anti-religion obsession. She is an Apatheist if I had to label her. She is daily bombarded by my rants. I feel for her. I will never be able to shake my childhood indoctrination completely; unlike my brother, who apparently can, I may be always doomed to think on these things and think on them every single day. But this is something I should be able to control to some extent. Many have. We need an AA for to help with "religious/anti-religious ranting" addiction.

There has to be healthier ways to configure these thoughts in my mind. I often attribute it to the complexity that is deep philosophical questions and how it is really OK to constantly try to unravel the puzzle of existence of "this ALL!" Of the Cosmos. It's fascinating! It's fun! Humans have been doing it for thousands of years! There are things I need to come to grips with in my life to allow me to move on.

The fact my family is Christian and can be vocally so is one of these things. It may always be rocky and a hard road to travel in the future as we are on polar opposite sides of the spectrum of the God question. I just hope our relationship stays strong and that we continue to love each other unconditionally despite whether we're a die hard Anti-theist or a vocal Baptist Christian. I can only hope to find the formula for my life that will give me some peace and those surrounding me can be in peace too. Hopefully I can also discover something that may be able to shift the moderation problem for me. It can't come soon enough.

Science Doesn't Disprove God (Salon Aritlce Review)

Science Doesn't Disprove God: Where Richard Dawkins and New Atheist Go Wrong:

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/19/science_doesnt_disprove_god_where_richard_dawkins_and_new_atheists_go_wrong/

This is a great article. What's always fascinated me is if Neanderthals made art. Also look at this article:
http://www.nature.com/news/neanderthal-culture-old-masters-1.12974

There seems to be some evidence to support they at least buried their dead, which is ritualistic, which does point possibly to a belief in an afterlife / which could possibly mean they had a rudimentary religion of some sort. Maybe not. The art thing is still in dispute as the author of the Salon article points out.

However, when the Amir mentions how "art" seems to be the dividing point to separate us from other hominid species (and makes us officially "human") the point appears to be lost on Amir that this idea of "conceptualizing things" or "symbolizing things" (the very thing that probably separates us from other species of animals) is where A LOT of sociobiologists think the concept of "god" was created. At that very point in our history.

Also a friend of mine pointed out too trying to pinpoint a point where "we became human" with all these special features our species has that others do not is like trying to pin point when beavers exactly became more precise dam builders. As in all things with evolution, it is very gradual and impossible to pin down.

However When Amir writes,

To what extent can evolutionary theory answer this question? Evolutionary science cannot indicate to us the location of the point on the continuous evolutionary scale, which Dawkins believes is there, at which human consciousness arises. Evolutionary theory is unable to tell us how life began, how eukaryotic cells evolved, how intelligence came about, or how consciousness arose in living thing

I couldn't agree more with him. Evolutionary science isn't magic. It only tells us so much about our existence. Abiogenesis is a field of science that deals with origin of life questions as he mentions, but philosophy is still alive in my opinion (where I disagree when the brilliant Stephen Hawking says "philosophy is dead") and we need to create a working theory of the rise of consciousness in our species. Cognitive science is working on this too. It's a real thing. I just bought a book about this last night on my nook called "The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory" by Chalmers

Here's the thing. I mostly agree with this article. Dawkins and some of the new atheists are not philosophers. I don't think science has disproven god necessarily. (though I think it has thoroughly disproven many historical or scientific truth claims made in the various ancient "holy" books of the big monotheistic religions alive today.) I do think that philosophy has disproven the idea of "god". Most working professional philosophers are atheists. Like most of academia, atheism is by far the norm (in all fields of study - minus theology of course. Though a great deal of Biblical scholars are nonbelievers. *See Robert M. Price). It's the "common people" the "citizenry" that are still struggling with this "is there a god or not" question still.

I personally think this question was settled years ago. There is no god. (at least not like any of the ones we've came up with over the years) There is just no evidence for him/her/it.

Amir is right. We have never seen consciousness be created by any other human being and should be very skeptical of claims that in the future this can happen with robots or whatever. He writes,

Consciousness, symbolic thinking, self-awareness, a sense of beauty, art, and music, and the ability to invent language and pursue science and mathematics—these are all qualities that transcend simple evolution: they may not be absolutely necessary for survival. These attributes of the human mind may well be described as divine: they belong to what is way above the ordinary or the compulsory for survival. The origins and purpose of consciousness and artistic and musical and literary and scientific creativity remain mysterious. Why would evolution alone bring about such developments that appear to have little to do with the survival of an individual or a species?

There is some problem here because some of these attributes can actually be connected to evolution. First, this self-awareness thing needs to not be a part of this list since other species of animals like some apes and dolphins are self aware (via mirror tests). Symbolic thinking may strictly be human. Of course art and music are interesting things that seem strictly human but like we said there could turn up to be evidence for cave paintings that are of Neanderthal origin. Not yet though. It's hard to be conclusive as you see in that Nature article I posted here. To me the invention of science and mathematics (just another form of symbolic thinking) is the greatest unique human accomplishment because it isn't "natural" for us to think scientifically because it goes against what "seems right" in our guts. Think about how most people don't know how to do science. Or math!

I wouldn't say these things are necessarily divine, just... mysterious. the one thing we don't NEED to do is attribute "mysteries" with supernatural gods, or "cosmic purposes" or whatever (we made these mistakes in the past, obviously ... just look at what used to be "god's wrath" now is just a hurricane) In science "The god hypothesis" is just completely useless and unnecessary. He's right that science can't disprove god. God is an ever-changing mystical idea. Science only uses what is useful for experiments. So to me, the God concept is just unhelpful and offers nothing to the conversation. This is what gave rise to the atheist mock god "The Flying Spaghetti Monster". We can postulate anything or anyone as "god". Religion can always move the goal post too, but makes liberal religions mold and change along side secular humanism. Why the rituals? Why the superstitious outdated silliness? I just don't see the point personally.

I still think that Amir would do well to read reports from primatologist like Francis deWaal to see just how "human" other primates are. His new book "The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates". So in this regard the gap isn't quite as drastic as some would say. I would say our intelligence . Science - the very thing this article is arguing against (well, scientism I guess, basically) is the most unique human creation. Even more than art or music (though these are wonderfully beautiful human contributions)

BUT saying that, he is dead on when he says our brain is vastly more intelligent than all other animal species. He sites great examples of classical music to Einstein's theory. Brilliance is our mantra. I love the Daniel Dennett quote. That man is a goddamn genius. I can read his writing (even when most of it goes right over my head) any day! :)

He finishes with these very powerful words that I think sum up nicely where all the sciences and humanities must converge to find an answer to:

We are faced here with one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in the history of science: At what point in hominid development and evolution does human consciousness appear? What exactly is our consciousness? What makes us different from animals? What gives us the powers to create and to think symbolically and to develop language?

However, mysteries do not equal "God". The concept of God among those that are quite literally the smartest among us apes is a concept that has been settled. God IS dead. 

Sorry Kevin Sorbo.

A Walk Through the Bible with Magog

Just as a pig can be possessed by a demon a human body can be possessed by something else. Call it a ghost, an gin, a demon, an angel, a son of god, these bodies are clearly just shells. And as with the example of demonic swine this isn’t just reserved for homo sapiens. Lord knows how many of our past ancestors like homo erectis or Neanderthals were plagued as hosts to these supernatural beings.

People believe this today. And yes it is 2014. March to be exact and I just got done debating the soul with a friend of mine who is a Christian. He wrote a new book about his ideas about godlessness vs. god. He cannot admit that he accepts the whole of the theory of evolution. Which is to say – the part involving human beings. Which is to say - he disagrees with 99.9% of professional biologists. He must know more then them. Strange. If I could ever be able to convince him of the actual science that leads us to these conclusions that homo sapiens evolved from lower species of animals then I could of course ask at which point did God insert the “soul”? Remember too, through the lens of biological evolution it’s a nonsensical question to ask when was the first human being. Yeah, hate to break it to everyone reading this but the Adam and Eve story, ... yeah well it's a story. That's it. So Christianity fails before it even gets going, but let's pretend I didn't just write all of that and move on.

This "ghost in the machine" is a notion based in human animal introspection going back millions of years. Fear of death gave us religion and other cultural phenomenon such as afterlife stories and of course stories of hell if one not adhere to whatever form of religion was around at the time.

The Christian myth is essentially the most powerful to us today in America since it is the most commonly practiced religion followed closely by Islam. Muslims accept Jesus as a great prophet, but not the son of god, as is aptly named by author and history Reza Aslan in his book “No God but God”. However in Christian dogma the real fun begins. 

Let's take a tour through the Bible:

THE OLD TESTAMENT

Here we have in the beginning (I guess the Big Bang?) a god named Yahweh, who created this universe. That’s right. He created it perfect. A rebelling angel that was cast down to this perfect planet (guess God didn’t see this coming or did since he is all knowing or this instantly makes no sense) takes the form of a snake and convinces the first two homo sapiens (which evolutionary biology tells us is impossible) that they should listen and eat of the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That’s right we see right off the bat Yahweh doesn’t like knowledge. Ouch. How foretelling. It gets more fun…

After these two bipedal apes eat from this forbidden fruit they recognize they are naked. *Sin = nakedness. Which by that rational all other species of animals (minus your little pet chihuahua that you dress up in a tutu) are in sin. What a fair and balanced God! (Remember God- only Yahweh- and Fox News are tight!) The God of the Bible is so full of anthropomorphic fallacies its not even funny. Almost makes a rational thinking person think that this whole thing may be concocted from the minds of a few bipedal apes. Hmmm. 

Nah.

It's probably all true.

Everything becomes terrible after “sin” entered the world. You need an advanced degree in theology to say what I’m about to say next, - At this point sin entered the world and death by sin. So everything died. Before this nothing died. NOTHING. Not even black holes. Of course it’s up for debate among Christian cosmologists whether black holes and colliding galaxies even existed before the “fall of man”. They’re working on it. These hard scientific questions aren’t easy. We still need more time to examine these things. Can I get a ... Anthropomorphic fallacy?? What?

Here's some things that are explained by Sin by most Christian apologists:

Human anatomy which is riddled with problems (most humans first dying of tooth decay, pathogens, sanitation problems, child mortality rate is staggeringly high in those early years) = SIN. Again, collapsing stars, black holes swallowing up stars with possibly habitable planets = SIN. (All of which is a mistake by 2 human beings by the way.) 99% of all animal species on this planet going extinct = SIN. The endless list of the problems with the human anatomy alone (allergies, choking to death while eating and breathing, mismatched diseases etc) = SIN

Christian apologetics can be summed up as "God did it" or it's all "due to sin". Takes years of seminary to get these advanced degrees to basically learn the "god of the gaps/sin caused all bad things" arguments.

God at this time is busy flooding the earth due to homo sapien’s sin, but not being a total dick by keeping 2 of every animal species (including dinosaurs) and putting them on a large wooden ship that would by a mathematical certainty snap apart immediately once at sea. A strong case can be made for Unintelligent Design just using the Bible itself. Thoughout the Old Testament we see God having to wipe out clusters of humans because they weren’t living up to what he wanted form a species that has free will. Or this just makes no sense. 

Stay with me

After the mayhem of destroying all of every species of animal (except a couple of each species) he moves on with his chosen people (yep, God has a favorite tribe of people among his human creations – the Jews!) It’s like a team. Go Chicago Bulls! Go Jewish people!

Now the fun part: Jesus. Remember we have to first get ourselves to accept our intuition and introspection.  We must be convinced that we are something or someone inside our bodies. We are not our bodies, but these bodies are merely vessels and the essence of what’s inside (our soul/spirit/essence/whatever) is truly us. We are spiritual beings having a human experience as one New Age book is titled. (not the reptilian guy) If you don’t believe that and feel like you know enough cognitive science to accept the data that supports that the mind is a projection of the brain or at least there is zero evidence of a mind existing outside of a brain then you may have a problem with the next bit:

THE NEW TESTAMENT

So the blood bath of the Old Testament comes to an end and the all-loving all-powerful, all-just God who sanctions the killing of mass groups of people (and raping the women, ... I’m sorry I meant little girls) while also etching a commandment in stone saying that killing is wrong. Not hypocritical. We are here with a fresh breath of air into the New Testament (the less barbaric of the testaments) where suddenly prophecies are being fulfilled (see James Randi on the hoax of prophecy fulfillment and that should about put that to rest). We are graced (literally) with a young Jewish boy. He later follows in his “earthly” father’s footsteps and becomes a carpenter.

Everyone loves Jesus. America loves Jesus! Bill O'Reilly loves Jesus! Fox News loves Jesus! Everyone I freakin' know loves Jesus! He comes from lowly beginnings, humble, eventually preaches to sell your riches and give to the poor ... but also says to take up your sword and fight ... so some conflicting messages going on here. No wonder every possible type of human endeavor whether good or bad for society has had “Jesus on their side”. Think slavery (which was sanctioned in the Old Testament) or the civil rights movement. Think Democrats or Republicans. Rich or poor both are justified by Jesus' conflicting messages. If one was to literally follow the teachings of this man one would have the experience not unlike AJ Jacobs did in his book “Year of Living Biblically”. War, peace, rich, poor - Jesus is your guy!

But again Jesus' body wasn’t Jesus. Was it? Was Jesus the outlier (according to most people who believe in a soul) where he really was one with his body?! Was Jesus physical body and Jesus’s soul connected – fused, if you will? If he felt the pain and agony on the cross does that not suggest Jesus is his physical body? It's so confusing. If Jesus was a ghost in the machine (or Jesus’ soul was inserted into this body by God the father/who was also him/and a holy ghost– don’t ask about the damn ghost it gets too complicated – or it’s all made up, I'm still not sure.)

Jesus’ soul went somewhere for 3 days as his body lay decaying in a tomb according to the Bible. Some say he went to hell and conquered death and snatched some magical keys like some Lord of the Rings storyline. Maybe. Or maybe he chilled out in purgatory for 3 days kicking it with some sinners like he did on this planet. Either way what we do know is that Jesus soul is/was real – it left this plane of existence – thus it was supernatural, and that this "Son of God essence" went away from it’s body for 3 days.

Good news! Jesus synched back up with the "ape suit Jesus" and pulled himself off the grave and walked around (among other resurrected saints too by the way - read your Bible!) and became the “risen savoir” obviously. I mean who else rose from the dead?! (Except Lazareth – who clearly wasn’t the Son of God… I mean come on don’t make me laugh! Being dead and then coming back to life - even if you could prove it wouldn't prove you would be the Savior or anything! Duh.) Now we will assume that Jesus (the son of God miracle part of Jesus not the physical tortured part) healed his decaying body since in three days the human body starts to decay quite noticeably. 

No need for skepticism here.

Now this is where it gets a bit weird. Jesus goes around meeting with people he knew. As in the gospel of Luke he assures them all he is NOT A GHOST (Remember Jesus acknowledges that ghosts are real here) but it is him in flesh and blood. So again, remember this is Jesus (the same Jesus soul 3 days before he died) and this newly healed ape body is now walking, talking, and breathing and testifying that he is in fact the Son of God. 

He even eats with others after his resurrection. I always say if you have died and been resurrected after a few days you better EAT SOMETHING! Your body needs essentially vitamins and minerals now more than ever. Some have suggested doing this 3 days dead in the tomb diet, but I think it's pseudoscience. Doubting Thomas stops by and lives up to his name. He needs proof (unlike the rest of humanity to come) that he is in fact the risen savior. He feels with his own hands the nail holes and spear holes and believes he is in fact the Son of God. *Side note, I think I make a pretty strong case that Thomas was a poor scientist then because he still should even then be skeptical. There are other options than this man before you is the Son of God just because you felt his holes.

FAIR AND BALANCED: Anyways, despite the rest of humanity never getting the option to feel for ourselves the living savior's holes we are to accept with faith (how convenient!) that Jesus was not only real but the Son of God. Since as we've established if you are raised from the dead it makes you the Son of God (excluding the multitude of other saints resurrected and Lazareth as mentioned in the Bible, and of course this is in hinging on if you believe the beginning of this article I have written – that there is even a God in the first place).

It’s hard to discuss atheism with Christians because you not only have to deal with not believing in the One True God (no God but God) but with Christianity you have to deal with that God having a son who is also and/or God. And I haven’t even added the third more ridiculous layer of the Holy Ghost. (remember ghosts are real)  It’s exhausting. And how a Christian doesn’t see that the burden of proof in their court is beyond me. I'm an atheist... I got nothing. You're a Christian and you've got: A  Creator God (who doesn't need a mother or father) that has a Son/(which is also the Father) with no mother/and what the hell, throw a Ghost in there - make it Holy (which is also a Father/Son). This Son/Father/Ghost combo became a human being... to fix a mistake from 2 humans tricked by a snake... I can go on. 

and I will.

I’m still not done. Here’s now what happens. Jesus takes his newly resurrected body (remember it is flesh and blood according to Jesus’ own words) and ascends into heaven. OK. So Jesus (the physical homo sapien part which is housing his “son of god” soul) is shot up into the sky and into outer space according to the eye witnesses of the Bible. Sounds like an UFO sighting doesn’t it? Well, it’s not, don’t be ridiculous! Intelligent beings from another planet?! Don't be absurd! it’s the Ghost/Son/Father flying off into outer space. Carl Sagan once tried to calculate Jesus ascension as any working astrophysicist should. He concluded that even if Jesus traveled at the speed of light he wouldn't have yet escaped our galaxy. Jesus hasn’t even left our galaxy. Think about that.

Maybe Voyager will find him somewhere out there. I suppose if Voyager did find Jesus out there one would have to expect to see a "Son of God soul" devoid of any recognizable homo sapien body as that would have been shredded upon leaving earths atmosphere at that speed obviously. So those atoms and molecules that made up the body (the shell) of the Son of God is floating around somewhere in outer space. If they were to find their way back to earth – just imagine the money one could make or just imagine the power one would have collecting these. Screw Jesus toast! I want Jesus atoms!

So is this the end? Jesus said that he would return in the lifetime of the ones that witnessed his ascension. 

Did he? 

No. :(

Was Jesus a liar? 

Yes.

There are other books like Revelations in the New Testament that talk about the "End of Days" and horse/scorpions and and water turning into blood (standard plague shit). Don't focus on the glaring fact that the writers of Revelations hadn't read a modern biology book talking about how many mass extinctions the earth has had since the beginning of life. Don't think anthropomorphic fallacy. Don't think these men where ignorant of every possible bit of information modern science has given us about this entire planet's history. These men where channeling the one true God when writing these horse/scorpion predictions. Trust them. Believe them. Remember the Bible (in its entirety) is true, and grown ups get degrees in theology that consider this as real and relevant in 2014. Always cling to the Christian logic: The Bible Said It I believe It That Settles It. The Bible is true because the Bible says it is true.

That's some solid logic!

Into the Lion's Den ... Again: Notes on a Recent Trip

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)