Hergest Ridge

I sincerely hope that my Beautiful Cynic will appreciate the title, for it’s her I had in mind when it was penned (or digitised as is the case these days). For the reader at large, you’ll be pleased to know that all cryptic references end with this paragraph.

Even if you didn’t sit through a single episode of Lost, chances are you’re aware of the many red herrings, twists, and surprises abundant in the series. Endless speculations and interpretations are to be found and heard everywhere. Co-workers, magazines, the couple at the bus stop – somewhere during your day you’ve been exposed to Lost and its ways.

As humans have a kind of allergic aversion to prolonged uncertainty, but as long as there is a prize at the end of the confusion, we’ll trek the unknown landscape for three seasons, plus. Is this why so many of us have tuned-in to Lost? If so, why are we able to delay the gratification that comes with later answers when Lost is concerned, but when CSI attempted to introduce story lines that weren’t limited to an episode, the viewers pined to no end?

If I made it sound like I have the answers to these questions, I’m sorry. I don’t. Sure, I have theories, but so does everyone else and their uncle. I’m hopelessly (and snobbishly proud of it) out of touch with Hollywood and the entertainment industry, and have already exceeded my threshold for discussing it. However, as the title of the entry suggest, there is something I have to say. Hear me out.

Any decent book claiming to be factually accurate will by virtue include references to the sources of information presented. These sources will come in the form of recommended reading, study results, quotes from various authors, scientists, philosophers, and in some cases a quote from a nincompoop claiming to know something about anything*. These references are recurring, and soon you’re left wondering “Who is this Bertrand Russel or Carl Sagan guy? What is this book that everyone keeps mentioning?” You want answers and before long you’re reading a second book to get them. As was the case with the first, in the process of reading you have learned three new names, and titles of five other books that sound interesting.

Where does it all end? On the Lost series, likely with Season 5. For all else, hopefully not a second sooner than the time your pulse comes to a halt for the last time. Life is a brief adventure in a magical, all the while natural universe, and for every answer we wrangle out of it, we find a grander question. The answer we sought becomes nearly insignificant, so small. Our thirst has not been quenched, and we’re back for more.

As the late Carl Sagan once said: “In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed!”? Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.”

_{* Jerry Falwell with (paraphrasing) “9/11 attacks are god’s response for tolerating abortion”, Ray Comfort with “A banana is the atheist nightmare obviously designed for easy human consumption”, G.Bush Jr. “God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them” (Washington Post), ad infinitum. Einstein was right when he hypothised that stupidity is indeed infinite.}

22:00 “Mad, Mad World” streaming directly into my mind, new jogging shoes on my feet, sailing through the night under the dark gray sky and the green trees really bring out the wonder of life. So many things coming together, the various pieces so much more than their sum.

There is something about that music track, the quiet piano all by itself, like a warning that no one wants to hear. It takes everything in its surrounding, plays on the shadows and calm exterior appearances, weaves all into one, and then gently waves a red flag, “You’ve been warned.”

17:30 Seven times they’ve sang “Happy Birthday” – that was the message, but the exact song is foreign to me – in less than two hours. The song comes with free desert for the celebrating individual to whom attention is drawn by the folks at Montana’s. Although I didn’t mention Caddy’s birthday, I can’t help wonder if he’d keep quiet for me. I think he would. Montana’s has been our Birthday Lunch place of choice for a couple years now, and I can’t remember having to wear the silly Viking headgear on either occasion. Surely, I’d remember that, which means he did indeed keep quiet.

Time flew by as it always does during these meetings. We met at the mall where my friend bought a pair of running shoes, and I decided to finally do so for myself. An impulse purchase of sorts, but one that was significantly overdue. Three weeks in pain from various injuries and old sores aggravated, last thing I want is for my feet to act up again. The summer is too short for sitting it out for such trivial reasons.

We visited the book store where I nearly bought “God is Not Great” by Christopher Hitchens . Had we left a few minutes earlier, I would have done just that. The few extra minutes was enough time to cool off – I should wait until the book is available in paper back. I have several books on my list of reading for the summer, and some of them are available cheap, or free on the web (Animal Farm looks to be out for open distribution). The library is of some help, but I have been told that the wait for Mr. Hitchens’ book is long.

“Red Strangers”, “The Lion Children”, “Atheist Universe”, “Snake Oil and Other Preoccupations”, and if I get really ambitious a shot at “Euclids Elements” are on my short list, along with anything by George Orwell. Yes – I do realise that Euclids Elements consists of 13 books, and No – I’m not even dreaming of reading more than the first book before fall is back in our hemisphere.

Back over lunch-turned-to-dinner, Caddy brought up an interesting point. Well, to be exact several interesting points are the norm and today was no exception, but there is one in specific I’d like to bring forth. He alluded that the side of the debate he presented with myself was quite the opposite of that he presents with other individuals. In other words, if the debate was with someone else, he would likely be asking a lot of the questions I am asking. Without getting into details and turning our personal conversation into a public forum, let me get to my point: There have been times where I agree with an individual, but press on with arguments against his or her stance. I play the Devil’s Advocate, but the other side is not aware that truly I happen to agree with them. “Why?”, I asked myself in reflection to such episodes. Am I just being facetious?

Caddy’s comment made me realise that to learn anything we need to be able to turn on our own views and challenge them, and sometimes the best way of achieving this method is to have others whom agree with you ‘fight for the belief’ by having it questioned. Besides, some of the best debates are those in which you make a convincing argument for something you don’t actually believe. Pulling off a feat of this nature shows a deeper understanding of the issue at hand, and can be very rewarding.

So, it’s settled then: I’m not trying to be difficult or facetious. Learning is the sought end result. At least that’s what I tell myself, but we all know that it’s impossible to observe a system from within without bias weighing in heavily on all such assessments.

12:00 Altering between Blocky (Addiction Defined – 543,891 Points), a couple of projects for clients, and a second reading of “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins, the day promises to be a fine one.

8:00 The city is covered in a blanket of fog. Two pigeons have once again decided to make my balcony their home. If it wasn’t for the mess they leave, they could stay. That, and they’d have to shut up, because on a day like today I’m going back to bed.

Random, recurring thoughts and bits of life from the more ‘interesting’ regions of my consciousness…

Just as some people think they’ll die young, I think that some day, for what ever reason, I’ll need to use very primary survival skills to stay alive. Attribute it to an overactive imagination, the constant global chaos, or an out of character ‘negative’ world view (I think it’s more realistic than anything else), when I learn how to make fire without matches or lighter, I think that the skill will help me survive some day.

After writing a piece, I edit out all unnecessary words. I feel special loathing towards consecutive short words. After forming this method, I read George Orwell’s “Rules for Writers” affirming the act. George also taught me another important point, that of avoiding the use of metaphors, similes, and other figures of speech seen elsewhere. I’ve yet to read any of George’s books, and I feel a tinge of guilt for having gone through so much of my life without doing so.

Dopey and Rudolph – my gerbils – are often referred to as “Mr. Hobbles” and “Monkey”. The names reflect Dopey’s funny walk due to a missing hind leg, and Rudolph’s love for climbing the cage walls.

I see YouTube as Plato’s virtual Academy. Sure, a lot of content on YouTube would classify as the scum of the earth, but if you look in the right places, gems will be found.

Standing at a professional crossroad is tough. On one hand, there is the excitement about the opportunities. On the other, a great deal needs to be considered from a future perspective. Tomorrow will be over in the blink of an eye and by nature I don’t give it much forethought, but it’ll be a much longer ride to get through several years. So how does one make the right long term decision?

Well, for one understand that there is no perfect decision. The things you worry about today are unlikely to be of much concern in a couple years. A ‘perfect decision’ today may still be perfect in two years, but it’ll likely be so for reasons beyond anything you can anticipate in the here and now. The values on which a decision is made need to be re-evaluated. Are they long term, or passing values? If you are basing a long term decision on a conviction that is fairly recent, dig deeper in search of something that has been with you longer.

Influence from close friends should be sought, but be warned: you have the greatest deal of information to make a decision with, and you are the one that will have to live with it. Is the friend suggesting a direction because they believe it’s what will make you happy, or are they speaking from a self-centred ‘it would make me happiest’ perspective?

Disregard all instant gratification pros. Instant gratification is just that, instant. It’s life span is very limited. It’s not that the pros gained from instant gratification decisions cannot deliver long term happiness, but they are one of the most potent biases in your decision making process. Eliminate these threats before they hijack your decision.

Understand that even with every last shred of available information in hand, your decision is still likely to be very, very difficult. The uncertainty of the future will make it so, nine out of ten times. With that understanding, make a decision! At the end of the day, it’s better to make a few mistakes while moving along, than to make none while staying where you are. Unless you are exactly where you want to be, the only chance of getting there is to get moving even at the expense of a few wrong turns.

Challenging Christians on their beliefs is frustrating . If you’re an ex-Christian like myself, your comments are dismissed with “You’re just angry, someone hurt you”. The alternate scenario is dismissed with “You don’t know anything about my God and faith”. Huh?

The other day I used the phrase “There are no sins. Only man-made guilt trips to keep the population under a spell.” An individual by the name of JesusLivesInAllOfUs promptly responded with “Spells are witchcraft, and witchcraft is the devil’s work. If there is a devil, there must be a god.” D’uh, how did I miss that obvious proof of God? Let me go and get my bible, and to my knees I shall fall begging for His forgiveness. Wait, who’s forgiveness? Should I get the Qur’an? Which God have we just proven to exist? This is soo confusing.

Here’s another recurring ‘Proof of God’: You can’t disprove Him! Since when does the burden of proof fall on the defending individual? You make a claim, you’re responsible for making a case for it. Never mind that most things cannot be disproved, thus by your ‘logic’ Zeus, Thor, Allah, Santa Clause, and fairies must be real.

‘But don’t we get our morals from the Bible?’
How many gays have you killed lately? Muslims? Blasphemers? Have you ever flicked a switch on a Sunday? The bible is pretty clear when it comes to these kind of issues, so why are you not following through? Because your sense of right and wrong does not come from its pages, that’s why. Where does morality come from? There are many viable theories. The bible is not one of them.

If I told you that your partner or spouse is cheating on you, you’d want proof before you do anything drastic. Why is this not the case with God? If faith is such a virtue, why not take my word about your partner’s infidelity?

Let me sum it up real quick. Democracy cannot survive religious indoctrination because it creates second class citizens. Religion is tax exempt, and it’s proceeds are increasingly used to fund political campaigns of dogmatic nature. This is why I’m speaking out against the Christian dogma above others. Christianity has long ceased to be one individual’s private opinion. This is why I refuse to be silent.

Things are very busy, but here is a quick post anyway. By quick, I mean ‘Less thought out’, not ‘Shorter’.

At last I’ve found a suitable and available domain name for the blog. It’s registered and hosted, but still very much a secret. Turns out that coming up with a name for the new blog was the easy part. Finding an available domain name to go with the blog name, that my friends was a nightmare.

Last night I went to mass, my first church attendance since becoming what Dawkins would – jokingly? – refer to as a ‘militant atheist’. The mass was in honour of those whom recently passed away at the Holy Family home. My grandmother spent her last days there, and was one of those honoured. She was religious, and would have approved; I on the other hand couldn’t help thinking that a better way to celebrate the lives of those passed away would be through the reading of eulogies by the respective family members.

I’ve finished “The End of Faith” by Sam Harris. The book shook me up a bit as it plainly describes views that are globally censored, and few dare utter even among friends. This alone would not be enough to shake me up – I’m good at dismissing psychotic dogma. Factually Sam’s ideas do not fall under this category – this is what makes those ideas so difficult to swallow -, but my gut was screaming ‘psycho’. You know a book was worth reading when it puts your logic and instincts at odds! Needless to say, I’ll need some time to examine and reflect on the thoughts brought forward by Mr. Harris. Here, I feel obliged to add that assuming the book accurately represents our world issues, I strongly disagree with many of the solutions alluded to by the author.

Since this is to be a short entry, I’ll pause my written thoughts here and leave you with the words of Richard Dawkins. May they spark your mind with reasonable thought.

‘Those of us who have for years politely concealed our contempt for the dangerous collective delusion of religion need to stand up and speak out. Things are different now. “All is changed, changed utterly.”‘

Believers in the God myth conclude that anyone who’s tried to find God and hasn’t failed because he or she didn’t try honest enough, hard enough, or long enough. I for one wasted thousands of hours in my life searching for God. Most of the journey put more distance between myself and ‘Him’, although there was a point where I thought I just needed to try harder, and did so. There are millions of people in the world that have embarked on the same journey and reached the same conclusion as I have.

Let’s look at the issue from a rational perspective. If an experiment is conducted by millions of individuals, and the results are all over the map, we can safely assume that our original hypothesis is flawed. In this case, the God Hypothesis is proven as flawed since some find God, and others do not. Due to the lack of controls in the experiment this would not be considered a scientific trial, but the case for God defeats itself either way: if to find Him we need a controlled environment over which we have practically zero control, God is not accessible to everyone despite the claim that we simply need ask him to step into our life for it to happen.

To give a superstitious example of how religion functions: A man walks under a ladder, proceeds to cross the street, and is hit by a bus. To someone believing that walking under a ladder is bad luck, the cause of the painful end result is clear. The man was killed because he walked under the ladder! On the other hand, a rational mind will look at the event and conclude that the accident likely happened because the man did not look both ways before stepping out onto the street.

In similar fashion, religious individuals apply their superstitious beliefs to reality, all while dismissing the many other possible causes for their experiences. You’ve joined a church and your life turned for the better? Being part of any close knit community can do that. You asked God for strength and received it? Millions of people find strength within themselves, without belief in God – that is where your strength came from. Have you led a troubled life until you asked God to come into it? You’ve found a way to clean up and attributed the end result to God. You believe that God was your saviour because every believer told you that He would help you, and now through your own false association you are perpetuating the myth.

Correlation does not equate causation (Latin Cum hoc ergo propter hoc – “with this, therefore because of this”). There are dozens of things I could attribute to a God, every single day. Interesting coincidences, wants fulfilled, dreams come true. If I was to act the part of a believer for just one day, I could further inspire any true believer in the power of God simply through reinterpreting the events of my day through the God lens. Through my playing with their minds, believers would add to their arsenal more anecdotes which they perpetuate to indoctrinate others.

This is how the God delusion feeds itself and survived through millennia. People that want to believe, interpreting reality in ways that support their theory instead of reflecting reality. We all do it to some degree, but theists are really masters when it comes to this kind of self deception.

There are well documented benefits that stem from faith and religion, but they fall under the placebo category and in no way prove the existence of any God. Unlike a placebo which comes without direct side effects, religion has plenty.

Imagine for a minute that there is no afterlife. How would the knowledge change your day to day behaviour if you knew that this life is all we have? Well, for one people would cease dieing in the name of God, Jesus, Allah, and any other mythical entity they happen to have faith in. Every year, millions of lives would be saved through allowing modern medicine do its job. Spread of deadly diseases would be curbed through 21st century family planning and precautionary measures. The list goes on and on.

I don’t know anyone that wouldn’t be comforted by the proposition of an eternal and blissful life. If any atheist thought it true – if only we could believe in the right God -, trust me, we’d all quit our jobs to search for the Lord. What a wonderful investment it would be!