It’s what all the teachers call
an awkward age
Well I wish that I
Could find out why
I was
…so uncool
And I didn’t know
why I was hated so
I never even met them
“It’s just the way kids are,” they say
“Grow a spine, wish it away.”

I remember growing older
I remember ages twelve to eighteen
I remember waking marked and bloody
And always wishing I could not be seen
…by a soul
crawling into a hole

Well it’s what all the doctors call
an awkward age
and they call them zits
or pimples leaving pits
but then
…pain is pain
And the scars it left
and all the marks I’ve kept
are more than on my face
Into my soul the phrase I’ll heap
“Beauty’s more than just skin deep

I remember growing older
I remember being one and forty
I remember her being in the bathtub
with bad pen marks darkly
…on her arms
crying over all the harms

Now its what I will choose to call
an awkward age
when her mind did start
to fall apart
and I
…grew so strong
And I managed to
do what I had to do
Never mind my own needs
My mighty shoulders may be sore
but I can always take on more

——————————

Mist

Quoting all day from the writing that pretends to be reason
Blinding the eyes with the muck and the lies there within
Building up rules with invisible tools from your home schools
Casting out doubt and the skeptical shout as the symptoms of sin

Happy basking in the blissful
Ignorance is such a joy
You are right and they are wrong
And in your faith they can’t annoy
And yet one day you find
Most the world is laughing at you
You were aiming with your guns
Not knowing you were blind

The arrogant truth with intelligent proof has ignored you
Reality goes without hearing a word that you say
Your fantasy world, with its circular curls dims the clear view
May crumble and expose eyes to the sharp truth of day

The dance of life has gone without you
So much beauty you have missed
Playing with the phantom faeries
In the truth obscuring mist
Knowing truths and building reasons is the faithful thinker’s way
The book is wrong
The fight was over
Well before you had your say.

Yet even then the fear of when we show ourselves to be
a non-superstar-istic oh so humanistic vulnerable imperfect being
To be average means so little yet to be normal means so much
Our hands just flesh and bone with no Midas gilded touch

And as the years go past, we fight to hold on to those dreams
but dreams are schemes that reality deems to push off as extremes
and we go along watching death of song begin to rule our lives
and the struggle just to live on must take over all our drives

And then we realize what we lost, and before we give all away
we fight for something we know not what for we know we cannot stay
so afraid of losing all that we forget to give
or so afraid of dying that we forget to live

GAP THEORY:
1. A period of time between the first and second verses of Genesis during which cool things like the fall of Satan occurs and the earth has a chance to grow old enough to not contradict radiometric dating or problems like the speed of light which exist for young earth creationist.
2. More generally, anything not explained in the Bible that needs to be explained in order for it to be compatible with what we actually know about the universe.

RAID EXPERIMENT:
An experiment which conclusively proves that accelerated radioactive decay is possible by demonstrating conclusively its impossibility.  The experiment demonstrates that scientists are silly for not accepting a theory which necessitates the extinction of all life on earth, which is clearly a minor difficulty which will be solved sooner or later.

CHARLES DARWIN:
1. A brilliant but deluded scientist.
2. An evil, satanic, non-scientist.

THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY:
1. A bunch of brilliant but deluded people who believe Charles Darwin despite overwhelming evidence supporting his theories.
2. Evil people who reject the truths of God’s Bible in favor of the lies of Satan’s reality.

CREATION SCIENCE:
1. A scientific discipline composed of brilliant and non-deluded scientists without degrees who use the Bible as the only source of truth and play with reality like silly-putty to make it fit.
2. A theory in vogue before it was thrown out by the courts and a new science called Intelligent Design took its place.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN:
See Creation Science.

DARWINISM:
Anything proposed by science which contradicts the Bible in any way.

ATHEIST:
1. Anyone who claims to reject the existence of God so that they can sin whenever they want.
2. Someone who knows that God exists, but denies Him so that more people will sin with him.
3. A Satanist.

AGNOSTIC:
A misguided soul who is rightly subject to ridicule by both Atheists and Theists alike.

MIRACLE:
Something that is accomplished by God, who is not subject to the rules of reality, using means that are entirely explained by the rules of reality, but leaves no evidence that can be found by the rules of reality.

TRANSITIONAL SPECIES:
A Darwinist myth that has never been found in the fossil record.  Silly scientists currently accept about 10,000 such myths.

GENETICS:
God’s miraculous building blocks, which allow for micro-evolution but never macro-evolution and do nothing to support the Darwinist theory despite the fact that it is necessary to develop new vaccines and medicines and exactly parallels the fossil records, which also does nothing to support the Darwinist theory and doesn’t prove anything.

BIBLE:
1. The inerrant word of God.
2. The greatest and truest source of knowledge ever created, as evidenced by the vast strides in knowledge that took place between 450 and 1300 AD when the book was religiously followed throughout Europe.

HELL:
The place where all of the scientists, atheists, agnostics, Jews, Buddhists, Hinduists, everyone who has never heard of Jesus, Christians who have not given away all of their possessions, Christians who have not obeyed all of the Biblical rules laid down in the old testament, and all children too young to accept Christ as their savior will go to burn in everlasting torture.

HEAVEN:
The place you go to if you don’t go to Hell, where the saved get to sing God’s praises through all of eternity and live in a beautiful mansion on a cloud.  Current population: 8.

MONOTHEISM:
The belief that there is only God, the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, a host of angels, Satan, the Virgin Mary, millions of dead relatives, and several hundred saints to whom one can pray and receive supernatural intervention.

I look with some amusement at the “debate” raging in my last post between Reginald and Mike. Mike is an expert at wordplay, and I find him frankly not worth arguing with. He is not nearly as dumb as some YECs (Young Earth Creationists), but his reason is by nature flawed under the incredible weight of the very, very obvious. I won’t bother really to argue with him, as he quibbles over the color of the flowers in the forest, somehow managing to ignore the trees that exist all around him. The evidence for evolution has long been irrefutable, and our understanding of it and the gaps within it seem (to my untrained brain) seem to be increasing and filling exponentially.

I, myself, have just undergone an epiphany of sorts, having finally having it beat into my head that man-caused global warming is very much a reality. I was, for many years, deceived. I put too much trust in people pretending to be scientists and pretending to use the scientific method. I was a big proponent of the “Junk Science” website, and, considering myself reasonably scientifically literate, I actually believed the bullshit they slung there.  I guess I am prepared to recognize ignorance, or even deception when one is motivated by faith or by “higher” goals. However, I was unprepared to deal with people who deliberately take good science and distort it, or out-and-out lie about it, for such a base reason. I was naive enough about humanity to believe that no one would put the entire planet at risk for the sake of a few extra dollars in their pocket. They are being deliberately deceptive, and the only motivation I can see for them to be this way is pure greed. If their motivation lies in another direction, I am unable to imagine what it could be. Lying for the sake of religion can be argued as simple ignorance (most of the time).  Lying for the sake of greed, particularly on such an important topic as the earth’s climate, goes beyond loathsome.

Back to developments in biology, Ida is a somewhat significant find, but it is exceptional only in its completeness…it is an exquisitely preserved specimen that fills in a gap in the fossil record, but not nearly as critical a gap as my previous entry implied. (see this video link, which puts Ida into the correct perspective far better than I possibly could.) Reginald’s fossil is more interesting from a human family tree perspective.

Even more important with still insignificant media attention was the synthesis of a critical part of DNA in the laboratory using conditions present on early earth. A part of the RNA molecule has been created in a laboratory. That such a complex molecule could be synthesized from “simple” organic chemicals really goes a long way to smashing many creationist arguments to bits. Not that they will ever acknowledge it as such, however. Life from non-life (abiogenesis) has absolutely nothing to do with evolution, but they have been lumped together in the mind of those who don’t understand the science. Without knowledge of the science behind it, evolution does seem to imply the abiogenesis.

The arguments will merely shift to a new gap, of course. We may, with time, be able to create a functioning cyanobacteria within a test-tube, but I personally doubt that we will be able to go beyond that. The earth itself took billions of years to get beyond that step, so my unscientific guess would be that the next step is far more difficult. A cyanobacteria is still a long way away, and also is still a long way away from a living animal.   It really doesn’t matter.  No amount of evidence can convince one who refuses to be convinced. Nothing is provable beyond unreasonable doubt.

Thus, the battle for the world’s “soul” will rage on. The forces of cultural evolution will continue to shape the battle. Reason will force those with something to lose from truth to battle against it more furiously. In order to survive in a world where truth would destroy them, the fundamentalist will have to deny reality even more vigorously. If this were simply a matter of reason I would have some reason to hope that the YECs would eventually change their mind. However, we are dealing with a mindset that believes that a book written by the hands of men is more to be trusted than reality itself. The more successful the reasonable, the more destructive the unreasonable will have to become in order to maintain their world view. When arguments work less and less, violence, the last resort of the ignorant, is likely to become more prominent. It is only through the blind following of an inflexible philosophy that one man can turn another into a demon. The man without dogma has no reason to fly a plane into a building. A man who refuses to think is easy pray for someone or some thing that has motive to do their thinking for them.

For a while I was feeling guilty with my obsession with religion and creationism, but I’ve come to realize that it really is nothing new.  My first book was going to be about religion.  My first fiction novel with have strong religious elements (coming at it from a decidedly non-Christian perspective, however.)

So, I post without apologies.  This is who I am.  Enjoy, if you can. 

Amazingly Unlikely Fossil Proves God's Existence!

Let’s be honest.  Ida just sounds too good to be true. Even practical scientists are having a hard to trying to temper their enthusiasm

I mean,what are the chances that the best preserved fossil specimen in history also happens to be the vital missing transitional link between apes and humans, and that this discovery would occur just at the time when the Young Earth Creationists were gearing up for their next major battle. (Okay, I don’t know that the YECs are gearing up for their next major battle, but odds are pretty good, as they ALWAYS seem to be gearing up for their next major battle.)

Bone marrow? From a 47 million year old fossil? Particularly one of such spectacular importance? Fur samples? Actually being able to tell what the darn thing had to eat last?

Well, what can one say? It’s a freakin’ miracle !

It is such an amazingly unlikely miracle that it more or less goes to PROVE that God exists. I mean, what are the odds? Millions of fossil finds, and the best also happens to be the most important.

Well, extra-ordinary claims require extra-ordinary proofs. It certainly SOUNDS from the initial talk that this thing was examined for skulduggery for two years within an inch of it’s former life. I want to wait for a while before I start jumping up and down about the thing, because it SOUNDS too good to be true. My initial reaction is to believe it, however. If it’s a hoax, it’s going to get too much scrutiny for too long a time for it to survive as a hoax for long. I’ll let the scientists fight it out.

But, seriously, if true, the odds against such a perfect specimen have got to be astronomical. For it to exist, one is almost tempted to say that God preserved it for us. “Here, you morons. You want a transitional species? Here it is! Creationists and IDiots, forget your silly fight. I created the Universe, and life evolves through natural selection. Get a brain already people! This is HOW I WORK!!!”

Of course, Creationists and IDiots are doing nothing of the kind. This fossil find is no big deal to them. Certainly nothing that shows transitions between “Kinds”. Of course, they never give a clear, scientific definition of just what the hell a “kind” is, so it’s an impossible target to hit, as it can be moved at will.

So, provided this fossil does not turn out to be an incredibly elaborate hoax (which I kinda doubt), we finally have a nice link in our evolutionary family tree that seems to act as common ancestor to both humans and apes. It not only is an excellent transitional species, but an excellent example evolutionary process. Not only that, our finding proves that God exists.

(I say this tongue in cheek, of course. But, seriously! Damn! What are the odds!?)

——————————

CONFUSION

I watch the morning sun arise
and bring forth new that day
a sense of hopeless loss and fear
and watching all that lay

about my mind in tangled mess
and muddy thoughts profound.
No simple loss of innocence
could ease that scentless hound.

The morning sun, it never changes
yet never is the same.
The ice of frozen memories
melt little with its flame.

How, and who, and why, and what
the questions all abound–
the rock tied to the rope of thought
tossed random all around.

No home in thee.  No home for me.
My unbound thoughts no rest.
No glassy lake of mirrored sheen
to help my mind do best.

The morning sun now in the noon.
The time goes back and forth.
Scrambled eggs of lunchtime sup
and Eastward goes the North.

And so my face goes upside-down
to match my state of brain,
and the morning sun now rise to night
to fall up-down again.

I remember the crowds – the noise – the overwhelming sense of smallness in a world that I didn’t care for and that cared not about me.  The time clock–ticking down four times.  Popcorn.  Not being heard or being able to hear.

When she later told us to spend ten minutes writing about one of our memories, this was the one I naturally chose.  Our objective was to write continuously–not to lift our pen from the paper.  Continuous stream of consciousness.  I produced the following:

———————————————-

NEVER FRIENDS

The blue seats were better than the yellow.  That was the goal.  The thing to be achieved.  I dashed back and forth with the money entrusted to me to find someone selling the seats represented by small pieces of paper.  I was good.  I could always find the sellers.  But that was the only good part.

Then inside.

Inside there was the clock.  Ticking down 4 times successively.  There was an infinite of noise–enough that I could neither hear nor be heard.  I sat and watched the clock.

The ball would catch my interest sometimes.  If the clock bored me, I would control the ball–make it either fall in or miss the basket.  I was good.  I succeeded 50% of the time.

The yellow seats were better for me–quieter.  The blue seats were better for them.  Closer.  There was food that was better then both.  Hot dogs.  Popcorn.

The place didn’t belong to me.  I didn’t belong to it.  We coexisted–tolerating each other.  We never, ever, became friends.

*********************************

Twinkle: Popper said that nothing is true if you can’t prove its opposite.

Having done extensive research into Karl Popper (i.e. having skimmed the Wikipedia article article about him), I believe that he is skating along the edges of the General Uncertainty Principle without completely identifying it as such, and is thus making mistakes in interpretation. If I am reading the article correctly, I believe that what Popper said is that no amount of evidence can prove that something is true, but a single example of its opposite can disprove it. I.e., no amount of instances of sun rising will prove that the sun will rise tomorrow, but a single instance of the sun not rising will disprove the idea that the sun always rises.

Again, the concept that NOTHING is provable beyond unreasonable doubt comes in. Popper seems to be toying with the principle of proof beyond ALL possible doubt, which I’ve demonstrated as an impossibility.

So, that the sun always rises is provable beyond reasonable doubt, and is therefore true (depending upon one’s definition of truth).  It is not, however, proof beyond unreasonable doubt. If the sun does not rise tomorrow, it merely demonstrates that an unreasonable assumption proved to be the correct one.

Twinkle: So, if you can reckon what’s God’s opposite and prove it exists, you’re done with your theory

So on to God. Firstly, it depends on how one defines “truth”. Absolute truth is unknowable by the General Uncertainty Principle. General truth I define as something proven beyond reasonable doubt.

Secondly, God’s opposite depends on what definition of God you prefer. If one accepts the definition of God as a supernatural being that created the universe, then, according to Popper, to prove that God is true requires that there exists no proof of its opposite, a universe created by completely natural processes.

I would submit that we have come a long way to proving our universe is created by completely natural processes beyond reasonable doubt.  In fact, by definition, science cannot use supernatural explanations, as science holds them by definition to be beyond reason and unprovable.  By the nature of science, a supernatural God is, definitionally, ruled out as an explanation.

This is not to say that science could not demonstrate strong evidence of the supernatural.  If, for example, prayer were proven to increase the likelihood of survival of  people undergoing open heart surgery, then we would have little choice but to conclude that something supernatural was indeed happening (alternative explanations, such as alien intervention, could be determined to be less likely via Occam’s Razor.)  Incidentally, this very experiment has indeed been conducted, in fact, and the results indicated that prayer did nothing to improve chances of survival.  This result proves almost nothing, for reasons that I’m not going to go into for time’s sake.

If this is a bias of science, then it is an absolutely necessary one.  Proof of natural processes cannot be found if we constantly throw “goddidit” into every unknown.

Therefore, if one (not unreasonably) redefines “truth” by throwing in the possibility of the unreasonable, then “truth” can never be proven.

What seems “reasonable” to me is that if God exists, He clearly does NOT want us to demonstrate his existence through our study of the natural world.

Twinkle: But at the end…does it really matter?

Well, in the “end”, it certainly DOES matter, as it could mean the difference between eternal hellfire and torture; 70+ virgins in assorted colors and flavors; or becoming worm food.

But I’m just playing and I know what sense you meant this in. And in the sense you meant it, then I would say no, it doesn’t matter in the least.

Twinkle: I’ve had so much proof of humanity’s evilness that I am positive that Love is somewhere out there…or maybe just inside myself… A secret recipe for serenity

As to evil, mankind is imperfect and suffers from many mental illnesses and brainwashing resulting from unreasonable arguments. Hitler very likely had a mental illnesses (Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and who the hell knows what that mustard gas did to him). Whether these illnesses are in anyway treatable does not change this fact. When what we perceive as evil is in fact something that is beyond the conscious control of a mentally ill mind, can we truly call it evil?

This is not to say that Hitler wasn’t a nasty, dangerous son-of-a-bitch who needed to be killed far, far earlier then he actually was.

So evil is definitional. Love? I have no doubt of it. Love, too, is definitional, but “generally” doesn’t follow under anyone’s definition of mental illness. Most people have love within them. This is a statement of faith on my part.

And if you could more clearly express your secret recipe, I would greatly appreciate it.

Love,

Alphonsus

Venusians

I learned why the teacher mentioned Descartes in step two of my Proof of the Mischievous God (see my previous post).  Descartes had essentially devoted his life to the question expressed in step two.

To reiterate, step two states the following.

2) God can, then, influence the human mind and make one believe whatever He wants us to believe.  This would certainly fall under the heading of what an all powerful person could do.

Descartes had asked himself the same question.  Is there anything that God couldn’t possible fool us about?  Anything that is, to use his word, indubitable, that is, free from all doubt?

Descartes spent years on the question.  He was a deeply religious man, and wanted to believe that there was some absolute in the universe, some gift that God had given that was beyond all doubt, that we could use to build all of our other proofs about the universe from.

His answer finally came out as the famous expression, one that I hadn’t understood until then.  “Cogito Ergo Sum”, or, more commonly, “I think, therefore, I am.”

What Descartes concluded was that God could not possibly be fooling us about our own existence.  How could God possibly be tricking us into believing that we exist?  If we didn’t exist, who, indeed, would he be tricking?

How could He, indeed.

God could, if He was mischievous and chose to do so, make us believe that two plus two equals five with the same certainty and conviction that we believe, “Cogito Ergo Sum.”

The point is, there could be a flaw in the logic of, “Cogito Ergo Sum.” that we are missing, or something obvious that we are being kept from seeing.

Can I point out what this flaw is?  Of course not, because I believe it to be true.  The logic of his point seems to be irrefutable.

But Descartes was the one who made the rules here.  The legal system tells its jurors that, to find someone guilty, they must be guilty beyond “reasonable” doubt.

By Descartes’ rules, the word “reasonable” no longer applies.  We are no longer talking about “reasonable” doubt, but to be completely beyond “any” doubt.

Descartes’ question is, in essence, is there anything that we can know for sure that is beyond unreasonable doubt.  The problem, of course, is that once one throws out reason, anything goes.  Logic no longer applies.  A madman who is convinced that he is being tricked by God into believing he exists will except no demonstration that he is wrong.

Cogito Ergo Sum depends upon reason, but reason is one of the conditions that doesn’t apply under Descartes rules.

The General Uncertainty Principle does not require that the flaw be pointed out.  All it does is state that a flaw could exist beyond our ability to see it.

To reiterate, NOTHING can be proven beyond all possible doubt, for all possible doubt includes unreasonable doubt, and without reason, the very concept of proof becomes meaningless.

Thereby, if I were to introduce unreasonable “what ifs” to any statement, such as, what if a statement, such as “a=a”, is wrong and God / Venusians / The Flying Spaghetti Monster / The Invisible Pink Unicorn is only making you BELIEVE the statement to be correct, then the statement has not been proven beyond ALL possible doubt.

**************

After I wrote out my little principle, I turned stupid for the next decade or so.

I loved this theory.  I loved the logic of the theory.  And, like a man who falls in love with and marries an axe murderess because she’s got nice boobs, I paid too much attention to the outstanding attributes and almost lost my head.

I spent the next several years of my life believing that absolutely nothing was provable ‑ ‑ that nothing could really be demonstrated with certainty, therefore anything was possible.  I became deeply philosophical during this period of my life.  No one could ever get a straight answer out of me.  I would respond to peoples concerns with relaxed, knowing smiles.  Nothing mattered, so no decision was demonstrably better than any other in the long run.

This is the same fallacy that the nihilist falls into.  Its a basic belief that just because nothing can be proven beyond all possible doubt that nothing can be known or proven at all.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that it gives equal weight to reasonable doubt and to unreasonable doubt.  There is absolutely nothing in the argument that suggests that this is necessary.  In the tautological statement “a=a”, we are faced with the overwhelming logic of it’s obvious correctness.  This statement is the cornerstone of all reason.  If it is not true, then nothing else we have ever thought of can be true.

The only way it can be stated as being possibly false is by invoking the Venusian clause.  But, even if the Venusians existed, there is absolutely no reason for us to believe that they would be able to, much less want to, make us believe this.  One would have to be unreasonable to the point of insanity to seriously doubt that this statement is correct.

In other words, just because something is not provable beyond all possible doubt does not mean that it isn’t true.  Just because it is possible to doubt something does not mean that it is wrong.  To believe otherwise is not … uh … reasonable.

Therefore, I retract my argument that it is impossible to prove God’s existence.  God could very easily prove his existence by making his existence known beyond reasonable doubt in a multitude of ways.  Sending the same message to everyone on earth while simultaneously making all the non-believers walk around and quack like a duck would go a long way toward demonstrating His existence.  I still maintain that it is unlikely that we will ever be able to prove His existence beyond a direct demonstration on His part, but I don’t have a proof for this; it’s just a statement of belief.  I can imagine several ways by which science could come up with reasonable proofs for God.  Nothing yet, but that doesn’t mean anything either.

Love and peace,

Alphonsus