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...

The next leap forward vs fear of spiritual authority

I think we live in fear of going against authority because authority had evolutionary advantages. In other words, we have an innate, natural abhorrence of going against authority because for most of our species history (approximately 3.5 million years ago until recent times i.e. founding of democratic secular societies, we lived in patriarchal or matriarchal hunter-gatherers societies in which there were an Alpha male or female, as well as their individual parents, who led our prehistorical ancestors. For example, if we look at our ancestors prior, to the introduction of agricultural which occurred approximately 9 to 10 thousand years ago, they were all hunter-gathers, and they may had supplemented their meat diet with wild fruits, berries, and proto-agricultural vegetables. Then someone had the idea instead of us going hunting why don’t we domesticate the food we have been hunting (the idea of domestication may have come from our experience of domesticating wolves into hunting companions, then they eventually became the common dog, and the livestock need food so the idea of planting grass and wheat to feed the livestock came into existence which then led to domesticating the wild fruit, berries and vegetables. This new adaptation led to a stationary lifestyle from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. During our hunter-gathering days, we lived in close family units like the African San-bushmen, African Pygmies, and South American native tribes do today, they live in small family units, and so authority was important to survival. We are one of a few species in which our young are helpless until they reach at least adolescences, and some adolescences and even adult are still helpless (how many 30 to 40 years old are still living with their parents when they don't have to). In other words, Homo Sapiens-Sapiens don’t get up and immediately walk like the gazelle or zebra on the African Savannah, that is we are dependent on our parents for a long time and so we take authority figures seriously in our lives, and we assume they are telling us the truth until proven otherwise. As Daniel Dennett or maybe Richard Dawkins may have brought out that when the village elders, shaman, priest told us to kill a goat or if our parents told us not to go to the edge of the water or a crocodile may get us, and if some Johnny-come-lately disobeyed their parent and became crocodile food we had an immediate reinforcement to what was said and so when ever the parents who gave up their authority to the village shaman who was most likely an elderly family member we got use to our elders and shamans telling us things based on authority. Therefore, I think we have a difficult time going against the authority of our families and if your family are Christians or whatever religious faith your family has adopted, there is this evolutionary fear of going against the authority of our parents and religious authorities. We seek out authority, even in science, we name drop (just like I did in mentioning Dawkins and Dennett), for instance we say Einstein said such and such, or this famous scientist said such and such, it is a natural innate drive or desire to seek out authorities, this is why science is often peer-reviewed, we seek out authority, that our hypothesis is right or wrong. Therefore authority acceptance and seeking is a natural thing. Yet when we decide to think outside our narrowed tribal, religious views, our families think we are moving into dangerous territory, like the child who goes to the waterside after they been told not to, they fear for our "eternal souls", we have broken the taboo. However, I begin to think about courage to go against authority, may sometimes be necessary for the survival of our species. Someone in proto-homo Sapient society had the courage to step down from the tree and walk on two feet, someone had the courage to stand up to the leopard, lion, and sabre tooth tiger, and other predators, someone had the courage to migrate out of the African Savannah to populate the world. I know there were deaths in some of these steps of courage. To give you an analogy, during the civil rights movement, Rosa Park refuse to give up her seat, she lived a long time, however Dr King was assassinated, Medgar Evers was murdered, some freedom riders in Mississippi were murdered and many others died fighting for civil rights, as a result today over 40 million people of color have more rights than they had because someone took a courageous stand. Freedom and progress takes courage, and if our species is going to survive it is going to take courage to move pass religion, race, and other differences. It will require us to take another great leap forward and we are going to have to fight our evolutionary fears of going against the things that divide us and may have had a survivability or evolutionary purpose, but they no longer do and these things need to start in this generation if we are going to do something about climate change, exploration of space, and move on to the next evolutionary step in our species.

Black Socrates

How do I know it's true?

I don’t believe that what Christianity professes is true, not just Christianity but any religion that make an unproven claim. What do I mean by true? True is something that is a provable or proven fact. Christianity is a faith or is based on faith, it is something that you have to accept on the word of another, but I have a difficult time just blindly accepting someone’s opinion that don’t have any provable evidence to back up it’s claim. How can we prove the tenets of Christianity’s claim? How can I prove that Jesus is sitting at the right hand of his father? As I type this it is almost laughable that people actually believe this, that is, that a god impregnated a virgin in a village in what was a Roman providence in the so-called middle east area that is now called Israel, this semi-divine being walked on earth, did miracles, knew he was going to be killed and he was going to rise three days later, and if you believe this you will be saved from the punishment this semi-divine being‘s father has created for people who don‘t accept this, believe something else, or even perhaps never heard. The reason this semi-divine being did this is because two naked people in a garden ate some fruit that his father had put in a garden and told them not to eat and they ate the fruit after they were convinced by a talking serpent. It is like me as an adult actually believing in Santa Claus and his eight tiny reindeer, without me being mentally ill or handicapped. However, a believer don’t think this is delusional but it actually happened because of a book put together by the Roman Catholic Church, the remnant or what is left of what was the Roman Empire. I can understand how someone can believe in an uncaused cause, an unknown intelligence that is innate in the universe or that is the universe, that caused the big bang or was the big bang, that goes from simplicity to complexity over an infinite amount of time, however, science hypothesizes that this universe will stop evolving and will one day die. This leads me to ask questions about science. How do I know science is true? How do we know the age of the universe? How do we know the age of the earth? How does science come to its conclusions? Why is this significant? Why do science believes that it is right? What happens if science is wrong? These are things which we should think about...

Faith is not Truth

I think to understand something you need to define it. I think Faith is not truth. Faith means to persuade, it is defined as belief; the assent of the mind to the truth of what is declared by another, resting solely and implicitly on his authority and veracity; reliance on testimony. Truth comes from the word true which means firmness, moreover, according to Word History: "The words true and tree are joined at the root, etymologically speaking. In Old English, the words looked and sounded much more alike than they do now: "tree" was treow and "true" was treowe. The first of these comes from the Germanic noun *trewam; the second, from the adjective *treuwaz. Both these Germanic words ultimately go back to an Indo-European root *deru- or *dreu-, appearing in derivatives referring to wood and, by extension, firmness. Truth may be thought of as something firm; so too can certain bonds between people, like trust, another derivative of the same root." The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved March 10, 2009, from Dictionary dot com website. True is define as conformable to fact; in accordance with the actual state of things; correct; not false, erroneous, inaccurate, or the like; as, a true relation or narration; a true history; a declaration is true when it states the facts. Faith is a declaration that has not yet been proven. When something has been proven it is no longer faith, it becomes a fact or something true. This is why Mark Twain once stated or wrote " Faith is believing what you know ain't so", because it has not been proven true, it could be a prerequisite to truth but it could also be a prerequisite to something false. However, faith is useless if it cannot be testable, that is, I have a hypothesis, I believe or have faith that it is true, when I think of a test for my hypothesis then it moves from faith to something that is true or false. Once proven true others should be able to follow my methods and receive the same results. Faith is not truth and it is useless until it can be proven. I know some would say, that you cannot prove your going to be paid on payday, this is a true statement, they would say I have faith, I would however disagree, because I have a way of proving that I will be paid, if I have access to the accounts balances from which payment is made, I can reach a conclusion. Also, I have pass experiences of being paid and this is another form of evidence. Now compare this to faith on the religious view point, I have been told by others that Jesus is coming, they say if you believe on the Lord Jesus you will be saved, can these statements be proven? What evidence both past and present do they present? Therefore, until they provide a way to test or prove their claim, their claims are useless. Think about it...

Black Socrates

Faith the ultimate Placebo

The human brain is a great mystery and phenomenon, right now if everything is working as it should, my brain is regulating my heart beat, my sugar levels in my pancreas, my digestive system, the amount of oxygen in my blood, and I am not even conscious of what else my brain is controlling, even the processes I briefly mention is not consciously controlled by me, these are all unconscious processes. I have read an interesting article in the skeptic dictionary called the placebo effect. The placebo effect is the measurable, observable, or felt improvement in health not attributable to treatment. (1) From the article there have been various theories as to why the placebo is sometimes just as effective as actual treatment. They all come down to what we perceive or think, if a person feel that the treatment is making them feel better, the brain will make it happen. This is what faith is, faith is the major placebo effect, because what a person believe not only affect their mental state it also affects their action. Religious faith is a big placebo pill. Go to your typical church especially evangelical churches, the music sets the atmosphere, it's soothing, people are literal hypnotized by the atmosphere, and so a person believe that they are going to get healed or feel better compared to the way they felt before they arrived, and so endorphins kick in and they feel better. Look at televangelists who are faith healers, they have soothing organ music playing in the background, the televangelist give people attention i.e. one on one attention, they offer suggestions of healing or health, they perceive that this is a place for getting better and they see others allegedly being healed, just like a person who visits a physician. In fact, there was a report on WUNC on health issues in eastern North Carolina in which diabetes patients who get more one on one time with a health professional will do better than those who don't, in fact in the report that aired this morning the hospitals and health clinic who are partnering together that is offering health counseling to their diabetes patients has shown a decrease in diabetes related hospitalizations compare other area health facilities that do not offer the extended health counseling. Faith is the heart of all Placebo effects this brought up another thought about a recent had a discussion with devout Christian about skepticism and about using common sense. We were discussing a church we both use to attend and how they were hung up on raising money and the pressure tactics they used on the laypeople like having lines when raising "special offering" and lines for tithes and offering, in which if you didn't pay any money, you were left sitting all by yourself, thus making the non-giver feel isolated. This person thinking was skeptical about the church leadership's motivation and I ask them why don't they use the same skepticism or critical thinking with the bible and I gave an example of how, I was listening to a speech in which I had a transcript and how even the transcription did not have word for word what the speaker said, and I asked how it is that scripture which was passed down orally is going to be perfectly transcribed? I brought up that I am like Thomas, I not going to believe unless I have some solid evidence and this person brought up the old "it's a faith thing". What is faith? Is it as Mark Twain said that “faith is believing in something you know aint true”? The bible says that faith is the substance of things hoped for; the evidence of things not seen, but the contradiction is there is no evidence for something not seen; how can something that is not seen have evidence? Because if there is evidence for something, then their must be a way of experiencing it, because if there is no evidence there is no way I prove that the thing not seen exist. In fact evidence comes from the Latin evidentia which means “that which is obvious”. What is meant by obvious? Obvious comes from the Latin obvius “That which is in the way, presenting itself readily, commonplace, plain to see”. It seems that maybe faith is more about psychology and not reality, although psychology is a field of science about the mind and it 's function and what I mean that faith is about psychology is there is such a thing as placebos, in which people in a test show signs of wellness even though it nothing being administered and so the thinking that something is being made better releases endorphins in the brain and gives the illusion of wellness and I see faith as a placebo, which I don't have nothing against, but we should see that it is nothing more than psychology. I don’t have faith the earth will revolve around the sun there is evidence that is doing it as I write this. I know there are things that my senses cannot sense, like an atom but with the right equipment and knowledge of how to use that equipment I can see an atom even though it is invisible to the naked eye. This is how science works. Think about it...

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....

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...