belief

a friend of mine posted on FB

"Do People Really Care? I mean Really????...or do they just TALK THE TALK? Are People REALLY there if you have No Food? If you need your Electric Bill Paid? Need Diapers...or Formula? Or do People turn their heads and look the other way....Are You Really Selfless? or Selfish? Honest to God...I really do wonder..."

and it put a smile on my face because it's a question that often times plagues me while I'm worming around under someone's house installing air conditioning duct and chasing off spiders and dodging various kinds of poo. I have had a most unusual religious evolution and as a result, my understanding of the Bible is nothing short of Hersey of the worst kind. But it makes my world make sense to me.

I believe that all religions come and go, shrink and expand, fade and bloom because they have messages within them that speak to us. They help us make sense of this crazy world. They explain deep truths that help us survive and be better than the rest of the animals. They are very very dear to us, and most of us inherit ours from our parents.

Today we have a division between Americans, and indeed, some other parts of the world are involved deeply in very closely related issues. There are the religious conservatives who insist that the Earth is 6000 years old and it was created by the Hand of God as the special place for his only True People and it's (insert religious group here) going to heaven and everyone else is wrong. Then we have the Ancient Universers who embrace the Big Bang and scientific method.

We have everything in between and a whole bunch who don't give a dang.

So what's the truth of it? How much genuine personal thought have you put into it? Utilizing your own critical mind? Not relying on the testimony and instruction of others which has convinced you of your current belief? Using the information you have, and rendering your own opinion....

The archeological evidence is monumental. The fossil record is astonishingly measurable and predictable. DNA evidence is clearing up the amazing accuracy of Charle's Darwin's understanding of genetic heredity and species differentiation. Carbon Dating Deniers simply do not understand the math and theory involved. There is no doubt that it's not "accurate" every scientist realizes that today's measurements are subject to change if new information comes to light. But carbon dating is only off by a few percent. The believer though, cannot allow change. Or can they.

Galileo was forced to recant his teachings that the Sun was the center of the Solar System and that the official Church teaching of an Earth Centric Universe was the God's Honest Truth. He lived out his last years under house arrest and not allowed to teach. His books were banned until the late 1800's. He was lucky.

Giordano Bruno was a contemporary of Copernicus, he was one of the Great Minds of our planet and was burned at the stake and all of his writings were banned and possession of them was punishable by death.

the list of reasons for burning him were:

* Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic Faith and speaking against it and its ministers.
* Holding erroneous opinions about the Trinity, about Christ's divinity and Incarnation.
* Holding erroneous opinions about Christ.
* Holding erroneous opinions about Transubstantiation and Mass.
* Claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity.
* Believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes.
* Dealing in magics and divination.
* Denying the Virginity of Mary.


burned at the stake, alive, and books banned!

I won't take you into the detail of the Flat Earth and the Round Earth, I know we all remember that one, and how most people thought it was flat, and then things changed, and it wasn't Heresy anymore, and now we all know better.

Problem is, no one wants to live in that "embarrassing generation" that has to come to grips with the transition.

Who among us believes the earth is flat, or that the sun revolves around the earth? Seriously.

the earth simply cannot be 6000 years old. I'm not exactly certain, but from the proposed 14.3 billion year old theory, our sun has gone through a number of gathering up and getting hot phases, explosions and reformations, it's in it's 5th life cycles according to current understanding. It takes 4 life cycles for the heart of the star to make iron from the hydrogen present at the Beginning. Each rebirth creates heavier elements in the inner heart of the star. (or is it 5 rebirths, someone will set me straight.)

without Iron you wouldn't have red blood.

And before you get all defensive, look at how much they got right, without having a telescope or math with arabic numerals! "In the beginning the universe was void and without form" "And he said let there be light, the there was light." Most of the creation myth could be loosely construed as a mythilogical account of human kind's movement out of the lost paradise of the Rift Valley in Africa, which is most likely the origin of the Garden of Eden myth. It's the birthplace of our ancestors. It went away due to Climate Change. The various species were scattered to the corners of the earth just like the Tower of Babel myth explains to us.

But you see, my Book of Genesis only needs two verses. In the beginning there was the Void, and God said let there be light.

How much more Amazing is a God who simply had to make some stuff and let it happen. The scientific evidence is stacking up deeper every day that throughout this vast universe, everywhere the conditions are right, and the big rocks don't destroy, there is likely life. We live in a shake and bake universe, and to me, that's more amazing than 7 days and the Hand of God. The Universe seems to be governed from one end to the other by mathematics and predictable attractions. We're only now finding out that all visible matter only makes up about 15% of what's out there! 85% of the universe is invisible to us because it's made so differently than we are, we can't interact with it!!!

Maybe God is over there trying to talk to us? Until we look I guess I'm going to have to remain without an opinion.

Carl Sagan felt that Atheists were a little bit silly, in that their disbelief in God was just as much a Leap of Faith as Belief in God. Until every corner of the universe has been uncovered, and there is no white beaded old man glad that we finally found him, I'm not going to form any Belief on the matter. To do so is to convince yourself that the Improvable is True. I worry this could upset one's entire cognitive function. This enforcement of a contrary belief system between the obvious and measurable and the accepted and invisible.

nature is my religion and my tiny humble place in the Universe has brought me a spiritual understanding of Life I cannot really explain well.

This isn't Creation vs. Evolution, reds vs. blues, or myth v. history. And when it comes to belief systems, it is our nature to be aggressively defensive, for our belief systems have served our forebears well enough to get us this far, to change it would be foolhardy! But the Earth stopped being flat, and the Sun stopped revolving around the Earth.

The Earth will eventually stop being 6000 years old. It's just a matter of which generation is strong enough to shoulder the embarrassment of waiting so long to challenge what our ancestors have demanded we believe, or die

My "studies" have been informal, I'm no one of importance or education. My recipe for wisdom has been very unconventional. I've read some book and have some audio books about biology, anthropology, philosophy, Early Christianity, and the Origins of Satan, and some Buddhism and shallow reading on half a dozen other belief systems, a psychology text book and a half, blah blay... and a whole lot of internal, dramatic turmoil and hard knocks... slowly add the ingredients while alternately stirring and beating, but do not allow it to rest, for 44 years. And then you'll have my understanding of things! We all have a different recipe. The more recipes you know, the better cook you become.

Our "modern" understanding of God is really very insulting to my understanding of God. If there is a God in my Universe, all he had to do was clap his hands and walk away. Instead of getting angry when Genesis is accepted as myth, understand that a myth is not just fiction. Myth is something far more elegant and magical. Myth is telling a truth, with a fiction. Because some moral and philosophical concepts are hard to understand when presented as dry words to an unprepared mind.

So a myth is utilized to convey a truth. My favorite example is the part of the Bible where Jesus sends his disciples to cross the Sea of Galilee while he remains behind to pray. He will catch up later. The weather is bad, and the boat is making no progress. Jesus walks on the water and saves them.

If you see the Bible as a history. Then that's exactly just what happened. Jesus walked on the dang water, and it proves he's the Son of God, and you should worship him and thank him for dying on the cross...

But what do you learn from this teaching, viewing it as a history. To fear/love Jesus' Dad, toe the line or else and you'll get into heaven. And by the way, pay your tithe and never mind what your kids are telling you we are doing to them, Satan is making them lie to you...."

If you take it as myth, you get the following from it. If you can embrace these teachings that Jesus has brought you, love your neighbor as yourself, give up your worldly belongings and help the poor and needy. Forgive your brother 70x7... etc Then you too, will be able to cross the stormy seas of life as though you're walking on dry land. No longer with the giant waves of emotional agony, and demonic lusts rule you! You will be able to take it all in stride and with gladness in your heart, just as if you were guaranteed eternal life in paradise. Amen.

I'm getting a little sarcastic, lol. I lost the original version of this in a tragic cut and paste indecent. I don't want to talk about it.

We need to erase this division between us. Is whose version of How the Universe began really so important that we must kill one another, or just judge and be hateful to one another? Dont' we have greater issues at hand that everyone needs solved, believe and unbeliever alike? For example, giant rocks from space. There's a real threat to all of us that makes gay marriage and abortion insignificant. But look at the anger and wasted time and money we spend on these things compared to protecting ourselves from what's Out There. We all know big rocks fall on the earth, and may kill us all, but whose book is True is more important to us?


Like my friend said. "Do people really care?" and for the most part, until one evolves mentally to understand the suffering of his neighbor, and not allow them to suffer if they can help it, then the answer is no.

I listened to this one audio book about Gnosticism. Certain early Christians believed that "Christ" represented the "noble character within". And if you think about it, until there is a Second Coming of "noble character within" It is going to be Hell, here, on Earth. And no matter how hard we pray, it won't happen until each one of us steps up to the plate.

I think the real reason the Jesus story spoke to so many people during it's rise to the mainstream, was that Jesus was an ordinary Joe. He was a construction worker. He really really believed in his religion, he had the balls to speak out, he was probably the first one to sell his belongings and help the poor. I have come to suspect that his public ministry began when he finished spending all his own fortune helping the poor and healing the sick.

If Jesus came into a quarrelsome house, and he spoke with the people, and instructed them in proper family interaction, he healed them, in fact, given the limitations of the language and the predominance of religion in their world view, there was only one way to explain the process of helping someone get over their anger problem was "casting out a demon of anger" it was viewed as a healing to teach someone to calm their troubled mind and get on with their life! He was a folk hero, a philanthropist who really believed in his God, and they killed him. They killed him because they didn't want the status quo upset The framed him, and killed him slow and horrible in front of God and everybody, over greed and power. And his only crime was his beliefs.

That pisses me off, even as an Agnostic! It makes me want to change my life, help people, be more like Jesus. He is a good role model, even if you don't believe.

But now we must come back to the Book. Much of it is myth now, and no longer history. How do we come to grips with this shaking of our belief system? Can society survive it? Will it ruin religion, will God die?

All I can say is, people have been predicting Armageddon every other year since Christ died. Christ himself expected the end to happen within 50 or so years of his death. When the Earth stopped being round, did religion perish? When the Sun stopped revolving around the Earth, did Chaos strike and Anarchy rule? No. But when these were all the politcal rage, those were the fears and concerns.

Just like today.

My prediction is that all but a few will be comfortable with a 14.3 billion year old Universe before too much longer. We will be educated that this 6000 year old Earth is a recent phenomenon and America's current romance with it was born out of McCarthyism and the Red Scare. During the 1800s and the Enlightenment, you would have been embarrassed to believe in creationism if you were having a talk in a restaurant. But the tides of reason change and often they're powered by emotion and greed.

And as for God and the Bible. I predict it will always be a Best Seller, and that it He will continue to speak to people and help them attain wisdom and humanly grace for countless centuries to come.

Happy birthday to me!

44. If you had asked me when I was 16 if I would be alive when I was 44, I probably wouldn't even be able to imagine life beyond the nuclear holocaust we all just knew was about to happen at any moment between the USSR and the USA, or the AIDS epidemic was going to kill all but the chaste... Yet here I am. Alive and fairly well all things considered. But it's just another workday amongst decades just like it, nothing at all like it used to be. Hell, if it weren't for the automatic reminder on Facebook I think only two people would have remembered! But I'm not complaining, I'm something of a recluse and to expect more would be unfair to all the otherwise great people around me, that I just don't spend enough time with to get invited to their birthdays!

But as this day has progressed, I've thought about birthdays and remembrances in a different perspectives. My X, who has custody of my kids and gets a substantial check, and has nearly every Friday off from work, not only didn't remember it was my birthday, offer to let me have a Friday to go be a grown up on but she's out with her new boyfriend, and will retire to her new cabin on a lake next to one of Tennessee's most beautiful landmarks (that I pay for with child support)for yet another romantic Friday night with boyfriend #11 since she met me, on her unending search for Mr. Romantical Superman...

But who is really missing out on what's important in life? I mean really, I'm about to head off to have supper with my daughters, the two most important people I'll ever know.

And I've had an epiphany of sorts, that sort of changed my whole perspective on life. My girls play softball, and they were wanting to get on the all-star team, so I had to explain to them that only the girls who have "their head in the game" will make it to the all-star team. And it dawned on me that my biggest challenge in life is that I do not have my "head in the game". Regardless of how fair life has turned out up until the very next second of your life, if you properly apply your mental abilities and physical abilities and "get your head in the game" tomorrow will be better, or at the very least, you'll have your eyes on the road again, and sooner or later, things will get better. But only if you keep your head in the game.

It's the damn drama of life that keeps most people's head's out of their games. As if any one of us has a "new problem" that hasn't been survived by who knows how many tens of thousands or millions of human beings before us? But we're born with built in mechanisms that monitor all interactions for fairness, and we're prone to be selfish, self-serving critters, without purposeful effort to the contrary. So drama happens to us and we loose the will to keep our heads in the game.

But that's not the end of the story, it's just the end of a chapter. Each one of us finds ourselves given the chance every day to stop. Just say no to Drama! Once a person frees themselves of all the emotional surges of a Drama reduced lifestyle then even a difficult life becomes bearable. If this isn't true, then why have all the poor people of the 3rd world nations not committed suicide by now? They understand something we've become too important to pay attention to.

And it dawns on me, that it's not your birthday that's important, so much as your Awakening day. What day was it that you woke up from a dramatic life ruled by the stormy seas of runaway emotions? That's the day we should go out and celebrate every year!

Double Standards

This week the District of Columbia's City Council made medical marijuana legal. As I read the article, I was stuck by the sad irony of my congresswoman going to DC, to "serve" Tennesseans, with employees who are under the influence of marijuana, attending social functions with people who use medical marijuana, eating dinner with them, and possibly even being with them in the same room, while they blaze up their medicine... meanwhile, back home, their constituents are being arrested, imprisoned, beat, shot, killed, economically ruined and raped, and marked for a life of substandard employment, for smoking marijuana.

The deepness, and injustice of this irony is just beyond sad.

Modifications to my Family Tree

So, I'm sitting here reading the latest on Physorg.com (nerd news without much bias). They're decoding the Neanderthal genome from ancient bone samples, and it appears there may have been some succesful inter-species hanky-panky goin on... various populations in the near east and europe seem to have from 1 to 4% of their DNA in common with what were once thought to be a distant relative that could never be related to us...

But, if we think about it for a moment. Humans being what we are, and doing what we do. What would have happened if we ran into a culture that was less advanced than ours? History is pretty clear really. We'd "trade" with them and give them stuff that is worthless in our culture, but rare beyond wonder in theirs. We'd take their land and resources, enslave them, and as some livestock to this very moment could testify if they could talk, ancient humans would have used neanderthals as sex slaves. I mean, we all know what ppl do with their critters even today! Let's be serious for a moment. No matter how unattractive they may have been, the DNA materials would have encountered one another, and if they were capable of combining, they would.


Uglier, prettier, stronger, weaker? Smarter?
Perhaps the offspring were sterile?
Perhaps they rarely survived birth?
Perhaps they were revered and treated like nobility?
Killed on sight elsewhere?

Who knows, but the possibilities are endless and it makes one look at certain portions of Genesis from a different light, if you look at the book metaphorically instead of as seeing it as a historical document. Suddenly Lot's fear of being killed by whoever found him, when there were supposed to only be 4 people so far, and he killed one, leaving just his mom and dad.... and then he "met his wife and knew her"....

I don't know, but I do know this. I'm real curious to see what happens when they actually begin to understand mankind's actual DNA-printed family tree. I can't help but wonder if maybe the different races of mankind, are the differences left when colony of humans met a "lesser species", and absorbed it into their own genetic pool?

Why do we say mean things to people we love?

i think the reason we do these hurtful things is rather biological. I do not intend to step on anyone's religious toes, but have embrace evolution theory, and it just meant I had to roll back the clock as to when the universe began, not who created it.... that said, and roll with it, pretend the theory of an 4 billion year old earth could exist... (an attempt to dodge theological debate entirely)

We're primates All social primates are obsessed with their social position in the troupe. It is important to us for the rest of the troupe to respect us, etc.

as I understand it, we are programmed for love at a level so deep in the ancient core of our mammal brain that it is a mystical and thrilling experience. It's better than drugs when it's good.

But it is indeed like a drug. It will distract you from reality. It will make you blind to the truth. It can alienate you from your true friends. And it can lock on to the worst possible potential mate and for all the wrong reasons.

I say be very careful who you uncap the love potion with and take a drink, because it has a 6month plus withdrawal period, and some members of our species are like those birds that mate for life, once our love program locks on to one person, it never lets go (conversely, some people can brazenly change partners at the drop of their pants!)

Funny how people are

I do heat and air conditioning work for a living. It's not for everyone, I can tell you that. I probably wouldn't do it if I weren't brain damaged! I often find myself crawling under a mobile home on the lookout for brown recluses, black widows, snakes of various varieties, raccoons, armadillos, possums, cats dogs, all those types of poo and anything people consume or excrete as well.

Mike Rowe's got nothin on me.

Anyway, we install air conditioners in pre-existing houses and new construction as well, and service them. Our demographic ranges from millionaires to nearly indigent people that my honorable to a fault boss often takes a loss on his bill trying not to make them worse off than when we arrived for the bill. He runs such a tight ship that he hasn't made more than 25K in a year since I've known him, and he does $250,000 in business on most of those years. He's a good man. Our nation would be a better place if they had half his sense of honor.

It's funny how a millionaire will build a fence to hide his new air conditioner, and the pensioner's gather around theirs and brag on their neighbor's new units. It's odd how the people who "live like animals" will pay you in cash and you want to cut them a break, and how the millionaires complain for the same bill and pay by check, late.

It's funny to me how few people know how an air conditioner works! It's a magic box in the back yard that they either do not want the neighbors to know they have, or it can be a prized possession.

It's funny to me how people who are "educated" and earn ten times an hour what an air conditioner tech makes, and then piss and moan when you hand them a bill or fixing their air conditioner that is less than they earn in a day. (the parts really are very expensive, the "wholesalers" charge outrageous margins on made in china parts. If you live in a big city, and your fan capacitor burns out, the capacior costs less than 6 dollars. But it's made in china, for probably $.05 each, and then shipped around the world and sold or 10,000% markups, with three times the failure rate of a US made GE capacitor. If your computer circuit board goes out you'll pay $300 for something that could be made out of stuff from radio shack, by mexicans who earn a quarter an hour and probably costs $10 to manufacture and ship to the wholesaler. It's marked up $290, and then the technician has to add on the customary 30% plus the service charge and the labor..... and who does the work, I mean the real work. The people who's hands actually touch the product. The people earning the 10,000% markups have manicured hands and mansions, and the rest of us get thumpped a crumb.

Funny how people who don't get their hands dirty, spend 99% of their entire lives inside an air conditioned space earning $100 of dollars an hour, expect the guy outside sweating to repair their air conditioner to work for minimum wage... and hurry up because it's up to 80% inside.

Funny which of those two groups are the "celebrated" ones.

I take my hat off to the guy who picks up my garbage every Tuesday and Thursday!

"And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you."

I take my hat off to the garbage man. He has moved a mountain. From my front yard, one garbage can at a time.

But I have to pay the Doctor $1500 to put 5 stitches in my finger?

Love at First Sight Pt., 2

To say that this is because of "what one woman has done to me" seems to me that the whole point of the post was missed... as I thought about it, it turned from a short reply to another post.... surprise!

I simply cannot see how my post would leave you to believe that I think they will always end badly I think you're reading more to it than I intended.

I've not arrived at this understanding of love merely over one failed relationship. I've observed literally hundreds and only know of a few that have worked. I've read multiple books, listened to audio books out the wazoo... and since my work seldom demands all of my attention, I've literally puzzled on this very thing for 1000's of hours!

I believe romantic love is a wonderful thing, in moderation and without obsession. My understanding of its "mechanics" does not lessen my appreciation of a successful partnership! It certainly doesn't make me disbelieve in Love. I may as well claim to not believe in the internet. Love really is nearly mechanical, regardless of what sort of "magic box" or fairy tale definition one chooses to explain it. It has measurable elements and predictable results from given inputs. I just see as amazing what others insist to be wonderful. Two different words with different meanings that are very nearly the same.

A roller coaster is no less thrilling to ride for the engineer that designed or the workmen that built it than any given passenger.

My understanding of how my car's mechanical components and they interact doesn't cheapen or render my appreciation of my driving experience "less meaningful". On the contrary, my understanding of these things gives me confidence in it's performance ability, and what dangers to avoid due to it's limitations! It also makes me more attentive and understanding to the symptoms of improper function. Imagine how useful this would be in correlation to your own mind and behaviors!

So many people who are "religious" or "spiritual" wonder about the meaning of life, or "why am I here" and my biological, robotic understanding of human life makes this question extremely simple to answer.

Since I have no confusions about mysterious after-lifes, or reincarnations, I have only the present and a finite future to worry about. Why am I here? Simple. I am a father. I have two children. Right now the reason I am here it to take care of them and lay the mental foundations and educations to make them content, mentally balanced adults and productive members of the planet. All other things are of secondary importance, unless they may jeopardize that goal, of course. When I get done, or by chance along the way, should love cross my path again, as a result of this failed relationship and my intense study of it, I will be more likely to identify a mismatch before heartbreak ensues. I will certainly be more appreciative of the right person than I would If I had no appreciation for the incredible odds that have been overcome! etc.

I mean, since I am really just another animal. If I were, say a bird and I found myself in a bad relationship with eggs in my nest, what would I do?

I put it to you that a definition of one's self that is predictable and mechanical in nature is not less magical than one involving a divine creation, or some frilly wispy spirit with loftier destinations. Sentient beings auto assembled from scratch, from the very dust of the earth.... that's beyond magical. It's astronomically dumbfounding! To me it is, just contemplating the odds is a religious experience for me.

I do not disbelieve in the existence of Love. I understand it and its pitfalls and powers. When it comes my way, I'm going to most certainly buckle my seat belt and keep my hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times... but it sure is gonna be fun!