Happy Winter Solstice - The Real Reason for the Season

Kirk Franklin thinks Jesus is the Reason for the Season, but history tell us something different. Unless, Mr. Franklin is admitting that Christianity is really the worship of the sun god(s), not the son (sun) of god. It doesn't take much to link the hope of a new sun with the hope of new life, to a babe in a manger, which is another symbol of the hope of life, like the pine and fir trees symbolizes the hope of life in the cold of winter. Think about it...Happy Winter Solstice, Happy Birthday Mithra.

Remembering Hitch

Although his voice is now silent, he empowers ours in the Free-thought community. To Hitch. (1949 - 2011) We will continue to speak truth to power.

Guess What, We're Still Here!

If I am writing this and if you're reading this, the world did not end on October 21, 2011. Harold Camping and Jesus had a lot in common, both of their prediction about the end of the world did not come true. Jesus supposedly said "Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in "this" adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power." i.e. Jesus was supposedly talking about to the "adulterous and sinful generation" who were alive when these words were spoken. Jesus predicted that some of his audience would be alive when the "Kingdom of God or Heaven" came with power. Mark 13:30-33: Jesus is recorded as saying: "....This generation shall not pass away, until all these things be accomplished....But of that day or that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is. I interpret this to mean he was not saying that it was not going to happen within the generation, but it was going to happen in "this generation" but no one knows the exact day or time but to be ready within this generation. A "generation" is normally a forty year period. If Jesus spoke those words circa 29 CE - 30 CE, then all of the events predicted in Mark 13:24-27 would have happened on or before 70 CE: "“But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; 25 the stars of heaven will fall, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 26 Then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. 27 And then He will send His angels, and gather together His elect from the four winds, from the farthest part of earth to the farthest part of heaven." Sound a lot like Harold Camping prediction doesn't it, here's Mr. Camping words on May 24th, 2011 "The great earthquake and rapture and the universe melting in fervent heat will be happening on the last day – October 21 2011... It’s all going to happen on the last day...The great earthquake didn’t happen on May 21 because no-one will be able to survive it for more than a few days or let alone five months to suffer God’s wrath because everything will be leveled and destroyed after that earthquake and there will be no food or water to keep everyone alive." Yes Mr. Camping and Jesus have a lot in common they both are failed apocalyptic prophets. Think about it.

Occupy Wall Street and Reality

I was listening to Dead Prez, song "Police State" in the introduction of the song Omali Yeshitela states "You have the emergence in human society of this thing called the State. What is the State? The State is organized bureaucracy. It is the police department…the Army, the Navy It is the prison system, the courts. The State is a repressive organization. The reality is the State becomes necessary only at that juncture in human society where it is split between those who have and those who ain't got!" He seems to be summarizing what we are seeing in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Several Months ago I blogged about Socialism vs. Capitalism, I asked are we as a species more inclined with socialism or capitalism? In other words, which system is more our true nature as a species, socialism or capitalism? Socialism is any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of means of production and distribution of goods. In other words, it's a system where everyone collectively gets a share of the pie, because the collective owns the pie. Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market. In other words, it is a system where only a few own a piece of the pie and sell the crumbs to the rest, it automatically creates a class based system. I think we lived in social groups because the need to bond and band together to survive and pass on our genes (DNA) , and this bonding and banding occurred for millions of years and evolution selected groups who bonded and banded together that out competed groups that didn't. Why did humans move toward egalitarianism? On a website Anthropology.net an article entitled Modeling The Egalitarian Revolution states: "The observation that Gavrilets et al. make is that while our closest living evolutionary cousins form alliances and cooperate in groups, their social systems are extremely hierarchical. The most glaring example can be seen in a gorilla troop where a dominant silverback presides over a few adolescent males and a harem of females. The group dynamic is fluid throughout life history, but each member of the system ultimately plays a role in the dominance hierarchy. But early human societies, such as the quintessential hunter-gatherer society, is generalized as being egalitarian. Prior to the agricultural revolution, hunting and gathering is thought to have been the only subsistence strategy deployed by early human cultures. Studying modern day hunter gatherers, ethnographers have noted that such societies distribute dominance much more equally and thus tend to be non hierarchical. Leaders are comparatively weaker than their subordinates which reverses the pyramid of power." "So why was there such a big behavioral shift during our evolutionary history? We may never know for sure. There are ideas floating around that all seem to suggest the lack of food and realization that cooperation, rather than competition, was more beneficial for overall survival. When food sources became more dependable, as seen after the Neolithic and the dawn of agriculture and pastoralism, is when we've seen a return to a traditional hierarchy." (http://anthropology.net/2008/10/09/modeling-the-egalitarian-revolution/) In other words, all one needs to do is observe the remaining hunter-gatherers to see how we lived for the most part from 200,000 to 10,000 years ago. However, with the rise of agriculture and the new abundance of food, the focus changed and class or hierarchical social order emerged or perhaps reemerged, and with surplus food, trading developed and this lessen the need for cooperation our (primitive) default natural state reestablished itself. As stated above if all our primate cousins (Chimpanzees, Bonobos, Gorillas, Monkeys, etc.) are hierarchical then this must have been our way of living for millions of years until we broke away evolutionarily from them to a Socialist/Egalitarian system as hunter-gatherers. Therefore, I think our default position is hierarchical for it is the older and primitive state, and our primate cousins are hierarchical and what make us think we are the exception? As a result, egalitarianism is a late player on the evolutionary time scale. However, Egalitarianism is close to Socialist idea of a classless society where everyone has an equal chance and has the opportunity to optimize their talents without regard to the class you happen to be born. As I watch the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations and the little national coverage it is getting and it seems to be a reaction to the 2009 petty bourgeoisie revolt of the Tea Party. Which side will win, will we evolve or default to our primitive hierarchical or class system? I think it depends on which system gives our DNA the best chance to survive and continue the game, for nature does not care which system exist, its only function is to keep the gene (DNA) successfully replicating itself and how it is done Nature does not give a damn, it does it by any means necessary! Think about it.

What's your Answer to Life?

I ask this question because so often I am bombarded with inside and outside influences telling me to find my life somewhere other than where I am, in other words, there is a 10 billion dollar industry for personal development, plus all the nonsense religion propagates, everyone telling us how f@cked up we are and how they can fix us or they have the cure. My philosophy or way of living and thinking is life is its own point, it does not transcend itself to get to somewhere else, but I will be the first to admit that I could be wrong. However, if life transcend itself where is it going and what will it do when it get there and will there still be another point beyond that point that it need to transcend? These are interesting questions, at least to me. As I stated before, I think life is its own point and this means to me it is something that cannot be improved but, it is something that as one who is "in" life should participate. In other words, I will take an active role in life, its good, its bad and its indifference, it is like Sisyphus with his rock, it is mines and this existence is all I know and is the one thing am certain of, anything that transcends it is to me irrelevant or meaningless to the life I am experiencing for it is not "in" life but outside of it. It is like Epicurus conclusion on death, Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not or to put it in slang, death aint sh!t to me, for when I am, it aint and when it is, I aint, why should I fear sh!t that does not exist when I do? This is why suicide philosophical or physical is not an option because to me it is trying to escape the one certain thing we have for something we don't. My answer to Life is "hell yeah!" Think about it.

Think for yourself?

On the way home, I was listening to George Hrab's Song entitled "Think for Yourself", the Beatles had a song with that title as well. It is a song, that I as a Free Thinking advocate agree, it is a song about learning how to be a critical, skeptical thinker, to don't accept what someone else say, believe, or sale you without asking who, what, when, where, how, and especially why. As I listened to the lyrics, I had an insight in which, I thought about evolution, especially Human Evolution. We primates emerged on the scene about 30 million years ago, then the hominids separated from Chimps and Bonobos about 6 to 8 million years ago. The most famous of our early ancestors is Lucy also known as Australopithecus afarensis who lived 3.2 million years ago in Ethiopia although she wasn't the first hominid, a recent fossil of Ardi (Ardipithecus Ramidus) pushes hominid evolution back to approximately 4.4 million years ago when, due to probably climate change some primates begin to walked on two feet. Being bipedal in an environment where the ancestors of lions, leopards, cheetahs, and hyenas where looking for their next meal was a tremendous risk but also gave them advantages it freed up their hands and allow them to see their predators in the changing environment, and this with many other variables led to higher development and evolution of the hominid brain, which eventually gave us an advantage on the East African plains and here I am writing about it,(isn't evolution da bomb!). In order to survive the early hominids had to cooperate and work together in order to survive. This led to us being a social species and it led to human primates having longer childhoods than our primate cousins. For example, a Daniel Dennett wrote in Breaking the Spell, Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, "Natural Selection build child brains with the tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them", it had survival benefits because it you were warned about going near the water hole because of crocodiles, if someone disobeyed and was eaten this reinforced the authority and social order of the clan or tribe. Another example, would be if someone was kicked out of the group and was later found dead or eaten by hyenas this reinforced the social order.Therefore, my argument is thinking individually or thinking for yourself is a recent phenomenon in our species way of thinking for a species who lived for millions of years who lived in social groups in order to survive, and propagate they had to think collectively therefore, I think group-thinking is the default position in our brains and to think for yourself take effort and practice and we don't do this well as a species, because for most of our evolutionary history we had to groupthink. What is Groupthink? Groupthink, "a term coined by social psychologist Irving Janis (1972), occurs when a group makes faulty decisions because group pressures lead to a deterioration of "mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment" (p. 9). Groups affected by groupthink ignore alternatives and tend to take irrational actions that dehumanize other groups. A group is especially vulnerable to groupthink when its members are similar in background, when the group is insulated from outside opinions, and when there are no clear rules for decision making. source: (http://www.psysr.org/about/pubs_resources/groupthink%20overview.htm) This is why religion thrives because it's probably a byproduct of groupthinking. In Summary, I think groupthinking evolved out of our sociology need to survive, cooperate and pass-on our genes (DNA) and thinking as an individual is a new phenomena and we default to groupthinking because we evolved in social groups that banded together to survive on the East African plains. Think about it or think for yourself, but it will take practice to override our default towards groupthinking. John D. Socrates a.k.a. The African Socrates.

The Big Whimper

I have been thinking about the meaning, purpose, and perhaps the function of my existence. Today, I read an article on the website The Universe Today, titled "The End of Everything" by Fraser Cain , and according to the website Dark Energy is constant, and based on the models the best estimate is that it will remain constant and this means the universe will, approximately 100 Trillion years from now, be one big lifeless, cold, and energy-free nothing, it is called the Big Freeze. In other words, the universe started with a bang but will end in a whimper. Therefore I ask; if the universe will end, why should I care of what I am doing now, it is all for nothing, as Ecclesiastes states in Ecclesiastes 1:2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher.“Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” However whoever wrote this book concluded in Ecclesiastes 12:13 "Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind" but how can this be our duty, how is this a point or give us a meaning? What if a person for instance, like when she was six years old a girl name Rosanna (now 11 years old) was shot by Charles Roberts IV when he shot 10 Amish girls at a school five years ago, in which five died. Rosanna survived but as her father Christ King states, "She cannot walk, talk or eat, yet Rosanna is aware of her surroundings and attends an Amish school" how can she fulfill her "duty" if she is in a vegetative state? Additionally, there are some kids who are born in vegetative states from the womb; how will they too fulfill their "duty"? I think the so-called teacher's conclusion is bullsh!t, a big whimper! How is god going to judge someone who has been in a vegetative state most of their lives through no fault of their own, she happen to be in the wrong f@cking place at the wrong f@cking time or this the way people are born, and there isn't a d@mn thing you can do about it! Yes, we can have improvements in science and have societies without guns, yet there will be people who are sociopaths and psychopaths who will kill and not everyone in the world will have access to these discoveries in science or live in a gun free society. Why should we care if it ends in nothing? I think the reply in the Power of the Myth by Joseph Campbell put it best when Bill Moyer stated Zorba says, "Trouble?" Life is Trouble" Campbell replied "Only death is no trouble. People ask me "Do you have optimism about the world?" And I say, "Yes, it's great just the way it is. And you are not going to fix it up. Nobody has ever made it any better. This is it, so take it or leave it. You are not going to correct it or improve it." Campbell goes on to state " It is joyful just as it is. I don't believe there was anybody who intended it, but this is the way it is. James Joyce has a memorable line: "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake," And the way to wake from it is not to be afraid, and to recognize that all of this, is a manifestation of the horrendous power that is of all creation. The ends of things are always painful. But pain is part of there being a world at all." To me it means, I care because this world as flawed as it is, it is all we have; take it or leave it, and my participation in life is my affirmation of it even though it ends in a whimper, it's my whimper. As meaningless as it is, it is still my meaning! Think about it! John D. Socrates a.k.a. The African Socrates.

Palestinian Statehood

The Palestinians submitted a request to be recognized as a nation. How can you have statehood and the boundaries for your state were never settled? From my research the Israeli-Palestinian conflict started with Zionism and European Imperialism during and after World War I, with the Balfour Declarations in 1917. This led to the British Mandate for Palestine in 1922 adopted by the League of Nations, who goal was to create a Jewish Homeland for Cultural and Religious Jews. Zionism,the national movement lead by Thedor Herzl which cultivated in late 19th and early 20th century Zionist Congress that called for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. I think the land is disputed and not necessarily occupied, in that the Israelis in the original mandate, their homeland were suppose to be an area that includes not only the current state of Israel but also, what is now called Jordan. From 1922 to 1947 there were many riots and conflicts with returning Israelis and local Arabs as a result, the UN in 1947 agreed to give and Israel accepted to take the right bank of Jordan but the Arabs did not accept it. Israel declared independence and their Arab neighbors declared war. The Arabs lost the war in 1948, and lost subsequent wars in 1956, 1967, and 1973. The Palestinians fled their homes and this created refugees. The Arab and Muslim neighboring nations refused to accept the refugees who fled in the wars thus creating so-called refugees (how can you be a refugee for 63 years). I think it is all based on religion. The idea of a promise land, that is based on the myth of an Exodus from Egypt that never happened. There is no archeological evidence to support a massive exodus of over 600,000 people living in a desert for 40 years. Plus if this was true, all the Egyptians had to do was go around the Red Sea into the Sinai Peninsula and recapture their slaves. As most scholars concluded what emerged to become Israel where probably ancient Canaanites who gave up polytheism and idol worship for so-called monotheism. I must admit I admire these Canaanites who became what we culturally call Jews. Judaism is not a race, some claim they are the founders of monotheism, I think Pharaoh Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV, 1364-1347 B.C.) would disagree. The reason I admire them is because they somehow kept their culture for 2600 years. They are not homogeneous as some claim. The main ethnic element of Ashkenazim (German and Eastern European Jews), Sephardim (Spanish and Portuguese Jews), Mizrakhim (Middle Eastern Jews), Juhurim (Mountain Jews of the Caucasus), Italqim (Italian Jews), and most other modern Jewish populations of the world is Israelite. The Israelite haplotypes fall into Y-DNA haplogroups J and E. Ashkenazim also descend, in a smaller way, from European peoples from the northern Mediterranean region and even less from Slavs and Khazars. The non-Israelite Y-DNA haplogroups include Q (typically Central Asian) and R1a1 (typically Eastern European). Dutch Jews from the Netherlands also descend from northwestern Europeans. Sephardim also descend, in a smaller way, from various non-Israelite peoples. Georgian Jews (Gruzinim) are a mix of Georgians and Israelites. Yemenite Jews (Temanim) are a mix of Yemenite Arabs and Israelites. Moroccan Jews, Algerian Jews, and Tunisian Jews are mainly Israelites. Libyan Jews are mainly Israelites who may have mixed somewhat with Berbers. Ethiopian Jews are almost exclusively Ethiopian, with little or no Israelite ancestry. Bene Israel Jews and Cochin Jews of India have much Indian ancestry in their mtDNA. Palestinian Arabs are probably partly Israelite or Israelis are partly Palestinian Arab. (Source: http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/abstracts.html) The last sentence is a kicker, Palestinians and Israelis share ancestry and those who are not in the Haplogroup E and J, ancestor's converted to Judaism during the Jewish Diaspora. The Bible stories of Abraham,Isaac, and Jacob being a common ancestor to the Israelites and Arabs (Ishmaelites) are not true, because the haplogroups J and E means there were two different founders, and not a common ancestor via Abraham. Think about it... John D. Socrates a.k.a. The African Socrates.

Civil Rights is more than African Americans Rights

I am a native North Carolinian, the state where my roots are intrinsically linked, passed a Republican lead ballot initiative to Ban same sex marriage that will allow voters to vote on it May 6th. According to Infoplease, "civil rights, rights that a nation's inhabitants enjoy by law. The term is broader than “political rights,” which refer only to rights devolving from the franchise and are held usually only by a citizen, and unlike “natural rights,” civil rights have a legal as well as a philosophical basis. In the United States civil rights are usually thought of in terms of the specific rights guaranteed in the Constitution: freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press, and the rights to due process of law and to equal protection under the law." There have been several African American Homophobic ministers, Wooden, Fozard, Hunter, and The Fredrick Douglass Foundation's Daniels (Fredrick Douglass is probably turning in his grave, if there was such a thing as an afterlife), saying that same sex rights are not civil rights, if this isn't civil rights what is? If people sex orientation is not equally protected under the law, then how can race be protected? If they create an amendment that can ban same sex marriage and legalize discrimination against another citizen because of their sex orientation, who will be next? I plan to encourage everyone I know to vote against this anti-civil right amendment. Same-Sex Marriage is already illegal in North Carolina. State statute currently limits marriage to opposite-sex couples. N.C.G.S. § 51.1-2 prohibits marriages between individuals of the same gender. It is interesting the Republicans platform is about smaller government wants the government in our private lives, what hypocrisy. The Party of Lincoln fighting to discriminate and legislate hate in my state. I am amazed how history plays out. Think about. John D. Socrates a.k.a. The African Socrates

Fairness is not a Fallacy

I recently read an article by Thomas Sowell titled, The Fairness Fallacy. In which he believes it is a fallacy to think life is fair and that we (especially African-Americans) need to get over thinking that it is. I am amazed at people like him who benefited from the very civil rights that he so often attacks (but that is another blog). Nevertheless, I will give him credit for one thing, he made me think. As a result, I asked myself; what is the meaning of Fairness, is Nature fair, and is it a fallacy to think it is Fair? I think that Nature, which is defined as a physical power causing all material phenomena (including life) is fair. What is fair? Fair (adjective) is defined as just, unbiased, equitable, in accordance with the rules. It is synonymous with fair-minded, unprejudiced, objective, disinterested, evenhanded; honest, straightforward, above-board, and upright. If I use the definition of fair as being something unbiased, can I say Nature is fair? In other words, is Nature disinterested or indifferent to our existence? I think Nature meets this criteria for it seems to align with the definition of something that is unbiased, equitable, in accordance with the rules (i.e. the laws of Nature). However, as a subjective being I am driven by desires and needs that are selfish and self-centered. When my subjective desires meet an objective Nature it feels unfair (and Absurd) because it does not meet up to my expectations. Yet, she (Nature) has always been honest in her indifference. For example, she lets you know that everything is impermanent, because she is constantly using her forces to change and recombine atoms into new functions. To give you an analogy, the dinosaur evolved approximately 300 million years ago, and it is hypothesized that a meteor or asteroid 6 1/2 miles in diameter collided with our planet 65 millions years ago, and this is believed to have caused the majority of the dinosaur's extinction (it is hypothesized that birds are the descendents of dinosaurs, see Morphed on National Geographic Wild) and yet, nature has not stop emerging life on this planet. I think we are one of many outcomes of a chain reaction in amino acids that emerged and adapted to the conditions on earth. Our DNA somehow became alive, evolved, and is still evolving, in other words, we are neither a special creation nor made in the image of an invisible disembodied non-physical being, we're just one among many. We happen to be born on a planet with the condition that is conducive for what we call life and Nature is indifferent to our existence, its only focus is how genes are passed on and does not care whether it is a strain of bacteria or a whale, it is disinterested in who does it but it is honest in its indifference and therefore meet the test of being fair, so I think life is fair and all I can do in my subjective self-interest is know that fairness is not a fallacy and live this life the best that I can. Think about it. The African Socrates

Capitalism (Class system) vs Socialism (Classless system)

I am thinking about human nature and the current economic and social issues. I'm thinking specifically about class and the question what is the norm in regards to our evolutionary history. If one look at the remaining hunter-gatherer they seem to be egalitarian, however if you look at our primate cousin, i.e. Chimpanzees, Bonobos, they have somewhat of a class system or social ranking. The Alpha Male or Female (Bonobos) have a higher status than lower status chimps and bonobos, they get to eat first, have more sexual partners, get groomed by lower status members of the group. However in existing hunter-gatherers they share kills, deliberate effort is made to not boast or brag of hunting abilities. There is an article in Time, The End of Europe, by Rana Foroohar about the problems in Europe and how in the UK and the US how the top 5% makes over 30% of the income and how there is a widening gap between the have and have nots. Therefore, I am asking which is more inline with human nature? Capitalism or Socialism. John D. Socrates a.k.a. The African Socrates

God, The Afterlife, and Original Sin

Recently, the thought came to me about how "if" the god of Christianity messed up this world according the doctrine of original sin, in which he put mankind into a situation where in his omniscience he knew he was going to fall and the suffering it entailed, then I can only imagine how he messed up the afterlife. Think about it....

I Love Lucy

Lucy (Australopithecus afarensis) lived 3.2 million years ago in Ethiopia although she wasn't the first hominid, a recent fossil of Ardi (Ardipithecus Ramidus) pushes hominid evolution back to 4.4 million years ago. Probaby due to climate change they walked on two feet, which took courage. Being bipedal in an environment where the ancestors of lions, leopards, cheetahs, and hyenas where looking for their next meal was a tremendous risk, but Lucy, Ardi, and our hominid ancestors took those steps, which lead to higher development and evolution of the hominid brain, which eventually gave us an advantage on the East African plains. I often wonder if the first hominids did not get out of the tree and stand on their two feet, there probably would not be Homo Sapiens, but a band of primates did, survived long enough to allow evolution to do its work and now their distant offspring is writing about it. I love Lucy because her kind made the steps that eventually lead to humanity. Think about it... We are all Africans..

The sky is Falling Harold Camping the Modern day Chicken Little

Here we are two days after the rapture supposed to have happened. As I read Harold Camping's May 11th interview in Nymag.com : " Interviewer: What will you be doing on that day? Are you just waiting for the earthquake, are you having some kind of ceremony?
Harold Camping: "There’ll be no gatherings of any kind that I have anything to do with. There'll be no — it’ll just be simply waiting, and the likelihood is that I'll be doing what everybody else will be doing, which is listening to the radio or watching TV, seeing what is happening as it begins on the other side of the world."
When I read this my skeptical antenna's went up, because why would he be watching TV or listening to a radio if the "believers" where going to be raptured away,they wouldn't be here to watch TV or listen to a radio, unless heaven or wherever the raptured are going will have TVs and radios.
Most Christians did not buy into this specific nonsense but they still believe that the rapture is going to happen. For example, Tim LaHaye famous for his Left Behind books and movies is your typical Christian response for he states in Huffington Post: "Instead, Lahaye sticks to the oft-cited passage from the Gospel of Matthew that is interpreted to mean the apocalypse will not be predicted:
But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father (Matthew 24:36).
Lahaye points out that Camping has been wrong about the date of the end times before, and he goes on to explain:
You can be sure the rapture will not occur when anyone sets a date because God wants us all to live every day as though Christ could come today. A great motto for daily living is PERHAPS TODAY. For one day it will happen and we don't know when, but we don't want you to be left behind!"
This opens a can of worms for the belief in the Trinity (that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit or Ghost are One Divine Being), for how can the Father and Son be one and they don't know what the other is thinking or knows.
This whole rapture fiasco should wake up people to even the prophecies in the bible, for they could have been just as wrong as Harold Camping and the other Henny Penny/ Chicken Little, who can't wait for the sky to fall. Think about it...
Black Socrates

Part 1: The African-American a Conservative: Christianity Still Enslaves the Mind Today

Hubert Harrison's essay: The Negro a Conservative: Christianity Still Enslaves the Mind of Those Whose Bodies It Has Long Held Bound which he published in the Truth Seeker, September 12, 1914 is still true today (97 years later). In the essay Harrison analyze and identify three areas as to why African-Americans are Conservative and why their minds are still enslaved by Christianity. The areas he discusses are education inequity, the affects of slavery and Christianity's role in Slavery, and the lack of economic freedom of circumstances, especially in leaders of thought.

Harrison opens the essay with the reflection that African Americans has taken part in every line of intellectual endeavor that Caucasians have, except for radical ideas like "theological criticism, religious dissent, social and political heresies such as Single Tax, Socialism, Anarchism; in other words, African-Americans are Theologically and for the most part Socially Conservative. For example, according to a Pew Forum on "A Religious Portrait of African-Americans" published July 30, 2009: "While the U.S. is generally considered a highly religious nation, African-Americans are markedly more religious on a variety of measures than the U.S. population as a whole, including level of affiliation with a religion, attendance at religious services, frequency of prayer and religion's importance in life. Compared with other racial and ethnic groups, African-Americans are among the most likely to report a formal religious affiliation, with fully 87% of African-Americans describing themselves as belonging to one religious group or another...The Landscape Survey also finds that nearly eight-in-ten African-Americans (79%) say religion is very important in their lives... Additionally, several measures illustrate the distinctiveness of the black community when it comes to religious practices and beliefs. More than half of African-Americans (53%) report attending religious services at least once a week, more than three-in-four (76%) say they pray on at least a daily basis and nearly nine-in-ten (88%) indicate they are absolutely certain that God exists. On each of these measures, African-Americans stand out as the most religiously committed racial or ethnic group in the nation...The Landscape Survey also shows that the link between religion and some social and political attitudes in the African-American community is very similar to that seen among the population overall. For instance, just as in the general public, African-Americans who are more religiously observant (as defined by frequency of worship service attendance and the importance of religion in their lives) are more likely to oppose abortion and homosexuality and more likely to report higher levels of conservative ideology. " Therefore, Harrison's assessment was correct that the African American is a Conservative was true in his time and they are today. The only area which African Americans are not socially conservative comes from economical reasons due to racism and discrimination, African-Americans believe in government involvement in social issues to protect civil rights, voting rights, and to open equal opportunities as well as create a social safety nets like Social Security, Medicaid, and Social Ware fare programs to offset the lack of economic equity in the United States. As a result, when African-Americans voted against prop 8 in significant numbers they were being true to their conservatism.

Part 2: The African-American a Conservative: Christianity Still Enslaves the Mind Today

The first reason Harrison highlights is the inequity in education, for example he states "when we consider that in certain southern counties the munificent sum of 58 cents is spent for the annual education of a Negro child" and the difficult task of even making it to college "we will cease to wonder at the dearth of thinkers who are radical on other than racial matters." Although this may not mean a reduction in African-Americans religiosity, according a 2002 Gallop poll concluded "that those with a lower level of education are more likely to "talk the talk" when it comes to religion -- that is, they're more likely to say they believe in God, place religion prominently in their lives, and recognize religion's importance in the world. But those with a higher level of education are as likely as those with less education to "walk the walk" -- by belonging to a congregation and attending services regularly. These results may point to a failure on the part of organized religion to attract and connect with those with a lower education level, perhaps reflecting the trend in the last century toward more highly educated clergy.
However, even though they do not belong in as great a number or attend as frequently as their more highly educated counterparts, those on the lower end of the educational scale have much more faith in religious institutions, perhaps reflecting a broader tendency to rely on institutions in other areas of their lives -- unions, HMOs, government agencies, etc. Those in this group have far less faith in the individuals at the head of their religious institutions -- the clergy -- than in the institutions themselves." In other words, The United States does not have a strong social safety net and so the poor have to reach out to religious institutions for assistents.

Part 3: The African-American a Conservative: Christianity Still Enslaves the Mind Today

In discussing Christianity's role in slavery, I too wonder with Harrison's assertion that "it would seem that the Negroes of all Americans, would be found in the Freethought fold, since they have suffered more than any other class of Americans from the dubious blessing of Christianity". For as Harrison illustrates the "dubious blessing" of Christianity, were 1. Christianity was used to justify the enslavement of Africans by using the bible for divine sanction of this "peculiar institution", with text such as "Cursed be Canaan", "Servants obey Your Masters" and 2. Christianity stressed "servile virtues of subservience and content" and as we can see "these things have bitten deeply into the souls of black folk." In other words, the very book they call the word of god and the Christian religion the Black folk follow was the very thing used to enslave them and it still does. The Christian Slaveholder knew the Christianity was an effective tool that could be used for subjugation, for they saw how it subdued the Roman Empire and the subsequent European tribes that came into contact with it. In fact, Harrison shows us how it was used in Africa to subdue and create colonialism through missionaries. For when the African closed their eyes the African had the bible and the Europeans had the land. He shows how B. L. Putnam Weale's book the Conflict of Color, naively advised the Lords of Empire (The Imperialist) not to civilize but Christianized Africa in the caption "The Black Sampson and White Delilah", so that "Delilah's work may well be done. Here in America her work has been well done and I fear that many years must pass before the leaders of thought among my people contribute many representatives to the cause of Freethought". 97 years later and still African-American leaders of thought among my people hasn't contributed much for the cause, for example, intellectuals like Cornell West and Michael Dyson, who is a Baptist minister, they both teach or have taught at Ivy League schools and proudly calls themselves Christians. Instead, of becoming theological critics or religious dissidents using historical or higher criticism or other methods that could help deliver their people from the mental bondage of their ancestor's slave-master religion (Christianity); they advocate and proclaim it! As Harrison states " the church among the Negroes exerts a more powerful influence than anything else in the sphere of ideas. Why is this? Harrison contends and I agree that "Nietzsche's contention that the ethics of Christianity are the slave ethics... Show me a population that is deeply religious and I will show you a servile population, content with whips and chains, content to eat the bread of sorrow and drink the waters of affliction. And he concludes that "Here in America the spirit of the Negro has been transformed by three centuries of subjection, physical and mental, so they have even glorified the fact of subjection and subservience. I think this "forbearance" was used during the civil rights movement that advocated "non-violence" and "is found in the fact that their spirits had been completely crushed by the system of slavery". For example, a lot of those who participated in the Civil Rights movement glorify and praise how African-Americans allow dogs to bite them and water through fire hoses to knock them down.

Part 4: The African-American a Conservative: Christianity Still Enslaves the Mind Today

Finally, he see economics playing a role in the enslavement of the mind, especially in African-Americans leaders of thought as he concludes "until Black Leaders are free by their circumstances, is when they will have freedom of thought," because if you make your living by the masses then you need to proclaim what the masses believe, in other words, he who pays the piper calls the tune. This is why a lot of the so-called African-American leaders are ministers.

Harrison essay explains how enslaved Africans adopt their Slaveholders religion and continues to, but I think there's an evolutionary and underlying reason too, it was for group cohesion and survival, especially after the end of slavery when over 4 million slaves found themselves free. For example, Nicholas Wade's book the Faith Instinct How Religion Evolved and Why it Endures argues how religion is key to our survival. Wade hold that natural selection can operate on groups, and that religion is a key tool for group survival, for groups that are cohesive will out compete groups that are less and thus will leave more offspring. In other words, belief in the supernatural was selected by evolution because it enhances our group cohesion by regulating our fertility, trade, warfare, social and national unity. As a result, African-Americans adopted Christianity because it is a slave ethic religion that was the dominant religion in the West and so it was easy for a group of people who had been transformed by three hundred years of subjection, physical and mental, to adopt a religion that had the slave mentality and ethic build into it and so African-Americans used religion through the Black Church to create group cohesion and bind themselves together in order to survive and pass on their genes. I think the way to break the chains of Christianity and other religions are through 1). Equal opportunity in Education and work will open opportunities for economic empowerment, 2) Strong Social Safety nets (countries with strong Social Welfare programs are less religious) and these two will lead to 3) Freedom of circumstances, which leads to freedom of thought. Think About It...

John Doe Socrates

Chinese Whisper, Telephone and Biblical Inerrancy, Pantheism

Recently I was reading through something I wrote and I found some typos and errors (and there may be some in this blog and other blogs I have written). This made me think if I can make mistakes writing on an electronic keyboard, with spelling and grammar check, etc., couldn't errors be possible with the canonized books of the bible that was handwritten, which were copies of copies, and if someone in an earlier copy made a mistake, an addition or deletion, how can you know what the original oral saying really said? It appears that Jesus of Nazareth never wrote anything himself so what we have in the Gospels was passed on orally. For example,from Luke 1:1-4 “1. Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, 2. just as they were "handed down" to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. 3. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, 4. so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.”(NIV) So I thought about how things that are passed on orally like a game which I call telephone. According to Wikipedia (so take this with a grain of salt) "In the game variously known as Chinese whispers, Telephone, Grapevine, Broken Telephone, Whisper Down the Lane, Gossip, Le téléphone arabe (French for "Arab Phone"), Stille Post (German for "Silent Post"), Gioco del Telefono (Italian for "Telephone Game"), Telefone sem fio (Portuguese for "Cordless Phone") and Pass the Message, the first player whispers a phrase or sentence to the next player. Each player successively whispers what that player believes he or she heard to the next. The last player announces the statement to the entire group. Errors typically accumulate in the retelling, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly, and often amusingly, from the one uttered by the first. The game is often played by children as a party game or in the playground. It is often invoked as a metaphor for cumulative error, especially the inaccuracies as rumors or gossip spread, or, more generally, for the unreliability of human recollection. As many players as possible line up such that they can whisper to their immediate neighbors but not hear any players farther away. The player at the beginning of the line thinks of a phrase, and whispers it as quietly as possible to his or her neighbor. The neighbor then passes on the message to the next player to the best of his or her ability. The passing continues in this fashion until it reaches the player at the end of the line, who calls out the message he or she received. If the game has been 'successful', the final message will bear little or no resemblance to the original, because of the cumulative effect of mistakes along the line. Deliberately changing the phrase is often considered cheating, but if the starting phrase is poorly chosen, there may be disappointingly little natural change. One variation known as "operator" allows each listener one chance to ask his or her neighbor for a repetition, as if assistance from the line operator were available by calling that word."
Yet Christians and other Theist (Jews, Muslims, etc.) want us to believe that their sacred scriptures are inerrant, that is, without error. This is absurd! I understand the need for certainty as stated in Luke 1:4 "so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.", but I think it is more probable that certainty in an absolute sense is either unknowable or doesn't exist. As I wrote in the past, I think reasonableness is more likely than certainty, which is we can know some things but not all things; we have to allow room for uncertainty. If we knew everything what would be the purpose of living? This is why I think the Vedanta idea of Tat Vam Asi (That thou art) or you're IT as Alan Watts wrote in The Book: The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, is reasonable. In the Book Alan Watts uses the Vedanta philosophy to illustrate the Pantheistic idea that the universe and everything in it is God playing hide and seek, and God deliberately forgets that he or she is really running the show and that he or she is god or IT, for if you knew it, IT would get bored and disinterested quickly, for if god knew everything before it happened, what incentive would god have to continue to exist? And maybe that is what the big bang was, the Will or thing in itself forgetting who it was, for by destroying the singularity it was reborn into everything. I find this more reasonable than the Judeo-Christian worldview of a god who is “perfect” having a need to create for why would a perfect creator need to create anything, wouldn’t this mean the creator lacked or desired something, and therefore was not perfect? Think about it...

Review of Pandora Seed: The Unforseen Cost of Civilization

I am going to use an acronym CRITIC to review the new book by Spencer Wells entitled Pandora Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization. This is based on the article in Skeptical Inquirer by Wayne R. Bartz: Teaching Skepticism via the CRITIC Acronym and the Skeptical Inquirer from the September/October 2002 Skeptical Inquirer.
C-Claim; what is the claim made? The overall claim of the book is Humanity needs a new mythos of learning to live with less if we are going to continue as a species, our greed "for more" fuels fundamentalism, mental illness, obesity, climate change, and the current issue of modernity. Dr. Wells is not advocating going back to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle but through development of civilization from Agriculture, we have develop languages, science, cultures, etc. that can not only influence our genome through Eugenics but also, as the last 10,000 years have shown, has given humanity resources and more importantly the responsibility for the sustainability of our species and planet.
R- Role of Claimant; who is making the claim? Dr. Spencer Wells is a Geneticist and residing director of the National Geography Genographic Project.
I- Information Backing Claim, what is it?
1. Modern anatomical Homo sapiens (i.e. modern humans) evolved in Africa 195,000 years ago and left Africa 50,000 to 60,000 years ago to populate the rest of the world. Other Hominid species like Homo erectus, Homo Ergaster which evolved into Homo neanderthalensis left Africa as well much earlier. Homo sapiens are the only Hominid species left, with Neanderthals dying out approximately 25,000 years ago in Europe.
2. Starting approximately 10,000 years ago Humans invented agriculture (probably a woman, since women did most of the gathering in hunter-gatherer societies) and replaced a hunter-gatherer diet with a sedentary agricultural diet high in Carbohydrates which is a contributing factor in our present problem of obesity. Obesity plays a significant role in diabetes, heart disease and hypertension, and other non-communicable diseases.
3. It was through agriculture that communities formed once there was enough food to sustain the community. Over the past 10,000 years these agricultural communities evolved into villages, villages into towns, towns into cities, cities into strong -centralized states that developed non-agricultural specializations like art, languages, religion which required priesthood,craftmen,merchant class, that is, all the hallmarks of what is now called civilization.
Test - Can the claim be tested? Dr. Wells shows how our DNA has for 6 million years, when human split from other primates, lived as hunter-gatherers and how when comparing actual data early hunter-gatherers to early agriculturalist lived longer, where taller, etc and for the last 10,000 years we moved from to a more sedentary life-style that is not necessarily conducive to a DNA and body that evolved from a hunter-gatherer life style. Obesity, other cost of civilization is what we are experiencing and living with today. The reason agriculturalist gained an advantage over hunter-gatherers is because they were able to have more offspring, and evolution is about passing on genes and whoever does this more successfully will have more offspring in future generations.
I- Independent Testing: Have the claim been tested by others? Yes, Jared Diamond have made similar claims in his books, Gun, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies and Collapse: How societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.
C-Cause: What explanation, if any, is being proposed? The cause is agriculture. Agriculture taught humanity that we can control our resources to a certain extent. Through agriculture we developed food storage, which lead to surpluses, this lead to gains in status by bartering and selling the surplus. With the sedentary lifestyle people were less likely to give up their resources therefore there was more widespread warfare over limited resources. Agriculture in controlling our resources created civilization and the idea that we are the masters of our own fates, but we have over-extended ourselves by the greed "for more", moving ever increasingly to a world of haves and haves not and the cost of civilization (fundamentalism, global warming, war etc.).

John D. Socrates

Faith , Suicide Bombers, and Doubt

Most believers I know don't believe what they profess to believe, they are the first to go to the doctor, they take advantage of the medicine and technology of a modern secular society while they bash secularism and science. They do all this while claiming to believe in Divine protection and healing. It would seem that of all people on earth who should not be afraid of harm or death it would be some one who believes in an afterlife. You have to admit that suicide bombers seem to believe in what they profess. The suicide bomber wants certainty or to be in control and so they take a leap of blind faith into the most uncertain or uncontrolled event there is, death, and what happens after death. In their leap of faith in trying to prove they are certain they do the most intolerable act there is, they kill and maim others; all in the name of their god. It is ironic that suicide is as Schopenhauer wrote "Suicide may also be looked upon as an experiment, as a question which man puts to Nature and compels her to answer. It asks, what change a man's existence and knowledge of things experience through death? It is an awkward experiment to make; for it destroys the very consciousness that awaits the answer." I think a suicide bomber shows us what a leap of faith is(it is the desire for certainty in an uncertain world), it is a conclusion that the individual has made about the value of their life and its worth to them, and based on the results it is not much. Like I wrote in my certainty in uncertainty blog. Our greatest fear is death because 1. we cannot control it and 2. of what may or may not happen after death, these two things are uncertain variables in our existence. I like all people want certainty but I will settle for reasonableness. I think reasonableness is the balance between certainty and uncertainty, it is the give or take or tolerance that is innate in the universe itself, at least according to the Principle of Uncertainty, which essentially means we cannot know everything just some things, you can know either the momentum of something or its location but not both. As I stated earlier, I like other people want certainty or to be in control, but I am skeptical that I am. Did I determine the day I was born, my gender, sex, name, or ethnicity? I think I can be aware that I am not in control or that there is a place for doubt, especially in a time where everyone are so damn certain. Think about it...