Saturday, November 19, 2011

Godly Dualism

What is the relationship between the typical perception of a separate entity of some kind running our bodies and the perception there is some kind of entity separte from the universe running it? Maybe our false perception of a soul leads to the false perception there is a god.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Obedience To The Status Quo

This article associates obedience with Stanley Milgram's famous experiments 50 years ago. But I have another take to share...

If you look at Milgram's experiments in conjunction with some recent news events--the toddler in China getting run over with no one helping and the Penn State case where a witness did not stop a child rape--I think we have something different at play here. It's not so much obedience than wanting to maintain the status quo pushed by the inherit inertia that powers it.

In all of these cases, and many more that happen every day, people decide to keep doing what they have been doing, or planning to do, despite an obvious good reason to do something different. It is our default action (or non-action) to keep on keepin' on.

Our minds may jump around all over the place, but our actions don't. We will almost always do what's expected or planned. It's the same reason abused spouses stay in their relationships and why almost all slaves never revolt. The unknown that comes with changing course is, for some reason, avoided by most of us even when it's clear we should do otherwise.

We need to be harder on ourselves to make sure we're aware of this flaw and do more to conquer it.

Communication Method Disproves God

I've read/seen a few things over the years claiming that a historical Jesus never really existed. Overall, I think the evidence presented is reasonable to make the claim. But, I think there is something more subtle (for lack of a better word) to consider.

Anything written by someone about anyone else is going to be faulty. Even autobiographies/memoirs will contain falsehoods. Most of these are probably honest attempts at recording the truth, but we know that our memories are just awful as recorders of stuff. We simply suck at recalling accurately what we've experienced.

Add to that the tendency to want to purposely write a story that tells mostly good stuff, and in an entertaining or clever way, we add even more trouble to the mix.

Now, put ourselves in a Mediterranean town 2,000 years ago. Very few people read or write. Well-known people get reputations mainly through rumor and "information" that is many people removed from a questionable and unknown source. Similar stories get mixed together.

So, given all of that, I don't think we can say that any historical character truly existed, at least not in the forms we commonly get exposed to today. Many are purely myth, some have some character on which a framework of disinformation was hung. Others may have more evidence of their existence. But, IMO, no one before the middle ages (or thereabouts), excepting some prominent royalty and a few others, can be said to have truly existed.

We humans have too many flaws to have recorded accurately any ancient occurrences at a reliable enough level to be considered worthy of being classified as proof. There was probably someone named Jesus; there were probably lots of people named Jesus. There were also probably lots of people who claimed to do miracles and be a "savior." But, given the times in question, there is no way we can take any of it literally--even the simple, non-miraculous claims.

It doesn't matter how many people recorded stories. There is no way to confirm a single source, let alone verifying it independently. The nature of the situation is one that we can only take the stories as stories. Facts cannot be assumed from them.

To say a god preferred this method of communication is to disprove his existence.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Better Information Leaves God(s) Behind

The idea behind the Big Bang is based on the fact that what happens when time moves forward gets reversed when we look back. Given that simple logic, if we take the fact that we attain better, more accurate information as time moves forward, the information available to our ancestors gets worse the further we look back.

That means conclusions will be erroneous that were reached based on information that has since greatly improved, including the claim that a supernatural creature living outside the universe's rules exists and tinkers with our planet.

If we were all to suddenly get amnesia about our god history while retaining all other knowledge, we could never reach conclusions that included some sort of magical and invisible creature existed. We have much better information now.