Handshakes: At many of the churches I visit, the service is stopped partway through and the congregants encouraged to shake hands. I don’t understand the point. It’s certainly not to socialize. The music plays too loud for us to hear each other, the event is over too quickly, and before I can even exchange names with anyone they are either moving on to the next person or else the next person has interrupted us first. Do they have to make quota? There is no meaningful social interaction whatsoever. It’s just an awkward way to spread germs. There is a lot of forced, false intimacy in churches in general. In some places, they hold hands during prayer and the pastors have gigantic, creepy smiles all the time. Why not be genuine?
Close Your Eyes: At many of the churches I visit, during the closing prayer the pastor tells us to close our eyes. This is of course the last thing I want to do when being told to do it – especially when surrounded by strange people. I don’t consider it any of his business what I do with my own body. Then he invites those who have made a commitment to Jesus to raise their hands, reminding them that no one is going to see them. If the point of closing eyes is not to put anyone on the spot, why make them raise their hands at all? If the point of raising hands is to take a public stand, don’t they want to be seen? Loud Music: At many churches the music is far too loud to be healthy. The bass vibrates my insides and makes me feel sick. It reflects off the walls in cacophony and makes me feel trapped. It’s very uncomfortable. I don’t even like any of the music they play anyways. I am told that singing along expresses gratitude to God, but how can that be? You can’t tell me that over a hundred people just happened to start singing the same song at the same time out of genuine gratitude by chance! Clearly it has more to do with conformity. I’ve always thought of such things as a little creepy. Stand Up: I can hike all day, but standing in one place is extremely uncomfortable and tiring. We are expected to stand during scripture recitation and during the music portion – sometimes for fifteen minutes or longer. What is the purpose of standing? Bad Hours: What sane person wants to be out of bed Sunday morning? This doesn’t work for a lot of people. Some churches also have services Saturday or Sunday night, but why not on weekday afternoons? There are a lot of people that work late Saturday night and sleep in Sunday morning. When can they go? Why don’t churches hold services on different days from each other so people can visit multiple churches and make friends in all of them? Simple Sermons: Sermons are almost always very simple. The same basic point is dragged out and repeated in different ways, but the larger context is left out, its importance is never explained, evidence is never given, and the exceptions go unmentioned. What is taught is very basic and I’m sure is old news for most of the people in the room. I have always been incredibly bored. Sin Management: Rather than focus on the greatness of God and his current activities, churches seem to be focused on what I and my father call sin management. They give advice on how we can trick our darker selves to avoid sinning and build up our self-control. They constantly lecture on the dangers of sin and how to tell right from wrong. Knowing that I am dead to the law and that there is no good thing in me, I let God take care of my sin problem and instead focus on the good news. This is hard to do when I am continually reminded of the bad. What I Love About Church: Some churches have coffee, donuts, and little libraries – and some have quite interesting architecture. They usually have ministries to join, if they fit you. Sometimes I can also find people to talk about God-stuff with, so church isn’t all bad. I’m just not sure that donuts are a good enough reason to get out of bed. What do you love/hate about church?
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There is an idea out there that the morality of an action is based less on the action’s results than it is on the motives of the actor. We do not blame people for accidents. In Christian circles, it is often said that sin isn’t what you’ve done; it’s the state of your heart. It is also said that God wants a “cheerful giver” and we should not donate or tithe out of guilt or to try to earn God’s favor. When we pray, we are told that praying with the wrong motives will leave our prayers unanswered.
The problem with this thinking is that it opens us up to accusation from others and ourselves. No matter how noble one’s cause, if they become aware of any potential benefit to themselves whatsoever, that benefit immediately becomes one of their motives. It is impossible for it to be otherwise. Then that little nagging voice inside says, “You know the real reason you did that good deed; you aren’t selfless at all.” Since there is virtually always a way for an action to benefit us in some small way (even if for no other reason than to make us feel good about ourselves), we will always beat ourselves up and live in guilt. I don’t think this is what God wants. Just because you may do the right things for the wrong reasons, it is no reason to stop doing the right things. It isn’t just about us. Just because you may pray for something with the wrong motives, it is no reason to stop praying. Just do it. Is it wrong to punish those truly guilty just because we might be doing it in revenge? Is it wrong to enjoy art and support the artists just because it has elements in it we find erotic? Is it wrong to give to the poor just because we make a show out of it to glorify ourselves? There is no way to control our motives anyways; only God can change the heart. Trust him to take care of it. In the meantime, never tire of doing right. God can use even our impure motives to accomplish his will. I was recently asked “when” I became a Christian and if I had a specific date my new life began. I did not and neither do many people, yet there are those that seem to doubt whether one is a true Christian if they cannot point to a conversion moment in their lives. The way I see it, there are a series of stages of ongoing growth that people enter. At every point, one might assume they are finished, but there always seems to be more to learn.
Stage One: In elementary school I was an atheist. My Sunday School teachers were nice people, but terribly uneducated in science. Over the years in spite of them, I learned enough science to gradually accept that miracles were possible and that the existence of God was probable. My change of mind was gradual and I wavered back and forth for a while, so I have no specific date to point to when I converted. Finally, by junior high school I came to think of myself as “saved” because I believed God existed. I had no idea there was anything more to Christianity than that. This was the first stage. Stage Two: For a long time, religion remained purely an academic exercise. I didn’t see how it related to my everyday life. It was only after I graduated high school that I became interested in actively seeking out God’s will. I believed I finally understood what God wants from us. This was the second stage. Stage Three: Even then, I was seeking out God’s will as a means to an end. I was using him as a tool to get my needs met. I assumed that was all he wanted from me. Only in my late twenties did I form the attachment such that I knew I could never be satisfied without him. This was the third stage. Stage Four: Even then, I still believed that there were other things I could never be satisfied without in addition to God – certain unfulfilled dreams and unmet needs I had. Over the next two years, I let go of these things and discovered that God alone is sufficient. I even let go of my personality. This was the fourth stage. I’m still learning just how to apply my knowledge in novel circumstances, but I haven’t reached a fifth stage yet, assuming one even exists. In looking back over my growth, I can see now that there has always been a guiding drive present that I have come to associate with the idea of God living inside me. This force existed in me even when I was an atheist, pushing me to learn more truth. There is no specific event in which God came to live in me after I had chosen him. He was already there. Because of this, I have trouble separating people into “believers” and “unbelievers.” We are all partial believers at different stages along our common walk. Having so recently been at lower stages myself, I understand that those still at these lower stages are unaware that there is more to learn. I want to guide them, not judge them. Faith: Since having faith is central to every religion, having a proper understanding of the definition of faith should also be important to define “when” one joins a new religion. When I first accepted Jesus, I still thought of faith as nothing more than a belief driven by the evidence and easily lost by new evidence or clever arguments. Was I not yet a Christian? Others accepted me as such. Later, I understood faith to be a choice to trust and not falter in belief every time some new challenge arose, but to stay the course unless it became clear I had been wrong. Was I a Christian then? Even then, I still tried to measure my faith to ensure it was growing. Now I understand that faith grows on its own anyway and cannot be hurried. Since tiny amounts of faith will eventually grow into mountains worth, all levels of faith are equal in their final outcomes. Measuring faith is counter-productive. Sin: Sin, too, has stages of knowledge. The Jews believed that one had to keep the Mosaic Law to keep on God’s good side. As 21st century gentiles, we know this isn’t true, but many of us still try to follow the dictates of our respective denominations. Even those that understand it isn’t the role of our clergy to make rules for us still try to live up to the standards of our culture and feel bad when we fail. In my case, I rejected being ruled by anyone but myself – but I failed even at following my own rules! Even when “by faith alone” is the only standard, we all fall short of perfection even in faith! It was only recently that I understood what Jesus meant when he said he came to fulfill the law. Don’t worry about messing up; you (or God) can always fix things later! I wonder just how much God plans ahead and how much he makes it up as he goes. Of course, this is assuming linear time; there might not be a difference in reality. If it is true that God makes a lot up as he goes, it is misguided to try to seek out God’s will for our lives. We’ll find out soon enough. All we need to know is that he loves us and is working to make things better. If there is no plan, it cannot be a sin to violate the plan! Religion: Even the way I eliminated other religions was gradual, and in a sense I never fully eliminated all of them. My belief is based more on my personal experience and reason rather than ancient text I can never be absolutely sure the source of. Christianity is mostly just the “language” I use to explain my spiritual state to others, since it is the religion I am most familiar with. I have every reason to think that God can reach anybody through whatever belief system they happen to have, and when this happens their beliefs change. None of us know everything, and all the major world religions have some wisdom in them. I’m not saying all religions are true – quite the opposite. I’m saying all religions (including Christianity) are incomplete without a connection to God, but we all have this connection already – and God is working in everyone to strengthen this connection without myself even having to do anything to convert all these people! In conclusion, I suppose maybe I was “saved” when I was conceived (sometime in 1981). When did you become a Christian? One thing I have observed in life is that Christians are very quick to alienate those they claim to want to reach over subtle, arcane points of theology instead of trying to find common ground. This needs to stop.
My Story: I grew up going to church every Sunday. I prayed every night. I read the Bible. I believed for most of my life that God created the universe, that Jesus died for my sins, and that the Holy Spirit lived in me and guided my actions. I believed that Jesus was himself God. I even believed in some of the more controversial parts of the bible such as a literal seven-day creation week and the virgin birth. Imagine my shock when in my thirties I woke up one morning to read online that I had been living a lie all those years; I had never been a Christian because I didn’t believe in the trinity! I was always aware that God’s tripartite nature was a common belief, but not that the debate had been settled, and certainly not that it was important. When I was young I always had the sense that it was something debated by theology nerds but incomprehensible to normal people. I was never sure whether I believed it myself because I did not know what it was. How could I know whether I believed in the trinity when I didn’t even know what “trinity” meant? Over the years I have heard no fewer than twelve different explanations of the nature of the trinity, all of them incompatible with each other, and by far the most common explanation I hear is: “Well, no one understands the trinity, but we know it’s true because the Bible tells us.” Really? Actually the word “trinity” is nowhere in the Bible and the only hint we have of its existence (that I am aware of) is that the early Christians were told to go out and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is very flimsy circumstantial evidence to say the least. Just because three of God’s manifestations are listed does not mean those are the only three he has. I can think of seven just off the top of my head: in the beginning speaking the world into existence, in the pillar of smoke that let the Israelites through the desert during the day, in the pillar of fire that led the Israelites around the desert at night, in the Ark of the Covenant, in Elijah’s still small voice, in Jesus, and in the bright light on the road to Damascus. That’s seven forms. Why is he not a septnity? What do those seven lampstands in Revelations really represent? It all seems so silly. God has not only been referred to as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, but also as the way, the truth, the life, the word, the prince of peace, the son of man, the son of God, the lamb, the lion, the alpha, the omega, the I Am, Yahweh, Elohim, Jehovah, Jesus, Yeshuah, and even the “unknown God” (Acts 17:23). God has not only taken the role of heavenly father, but is also referred to in the Bible as the bridegroom of Israel and the head of the church body. He is even called a vine while we are the branches! Why do we only consider three manifestations? Doesn’t it make more sense to say there is only one God who takes on as many roles as he wishes? Isn’t it overreach to declare others not to be true Christians just because they might be wrong about one or more points of theology? Don’t we still worship the same God? The same might be said about Jews or Muslims. They claim to worship the God of Abraham. They might call him by a different name and have some ideas about him that I don’t agree with, but how can I know for sure it isn’t the same God? Only God knows the heart. This is how this debate started. To show love and solidarity with Muslims as they are abused both by the extremists within their own religion and those in the west who cannot tell a good Muslim from a bad Muslim, a professor at a Christian college a few years ago opined that we all worshipped the same God – not an uncommon opinion. Not only did the college fire her, but they went on to say that Muslims certainly do not worship the same God because they don’t believe in the trinity and anybody who doesn’t believe in the trinity doesn’t worship the same God either. I was quite surprised. Whatever the theological truth might be, this rhetoric is dangerous for two reasons: It alienates the Muslims that we should be trying to reach and it alienates other Christians who could help us reach them. In any case, I know Jesus personally and I know he accepts me, so I don’t care what others say. I still can’t believe somebody got fired over this. Question: When did belief in the trinity become so important? Beauty is largely a matter of perspective. Most people can appreciate a healthy forest or meadow full of tall trees, lush greenery, and vibrant flowers, but consider it an imperfection when one dead tree blemishes what would have been a fantastic landscape scene. However, beauty can be found by zooming in. Close to a dead tree, one can see it has become a home for insects, bacteria, and fungi. Mushrooms and molds make beautiful mini-forests themselves. Death is a part of life. Seasonal cessation and renewal makes life more interesting. It’s all a matter of perspective.
A scene full of dead trees can look good, but one dead tree among many live ones stands out as if it does not belong – especially if it leans at an odd angle or has a glaring asymmetry to its remaining limbs. It has to do with balance. In cases such as this, I find it helpful to imagine myself observing from very far above, seeing the dying, broken, and diseased parts of the forest scattered about artistically. I find the balance and the beauty by zooming out. It is not only the natural world that holds beauty. Cities can be beautiful. Close-up, cities look to me haphazardly thrown together and unbalanced. Buildings of different shapes are mixed in among cranes and telephone wires. Lanes and road signs are often painted in ways that don’t make sense. They are polluted and ugly. Zoom-out, however, and they start to look like alien forests. Instead of growing through cellular division the way maples, pines, and oaks do, skyscrapers are pieced together from smaller bits by hard-working humans and machines – similar to the way proteins are built in ribosomes by RNA and other proteins. The process is just as interesting. Lots of people hate finding litter in the forest. I’m not necessarily a fan either, but the existence of litter is evidence of previous use by Homo sapiens, one of the most interesting species on the planet. Other animals mark their environment by chewing on trees and damming up streams, building hives or nests, digging burrows, leaving footprints, or leaving behind the remains of their last meal. Digestion is fascinating and our beautiful world would not be the same without it. One has to expect its byproducts. In the same way, one has to expect the byproducts of human civilization. If litter still bothers you, do what I do and imagine each piece as an alien sea creature. See what ideas you can come up with. Even civilizations-gone-bad can hold some beauty. I’m no fan of apartheid or communism, but their existence shows the myriad forms that human society can take and still function. I like to think of civilizations and ideologies as competing and evolving just like colonies in a petri dish. Just because my own ideology compels me to fight such things, doesn’t mean I can’t find some enjoyment in learning about them. Anything real has beauty and all truth is beautiful. What of fiction? I love to think of all the different forms reality can take but probably doesn’t, whether they are serious scientific theories or ridiculous situations from fantasy novels (or comedy skits). Even if none of these things ever happen in the real world, they are still able to be held in the mind and encoded by the brain somehow. They leave their marks on our existence. Thoughts are part of reality and every bit a legitimate subject of study. Psychology is interesting, too. Besides, how do we know this world isn’t just a dream we are having where the current rules exclude such things as remote viewing, time travel paradoxes, and curses of bad luck? There is no way to know for sure that we aren’t asleep right now. We can only experience things through our minds, so it is only our minds and our thoughts that we can be sure are real. It doesn’t sadden me too much that my comics are fiction, because in at least one sense they are just as real as anything else. I still struggle with some things, however. When I am unable to write, or go exploring, or rest long enough to collect my thoughts, I can’t always see the beauty in the variety of things. When I feel better, I see that these times of up and down are an unavoidable consequence of progress. Beauty is everywhere, even in the inability to see it. Life is never static; only death is. Unfortunately, this explanation only partly satisfies, and when I am down, nothing can satisfy me. I still have more to grow. Related posts: Valentines From God Finding Adventure Close To Home How To Find Interesting Things How To Find Things Interesting What To Do When There Is Nowhere Left To Go Thoughts On Play Thoughts On The Natural And Artificial Worlds Thoughts On Thought So many people seem to assume that something labeled “natural” must always be better than something artificial, especially when it comes to food and medicine. However, we should know that this is not always true. Floods, lightning, blizzards, rattlesnakes, and smallpox are all natural. Boats, lightning rods, combustion-heated homes, antivenin, and vaccines are not – or are they? What does it even mean to be natural?
Natural is a very relative term. Left to their own devices, dirt, air, and water just make mud. It takes the intervention of living cells to build ferns, trees, spiders, and sparrows out of them. Yet, life is considered no more artificial than non-living matter. Honey is considered natural, but nectar doesn’t turn into honey on its own. Bees collect it in their stomachs, spit it up, evaporate the water, and store it in wax cells. Humans come along later and remove the wax. Honey doesn’t naturally come in squeezable bottles! Is anything in the process to make honey really any less of an artificial process than the way that humans use corn to make high-fructose corn syrup? Tools are generally considered artificial, but isn’t it natural for humans to make and use tools? All people groups use some tools and would not likely survive long without them. Some animals even use tools. Orangutans use twigs to pick seeds out of pods and dolphins use sponges to protect their beaks when sifting through sand. Homes are generally considered artificial, but isn’t it natural to build shelter? Animals build burrows, nests, or hives of wax or paper. Humans use wood, metal, and drywall. What’s the difference? Is agriculture natural? Left to themselves, edible plants do not grow all together in one accessible place, but as with tool-making and home-making, humans naturally use their ingenuity to harness nature to make their lives easier. The same could be said about breeding strains of plants or animals to have desirable traits. There is nothing unnatural about pollination or mating; humans just tilt the scales of these natural processes to benefit themselves. The same could be said about genetically-modified organisms. There is nothing unnatural about DNA expression – DNA is a naturally-occurring compound – humans just select for the genes they want. Creating pest-resistant crops through genetic manipulation is just using nature to fight nature. Even when humans create brand-new compounds that have never before existed, all they are doing is rearranging the elements nature has provided them into new configurations. According to mainstream thinking, there was a time billions of years ago that free oxygen was new on Earth; it was a waste product of photosynthesis toxic to most life at the time. Even when humans do create brand-new elements (like plutonium), all they are doing is moving pre-existing protons and neutrons around. If one day humans create new forms of matter, such as gluon balls or strange matter, all they will be doing is reconfiguring the pre-existing quantum fields that underlie all of reality. Natural is relative. Is death natural? Everything dies, but generally not without a fight. It is only natural to avoid natural death. Neither humans nor reindeer willingly surrender to the wolves – even though predation is one of the most natural things there is. Humans will go to especially extreme lengths to avoid death, including feeding tubes, artificial hearts, blood transfusions, chemotherapy, radiation, and lots of surgery – but are any of these procedures unnatural? Isn’t it only natural to want to escape death by making an artificial heart out of natural substances by artificial means? Can it be natural to be unnatural? What does “natural” even mean in this context? Is homosexuality natural? One could certainly make a legitimate case that it is an artificial perversion of natural reproductive behavior, but one could also make the case that it is a natural strategy to curb overpopulation occasionally practiced across the animal kingdom. Can it be natural to be unnatural? One could also make the case that homosexuality is a disorder like Alzheimer’s, and no one ever suggests that Alzheimer’s is unnatural. Is abortion natural? One could certainly make a legitimate case that it is an artificial perversion of natural reproductive behavior, but one could also make the case that it is a natural strategy to curb overpopulation. Tasmanian devil mothers have been known to eat their excess children and some sharks eat their siblings while still in the womb. Can it be natural to be unnatural? Is warfare natural? One could certainly make a legitimate case that it goes against the natural drive to cooperate with members of the same species in order to better compete with rival species, but one could also argue that it is only natural to want to defend one’s kin. Chimpanzees fight all the time. Ants are among the most brutal to their own kind. Can it be natural to be unnatural? People generally understand that words such as tall, fast, hot, and important refer to relative values. What is rarer are those who understand that words such as authority, miraculous, and natural are. They think someone is either in charge or not. They think an event is either a miracle or not. They think something is either natural or not. Natural is a very relative term. One thing I’ve observed in life is that people are quick to place blame. They forget that some things are just accidents or bad luck. In their zeal for justice, they will assign responsibility to people who are completely innocent. Even in cases wherein the accused were in fact a cause of the misfortune, objections that there was no reason for them to have known or acted differently fall on deaf ears. Honest mistakes are not allowed.
I once received a ball as a present and promptly brought it outside to play. My friend and I took turns kicking it up the driveway and letting it roll back down. We had little control over its exact arc, but no reason to be concerned of where it might fall. After a while, my friend kicked the ball and it landed just the right way on the top of a barbed-wire fence, where it deflated and hung. It was an obvious accident that could just as easily have been made by me and I knew that balls kept in the safety of my closet are no fun at all. I was more amused by the event than anything. However, in my experience most people in my position would have blamed my friend. Most people in my friend’s position would have blamed the one who put up the fence. Those with the means to do so might have sued. Sometimes there is also some human negligence involved. I loaned my bicycle to a different friend of mine who rode it around the corner where he collided with another friend of mine on his bike. One of the gears bent and my bike never worked after that. It was clear he was not as careful as he could have been, but how careful should he have been and what percentage of the blame was really his? If he had immediately come to a complete stop upon seeing my other friend, he likely could have avoided the accident, but there was no way to know for certain that he couldn’t dodge or that the other couldn’t dodge (they both dodged in the same direction – into each other) and he had only a fraction of a second to decide. Who among us hasn’t made mistakes of this nature? How many times have I been distracted by a bird or bug and taken my eyes off the road for a second, but nothing happened because no one else was around? Stopping our bike or car every time there is the slightest question of safety would mean we would never drive anywhere at all. Merging into traffic would be very much impossible. There is a such thing as being too careful. In any case, some of the blame was also on the one my friend collided with. Neither of them were as careful as they could have been going around that corner. Some of the blame could also be placed on the manufacturer. The gear should not have bent like that in such a low-speed collision (they were both going just over walking speed). I’ve had my bike fall over before at similar speeds and nothing happened, but this one time something did. Sometimes it’s just bad luck. As children, it seems we understand this. We can tell the difference between accidents and genuine malice. Sometime along the way to adulthood, we learn that we can hire a lawyer to trick a judge/jury and win a lot of money. It’s like the lottery! To protect themselves, companies print warning labels that make us laugh. Some make us sign waivers we worry will protect them from even legitimate grievances. Restaurants salt steps that aren’t even icy and put up signs to warn of puddles. I’ve always thought that anyone unable to see the puddle is likely to also be unable to see the sign. They could trip over it. Among my peers it was considered proof that all adults were crazy. Property owners become very protective of their borders. One guy in the neighborhood was terrified that children playing in his yard might get hurt and their parents sue, yet he had rented out the downstairs apartment to a family with children. What was he thinking? The church next door was terrified that some of their shrubbery might be damaged and also attempted to crack down on play – even though many of their members were children. Where were we supposed to play? In the middle of the street? There is no life worth living that is safe. The only life free of change is called death. Everybody has different levels of tolerance and I do not wish to impose my way of life on anybody; I just wish they would stop imposing on me. Life is an adventure. Life is magical. I often find fun and intrigue in mundane things by using my creativity to imagine alternate explanations for everyday phenomena. Could what appear to be mere coincidences actually be proof of a plot to replace world leaders with alien clones? This is the most common way I come up with my science fiction stories. While there is nothing wrong with this, the real world is interesting too.
I often like to think of natural places as full of mysterious fields of energy that can be tapped into with the right knowledge to perform interesting shows. I’m not wrong! Natural places are full of gravity, magnetism, and electric gradients! Trillions of neutrinos pass through our bodies every second. Individual particles maintain spooky connections through quantum entanglement. Ripples in the electromagnetic field are all around us. Those with the right knowledge and equipment can send and receive radio waves to communicate long distances. Under the right circumstances, there can be spontaneous discharges called lightning. None of these phenomena are fully understood. Even so, does knowing how magic works make it any less magic? I often like to think of normal rocks as having strange properties making them react with other substances in unexpected ways. Maybe they do! Chemistry is relatively well understood, but there is still room for surprises. Perhaps if mixed with just the right solution in just the right concentration at just the right temperature at just the right pressure something will happen that is not obvious. I often like to think of the parks I explore as islands in a large sea. By using my magical powers/artifacts and standing in the right spot, I can grasp onto the mysterious currents of energy that will bring me through the air or water to the next island. This is almost what happens! I use a machine called a car to follow the roads. Some roads have higher speed limits than others, and they intersect each other in complex ways. Does being made of matter make the roads less interesting? Would my mysterious currents of energy be any less interesting if beings made of the same energy interacted with them as if they were solid? What is matter made of anyway? Does requiring stops for fuel to power my magical artifact make my car less interesting? Does the fact that the roads were built by a race of intelligent beings make them less interesting? Does the fact that off-road travel is also possible make the roads less interesting? Of course, in the real world we also have real islands and there are real ocean currents, not to mention the trade winds and the jet stream, so I don’t have to dream. Other times I like to think of the parks I visit as whole planets. Does being small make the parks less interesting? Realistically, I don’t think I could ever stand to explore a whole planet. It would take too long before I got bored with it and wanted to move on. It would be too different from continent to continent to really get a feel for what it was like that made it different from other planets. Swamp planets and desert planets I understand. A single planet with deserts, swamps, jungles, tundra, oceans, plains, mountains, farms, and cities is just too much! It would take a lifetime to explore it! In order to hold knowledge in our finite minds, understand it, and enjoy it, it must be simplified by cleaning up the details that don’t fit our narrative. This is why I break the Earth down into manageable parks (and other places) with nothing in between as if they were planets separated by empty space. I often like to think of trails as following mysterious flows of energy that prevent plant growth, but this is not too far from the truth either. I know that they are maintained by the actions of humans (and sometimes other animals), but does understanding how the phenomenon works make it any less interesting? Why were those paths chosen to begin with, anyway? Human psychology is still very mysterious. What really causes fairy rings? No, they aren’t gateways to other worlds, but the world inside is different than the world outside. The world inside is dominated by a mysterious force called fungi, and nobody really knows how living cells function. I also often like to think of animals as having a secret language of their own in which they exchange profound truths that we can’t understand. How do we know they don’t? We can never be sure of the full meaning another human brings to the same words that mean so much to us. Animal sounds could be much the same for them. Animals have senses and forms of knowledge we do not, trail scents and electrolocation being only some of the examples we are aware of. What about the examples we have yet to discover? What of the examples that animals deliberately keep secret from us? Could animals and angels be one and the same? We already live in a fantasy world. Related posts: Miracles Happen Every Day, Finding Adventure Close To Home, How To Find Interesting Things Fun is the most important thing in the world. It may serve no purpose, but it is the purpose that all else serves. Why work if not to take care of the essentials in order to have more time for fun? Otherwise, you are only working in order to be able to continue to work, and that doesn’t sound very fun.
Why do people stop playing as they age? Do the games of childhood really stop being fun? Are they unable to compete for time with grown-up “games,” such as drinking or sex? Is it really more fun to sit on a couch watching others on a TV screen playing a game with a bunch of rules than it is to go outside yourself and make up the rules as you go along? Balderdash! Other people only stopped playing for the same reason I did; when we got older, people started to look at us weird. If people wanted reality, they’d just look out their windows. People read fiction to escape. They don’t want to read about a character with exactly the same type of life they have. They want to read about characters facing challenges they will likely never have the opportunity to face. They want to read about discovering new lands, escaping danger, and conquering kingdoms. Fiction should be different from common reality – and the purest form of fiction is that which takes place on worlds which have never existed and features technologies likely to forever be impossible. There are three types of people: workers, defenders, and artists. All three are important. No society can survive for long without the whole set. Workers keep us fed and keep the lights on. Without them the defenders and artists would starve. Defenders respond to special events such as fires, broken pipes, cancer, or war. Without them, the workers and artists would be killed. Artists build and create. Without them there would be no technological progress. Without them there would be nothing to defend or to work for. Without them there would be no entertainment and nothing to make work, defense, or life worth doing. Without them there would be no purpose to life except its own continuance. It is said that idle hands are the devil’s workshop, but they can also be the workshop of heaven. The most creative ideas often come when we aren’t trying to come up with them. The greatest insights often come from outside the field of study they apply to. Sometimes taking a break can help you get more done in the long run. Learning is inherently fun. Every kid knows this. The young of every mammal species are driven to learn. There is no need to “make learning fun” unless it was first unnecessarily made into a chore. I know the difference between model and reality. I don't care whether you call God Yahweh or Allah or whether you tell me the circumference of a circle is 2*pi*radius or tau*radius. The language changes, but the concepts are the same.
My father once told me of the time he was in school and the teacher brought in a black box. It had all sorts of levers and wheels and things sticking out of it. Pushing or pulling on one thing would cause a reaction somewhere else. The assignment was to figure out what the internal mechanism of the box looked like. Every student came up with a different answer. Every answer worked. My father understood that theories are useful as long as they describe our results and help us make decisions, but that no one can ever really know the truth for sure. They never found out what was in the box. I think in the same way. Reality is ultimately unknowable and so our models must be tentative. I am always learning. I love hearing new ideas that challenge my old thinking, but I don’t immediately throw out my old ideas for new ones that can just as easily be challenged by still newer ones. I don’t need to have it all figured out to believe in something. The physicists who first discovered that atoms are made of positive nuclei with detachable electrons didn’t know anything about antimatter or the wave nature of electrons. They still to this day don’t know whether they are better thought of as point particles or as loops of vibrating string. This does not stop them from believing electrons exist. Our ideas about cosmology have also changed a lot in the past five hundred years. Our ideas about how large the stars are, how far apart they are, how fast they move, whether they move at all, what they are made of, and the nature of the invisible stuff in between them have all changed – sometimes more than once. This does not stop people from believing that stars exist. In the same way, I don’t have to understand just how God operates to know that “something” is there. I expect to be surprised as I learn new things about the universe. Is God really a trinity? Is he really a male? Is he really omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent? How does he experience time? Does Hell really exist? Do angels really exist? How exactly does a painful world and a loving, omnipotent God coexist? I am open to all possibilities. For now, having a benevolent intelligence guiding my life is as good a model as any, ready to be refined as new data pours in. Evidence of disasters in the world is no more problematic for my theory than the “vacuum catastrophe” is for quantum mechanics, or the “ultraviolet catastrophe” was for classical mechanics – they still teach the laws of Newton and Maxwell in school because they are precise enough for most applications and using quantum mechanics for everything is unwieldly. That I sometimes act and speak as if I am on my own without any divine help should be no more surprising than it is that scientists switch back and forth between the contradictory models of quantum mechanics, classical mechanics, and general relativity based on the phenomenon under study. Which models give you hope? One thing I have observed in life is that the very same stimulus can yield opposite responses in different people. Psychology is frustratingly unpredictable, yet most people act as if they believe everyone thinks just as they do.
Does care for our fellow citizens make us statists or libertarians? Protecting our countrymen from criminals and unfair business practices requires a strong government, but protecting our countrymen from government corruption and injustice requires that government be weak. Those on both sides of this issue speak as though those on the other side obviously only care about themselves, treating it as a given. They never give the issues any deeper thought. I have even seen professors of psychology and political science – who should know better – do the same. Does greed make us capitalists or communists? On the one hand, capitalists seem to be motivated by the desire to acquire resources. They love to earn money. On the other hand, communists also seem to be motivated by the desire to acquire resources. The poor want the wealth of the rich redistributed to them and the politicians want the power to manage the whole system of redistribution. Does valuing liberty make us pro-choice or pro-life? Obviously, liberty includes the freedom to choose, and the freedom to get abortions, but a dead person can make no choices, and so liberty must also include life and the freedom to not be aborted. A libertarian can support either side and still call themselves libertarian, no matter what other libertarians might say. Does valuing being true to one’s self make us pro-transsexual or anti-transsexual? It’s a sad thing when someone hates another. It’s even sadder when one hates themselves. Being who you were born to be means accepting reality and embracing the body you have, not the one you wish you had. However, being who you were born to be can also mean accepting the reality that the body you have doesn’t fit the “real” you. Is Darwinism or The Bible more racist? On one hand, the Bible teaches us that all mankind descends from just two people, Adam and Eve. We are all brethren. On the other hand, racists have used Noah’s curse on his son Ham as an excuse to discriminate against Ham’s supposed descendants. On one hand, Darwinism goes even further than the Bible, teaching us that not only all humans, but all life including plants and bacteria, are descended from a single ancestor. On the other hand, racists have used Darwin’s ideas to support the claim that some people are more evolved than others and that some people are basically just animals. Both sides claim the ideas of the other are too dangerous to be taught to our children. Evolutionists claim that Christianity breeds racial conflict, while Christians claim the same about evolutionary theories. Evolutionists also claim that those not taught evolution as children will never develop the science skills necessary to be good engineers, which is silly. Christians also claim that those taught evolution as children will all become atheists, which is equally silly. It’s all so very silly. Does belief in an afterlife make you a better person or a worse person? Thinking that this is all there is and knowing that there will be no permanent consequences for bad behavior can cause one to live to enjoy the moment by giving in to selfishness or even sadism, while believing in a reward-punishment program after death can incentivize one to behave morally. On the other hand, thinking that this is all there is and knowing that riches will fade can cause one to give up on selfish accumulation and instead seek to serve others during the little time they have left, while believing in a reward-punishment program allows one to be manipulated by false religious teachers to engage in immorality such as terrorism. Are Calvinists or Arminians more likely to evangelize? Believing that God always gets his way with or without anyone’s help, saving whom he pleases and damning the rest, has given some Calvinists an excuse not to waste their time trying to win people whose fate one way or the other is already certain. At the same time, believing that each individual ultimately ends up where they want to be by their own choices has given some Arminians an excuse not to waste their time trying to win people who have already made up their minds. Does being surrounded by temptation make us weaker or stronger? There have been studies done suggesting that the subconscious associates food cravings with scarcity. Keeping your house well-stocked with candy and other supplies sends the subconscious the signal that there is no need to accumulate anything more, and the cravings go away. On the other hand, whenever I know there is candy in the house I cannot think of anything else until it consumed. When I have to travel all the way to the store for candy, my laziness wins out. Some people have suggested that willpower is like a muscle that must be exercised in order to strengthen it. This is why many people give up something for lent. However, studies have shown that whenever people feel as if they have been deprived (either by themselves or others), they will subconsciously grant themselves some liberty to make up for it. Those who give to charity are ruder. Those who skipped dessert yesterday will eat twice as much today. Does going through a period of scarcity make one more generous or more stingy? On the one hand, those who have experienced poverty might be extra careful never to experience it again by never giving anything away, while the rich have such abundance they don’t mind giving much of it away. On the other hand, those who have experienced poverty know firsthand how it feels and might better empathize with others going through the same thing, while the rich don’t have a clue and might never think of anyone but themselves. It’s all in the application. One thing that I have observed in life is that most people see distinctions I do not. They are always dividing us into different groups based on personality traits or modes of thought, but I have a hard time understanding the classification.
Reason and Emotion One of the most common false dichotomies I hear is that some of us are rational while others are emotional. I am told that reason and emotion are enemies and that it is impossible to use both simultaneously. I have always seen them as complimentary. If I do not know, how can I care? And if I do not care, what difference does it make that I know? In order to escape a burning building, one must both use reason to understand that they are in danger and use emotion to choose to make use of that understanding one way or another. One without reason is as likely to run in place as run out the door, while one without emotions is also as likely to run in place as run out the door. People are too quick to make assumptions. They assume that the emotional response is to run into a burning building to retrieve objects of value while the rational response is to remain outdoors until the danger passes. Why can’t it be that the emotional response is to flee the flames in fear while the rational response is to carefully analyze the risk and determine it still minimal enough to run back in to rescue the baby? Which individual is risk-averse? The one who does not want to risk burns and suffocation or the one who does not want to risk losing irreplaceable things that are likely salvageable? In every action, there are emotional tradeoffs based on the perceived outcomes – perceptions arrived at through reason. Left and Right I am told that the right side of the brain is creative while the left side of the brain is logical. Right-thinkers make great artists but are easily fooled by propaganda while left-thinkers can balance a budget but are unable to invent creative solutions to new issues. I have always seen logic and creativity as complimentary. Creativity feeds on logic. Understanding how things work is a necessary base for extrapolating how they can work differently. I am told that left-thinkers are better at critical thinking and right-thinkers are better at seeing “the whole picture” at once, but how can one engage in critical thought without seeing the whole picture? A left-thinker might be able to follow a chain of logic left behind by a right-thinker, but they would not be able to create one themselves. I have observed that some people get hung up on symbols while losing track of the underlying reality the symbols represent. This causes them to make comical and sometimes dangerous mistakes. Since it is supposedly left-thinkers that get lost in details, are good with symbols (both language and math), and are sequential in their thinking, it follows that left-thinkers are bad at critical thinking – yet this is the opposite of what I am told. East and West In eastern thought things are defined in relationship to other things whereas in western thought things are defined in isolation. Thus, an easterner might define a bird as that which eats seeds and is eaten by cats while a westerner might define a bird as an object with feathers and wings. I have problems with this dichotomy too. Reductionism is supposedly a western idea. In reductionism, feathers can be described as having vanes and barbs and wings can be described as having bones and skin. Even if the bird is broken all the way down into its constituent subatomic particles, the motion of those particles is meaningless except in relation to other particles. Since mass is nothing but resistance to a change in motion, mass too is meaningless except in relation to other particles. The same goes for spin and charge. Ultimately, all thought is eastern thought. At the same time, easterners would never be able to understand or communicate about the immensely complex world without imposing some sort of simplifying taxonomy onto it. I assume they have finite minds like everyone else. This requires breaking things down so they will fit in memory. Ultimately, all thought is western thought. Faces and Vases I wonder if the propensity of humans to see things as “either-or” has a neurological basis. I am told that in viewing pictures like the one here, people always see either a vase or two faces but never both at the same time. This has been cited as proof of a central consciousness distinct from all the sensory data our brains continually filter through that our subconscious is “aware” of but “we” are not. Oddly, I have never had a problem seeing both faces and vase at the same time. Am I an alien? Please read this and tell me what you think.
Misleading labels: The media elites in America are always trying to divide us. They divide us by age, sex, religion, and race. They divide us into extroverts and introverts. They divide us into aspies and nuerotypicals. Most of all, they divide us by political party affiliation. They use misleading labels such as “conservative” and “liberal” to make us believe there are two distinct groups of us with a large gulf in between. The reality is that no two people agree on everything and there are often more differences within groups than between them. Independent individuals exist across the political spectrum as one large, sprawling group. How people are classified depends much on the questions asked and on how such things are framed. It is entirely possible to believe the death penalty is sometimes justified, but to still believe it to be bad policy. It is entirely possible to believe the wars in Iraq and Libya were justified, but to still believe them mistakes. It is entirely possible to believe that drug use and extramarital sex are unhealthy without considering them immoral, and possible to consider them immoral without believing they should be made illegal. It is entirely possible to be deeply suspicious of big corporations and yet even more suspicious of big-government attempts to reign them in. The same person taking two different surveys may seem very liberal to one and very conservative to the other. Depending on which points candidates emphasize, the same person could vote either Republican or Democrat. Measuring Values: Sometimes people will support the same policies for very different reasons. One can support anti-capitalist economic protectionism not to protect the jobs of American workers, but to protect national security and self-determination. Some people may oppose affirmative action not because it divides us and perpetuates unequal treatment based on race, but because they are secret segregationists. Whether one supports particular policies often depends how the policies are applied. One might be perfectly happy to let the state decide to legalize or criminalize abortion or drug use, but not believe it is the role of the federal government to tell the states how to rule. One might believe it perfectly permissible for government to fund with taxpayer money things such as health care and education, but not the federal government. One might believe that the congress should pass a law to define marriage to include homosexual unions, but still call foul when unelected judges impose their own will on the people to do the same. Sometimes what policy someone supports depends on what the given alternatives are. The same individual might support a flat tax when the alternative is a complex income tax with multiple brackets, exemptions, credits, deductions, and different rates for different types of income, yet support a sales tax over a flat tax, and a tax on the states over a national sales tax, allowing the citizens of each state to decide how they will be taxed. This is what gets politicians into trouble more than anything else. They will support one policy one year and another policy another year because the given alternatives have changed, not their principles. The media will still cast the change as a flip-flop. Sometimes the problem is one of pragmatism. On one hand, one might support democracy over anarchy because of the political reality that without government there is no protection from criminals or foreign governments, though in an ideal world without such threats they would support anarchy. On the other hand, one might support separation of powers, a bill of rights, and term limits that thwart the will of the voters over pure democracy because of the political reality that most voters are easily manipulated and too willing to impose their will on each other, though in an ideal world without such things they would support a pure democracy. On yet another hand (How many hands do people have again? I’ll use a foot.), one might not support term limits or separation of powers because of the political reality that such things are not politically viable. Over and over I see people that actually agree or have very similar positions argue with each other – and this phenomenon happens outside of politics as well. Sometimes two people who are both moderates on abortion and can see merit in both the pro-choice and pro-life arguments will misinterpret where the other is coming from. One person might react to recent pro-choice extremism by repeating a pro-life argument and another person might assume the first to be pro-life and respond with a pro-choice one, in turn leading the first to assume the second is a pro-choice extremist. They can go back and forth for hours and never realize that they agree. We aren’t as far apart as the media would have us believe. I encourage everyone to be patient and tolerant and really listen to each other. We are more alike than most people know. Classification: What is the difference between liberals and conservatives anyways? I find that what I am told by pundits, politicians, and even scientists does not make sense to me. We are told that liberals support big government while conservatives support small government. Is this true? There are many different ways to measure the size of government. It can be measured in the number of agencies, the number of employees of those agencies, the fiscal costs of running the agencies, the number of individual laws and regulations, the expansion of the ability to enforce the laws (e.g. greater punishments, greater surveillance), the tediousness and intrusiveness of those laws into realms that many consider private (e.g. how many ounces of soda one can order), and the expansion into realms not directly related to governance (e.g. spending money on welfare or corporate subsidies rather than on law enforcement). It is very difficult to find data on these things except for spending, and spending has been increasing under both Republicans and Democrats since the forties. I am sometimes told that conservatives value tradition while liberals are for change for the sake of change. Is this true? There are different ways to measure change. Liberals keep proposing new policies all the time, but from my perspective they seem like only tiny tweaks to the same top-down, one-size-fits-all, all-in, big-government model that they have been using since The New Deal and The Great Society. In contrast, conservatives propose many creative new ways to order public life, such as partial Social Security privatization and school vouchers. It is only a tiny minority of them that propose tearing the whole system down. I am sometimes told that liberals are idealists and conservatives are pragmatic. Is this true? While it makes sense to say that the free market is a practical alternative to failed liberal welfare-state policies that only create dependency and it makes sense to say that training and equipping good citizens in gun use is a practical alternative to failed liberal gun-control policies that the criminals don’t follow anyways, conservatives are idealistic in that they cannot see that neither the free market nor repealing the gun laws are politically viable. When the majority supports an impractical ideal, the practical thing is not to fight it. Some students of political science classify people in two dimensions – one pertaining to the degree of economic freedom they support, and the other pertaining to the degree of personal/social freedom they support. Others use three dimensions – one for economic issues, one for personal/social issues, and one for foreign policy issues. I have even seen models using four and five dimensions. With all of these models, there is the problem of classifying which issue fits in which dimension. Are school vouchers a personal issue or an economic one? Is participation in NAFTA an economic issue or a foreign policy one? Just to make things even more confusing, the way pundits and politicians arrange possible positions on a given issue into a political spectrum often defies logic. It is highly misleading. There is a school of thought popular among Republicans that we must meet every potential threat to our national interest with overwhelming force before they become big problems. There is another school of thought popular among Libertarians that the best way to avoid wars is by not being so quick to escalate. The best policy is probably somewhere in the middle. Where do the Democrats fit on this spectrum? Listening to the politicians, they would have you believe that they are Libertarian-esque when running against Republicans, but as soon as they get into office they get us into wars everywhere even when there is no compelling national interest, instead citing “humanitarian reasons” – but humanitarian reasons exist in every conflict! Spectra can be divided up differently depending on how an issue is conceptualized. Purely pro-choice people obviously go at one end and purely pro-life people obviously go on the other end, but who goes in the middle? Those otherwise pro-life who make an exception for rape and incest, or those otherwise pro-life that make an exception during the first trimester? There exist those that dislike verbal obscenities but have no problem seeing them in print. There exist those that dislike written obscenities but have no problem hearing and using them verbally. Some people prefer an income tax, some prefer a sales tax, and some prefer a property tax. What fair way is there to arrange those people onto a political spectrum? Among those who are called moderates there can be larger differences than between the most radical liberals and the most radical conservatives. Some are called moderates because they are radically liberal on social issues and radically conservative on economic issues. Others are called moderates because they are radically conservative on social issues and radically liberal on economic issues. Some are called moderates because they are right in the middle on nearly every issue. Still others are called moderates because they don’t care much what happens on many issues of little importance to them. For example, there are those that care deeply about the environment but have little preference whether gay marriage is legal or not. Even on a given issue there are at least three different ways to be a moderate. One can hold a position that is an equal distance from the extremes in potential positions one can have, one can hold a position that is identical to that of the average voter (mean, median, or mode?), or one can hold a position that is an equal distance between the official positions of the two parties in Washington at the moment: One extreme school of thought is to grant the federal government complete power to overrule the state governments. The opposite extreme school of thought is to give each state the complete power to rule without interference from other states. To some, the perfect compromise between the two is to grant the federal government only those powers explicitly granted to it in the constitution, leaving everything else to the states, and prohibiting from the states only those powers explicitly prohibited from any government (i.e. the bill of rights). As far as they are concerned, they are moderates, but because this puts them out of step with the majority who clamor for more federal intervention and centralization, it makes them extremists. Still, the average citizen does not want to grant as much power to the Washington as both the Democrats and Republicans seem to want to take recently, yet the media will often treat those that lie between the two parties as the true moderates and paint average citizens as extremists. The truth is that the words liberal, conservative, moderate, centrist, radical, statist, fascist, and libertarian have no constant meaning. The labels are misleading at best and divisive at worst. Don’t let words get in the way of understanding. We are all Americans. We all want to be safe, free, and prosperous, but many of us are confused and misguided. They are not the enemy anymore than those we think of as our allies. That is the greatest illusion. Start talking to each other again. More importantly, start listening again. The nation and the world depend on it. These issues in classification and more are fleshed out further in my book, The Nutcase Across The Street. Check it out if you are interested. If you like, you can also check out my old blog TheUnderstandingProject.com, where I describe some of the ways that we often talk past each other and don’t really listen. In the meantime, leave me a comment telling me your experiences with political division – or you can tell me how much of an idiot I am; that would be the normal thing to do on a political post. How many of us live the way we want? How many of us are just conforming in order to fit in? Could it be that many elements of our culture only exist because they already exist, not because a majority prefer them?
Spoilers: The most obvious example where this seems to be the case is in voting. Most people are not informed enough to really know what they’re voting for, but to the degree that people have set opinions, my impression is that the majority of those voting for Democrats only do so to keep Republicans from getting elected and the majority of those voting for Republicans only do so to keep Democrats from getting elected. There exist other viewpoints that better fit the true preferences of the majority, but voting for candidates espousing these viewpoints risks allowing the other party to win. If we all voted the way we really wanted, we would have a better government, but because we all worry how other people will vote and they worry how the rest of us will vote, nothing changes. Communal Living: People all have different tastes in art and functionality when it comes to where they live, but a major component of what goes into buying a home is whether they will be able to sell it in the future. Instead of buying what best fits us we try to please the majority of the market – but the majority of the market only prefers these things because they are trying to please others! Homeowner associations even prevent certain types of remodeling because they will bring down housing prices in the area for everyone. Nobody ever lives in their true dream house and they prevent anyone else from living in their dream house too. Everyone is a busybody that tells others how to live and we are expected to hold the interests of the group over our own. This is communism! A Heavy Cost: How much should be charged for a new product or service? How much should we pay our employees? Rather than test the market and repeatedly raising or lowering prices until we find the right spot, a shortcut business owners use is to see what similar products are already selling for. They rely on others who rely on still others who rely on still others. Because prices are much the same, consumers have no choice but to go along with it. Knowing there is an endless supply of people looking for a job, companies have less incentive to raise wages to draw employees from other companies. There is no true competition. This is collusion without actually colluding! The Ties That Bind Us: Making friends is hard. Strangers take a long time to open up to me, and when the rare stranger does open up quickly, it stands out as so unusual that I think something isn’t right and then I’m the uncomfortable one. Adults generally say hello and introduce themselves. Children skip the rituals and just start playing. Is this the way we would all behave if we weren’t taught the “right” way to do things? We initiate handshakes because we are taught that way and we go along with it when others initiate handshakes so we don’t seem rude. We dress up to make a good impression in job interviews even when the job we are applying for has no dress code. The hiring manager doesn’t care except that it shows our ability to conform and our attention to detail. The hiring manager only dresses up himself to set a good example. Could it be that nobody likes suits or ties? Could it be that most of us would rather work in our pajamas or perhaps even wear nothing at all? The Measure Of Things: The metric system is inherently simpler to use than the imperial one, but Americans are already used to using the imperial system and there is no point in any individual using metric if nobody else is. The inferior system is frozen in only because we are not coordinated enough to switch over all at once. There is no point in even learning metric under those circumstances. How did metric ever catch on in other countries, then? Generally, it was imposed by dictatorship. The cure is worse than the disease. The Meaning Of Life: Changing the language is equally difficult. Which pronoun should be used when the sex of the one it refers to is unknown? Instead of the awkward “his/her/its” or the grammatically incorrect (because it is plural) “theirs,” most people use “he.” This is confusing, but it would be far more confusing to unilaterally begin using new pronouns never heard of, such as ver and vis. Instead of using the awkward term “American Indian,” most people simply use “Indian.” This is confusing because Asian Indians are also called “Indian,” but it would be far more confusing to unilaterally begin using the virtually unknown demographic term Amerindian. Sometimes language does evolve, as when homosexual unions started to be referred to as marriages. This confused a lot of people at the time, but worked anyways because those holding to the old definitions were ridiculed, bullied, threatened, boycotted, and even persecuted by the government – so there are ways to change things. Hope And Change: Sometimes culture can change without bullies or dictators. It used to be difficult for those with tattoos to get a job. Parents told children never to get tattoos because they would ruin their future. Because so many people went and got tattoos anyways, companies now have little choice but to hire tattooed employees, and public perception has changed. It no longer matters. This gives me hope that the culture can change in other ways as well. Many people have asked how it is that a loving God can send anyone to Hell. The response is usually that evil-doers send themselves to Hell by their own actions, whether bad deeds or lack of faith, depending on who you ask. Still, many people are uncomfortable with the idea. How can a temporary life of sin earn an eternity of torment? Why would a truly loving God even create such a place?
Here are some possibilities: Hell doesn’t exist: One of the most common answers given is that Hell is only a myth created by the professional clergy to scare people. This is possible, but unlikely. Not having been there yet, I can’t say with certainty that it exists, but since Jesus himself has been recorded mentioning such a place, it seems probable that something like it does. Death is just that: Others have suggested that what is interpreted to mean a place of eternal torment is actually just the grave. Those who die are simply dead, and have no conscious existence apart from God’s salvation. In other words, all things naturally run down from entropy and what God does is offer a way out, but no one is forced to accept his offer. It beats the alternative: Another explanation is that Hell is simply the absence of God and therefore of anything good. Many people have difficulty accepting the truths that they have done anything wrong, that another entity (God) rules over them, and that they will have to forgive others and share Heaven with those they consider inferior. These people would be absolutely miserable if forced into Heaven. For those who hate God and everything good, Hell is actually a more hospitable place for them. It is not designed to be torturous, but without God’s intervention the people living there will likely make it that way for each other given enough time. Hell is temporary: Some people have hypothesized that Hell might be only a temporary situation, and that many of those initially sent there will still have a chance to get free when they finally accept God’s way of doing things. There are hints in scripture to support this. Critics of this idea have claimed that this suggests that Heaven might be temporary too, and that those who screw up might be cast out. Since this second idea is contradicted by the Bible, they reject the first idea as well. Purgatory: The old idea of purgatory is similar. Perhaps those who die pass through a realm where their sins are first purged before passing on to their permanent home. Critics of this theory point out that purgatory is redundant and unnecessary since our time on Earth serves much the same function. Hell (and Heaven) may also refer to a state of existence rather than a place, so that it is Hell-on-Earth (and Heaven-on-Earth) that is temporary. Time travel: I had a weird idea once. What if Heaven is simply the ability to pass up and down our personal timelines and make different choices over and over until life comes out perfectly? Our actions of course allow us to alter history by reaching others with God’s message of love, which allows them to escape Hell the second time through, which allows them to travel back and further refine history. Eventually, the whole world is perfect and we have Heaven-on-Earth. This idea is compatible with some of my other ideas about time. What do you think? The ancients seemed to think that Heaven was above the sky in all directions and Hell was below. We now know enough to realize this is silly – but where is Heaven?
We now know the sky is full of planets. Could Heaven be on another planet? Some physical models suggest there could be parallel universes just centimeters away from us but in a dimension we can’t move in. Could Heaven be in another M-brane? Some physical models suggest there could be forms of matter all around us with its own set of forces, but sharing no forces with us and able to interact only through gravity. Cosmological measurements seem to corroborate this idea. Could Heaven be made of dark matter? Others have suggested that Heaven is not a place at all, but a state of being. Wherever Jesus is, there too is the Kingdom of God. Since Jesus lives in us, Heaven is everywhere we go. Perhaps the best way to characterize it is to say that Heaven is the future, as the world is gradually renewed by love until we finally have Heaven-on-Earth. Not having been to Heaven yet myself, I can’t be absolutely certain that it exists. Those who claim to have been there could easily have been suffering hallucinations arising from oxygen deprivation. Still, I have on rare occasions had a taste of God where I knew I was part of something much bigger. I know God exists. Perhaps that is what also happened to these others while they were experiencing severe trauma bringing them close to death – and maybe being connected to God that way is all that Heaven is. What do you think? In a previous post I described three approaches to describing reality. Each of them represented a different paradigm, or way of looking at the same things. They do not contradict each other and might be equally true. In the same way, there is more than one way to look at classifying paradigms. Somebody else might instead have classified theories of everything into reductionist and wholist models. Since elements of reductionism and wholism exist in the matter-energy, space-time, and mind-spirit approaches, these two ways of looking at classification have nothing to do with each other and thus represent different paradigms of classification. The question of whether the matter-energy approach is more reductionist or wholist is meaningless.
When people disagree, they often disagree on more than the answers; they disagree on the questions, too. My experience in life has been that most people are only ever aware of one way of looking at things, whereas I enjoy learning the basics of every school of thought. When it comes to politics, sociology, economics, religion, and morality, this lack of understanding can lead to unnecessary strife. Take the three approaches to sociology for example: Structural-Functional: This approach begins with asking what role an institution or individual plays in the community and what good is derived from it. For example, slavery and hierarchy provide a more efficient division of labor and coherence of leadership than if everybody did their own thing. It is assumed that all societal arrangements are good for the community as a whole, though some practices may be better than others. Social-Conflict: This approach begins by asking who benefits at whose expense by having a particular institution in play. For example, respect for property rights benefits those with property at the expense of those without the means to join them. It is assumed that all societal arrangements hurt somebody. Symbolic-Interactive: This approach begins by questioning how it happens that the members of society even agree on what is good and bad. While a social-conflict theorist would see the Amish as somehow oppressed and a structural-functional theorist would see their existence as important to defining cultural standards, a symbolic-interactive theorist recognizes that the Amish live the way they do because they want to and asks why we don’t all live the same way. Another source of conflict is the way that liberals and conservatives understand government. “Liberal” and “conservative” are words with no agreed upon meaning, but to the extent that an agreement exists I have noticed a correlation in their approach to politics. Perfect Government: Ask a conservative to describe his perfect government and he will likely begin by listing the different ways in which power will be divided and restricted in order to prevent corruption and dictatorship. No minimum guaranteed level of government provision will be mentioned because it will be assumed that the people through their representatives will pass laws and spending to take care of that. Ask a liberal to describe his perfect government and he will likely begin listing all the different projects and programs that he wants fully funded. No suggestion of where the funds and resources might come from will be mentioned because it will be assumed that anything that can be done through the government will be. The conservative sees government as just one of many competing societal interests while the liberal sees it as the all-encompassing expression of all people in society. Nature Of Politics: Ask a conservative his political views and he will likely begin listing all ways he agrees and disagrees with current government policy. He may also have opinions on medicine, technology, education, religion, hiring practices, and how to raise a family, but none of these are considered political opinions or even proper things for a government to be involved in. Ask a liberal his political views and he will likely begin listing all the groups in society being oppressed by other groups. To them, the relative prestige, education, finances, and other forms of power between people is just as much politics as government policy. Workplace politics is still politics. Do you have a different way of looking at things? One time, I was thinking of all the different attempts to explain all of reality in terms of a small set of principles and I realized there were three different categories of them. I call them the matter-energy approach, the space-time approach, and the mind-spirit approach. Because they approach reality from completely different perspectives, they do not contradict each other and so might be equally true.
Matter-Energy: In this approach matter and energy are all that exist. Matter is convertible into energy through annihilation. Mass (resistance to change in velocity) is caused by the Higgs energy field. All energy fields come in discrete quanta and all fundamental particles come with quantum-mechanical wave functions. All fields are expressible in terms of a single, unified field that manifests itself differently in different situations. The mind and spirit are actually just manifestations of material interaction, such as a network of firing neurons. Space and time are actually just manifestations of material interaction too, creating imaginary phase-spaces. For example, suppose a set of particles existing on top of one another in a point of zero dimension were able to take on different values of some property existing along a spectrum, such as color. Suppose that particles were able to interact strongly with other particles of the same color but weakly with particles of the next color on the spectrum and very weakly with particles of a color further along the spectrum. Should any sentient citizens inhabit this zero-dimensional realm, they would interpret color as a spatial dimension. In the same way, all dimensions are illusions in this approach. Models tending to focus on matter and energy include Newtonian gravity, quantum electrodynamics, quantum chromodynamics, super-symmetry, and the idea that we might be living in a holographic simulation running on a computer of fewer spatial dimensions than we observe inside our simulation. It is the most popular approach of thinkers in this age. Space-Time: In this approach space and time are all that exist, forming a cohesive “spacetime,” the only difference between them being that objects extend along the temporal dimension forever, even when they are spatially small. Each particle experiences time in a different direction depending on its velocity. Particles themselves are merely tiny regions of highly curved space, affecting the way other particles move around them. These effects are “fictitious forces.” Matter is an illusion. The topology and geometry of all the dimensions of spacetime (including some that may be tightly curved to be very small in extent) are what give rise to everything we interpret as forces. Models tending to focus on space and time include special relativity, general relativity, and the Kaluza-Klein theory. This approach was popular in the first half of the twentieth century but has since stalled. Mind-Spirit: In this approach only information exists. Starting with the sure knowledge that the mind exists (without which we could not know anything), students of this school of thought break the mind down into its fundamental building blocks (e.g. perceptions, sensations) to understand it. These are measured and classified. In the same way that characters in a script or dream are mere manifestations of a higher consciousness (the writer or dreamer), we and our universe are a manifestation of some higher mind. By our minds being extensions of this same supermind we are all connected. The only reason we believe that minds require brains and therefore matter to exist is because those are the current rules inside this dream. Matter, energy, space, and time are nothing but illusions created by the mind. Physics is a result of bits of information copying and destroying each other. The mind-body problem is solved by not having bodies. This approach has been hinted at in limited ways by philosophers and religious leaders throughout history. Cellular automata is a related idea. It came closest to being true science in the work of Descartes and Locke, but has since stalled. In the eighteenth century scientists discovered that lightning was made of the same electricity as static discharges. In the nineteenth century scientists discovered that electricity and magnetism were related. They described the phenomenon as different manifestations of the same underlying force named electromagnetism, which operated through something called an electromagnetic field. They predicted the existence of ripples in this field called electromagnetic waves. Later it was found that visible light was an electromagnetic wave. Radio waves, microwaves, infrared light, ultraviolet light, x-rays, and gamma rays were also shown to be electromagnetic, made of the same “stuff” and differing only in wavelength. At the atomic scale, electromagnetic forces drive chemical reactions and bonding. The magnetic, electrical, optic, chemical, and physical properties of all substances are governed by the electromagnetic force. What were once thought of as separate phenomena are now described in terms of a single theory.
At the same time, gravity was used to explain both falling apples and the movement of the planets. The various behaviors of the atomic nucleus were described in terms of two forces: the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force (physicists apparently have no imagination when it comes to names). Might this trend continue? Is it possible to explain everything in terms of one force? This is what physicists have been trying to do for a century now. Some progress seems to have been made. The Kaluza-Klein theory unified gravity and electromagnetism, and the standard model of particle physics unified the weak nuclear force, the strong nuclear force, and electromagnetism. Unfortunately, the two theories are incompatible with each other. Numerous other candidate models have been proposed to unify all four forces, such as superstrings, super-symmetry, Penrose twistors, the holographic universe, cellular automata, and quantum loop gravity. There are problems with each. For some, the math is so hard that we can’t be sure they even work at all. For others, they are so versatile in explaining everything that they can explain anything – meaning they make no testable predictions to disprove them. In everything I read on the subject, it is simply assumed that a unified field exists to explain all fields, both for bosons and fermions. Why? I have always wondered whether a unified field theory is even possible. What if the four forces are truly separate and fundamental? Could it be that nature is infinitely complex, with baryons being made of quarks, being made of still smaller particles, being made of still smaller particles, and so on forever? Since math is the foundation of physics, doesn’t Goedel’s theorem imply that any “theory of everything” must necessarily be either incomplete or inconsistent? The same could be said of any set of rules, including those of moral philosophy. It seems that when I try to organize a set of principles from which right and wrong can be determined, there are always situations in which they either do not apply or else yield contradictory answers. The best example is land ownership. I believe in property rights. Land claims must be first-come-first-served. What is to be done with landless nomads, then? What is to be done with the homeless? Humans are material objects that take up space. They have to be somewhere. When the whole world is taken, where do they go? Who’s yard do they camp in? Yours? It would make sense to take a tiny sliver from everyone’s land to gather together in one place for them, but this is not how space works. It would make sense to cut up the nomads and distribute their matter equally across all lands, but this is not how the human body works. Instead, the majority of landowners will be blissfully unaware of the problem, while a minority will find their properties overrun. While it is perfectly permissible to defend your livelihood by driving the intruders away, it is also perfectly permissible for the intruders to defend themselves from being constantly driven from one place to another. Conflict is unavoidable and because any conflict can contain an element of this one (imagine the intruders taking over the government, taxing the landowners, and using the money to buy places for themselves), it can no longer be said who is right and who is wrong. Morality completely breaks down. I am not a relativist. There is still a right choice and wrong choice in any given situation. It’s just that the underlying principles are infinitely complex and cannot be described ahead of time in a way comprehendible by any finite mind. These subjects I hope to describe in greater detail in the book I’m still writing. Some have suggested that our four-dimensional spacetime might be a sort of “membrane” moving through a higher-dimensional spacetime and that it is possible that it could move in such a way that time for us would simply stop. There would be no way to see the end of time coming, but one prediction of the theory is that space would expand, pushing the galaxies apart – which is exactly what we observe.
As a side note, I have also heard that if the accelerating expansion of the universe continues forever, that it will eventually pull atoms apart and leave fundamental particles stranded with no way to interact with others as space expands faster than light. Since fundamental particles by definition have no internal mechanisms that could represent a changed state over time, time would be meaningless. After reading about this theory I had a thought: If it is possible for time to abruptly end in the middle of things, is it also possible for it to abruptly begin in the middle of things? Why not? Could it be that the big bang never happened and the universe started up in its fully formed state? Could it be that humans never evolved but instead descended from a pair named Adam and Eve who had no parents and no childhood? Obviously, this proves nothing. It’s just an interesting possibility that arises when you start playing around with time. What do you think? Why does time only move forward? Time is only known by the relation of one rate of change to another rate of change. It makes sense to say that one clock runs faster than another, but if time itself were to run faster, then all clocks (and ALL physical processes) would run faster together and there would be no way to know that anything was unusual. Time is relative. To say it moves faster or slower is meaningless unless it can run differently in different places. In the same way, saying it moves forward or backward is meaningless unless it can run differently in different places. If time ever did run backwards, we would also run backwards and thus never notice.
We only experience the present. We know the past through our memories, but memories are stored in the arrangement of our synapses in the present. For all we know there might be no past and our memories false. For all we know, time is already moving backwards, we have forgotten the future, and we remember a past that we will soon experience – but by the time we get there we will have forgotten our current present, not being able to remember the future. At every moment, we will have the compelling belief that we are experiencing time forwards. Since there is no way to tell the difference even in principle, it is actually meaningless to think of time “moving” at all. The real question is why we don’t remember both past and future. The real question is why we don’t see some objects evolving backwards relative to other objects. Why don’t we see spilled milk spontaneously leap off the floor back into the glass? If milk were to spontaneously leap off the floor we still might not interpret this as backwards time if there were no glass there to catch it – and it would have to be the same glass it fell out of in the first place. Otherwise, the milk is just hopping around and changing glasses. This would require someone to be standing there with it, requiring them to be moving backwards, requiring their surroundings to be moving backwards, and so on. If you continue moving forward in time, you will find yourself deeper and deeper in the milk’s past. This gives you the opportunity to interfere and create a paradox. Killing the cow before it has grown old enough to be milked will mean the milk will never exist and you will have indirectly interfered in your own past. There will be chaos. With different objects experiencing time differently, it will be impossible for any object to experience time in one direction for long. They will interfere with each other. Time can only be experienced by an object when the object’s surroundings experience time in the same direction, whose surroundings must also be moving in the same direction, and so on. In any given set of particles, time either moves forward together or else not at all. When energy is evenly distributed throughout a system, particles simply bounce around off each other in a way giving no hint which way time is moving. There is no way to measure time in this situation and so it is meaningless to say it exists. Time only exists when there is an unequal distribution of energy. The real question is not why time doesn’t move backwards or why it doesn’t run in different directions, but why we find ourselves in a universe with an unequal distribution of energy for measurable time to exist at all. Of course, one could always say that if there were no time, we wouldn’t be here to be asking the question, but that still doesn’t explain why. So why do we find ourselves in a universe with an unequal distribution of energy? If the electromagnetic force were just slightly stronger, protons would repel each other with such gusto that fusion of hydrogen into heavier nuclei would be impossible and it would be a very boring, lifeless universe of pure hydrogen. If the electromagnetic force were just slightly weaker, fusion would be so easy that stars would burn up and explode in no time and it would be a universe far too exciting for life to survive.
This is only one of many such examples of the constants of nature being “fine-tuned” for life. This raises the question of why the constants are the way they are. Nobody knows. There are those that have suggested that this proves the existence of God, assuming that God created the universe with life and humanity in mind. Others point out instead that if the constants were different, we would not be here to ask the question, so it should surprise no one that we find ourselves in a universe with constants fine-tuned for life. They say, “Of course things are the way they are; if they weren’t you wouldn’t be here asking about it.” This is called the anthropic principle. As far as we know, there may be very many universes with random constants, and statistics predicts that at least one of them will be friendly to life simply by chance. Coupled with the anthropic principle, this explains much. However, there are limits to the principle’s explanatory power. It only explains away those things that are absolutely necessary for sentient life to evolve. It does not explain the incredible complexity and redundancy of our ecosystem. In all the possible universes where life exists aware enough to pose the question “why these constants?” the fraction of them with ecosystems as complex as ours must still be very small – so where did it all come from? Even if it turns out that evolving sentience requires conditions leading to the state of affairs we now see on Earth, it certainly does not require that life evolved anywhere else in the universe. Evolution is such an unlikely process to begin with that it would be far too unlikely to happen twice. If we ever meet aliens, we will know something more is going on. Since we have already asked the question “why these constants?” there is no more reason that we must necessarily survive to ask other questions. There is nothing guaranteeing that the laws of nature will not change. There is nothing guaranteeing our surviving the next meteorite impact or gamma ray burst. Which is the more likely universe? One in which life survives just long enough to invoke the anthropic principle before dying? Or one in which life survives indefinitely? The longer we survive and the more we learn that can go wrong but doesn’t, the more we will know that something else is going on. Of course, if humanity were to survive another ten billion years and meet trillions of other sentient species, one could always say, “Of course things are the way they are; if they weren’t you wouldn’t be here asking about it.” If miracles are real, why don’t we see more of them? The problem is the definition of the word “miracle.” Miracles happen, but when they happen often enough for observers to discern a pattern and describe it, they are simply relabeled as science and no longer called miracles.
Is moving something without touching it a miracle? It is unless it happens all the time in a mathematically consistent way. Then it’s just called gravity. What about moving around matter by the power of the mind? We do this all the time when we lift a finger. It has been relabeled neurophysiology. What about mixing air, dirt, and water together into a living figure that dances and sings? That’s called biology. Plants combine air, dirt, and water all the time to build themselves up and are in turn eaten and absorbed by dancers and singers. What about using positive visualization or prayer to heal the body? It is unless it happens often enough to be measured. Then it’s called a placebo effect. What about creating something from nothing? Can science explain that? At the subatomic scale, particles pop in and out of existence all the time according to certain statistical laws. These “virtual particles” are how forces are thought to be mediated. Negative mass-energy is also possible when there are attractive forces. For example, a hydrogen atom has slightly less mass-energy than the sum of the electron and proton that make it up because of the electromagnetic force holding them together. In cases where negative mass-energy exactly balances positive to add up to zero, there is no limit on the positive mass-energy that can spontaneously exist. Mass is equivalent to energy through the relationship E=mc^2 and so it is possible for any amount of matter to pop out of nothing so long as the attractive forces holding it together add up to an equal amount. According to some estimates, the amount of mass in the observable universe is equal to the amount of negative energy in gravity it has, meaning that the entire universe might have zero net mass. In other words, the entire universe could have literally popped out of nothing without violating physics, all explained without resorting to intervention by supernatural entities. The standard model of particle physics is incomplete because it predicts the mass of each fundamental particle and the sum of the quantum vacuum energy fields between them to be infinite. This defies observation. Some have suggested that the universe we see is only a tiny fraction of an infinitely dense sea of reality. In one sense, we no longer need God to explain physics, but what if the infinite quantum vacuum energy is God? Who is to say it isn’t? Something of that complexity would certainly be capable of thought – and probably many other activities far beyond our comprehension. There is no way to predict with any certainty what the nature of an infinitely complex energy field would be. It would mediate all forces and sustain the physical laws through continual intervention (Colossians 1:17, Acts 17:24-29). From this infinite reservoir energy could be added to and taken from the universe we see. Since known physics derives from this deeper physics, occasional violations of what we think of as normal physics could occur and these would be called miracles. It would also explain the evidence of intelligent design we see in creation. In conclusion, science has already found proof of miracles and may even have found God, but it knows them all by other names. The conflict between science and spirituality is one of semantics. You never really know how much love you have until you need it.
What I mean by that is you may believe you love someone more than life itself only to find out otherwise when you are actually put in a situation forcing you to make the choice. Likewise, you may be undecided about someone only to discover when the time comes that you do take those risks. I have been on both sides of this and it surprised me both times. Love is meaningless without action. Without work, love – like faith – is dead. The older I get, the more I learn about what true love is and how it differs from selfishness. Many times I thought I had it finally figured out only to learn my love was still not quite perfect. Don’t worry about how much it is that you love someone. Simply love them the best you know how at this moment. Sometimes I feel like there is nowhere left on Earth to discover. The days of Columbus and Magellan are over. Satellites photograph every square meter. The ocean floor might not be fully mapped, but from what is already known it is not likely to have much that is exceptionally interesting. It is also too hostile an environment for me to really enjoy myself there. This is when I remind myself that:
It also bothers me that so many areas are restricted – whether by government or by private entities. I figure everyone is entitled keep me from their backyard, but when hundreds of acres of wilderness are marked with no-trespassing signs, there is a severe problem. What purpose do I have on this Earth if not to explore? How can I explore when so much land was stolen away from me before I was even born? Some areas are closed for ecological reasons, but they are only closed to humans – not other animals. This is discrimination! Some areas are open to the public but only for a fee. You have to pay to camp, dock, or even park your car! More and more humans are dumped into smaller and smaller spaces together but sometimes I just need to get away from people to relax and recharge. State parks are great places, but they often have rules against firearms, hunting, collecting, campfires, walking off trail, and alcohol. I wish I didn’t have to deal with people and their rules. Columbus and Magellan just went where they pleased. This is when I remind myself that:
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AuthorMy name is Dan. I am an author, artist, explorer, and contemplator of subjects large and small. Archives
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