Reasonable Doubt

Today I am thinking about reasonable doubt, I feel that if a person can live or die in a court of law (especially since the United States has Capital Punishment) and according to our laws, a person cannot be convicted beyond a reasonable doubt. If a reasonable doubt is a criteria for judging the guilt or innocence of an individual why can't we apply the same principles to religious claims or any claim in this regard. According to a law dictionary, beyond reasonable doubt is defined as - The level of certainty a juror must have to find a defendant guilty of a crime. A real doubt, based upon reason and common sense after careful and impartial consideration of all the evidence, or lack of evidence, in a case. I found a good explanation on Infidel.org by a retired lawyer "In law there are generally three degrees of sufficiency of evidence. They are, in ascending order: 1) preponderance, 2) clear and convincing, and 3) beyond a reasonable doubt. To prove something by a preponderance of the evidence is to weigh the evidence on each side of an issue, declaring the side with the most evidence to be proven. This is the standard applied in most non-criminal trials. The clear and convincing standard is often required when one party is trying to prove something that is out of the ordinary, that is, something which doesn't ordinarily occur. An example in law would be trying to prove that someone who signed a deed or will did so against his will. That is so rare in the ordinary course of things that whoever makes such a claim must provide considerable evidence to support it. The beyond reasonable doubt test is used primarily in criminal trials, where the prosecution is required to prove its case with so much evidence that no reasonable person could doubt the accused guilt. “Man with no heart: Miracle and Evidence by Richard Packman. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt, therefore, is proof of such a convincing character that you would be willing to rely and act upon it without hesitation in the most important of your own affairs. However, it does not mean an absolute certainty. All three methods are methods of judgment that are pragmatic and used everyday in issues in courts of law that range from mundane events like will disputes to life and death cases, such as Capital Punishment cases. Therefore starting with preponderance is there more evidence for the existence of a creator than there is not? I won’t go through the arguments because they have been debated back and forth since at least the Enlightenment and the bottom line is if something natural can equally explain the natural then there is no need for a supernatural entity. Clear and convincing simply means extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so if you claim a miracle then the party making the miraculous claim is responsible for presenting the evidence to back-up the claim and if a natural explanation is plausible then the extraordinary evidence must be empirical. Christians often use Romans 1:20 as their evidence for the Biblical God existence, Paul wrote in Romans 1:20 " For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse." Nevertheless, creation does not present a complete unveiling of God's character. If creation reveals God's wisdom and power, then it gives us a very imperfect presentation. The fall of man doctrine if accepted means creation is under the curse and is flawed because it has been stained by sin. As a result, a flawed creation cannot be an ideal way for revealing an invisible God and hence, the testimony of creation or the argument from design is incongruous. Beyond a reasonable doubt, given two or more explanation which of the two is more practical or reasonable? I will use evolution versus creationism to discuss beyond reasonable doubt. What is the more practical explanation for explaining that humans and chimpanzees share 96 to 98% of the same DNA and both have a vitamin C deficiency; does this means we come from a common ancestor or is a supernatural explanation feasible? Which is more reasonable? If we remove our biases then it is more practical we share a common ancestor and this explanation is more reasonable. Therefore, before we take a leap of faith, when there is evidence, we should go with the evidence. Think about it....

Find meaning in meaningless

I am thinking about, what I always seem to think about; the meaning of life, why are we here, what is it all about, what does it all mean? Our greatest fear is that life is meaningless,we fear that life is meaningless or pointless and so we seek for something outside of ourselves to validate our existence, and if we cannot find something we will create it whether we call it a god or a tribal affiliation, we want life to have significance. Yet we don’t think an ant's life has a meaning. If we did would we put down insecticide? I have read Thomas Nagel’s argument that if you ask: what’s the point of anything; you find that really when it’s all said and done probably there’s no point to our existence, if we think about it in a million years? Will there be a species on earth called Homo sapiens (i.e. human beings) what are we evolving towards? Is this just a blind and inevitable process, nothing else? Is our existence the conclusion that Thomas Nagel, Albert Camus, and Soren Kierkegaard has come to that life is not only meaningless but absurd? What is the point of a god creating anything, what is the point of creating anything if you’re omnipotent, omniscience, and omnipresent what pleasure would I get if I already know that a black man from North Carolina would be asking these questions and his whole life, actions, everything that he will fail at or accomplish, is already known? What pleasure would such a being get from this? What’s the point of it all? If there’s a point may be that there isn’t a point and I should not take it serious, but yet I do? If I live tomorrow, I will still get up and go to work even though it’s perhaps meaningless. What is meant by meaning? According to The American Heritage Dictionary fourth edition; Meaning is defined 1a. to be defined as: denote b. To act as a symbol of; represent 2. To intend to convey or indicate 3. To have as a consequence 4. To be a specified importance: It comes from the Old English maenan, tell of. I am reading Alan Watts transcript entitled "Sense of nonsense" which covers the meaning of life here's the conclusion of Alan Watts: "It is this participation in the essential glorious nonsense that is at the heart of the world that is not necessarily going anywhere, that is a dance. It seems that only in moments of unusual insight and illumination that we get the point of this, and find that thus the true meaning of life is no meaning, that its purpose is no purpose, and that its sense is non-sense. But still, we want to use the word "significant." Is this significant nonsense? Is this a kind of nonsense that is not just chaos, that is not just blathering balderdash? But rather has in it rhythm, fascinating complexity, and a kind of artistry. It is in this kind of meaninglessness that we come to the profoundest meaning." Alan Watts was so true in his sense of nonsense, he concluded that life’s rhythm, it’s ebb -and- flow, like a dance that isn’t going anywhere but it is the dance that in itself significant and to seek for something outside of would be diminishing to life itself. Life is what it is, which is incomprehensible to put it words, however it means to me (and I could be wrong): life is to be lived, replicated, as I often think, whatever a thing do, that is its purpose. Life to me is a self-replicating matter-energy that is neither created nor destroyed but changes dance partners (in a metaphysical sense) or as science would say it changes from one form to another.In other words, Life is a mean to its own end, there’s nothing outside of it to get to. The meaning to ones life exists in life itself and not outside of it, this is why I feel to subjugate this meaning to an unknown force is not only irrationally but fails to add or give any additional meaning. In others words, if I can't give my life it's meaning; how can a belief in an invisible deity give it meaning? Think about it...

Review of Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God by Carl Sagan

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoy Carl Sagan's writings. This book is a compilation of a series of talk Dr. Sagan gave a the Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology in 1985 at the University of Glasgow, his wife Ann Druyan edited them.

Chapter 1: Nature and Wonder: A Reconnaissance of Heaven:
What I got out of this chapter is: The main point of this Chapter: is that the western theology view of God is too small or seems very small when you compare the vastness of the universe to what concepts these theology claim (i.e. the universe was created in six days, the sun came after light, a snake can talk, that human came on the scene full evolved, etc.). The information backing Dr. Sagan claim is there are a trillion of worlds some smaller than earth, some larger in the Oort Cloud that revolve around around single sun. Our sun is 1 in 400 billion in our milky way galaxy. Our galaxy is 1 in 10 to the 23rd power of known galaxies in the universe. All one has to do is go to Hubble website to see a glimpse of the vastness of the universe. He concludes "I would suggest that science is, at least in part, informed worship. My deeply held belief is that if a god of anything like the traditional sort exists, then our curiosity and intelligence are provided by such a god. We would be unappreciative of those gifts if we suppressed our passion to explore the universe and ourselves. On the other hand, if such a traditional god does not exist, then our curiosity and our intelligence are the essential tools for managing our survival in an extremely dangerous time. In either case the enterprise of knowledge is consistent surely with science; it should be with religion, and it is essential for the welfare of the human species.
Chapter 2: The Retreat from Copernicus: A Modern Loss of Nerve
What I got out of this chapter is: We have anthropomorphized the Cosmos in which human psychologically felt the universe/cosmos evolved solely for us and no one or nothing else. Copernicus and others have demonstrated that we are one among many and not the point of the cosmos. Dr. Sagan info backing his claim is we use such terms such as sunrise/sunset because we once thought the sun revolved around the earth. The idea was the earth was the center of the God's creation and therefore was the center of the universe. However, Copernicus, Laplace, Kant, Darwin, and others have shown that we are one among many, our Earth is just another planet, our species share biological and genetics with other plants and animal. It took our planet 4500 million years to get were it is, in which species came and went, stars came and went, and our retreat or fear is that we are insignificant and our need for purpose causes a psychological bias in which hate what Copernicus and others have shown us, and so instead of accepting the facts of science, we cling to the faith of religions.
Chapter 3: The Organic Universe:
What I got out of this chapter is: We are the product of a natural organic universe. It does not take much to jump start or to get life going and for Darwinian Natural Selection to pull out the experiments that works and ignore the ones that don't. In other words, we live in a universe/cosmos that have an abundance of the organic molecules that are necessary for life and we live on a planet that has had the time to experiment with Darwinian Natural Selection that created the life we now know. For instance, if look toward the center of the milky way galaxy in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. We can see a set of dark clouds some extensive, some smaller. In these clouds that are upward of 50 different kinds of molecules, most of which are organic.."And it is precisely in such dark clouds that the collapse of solar nebulae is expected to happen, and therefore the forming solar system should be composed, in part, of complex organic matter. The conclusion is that complex organic materials are everywhere."
Chapter 4: Extraterrestrial Intelligence:
Summary:What I got out of this chapter is: 1) We don't have an appropriate language or concept for extraterrestrial intelligence, not even theologically. 2) John Adams " Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." However, as Schiaparelli and Lowell show us even scientist can misinterpret facts. 3) The Drake Formula is given only as an idea of the possibilities of intelligent life.
Chapter 5: Extraterrestrial Folklore: Implications for The Evolution of Religion
Summary: What I got out of this chapter is: 1)We have a hope that someone or something would come and save us from ourselves and 2)This is a dangerous idea because the more we look for someone/something to save us or for a solution outside of ourselves the less likely we are going to solve our problems ourselves. 3)Extraordinary claims require evidence just like anything else that is claimed: i.e. "Is is more probable that nature should go out of her course or that man should tell a lie?" 4)We want miracles because it makes a better story 5) Sometimes history is rewritten to our satisfaction and not for truth. 6) If we have an emotional stake in the answers the more skeptical scrutiny is required.
Chapter 6: The God Hypothesis
What I got out of this chapter is:1) Natural Theology has long meant that theological knowledge can be established by reason, experience, and experiment alone. 2) What is the definition of God? In the West, God is defined as omnipotent, omniscient, compassionate, and personal. How could we establish that the Western God have these qualities? 3) Is God the sum total of the laws of physics as described by Einstein and Spinoza? 4) There is no truly Natural Theology because all arguments or proofs given so far cannot be established by reason, experience, and experiment and are not compelling when held-up to scrutiny.
Chapter 7: The Religious Experience
What I got out of this chapter is:1) Humans are millions of years old with the human species perhaps being one million years old(with uncertainty) 2) Whatever feelings, thoughts, and approaches to the world must have selective advantages. 3)If we analyze for examples of hunter-gathers from the !Kung (i.e. non-hierarchical society) versus Jivaro (extremely hierarchical society)their gods are similar to the society that worship them. 4) Religious experience must has a molecular base because certain chemicals (via drugs like LSD, peyote, etc.) or deprivation can trigger molecules in our brains that can have mystical/religious experience and there must have been a selective advantage for it to have stayed with our species. 5) Religion is hardwired into our species to get us to cooperate, be dominated, to try and control our environment and to understand/explain the unknown.
Chapter 8: Crimes Against Creation
What I got out of this chapter is: 1) In the history of our planet many natural catastrophes or events has happened, yet with nuclear weapons we have the ability to destroy our planet. 2) It is Dr. Sagan's thesis that it is not only imprudent but foolish to an extreme for the human species to have so large an arsenal of weapons of such destructive power simply available. 3) Religion can speak truth to power. 4) Christians should rein in fundamentalist who goals are to expedite the world's end. 5) Not one country who claim to have a Christian foundation or Christian founding fathers, not even the United States has adopted Jesus tenets of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you or Love your enemies, etc." 6) We all are mutually dependent on this small planet, we breathe the same air and whatever divides us it is clear the earth will be here thousands or millions of years from now, but the question is, will we?
Chapter 9: The Search
What I got out of this chapter is: 1) It is the search for the answers to what we are and why we are here that open a two pronged investigation into the nature of the world and ourselves. 2) Our intelligence separates us from other species. 3) Because of our intelligence we have increased in numbers and occupy outpost everywhere on this planet. 3) If we don't destroy ourselves we will continue our expansion to other planets. 4) Our species started off as hunter-gatherers millions of years ago, as we grew and expanded we move from small tribes to city-states to nations to empires, our next move needs to move to being citizens of the planet. 5) We have tow conflicting natures in our hearts one is aggressive i.e. reptilian, the other has the capacity for compassion, sympathy, and love. 6) People are fighting over myth and are afraid that their version of the truth is untrue. 7) So we must be willing to question everything even our own ideas. 8)If we think about where we came from 15,000 million years ago; it is truly amazing that the Big Bang lead eventually to a self-replicating organism. 9) We need to hone the talents our evolution and history has given us in order to increase our chances of survival. 10) History shows us how we went from the divine rights of kings to revolutions(i.e. American, French, Russian, etc.) so that we no longer believe in the divine right of kings, we no longer believe in chattel slavery, 11)Disease have been reduced over time it is no longer thought or taught to be a god-given part of life. 12) We all have a vested interest in the elimination of nuclear weapons. 13) The better we understand ourselves and others the better we understand the framework of how we fit in and not to go to our force our emotional predisposition on whatever our exploration tell us but accept the universe as it really is. The end of the book has selected Q & A that occurred after each lecture my favorite Q & A was Chapter Five a Questioner asked Dr. Sagan How do you recognize truth when it is upon us. Dr. Sagan replied "A simple question: How can we recognize truth? It is, of course, difficult. But there are a few simple rules. The truth ought to be logically consistent. It should not contradict itself; that is, there are some logical criteria. It ought to be consistent with what else we know....he went to say "The more badly we want to believe it, the more skeptical we have to be. It involves a kind of courageous self-discipline..."

Black Socrates

Genes vs prayer

I had a thought that I wanted to put in my blog while it was fresh in my mind. The thought is so often we seek direction from a god or a dead ancestor,coin flipping, divination, etc. in other words we look for solutions or answers to our problems outside of ourselves. However, I feel that my genes which I received from my ancestors, through evolution and adaptation created the brains in which mental processes occur, has given me everything I need. To seek direction from an unknown god or dead ancestor like conventional religions and traditional religions want us to, is to be a child forever asking someone to save us, to help us and we never grow up and take responsibility for our lives. I catch myself wanting to flip a coin, speaking a silent request for direction on a decision but then I say to myself, I have a brain, which the evolution of my species has given me over millions of years, and thus I have everything I need and thus to ask a god, an ancestor, flip a coin, or consult some divination would be an insult to the legacy of all who have given me their genes,which produced my brain, and my mental capacities to think for myself. This is why when people pray they bow their heads and close their eyes, if you stand back and look at them objectively, it look ridiculous, (the next time there's a public prayer or something see how it looks), they look like little children or a slave begging a master, a mean parent or bully for a something they want. As Fredrick Douglass once stated and I conclude "I prayed for twenty years but received no answers until I prayed with my legs" Think about it...

Original Sin and the Atonement

From John G. Jackson's essay the Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth (see web link: http://www.africawithin.com/jgjackson/jgjackson_pagan_origins_of_the_christ_myth1.htm) he states: The cardinal doctrines of the Christian religion are (1) the Fall of Man and (2) the Atonement. He later quotes from T.W. Doanes who points out:
"These two dogmas cannot be separated from each other. If there was no Fall, there is no need of an atonement, and no Redeemer is required. Those, then, who consent in recognizing in Christ Jesus a God and Redeemer, and who, notwithstanding, cannot resolve upon admitting the story of the Fall of Man to be historical, should exculpate themselves from the reproach of inconsistency"



I will substitute Original Sin for Fall of Man and therefore one must ask: What is Original Sin? Original Sin is a Christian belief based on Paul's statement, "Therefore just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned 13. for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Augustine of Hippo fully developed the doctrine of Original sin because he stated that is was "the deliberate sin of the first man is the cause of original sin" (De nupt. et concup., II, xxvi, 43) and from the Augustinian perspective, is not a free and individual choice by a baby; but rather the effect of the sum total of "hereditary sin", taught through the story of the sin of Adam and Eve (Genesis Chapter 2-3). The Augustinian doctrine of original sin teaches that every individual is born into a broken world where sin is already active; that they are inevitably influenced personally by the actions of others and the consequences of choices made by others. The Augustinian effectively believes that human nature - and hence every individual person - is flawed. Therefore, according to this doctrine, Original Sin is perpetually transmitted to human beings by Adam and Eve.

What is the Atonement? The atonement is a doctrine found within both Christianity and Judaism. It describes how sin can be forgiven by God. In Judaism, Atonement is said to be the process of forgiving or pardoning a transgression. This was originally accomplished through rituals performed by a High Priest on the holiest day of the Jewish year called Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement). Since the fall of the second temple, the idea of a mediator is no longer accepted as necessary for atonement in Judaism, to atone for sin all one need to do is simply repent. Also the atonement was for actual sins, the breaking of the Mosaic Law, and not for an original sin. In Christian theology, the atonement refers to the forgiving or pardoning of sin through the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, which made possible reconciliation between God and creation thus the Christian doctrine of atonement is more properly understood to be reconciliation. Which essentially mean we were enemies of God through the original sin of Adam and through Jesus Christ giving of himself as a sacrifice for Adam's sin we now have a restored friendship with God in (see 1 Corinthians 11:2-10; 15:22, Matthew 26:28).

Is Original Sin perpetual? I don't think it is. First, according to Judaism, which is Christianity's predecessor, there is no scriptural proof of a Jewish doctrine of original sin. In fact, in Genesis 4:6,7 (NIV) in the story of Cain and Abel, Then the Lord said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.This implies that Cain(the first born after the fall) was not born sinful but allowed sin to overtake him and thus the Original Sin Doctrine has no merit. Also, the Torah(The first five books of the Holy Bible and Hebrew Bible), a person sin will not exceed the 3 or 4 generation (Exodus 34:7 ) even though this text contradicts Deuteronomy 24:16 . Moreover, the prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel18:20 which states that every man shall be responsible for his own sin and not the sins of his ancestors. Lets say I take the conservative stance and go with Exodus 34:7 that a person ancestry sin's pass on to the next generation, if Adam and Eve sinned then mankind punishment for Adam and Eve's sin of disobedience should not have exceed their great-great-grand children. If the sin did not exceed Adam/Eve great-great-grandkids i.e. the fourth generation, then the idea of a savoir-god atoning for original sin is unnecessary.

Secondly, I think that the theory of evolution does the most damage to the original sin, according to evolution mankind and other species slowly changed from lower life forms over millions of years, and according to geologist the earth is 4.5 billion years old. Evolution is a scientific fact the theory or best explanation is what Charles Darwin called Natural Selection. The reason we have evolved with the great Apes (chimps, orangutans, gorillas, etc.) from a common ancestor is found in genetics, human and other primates have a vitamin C deficiency, if we did not evolve from a common ancestor then other primates would not have this deficiency.

In conclusion, the idea of Original Sin is a myth or way people try to explain why people behave improperly to themselves and to others. The original sin idea creates a problem which has a ready made solution (the atonement through Jesus Christ). The reason we behave improperly is because we are mammals, because we have an ego, which is a conceived idea about ourselves, we have this notion that we are different from other species. Judaism, Christianity’s predecessor, doesn’t support the idea of original sin and because we have evolved over millions of years. We must concede there was no fall of man in a garden of delight, i.e. , and therefore the idea of a dying savior is not necessary. This is why creationist sees evolution as the greatest threat, but this is another blog.