HELLO AGAIN, WORLD!

I don’t know if anyone will be interested in reading this, but it’s welling up in me like the words to a poem, demanding to be spoken. Most of my references are from Wikipedia for ease in both research and for easiest reading. So here they are for what they’re worth, my thoughts on….

BEING HUMAN

The only way I can think to begin is to reference some experiments that shaped my thinking. The first regards the domestication of the silver fox. Here’s a Wiki excerpt:

There are many records of domesticated red foxes and others, but rarely of sustained domestication. A recent and notable case is the Russian silver fox, a domesticated silver fox by the Siberian Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk,[18] since it resulted in visible and behavioral changes, and is a case study of an animal population modeling according to human domestication needs. The current group of domesticated silver foxes are the result of nearly fifty years of experiments in the Soviet Union and Russia to domesticate the silver morph of the red fox. Notably, the new foxes became more tame, allowing themselves to be petted, whimpering to get attention and sniffing and licking their caretakers.[19] They also became more dog-like as well: they lost their distinctive musky "fox smell", became more friendly with humans, put their ears down (like dogs), wagged their tails when happy and began to vocalize and bark like domesticated dogs. They also began to exhibit other traits seen in some dog breeds, such as color pattern, curled tails, floppy ears, and shorter legs and tails. They are also more likely to have piebald coats, and will almost always have a white spot on the chest or face. The breeding project was set up by the Soviet scientist Dmitri K. Belyaev.

The purpose of the experiment was to see if wild dogs became domesticated ones through selective breeding by humans. Here’s what happened:

Belyaev believed that the key factor selected for in the domestication of dogs was not size or reproduction, but behavior; specifically, tameability. Since behavior is rooted in biology, selecting for tameness and against aggression, means selecting for physiological changes in the systems that govern the body's hormones and neurochemicals. Belyaev decided to test his theory by domesticating foxes; in particular, the silver fox, a dark color form of the red fox. He placed a population of them under strong selection pressure for inherent tameness.

As Lyudmilla Trut says in her 1999 American Scientist article, The least domesticated foxes, those that flee from experimenters or bite when stroked or handled, are assigned to Class III. Foxes in Class II let themselves be petted and handled but show no emotionally friendly response to experimenters. Foxes in Class I are friendly toward experimenters, wagging their tails and whining. In the sixth generation bred for tameness we had to add an even higher-scoring category. Members of Class IE, the "domesticated elite," are eager to establish human contact, whimpering to attract attention and sniffing and licking experimenters like dogs. They start displaying this kind of behavior before they are one month old. By the tenth generation, 18 percent of fox pups were elite; by the 20th, the figure had reached 35 percent. Today elite foxes make up 70 to 80 percent of our experimentally selected population.

What this outcome showed was that through selective breeding over a mere 50 years or ten generations, the traits selected for changed the breed. Not only personalities changed, but also coloring, demeanor, and communication styles. It’s unlikely that these changes can be reversed.

Just file that.

The second experiment worth noting involves some dancing pigeons.

The Skinner box is a device that was first developed by B. F. Skinner in his work on operant conditioning. A subject was placed in the box, and the mechanism gave small amounts of food each time the subject performed a particular action, such as depressing a lever or pecking a disk. With the operant conditioning chamber attached to a recording device, Skinner was able to discover schedules of reinforcement. These patterns are the basis for organismic interactions with the environment and are explored extensively in Schedules of Reinforcement and elsewhere.

But here’s where it got really, really interesting:

Skinner's research discovered many fascinating examples of animal behavior. One of the most interesting, perhaps, was Skinner's work on superstition. Instead of giving a reward for a specific action and training a specific behavior, Skinner would take a hungry pigeon and place it in a box that would release a food pellet at random. The pigeons developed all kinds of complex behavioral responses such as bowing, scraping, dancing, and neck turns.

What happened was the pigeon would receive the food pellet while it happened to be performing some action, and rather than attributing the food pellet reward to randomness, it would assume that the appearance of the food pellet had something to do with its behavior. So it started doing whatever that action was, over and over again, and sure enough, it was eventually rewarded with a food pellet again. Since the pigeon is increasing the amount of time spent performing a particular action, it is also increasing the number of times it is "rewarded" for that action, even though the reward is random.
One can’t help but wonder how pigeons have so quidkly – within one lifetime - invented a religion of dance. I don’t mean to invalidate actual religious/spiritual experiences. I think it occasionally happens that a particular person has a great insight of spiritual significance and becomes enlightened. But if this moment of clarity occurred while that person was on a hilltop, everyone rushes to the hilltop hoping for the same insight, and often claim that they get it. And it may be true that they gain some insight. However, repeating the behavior does not guaranty the same result; the two are unrelated. Build a giant church on the hilltop and shame those who don’t believe in the hilltop and you have just unintentionally invented an organized religion. Anyone who disagrees that the hilltop confers enlightenment is ostracized from the community and denigrated with such phrases as “lack of faith” or “blindness to the truth.” But the truth actually has no part in their religion, and faith gains nothing but a good feeling of community, acceptance and agreement.

Our minds are hard-wired to see patterns. They are hard-wired to see things in terms of cause and effect even when the outcome is completely unrelated to previous actions. Since one can’t predict randomness, and there’s nothing about it that’s understandable, we learn to dance like pigeons in a random reward-trial. The good news is that what seems random is actually the outcome, not of what dance we were doing at the time, but of causes we can’t readily see or understand. Humans survive by solving problems, and that’s an excellent strategy. Right up until there’s a flood (for example) and we lose loved ones and/or our possessions. Then it seems to our problem-solving minds that there must be a way to prevent such things, but there isn’t. So we move on to thinking that we must have done something wrong, When no physical mistake is found, we reach further afield and light on the idea that we have thought or believed or behaved wrongly. Organized religion bolsters this view by the expedient logic of telling us that if we had faith we could do anything, and if we can’t fix this it’s because our faith is lacking. So the problem-solving, outcome-oriented human mind, while it is not happy, is satisfied that the solution has been found.


Third, an experiment unofficially called “Monkey Money.” There isn’t a good Wiki reference for this experiment, so allow me to summarize. If you’re interested in the details, see the “References” section below.


Cognitive psychologist Laurie Santos taught a group of primates to use money for food. Exchange rates were established, and then some pretty sophisticated scenarios were set up where the primates were allowed – even encouraged – to take financial risks in the hope of financial gain. The amazing outcome was that the primates very quickly displayed exactly the same attitudes and actions that humans demonstrate in our own financial decision-making. No significant difference.


So while this is not absolute proof, the implication is clear; humans are not that special. Other animals, which we consider lower life forms, share our innate traits. What that says about being human is that our “programming” (our ideas and even our ideals) are neither entirely unique nor entirely random, nor based solely on our experiences. WE ARE JUST ONE OF THE ANIMALS ON THIS PLANET. Does that mean you are not special? Not at all! Just that some of the unique bundle which makes up “you” is hard-wired. Of course you still determine your own path, your own choices, your own value. What it DOES mean is that if we are going to claim we are intelligent, we must accept the evidence that much of our thinking began as evolutionary advantages shared by other earth-beings, and that some of that thinking needs to be changed. We need to recognize what paradigms are no longer valid.


BETTER THAN HUMAN

I always find it a bit annoying when humans are surprised by the love, loyalty, and compassion displayed by animals. I’ve had at least one cat almost continually for the last fifty years. When still a child, I realized they are capable of love, loyalty, and every kind of good behavior including compassion. That’s not to say that animals aren’t dangerous; they very much are! But they are just as capable of caring, making sacrifices, and loving even across species barriers as humans are. Eventually I believe humans will be able to accept this, and as a result, treat animals at least as well as we treat each other. However, this will no doubt take some time, as social adjustments seem to take many generations to “take.”


This can easily be seen in the social issues we still – despite our claim to be rational – are struggling to deal with. Racism, for example, is a natural enough attitude when the threat of strangers invading one’s territory and gene pool is acute and threatens our genetic success. But we are far beyond the point where the success of our species depends on this. Racial purity is actually the opposite of success, since diversity provides a much greater chance of survival.


Homosexuality, for another example, is not unique to humans. Even the most cursory study of animal mating habits shows that it is ubiquitous in nature. Homosexuality and/or gender ambiguity is a fact of life among all animals, and there’s no reason humans should be immune, or why it should be considered “unnatural.” When breeding populations were dismayingly small, this might have seemed threatening. But once again, this is no longer a threat to the survival of the human species. In a genetic bottleneck – which humans have faced more than once – it was an issue. For us? No.


Using our much-vaunted intelligence, it is time to rethink many attitudes and behaviors which originally had an evolutionary advantage, but NO LONGER DO.


GOOD GUYS / BAD GUYS


Opponents of selective breeding seem to forget that humans have been selectively breeding themselves since before we became homo sapiens sapiens. We breed ourselves selectively by choosing the most attractive (that is to say, usually the fittest) mates we can find. This has been going on for far more than ten generations. Like the silver foxes above, our behavior and appearance have been shaped by this – surely – completely “natural” selection process.


My point is that if we are taller, more consistently bipedal, stronger and smarter or more beautiful, it isn’t because we were just uniquely made that way, but because over thousands of generations we chose to become that way. In the silver fox experiment one should note that this selective breeding only succeeded in its goal about eighty percent of the time. Knowing this to be the case, perhaps we should evince slightly less surprise when a certain percentage of our population doesn’t exhibit the desired traits or behaviors. Altruism doesn’t necessarily breed true.


People will tell you that community-beneficial traits like altruism and other good behaviors have evolved to support our species rather than the individual. There are all sorts of explanations for why families or herds protect one another, for instance, sometimes at the cost of their own evolutionary success. The same strategy can be observed in pack animals like prairie dogs and wolves. It’s not my intention to argue causes, but rather to simply note that group-benefitting behaviors exist, that this is a fact of nature just as much as economic systems, superstition and selective breeding are. Homophobia and racism are perfectly natural outcomes of our evolution.


So who are the “good guys”? The good guys are the ones who observe the facts, evaluate their applicability to circumstances and aim for better action and better understanding. They are the ones who consider our problems, rethink their position, and modify their thinking to embrace the facts – the reality.


ADOLESCENTS


It’s well known that the most dangerous place to be when it comes to bears is between a mother and her cubs. At any perceived threat to her offspring the mother bear will attack and kill without hesitation. And yet when her cubs reach adolescence, the same protective mother bear drives her cubs up a tree and forces them to stay there. When she’s sure they won’t try to come down, she leaves what has been her territory, leaving it to the cubs and leaving them on their own. When they finally grow tired and/or hungry enough to come down, their mother is gone forever and their adulthood has begun.


When male lions (similarly to wolves and other pack animals) reach adolescence they are driven out of the pride and wander alone until they find another pride and are either stronger or more desperate than the alpha lion in that group and attempt to take the alpha lion’s place. If they’re successful, they have a new home and family. If not, they continue to wander on until they eventually succeed or die.


Even among domesticated cats where pride- or pack-based behavior doesn’t apply, once her kittens are weaned the mother drives them out of her territory. Should they return, she will attack them exactly as she would any invading stranger.


This same type of scenario plays out across all species and has always done so. It’s a successful survival strategy. Yet every single generation of humans without fail has the same reaction to the adolescence of the following generation; they wonder where they have gone wrong or been bad parents. They wonder what is wrong with their teenagers. The teens just want to get out from under their parents’ control, and by the time they leave home the parents are glad to see the back of them. But – there’s actually nothing puzzling in either case. Whether you are the parent or the adolescent, the bonds of childhood have to be broken, new territories staked out, mating strategies tested, battles for dominance fought, and ultimately, the separation will occur. It shouldn’t be surprising that it’s a painful process. So why do we fight the process, blame ourselves and our children, and suffer so much drama as a result of a perfectly natural process?


Of course it’s necessary for every young adult to challenge the very things parents have tried to procure for them (financial security, education, marriage). They are simply establishing themselves beyond the security blanket. The drive is as predictable as it is unavoidable. There’s no need for alarm on either side; just take the long view; eventually these new strategies being tested will either succeed or fail. Either way, the most important factor in our success is that we support one another through the process, share compassionately, and come out the other side with a sense that whatever happens we will not abandon one another. A child will perfectly naturally question everything they’ve been taught. It doesn’t mean the adults in their lives have done anything wrong, nor, in the end, will children on this migration ultimately think the older generation are idiots; they will come to respect them given time and experience. In the long run, it is not the End Of The World.



CONCLUSION


The point of bringing up the subject of adolescence is this; there is very little difference between humans and animals. The sooner one becomes at peace with that, with our natures – with nature itself, the sooner we can go about the business of evolving our culture and working with nature instead of fighting it. Since you can’t change nature there is no sense in that. Give even a little thought to the issue of problem teenagers and guilt-ridden adults and you’ll see that we’ve been handling the breaking of our childhood pair-bonds in the worst possible way.


Again, we must, if we insist on claiming we are intelligent, look at the facts. It makes no sense to blame anyone (even yourself) for things which have always happened. If we are so smart, why are we failing to learn from the facts, even when they are endlessly repeated right in front of us? People from different places or with different skin color or with gender-related differences, members of other generations or even members of different species are exactly the same as we are on the most basic level. Look at the evidence for yourself.


In summary, I urge humans to think, to consider some uncomfortable truths, to draw new conclusions and shift perspectives accordingly. Like all earth animals, we have evolved selectively, and certain traits are now inherent in our makeup. But that doesn’t make them permanent. The drive to reproduce was a brilliant survival strategy, but it no longer serves us best. Having a multitude of children may make one feel genetically secure, but it is no longer necessary or even desirable for survival. The same applies to racism, homophobia, religion. The need for economic and community/spiritual security, for good mating rights, for genetic immortality, are universal desires. Just recognize the systems, acknowledge their value, and consider what we can realistically do within them. These are my aims, this is my truth. Thank you for reading this, because just hearing some new ideas is good for your thinking and for humanity; change comes slowly, but inexorably. It allows our future evolution to be wiser. Namaste.



REFERENCES:

Domestication of the silver fox; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_K._Belyaev

Dancing Pigeons; http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Skinner_box

Monkey Money; http://www.ted.com/talks/laurie_santos and http://www.marketplace.org/topics/your-money/monkeys-love-discounts-too

CREATIONISTS VS GLOBAL WARMING: FOCUSING ON THE WRONG FIGHT

It seems pretty obvious that global warming is actually a thing. The ice isn't ABOUT to melt, it's already MELTING. You can't deny global warming if you even glance at progressive photos of the poles. So, let's take that as a given for now. My question isn't whether there is such a thing, but why the Christian Right denies it so vehemently. If you believe the earth is only 5,000 or so years old, fine. Ignore the evidence. If you want to believe that an all-powerful God created mankind, however,I have a problem with your views on global warming. Here's why: This God of yours created Adam, right? Made Adam in His own image, etc. And why did he create Adam? To tend the Garden of Eden. If you accept these things as True, if you are true to your own philosophy, then our purpose would be to "tend" the Garden we were thrown out of. To name (and therefore care for) the animals. So, you got kicked out of the Garden, and that sucks. But since you are in THIS garden NOW, shouldn't you be showing God how well you can tend it? Or will He, like the Biblical master, come home to find that not only have you not increased your "talents" but you have burned them to the ground, scattered the ashes, and salted the earth? Be consistent in your own values, whatever they may be, that's all I'm asking. You can't, in honesty and good conscience continue to decimate this world and expect it's Owner to like that. It's no use fretting over who did what to whom so long as you are failing so miserably at your own purpose. Stop arguing and get out your hoes.

Further Recommended Reading

http:/www/evilbible.com

BEYOND RELIGION

FOR FUN: The Skeptics Annotated Bible http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/abs/long.htm

SCIENCE IV

COSMOLOGY

“From whence, then, could arise the solitary and strange conceit that the Almighty, who had millions of worlds equally dependent on his protection, should quit the care of all the rest, and come to die in our world because, they say, one man and one woman ate an apple? And, on the other hand, are we to suppose that every world in the boundless creation had an Eve, and apple, a serpent, and a redeemer?”
- Thomas Paine

“Paine is saying that we have a theology that is Earth-centered and involves a tiny piece of space, and when we step back, when we attain a broader cosmic perspective, some of it seems very small in scale. And in fact a general problem with much of Western theology in my view is that the God portrayed is too small. It is a god of a tiny world and not a god of a galaxy, much less of a universe.”
- Carl Sagan

I would add to these comments that it isn’t even one world God is concerned with, but only one nomadic people in a very small country, to the point of favoring those from a particular family line, out of only 12 tribes. How small a god is that? That he can only “appear” in Israel and Egypt (and sometimes parts of Rome?), and even that for what turns out to be very few generations when weighed against the number of our generations. Your God is small, he only cares about one people, and only for a small blip of time. When he supposedly sends his son to die and thereby change his message to “us,” even that son is sent only for the Jews. It isn’t until the very last minute that God and/or Yeshua supposedly suddenly says, “And those other guys, too.” Yet those “other guys” have defined that religion for centuries, and even used it as justification for the mistreatment of Jews!

CONCLUSION

I urge that the same logic and method we use to test any fact be used to test religion. And if all the proof isn’t in yet, let’s admit that, without glorifying the lack of proof as something heroic. And if it’s something that needs to be interpreted, let’s require proof of correct interpretation, and a sensible explanation why this is the case.

As we’ve discussed, science relies as heavily on its priesthood and interpreters as religion does. And some of their hypotheses may remain forever impossible to prove. However, the things that have been proven we have cause to believe because there is at least some method to that proof. Thus we believe in things like gravity, even though we don’t know exactly how gravity works, because scientific method demonstrates that it exists. Religion has had no method in the last two thousand years other than truths revealed to one human at a time, with no method of interpretation other than “I saw,” or “I KNOW.”

A decade ago, when eminent scientists warned us about Global Warming, many of us didn’t believe them because they could not infallibly show it to the satisfaction of the man on the street. Now that the North Pole is all but subject to tides, there is proof. Why do some of us still fail to believe? Yet if a charming–enough stranger tells us they had a vision involving God, most of us believe him; he can make millions founding his own church and broadcasting on his own TV network while collecting Rolls Royces.

Most people don’t believe in psychic powers because they can’t be reliably replicated (a requirement of the scientific method), yet we believe in the power of prayer even though it can’t be reliably replicated, either. If we were as rigorous in our religious beliefs as we are in our scientific beliefs, the Earth would be a very different place.

Of course we can’t go back and change our history based on today’s wisdom, but we can go forward from today using reason and logic. The prejudicial belief in religion over science has been proven wrong at every turn, and as I hope our logical look at the Bible has shown, religion is NOT reliable, logical, nor replicable, is NOT based on reason, and is entirely UNPROVABLE. If God is so powerful and wants us to know he exists, let him show us in a way that can’t be denied. If he is either not so powerful, or doesn’t care what we believe, then he is irrelevant to our existence. I say he is irrelevant because faith in this unproven being does not lessen the possibility of: Divorce, Addiction, Adultery, Infection, Crime (smaller percentage of atheists in prison than Christians), Homosexuality, Cancer, Autism, Mental Illness, Birth Defects, Abandonment, Poverty, War, Starvation or Death.

The religious pay tithes to their churches even when it’s clear that the money is going to the church and not to the poor. They continue to pray for peace even though that prayer has never yet been answered; would it not be wiser to DO something about it? Or are we still not that wise? Let us think, for once, what it would be wise to do. We are no longer adolescents on this planet; it's time to grow up.

STATISTICS OF FAITH AND OTHER FUN

http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html/

MOVIE RECOMMENDATION (The God Who Wasn't There)To purchase the movie: www.thegodmovie.com

Listen to "Hereby Chants" for something different at: www.herebychants.com

And to wrap up with fun: www.400monkeys.com/God//
And Movie: Religulous (a Bill Maher comedy about religion in America)

SCIENCE III

SUMERIA AND OTHER ANCIENT CULTURES

Previously: “Studying the ancient stories of Sumer, some history buffs believe some Nephilim (also called the Annunaki) came cruising by from the planet Nibiru and created humans as slaves.”

Apparently the idea of a paradise, a heaven and hell, of a god and angels, a tree of immortality and even a great flood came originally from Sumeria. In fact some call the Sumerians the first human civilization, and already it was filled with these fantastic stories. They show the first evidence of a system of writing (or we wouldn’t know so much about them), had the first standing army in history, and had cities with walls around them. it appears as though they just burst full-blown onto the scene. But of course we must always keep in mind that Archaeology is barely getting started, and we’ve only dug up about 5% of the earth’s land surface – there could be father-civilizations out there still.

I once assisted with the making of a short film set in medieval times. It started out with a nursemaid telling a story to children in a castle. We decided that the children should be of every race we could get hold of. Only later did it occur to me that we were actually altering history. Children of every race did not live in European castles in the Middle Ages. It felt so right to do it that way, but it wasn’t the truth. Given the choice, I wouldn’t do it that way again, but it goes to show, I think, how astonishingly easy it is to make the story just a little more fair or pleasant or clear or just. Not only were there children of all races, they were all dressed as only princes and princesses would have been dressed at the time. I call this the 25% embellishment allowance. If you seriously consider this story-telling flaw, then extrapolate over a few centuries - think how many generations came and went before our ancient stories were written down, it’s frightening. What have we been believing? This is why so many seekers are searching for the most ancient of religions – we want to know what mankind thought before the deterioration of centuries. Sumer gives us that.

But it would be too bad if someone mistook “2001: A Space Odyssey” as a true history or as a religious teaching of our century. How can we tell Sumerian’s entertainment literature from actual beliefs? We can’t.

The fact that Sumerians “invented” writing is also to their blame – for what is oral changes with the times, but what is written can last for centuries without change. I guess that’s both a good thing AND a bad thing.

When archaeologists uncovered evidence of a kind of combination soccer/basketball court in South America, what made them decide it was a religious pastime? We’re never told. The ball going through the hoop describes the same arc as the sun in the sky? Oh, please! Can’t they have enjoyed sports? Sure, there are some murals that depict one team killing the other, but don’t we basically say the same? We’re going to murder the other team? And the Aztec bent for executions (sometimes several thousand in a single DAY) is believed to be a way of sending prayers to the gods. I haven’t seen the evidence of that (and I don’t believe we’ve deciphered their writing as yet). Is it just an archaeologists’ imagining? Of all the sciences out there, archaeological anthropology is probably the one we’d be most likely to understand, but we’re not shown the evidence, just fed the party line.

In the study of history, listen! The most difficult lesson to learn is that people of the past were NOT stupid! They were just like us. I’ve heard people laughing about some of Walt Disney’s creations, saying if a future archaeologist found them, they might think we worshipped mice. What part of that is funny? It’s probably what we’re doing now!

SCIENCE II

EVOLUTION VS DESIGN

The reason this subject is even open for discussion is not only because we can’t understand a thing a physicist or professor of math says, but also because humans our very selves are so unlikely. The evolutionists would have it that we, well, EVOLVED here. But if that were the case, wouldn’t we be some of the baddest mothers on the planet? Instead of being so frail we must cover our skin in sunlight, our feet most anywhere, have no natural weapons AT ALL – even our fingernails are worthless as weapons – they break off before they can hurt anyone but ourselves. Our teeth aren’t good weapons, we have no ability to camouflage ourselves, we can’t even outrun a deer, we’re not strong for our size (we should be at least as strong as a chimp, wouldn’t you think? But we’re not…). We can’t be left out in the rain, out in the sun, or out in the cold. If we’re from here, how is it we need vitamin and mineral supplements to survive? A creature living on the savannah, for example, won’t get much vitamin C. Yet doctors and nutritionists insist we must get more than an orange’s worth per day. What?

We are the only primate whose males haven’t a penile bone. Even though primates are shaped a lot like us, they do not have sex face-to-face as we do – nor do most other earth creatures. Earlobes are another mystery – only humans have them. No genetic advantage, they just hang there. They don’t even improve our hearing. One of the serious questions evolutionists have to face are skulls through the ages. The problem is, when you get to homo sapiens sapiens (us), the skulls (which have gradually been getting larger through the millennia) are suddenly smaller, thinner, more frail, and =thwup= have suddenly invented foreheads.

We can’t see in the dark, in the infrared, can’t hear or smell as well as a dog or hear as well as a cat. We’re puny little helpless things for several years after birth – a fact that didn’t improve our chances of survival in caveman days, unlike a cow or a camel, ready to run alongside its mother within an hour. In fact, it’s hard to think of any human survival advantage. You may name speech, and say we can therefore hand down knowledge and work together in teams – but what about before language developed among us? The ability to speak doesn’t impress a lion in the least (or any cat, for that matter).

We have no defensive weapons – nor do we have any defensive tricks. We can’t spray ink, stink or quills. It’s so easy to knock us down that we don’t even need second-party intervention; we trip over our own feet. And why don’t our females have a breeding “season?” Other animals do, because any young born in winter have a lesser chance of survival – and that was true of early humans, too. It’s not as if this has been going on only since fur coats and central heating.

Only our pluck and our willingness to work together does anything for our survival whatever. I’ve seen a cat chase away a dog ten times it’s weight and twice as vicious; that’s pluck. So it’s a Star Trek world, after all. And what’s this thing we have with art and music? How is that a survival trait? Did it get the chicks? Because if so, both Beethoven and Hendrix missed that boat. Along with Van Goh, Janis Joplin, Leonardo da Vinci, Antonio Vivaldi; it doesn’t seem that being in the entertainment industry makes one prone to more reproductive success. Nor, it seems, does science. Yet we simply burst with artists and scientists of every kind, and always have since the caves. And here’s another point – every other animal on the planet is born capable of making whatever shelter it needs, but mankind took quite a while to figure it out. How can we have evolved in a place where we’re the least likely to survive?

A very long time ago some wise men decided we must have been designed to live in a garden. Studying the ancient stories of Sumer, some history buffs believe some Nephilim (also called the Annunaki) came cruising by from the planet Nibiru and created humans as slaves. I don’t want to even discuss Scientology and its alien forebears. But if I were creating/designing a slave, I’d make him very strong – stronger than local primates, certainly, not to mention local predators! Of these two choices, the garden seems just a bit more likely. There is some evidence (albeit slight) that aliens have been (and/or are now) here. But whether we were created by a god or aliens, it would be unconscionably cruel to create a being for gardens and then toss it out into jungles, savannahs and ice floes, where Neanderthals had already claimed the territory (and yes, they were stronger than we were, and every bit as smart, plus anthropologists now believe they also had the gift of speech). The only reason I can think of which isn’t cruel is that these garden-dwellers got lost or escaped by themselves (and found they had to wear clothing in this new, crueler environment). That might just pass as an original “sin” from which all suffering flows.

I don’t believe there is an omni-present God, nor do I believe in alien intervention (though it’s an interesting possibility), nor do I quite buy evolution. I believe it’s a very difficult subject that has yet to be proven to a satisfactory degree. There have to be more than those three alternatives, don’t there?

SCIENCE

I know I spend a lot more time on religion than I do on science – that’s because I’d need a few decades-worth of college just to understand the questions in science! Whereas religion, alas, gives one all the ammo one could wish. I do believe in the scientific method, and I applaud the brave souls not only trying to figure out what’s what, but staking their reputations and livelihoods all too often on the answers.

Just, lest we rely on scientific reasoning too much, let’s remember that all the laws of physics, biology, all the ologies, really, life, the universe and everything, all apply to only 4% of the universe. Either that, or we have no idea what gravity is (with apologies to Sir Isaac Newton). And the really sad thing is, it’s true – we really know not much more about gravity than Einstein dared imagine. Even though I’m not a bizzillionaire, I’d like to lobby for getting this issue looked into! Let’s also keep in mind that science doesn’t have answers to such questions as “What is reality?” and whether everything we know of is made of vibrating strings, branes, or bits of pure information, or even, as the New-Agers would have it, of thought itself.

And pseudo-science is NOT the answer. Just because real scientists dumb down the message almost enough for people like me to nearly understand it, that doesn’t mean that’s all there is to it. The idea that our “intentions” affect reality is based on some creative thinking. Are you familiar with the question of whether light is a wave or a particle? (Yes, we don’t know what light is, either...) In that experiment, whether or not the experiment was being observed seemed to affect the outcome. Now, if the light doesn’t know whether you’ll be watching or not, it couldn’t do that, and the way I understand it, our INTENTION to observe must therefore be affecting the outcome, because it works even if we tape it and observe it LATER. If that’s not correct, I beg you, explain it to me! But this is very different than saying that anything you can conceive of can be yours (for a progressively larger fee, naturally).

That brings up science’s biggest problem today; how can scientists, who concentrate for an entire career on particles too small for us to see even with the greatest super-microscope, explain to ordinary people what they’re doing and why it matters? If they end with the sentiment that a new technology has been borne out of these experiments, that we get. We LOVE our cell-phones, our tweets and twits and magic boxes of music. Anything that makes more gadgets, we like. But how will we ever know anything if we can’t even figure out gravity? It’s not like it’s a new thing. Or light? Wasn’t that one of the first things ever to exist, in EVERYONE’S creed?

The real question is, if it weren’t for the possibility it could supply us with ever brighter toys, would sciences like quantum physics even be called science? Because science, as I understand it, is supposed to EXPLAIN things, not make them more mysterious. According to Dictionary.com, science is: “Systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.” The operative word being KNOWLEDGE, not imagination or mathematical proof.

Of course we need specialists, and I can certainly see supporting agricultural and pharmaceutical or medical sciences, whether we can understand them or not. But the truth is, in spite of our great technological strides, we don’t know what the basic components of our world are, and some of us care.

JEWS IN CAPTIVITY

It’s simply incomprehensible to me that people still believe tens of thousands of Jews were slaves in Egypt, even though Egyptian’s (who were masters of record-keeping) kind of forgot to mention that. They also forgot to mention the ten plagues, the escape of the Jews, and the death of the pharaoh’s entire charioteer corps. Archaeologists have been combing the desert for generations and have yet to come across the slightest evidence that a large group camped there for forty years.

Science has tried to provide an explanation; that there was a massive volcanic eruption which would account for all ten of the plagues AND the pillar of smoke by day and fire by night. There would also have been white flakes falling from the sky, but I hope the fleeing Jews didn’t actually eat the volcanic ash and call it mana (perhaps that would fall under the 25% embellishment rate). Science even accounts for the death of the first-born, as the eldest son was usually given night duty over the livestock, who were ill and dying. This doesn’t quite explain the death of pharaoh’s son, as I believe he had people to do that.

But another bizarrely missing piece of the puzzle in the Bible is the name of this pharaoh. Certainly they all knew his name, especially Moses who was supposedly brought up in his household. Yet it’s never once mentioned. It’s a small detail, but telling. Other things that seem strange; that God sends Moses to demand the release of the Jews, but God hardens pharaoh’s heart against Moses. Why would he do that? Another small but extremely annoying detail.

As for the parting of the Red Sea (or the Reed Sea, or the swamp), again Science offers the possibility of a tidal wave, where the water first withdraws (seemingly completely) then rushes back with incredible force. However, there’s never been a tidal wave which would allow forty thousand people and a corps of charioteers to cross the seabed (or swamp) before rushing back and drowning them. Even four hundred people is extremely unlikely. Four people might make it.

Of all of these events, we can say, “Ah, it was miraculous; God at his showiest,” or we can accept the simplest explanation; that the whole episode was caused by nature. Add to that the fact that there weren’t enough Jews in Egypt to even warrant a mention, and apparently the ten plagues weren’t worth mentioning, either, and Pharaoh didn’t have a name, no one camped in that desert, and for all it’s great holiness apparently even the Jews can’t remember which mountain Sinai is, and I think logic must guide us to dismiss this entire story.

For these reasons, I believe in the Holocaust, but I don’t believe in the Exodus. I’m interested in hearing your opinion!