Could Barack Obama join a select group of U.S. Presidents?

Now that the presidential primaries are over it is now official that the Republicans and Democrats are running Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton respectively as their candidates.

Trump has never served in public office in any capacity and if he wins will be the first since Eisenhower to win the presidency with no prior public service experience.  The only other presidents with this distinction are George Washington, Zachery Taylor, and Ulysses S Grant though all these men served in the United States military and each commanded the army during war.

If Hillary wins she will obviously be the first women president in United States history which is certainly a landmark, but as I watched Obama's speech it dawned on me that if Clinton wins it will also put our current president in a rare category.  Only nine presidents have been elected to two terms and had their party win the next election.  They are:

President	Party	Historical Ranking
Thomas Jefferson	Democrat-Republicans	4
James Madison	Democrat-Republicans	14
James Monroe	Democrat-Republicans	16
Andrew Jackson	Democratic	7
Abraham Lincoln *	Republican	1
Ulysses S Grant	Republican	36
William McKinley *	Republican	19
Franklin Roosevelt	Democratic	2
Ronald Reagan	Republican	15

                 * - Elected Twice ; Died in office

Will Obama join this group?  Only if Hillary wins.

As you can see this list contains many of the best presidents in US history.  To serve two terms and still be liked enough at the end of your presidency that your party can still win the next election is a rare thing in American politics.  The following fact about this list of men is even more interesting to me when thinking about the future.

President	Currency
Thomas Jefferson	$2 bill ; Nickle
James Madison	$5000 bill (discontinued)
James Monroe	$100 Silver Certificate (discontinued)
Andrew Jackson	$20 bill
Abraham Lincoln *	$5 bill ; Penny
Ulysses S Grant	$50 bill
William McKinley *	$500 bill
Franklin Roosevelt	Dime
Ronald Reagan

Notice the guy at the end whose been left off?  Republicans have been trying to get Reagan's face on US currency since he left office but the Democrats have prevented it thus far.  That hasn't stopped Republicans from immortalizing Reagan's name where ever they can all over the country.

Contrast that with Obama.  Despite what Republican say, Obama has been a good president.  He inherited a divisive war, a crumbling economy, and a polarized voter base yet right now he's finishing strong enough to be a positive force to help get Hillary and other Democrats elected.  That is what it means to leave a legacy.  Compare that to George Bush who was considered toxic to Republican candidates by the end of his presidency.

Obama has been a much better president than most Republicans are willing to admit just like Reagan was a better president than most Democrats are willing to admit.  My guess is it won't be long until we start seeing Obama's name on schools, airports, and parks all over the country just like Reagan.

Perhaps we might even see some comprise in Congress and in time we will see Reagan on the $50 dollar bill and Obama on the $100.  Crazier things have happened.

Tweet

Lucifer - How a mistranslation gave the devil another name

Earlier this week I found a comment by Ben Carson very interesting.  Actually it wasn't something that Dr. Carson said but instead in the reaction to a disparaging comment he made about Hillary Clinton.

In 1969, Hillary wrote her undergraduate thesis about Saul Alinsky, a man who in his book Rules for Radicals called Lucifer:

“… the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively he won his own kingdom.”  

Ben Carson saw that as Saul Alinsky praising Lucifer and sees Hillary’s relationship with Saul Alinsky as another reason why America should reject her.  I mostly ignored the comment at the time as politics is filled with half truths but someone made a comment online that did arouse my interest.

The name Lucifer isn’t in the Hebrew Bible.  It’s a mistranslation from when Jerome created the Latin Bible.

As a history junkie, this statement was much more interesting to me than a political jab no one will remember in a week.  Was this person’s claim true?  What is the origin of the name Lucifer?  I spent the next couple of hours investigating it.

The story of how the Bible came to its current form is much too complex for a blog post but for the last 400 years the English speaking world has mostly used the King James Bible.  The King James has had a huge impact on the way we speak today.  Many common sayings such as 'bite the dust', 'fly in the ointment', and 'wit’s end' along with thousands of other common phrases all originate from the King James.  It isn't much of a stretch to state that the King James Bible has had more impact on the English language than any other book.  Yet in this version of the Bible the name of Lucifer is mentioned exactly once.  It occurs in Isaiah 14:12.

 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!

Of course the Bible wasn’t originally written in English.  The main source for the King James Bible was the Latin Vulgate written by Jerome around 400 AD which states.

Quomodo cecidisti de caelo lucifer qui mane oriebaris? corruisti in terram, qui vulnerabas gentes?

This translates loosely to:

“How art thou fallen from heaven , O Lucifer, son of the morning like the sun? art thou cut down to the ground , you who laid the nations low!”

The confusion occurred when Jerome translated the Hebrew Bible into Latin.  Here's the translation of the Hebrew Bible directly into English.

How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!

Notice the change?  The meaning is essentially the same in all version but the original Hebrew referred to a morning star.  What is the Latin word for ‘morning star’?  You’ve probably guessed that it is lucifer.  In defense of Jerome, his wording had nothing to do with Satan as Lucifer was also the proper name for Venus, as known as the morning star.

Hanging Gardens of Babylon
by Maarten van Heemskerck

Isaiah 14:12 was written as a metaphor.  In this case the 'morning star' is (most likely) referring to Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylonian who conquered most of today’s Middle East in the late 7th-early 6th century BCE.  After repeated uprisings in today’s Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar took important Jewish families into Babylonian captivity starting in 597 BCE.  It was in this captivity where the Jewish scholars put the final touches on the books that made the Torah while adding further books.  Most of Isaiah 14 speaks about the godlessness of Babylon and how its actions will lead to ruin. 

Cyrus the Great liberating the Jews
 from Babylonian captivity to resettle
 and rebuild Jerusalem.
Painting by Jean Fouquet

It mentions nothing of Satan and while some Christians have argued Satan was working through Nebuchadnezzar, the Bible does not state this explicitly.  All Isaiah states is saying Nebuchadnezzar had risen high and would eventually be struck low.  Later in Daniel 4:28-33, Nebuchadnezzar is shown to have lost his sanity though most history scholars feel this passage is really speaking about a later Babylonian king, Nabonidus, who is known to have had a nasty skin disease.  It fits the narrative as Nabonidus is also known to history as the last of the Babylonian kings.  In 539 BCE he lost his throne to Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid Empire, who eventually allowed the captive Judeans to return home to Jerusalem.

How did one mistranslated line about the ‘morning star’ in Isaiah 14:12 get into today’s vocabulary equating the devil with the name Lucifer?

Paradise Lost Illustration
 by Gustave Doré

It took time.  As people stopped using Latin, the meaning behind the words made less sense to future generations.  They began to understand the word Lucifer as a proper name of an individual.  When Dante completed the Divine Comedy in 1320, he referred to Lucifer as sitting in the 9th ring of Hell.  In 1654, Vondel made Lucifer the titular character in his play on the subject of Satan.  In 1667, Milton's Paradise Lost speaks more specifically when he describes the angel Lucifer's fall from Heaven to become Satan in Hell.  As time passed, these popular works meshed into Christian lore and the names of Satan and Lucifer became interchangeable.

So today I learned something from Ben Carson ... indirectly.

Tweet

God and the certainty of faith

It's almost Christmas and many people take this time of the year to reflect on the past year and look to the future.  For many people in the United States, this process also includes an appraisal of how their past actions reflect in the eyes of God and more specifically a Christian God.

Pew recently released a poll which showed that certainty of God is slipping.

In 2007, 71% of Americans were certain God existed but in 2014 that number dropped to 63%.  

The numbers by religious affiliation are summarized in the chart to the right.  Polls like this intrigue me because the word certain means that it is provable by direct evidence yet there is no direct evidence that God exists.  There is indirect evidence like the cosmic dance between the Sun, Moon, and Earth which gives human beings a great place to live but that is residual evidence.

Science would consider the idea of God a theory but you could never publish a peer reviewed paper of God as a fact due to the lack of direct evidence.  Yet a large majority of people are certain God exists.

Why is that?  None of us know with certainty how the universe originated.  Scientists understanding starts with the Big Bang but they can't explain what happened before that.  Some religious will claim that God initiated the Big Bang but even if that were true, that leads to the question of who created God.

The number of people certain that there is no God jumped from 5% to 9%.

This number intrigues me almost as much as those that are certain he exists.  No one is certain God exists.  No one is certain that God doesn't exist.  People have faith that God exists.  Doubters assume there must be another answer for the universe's existence but they don't know for sure.

Seeing this poll reminded me of something that happened to me when I was twelve.  At the time, my family lived in an apartment complex and door to door proselytizer from a megachurch convinced me and my brother and sister to attend their church.  Looking back it still feels a little surreal.  A couple of days later, a bus driven by someone none of us knew drove into our neighborhood and dozens of kids were carted off miles from their homes without a single adult they knew (only churches could ever do something like this).

When we arrived we were all in awe.  The church was an immense mix of glass and concrete paid by thousands of people that watched the television services held there each week.  My sense of awe turned to fear when I got split off from everyone else.  I was the oldest and was told I couldn't attend the children's service.  I had to attend the young adults session.  Having no choice, I went into the room with hundreds of other kids my age.  The first thing they did after we sat down was to ask us to bow our heads, close our eyes. then the leader called out,

"Raise your hands if Jesus Christ is your personal savior."

That was a tough question.  I'd gone to a Christian Church most of my young life, attended Sunday School and went to Bible camp.  Yet the question still bugged me.  Some things in the Bible didn't make sense to me and somehow I knew I couldn't raise my hand.  After all, the church had taught me my whole life that God would know if I was lying and I certainly didn't want to go to hell.

Less than a minute later an adult approached me and asked me to come with him.  Like the obedient kids I was, I followed a complete stranger into a back room (again ... only churches could get away with this).  I certainly noticed I was the only one in the room asked to do this and can still remember my growing embarrassment as a hundred pair of eyes watched me trek through the room to a little booth with a door.  I can still remember my hands starting to sweat as the man sat at the table across from me.  He said,

"I noticed you didn't raise your hand.  Why don't you feel Jesus your personal savior?"

I hemmed and hawed for a bit as I shrugged my shoulders but the man was insistent.  I wasn't sure what to say so I asked the first thing that came to mind.  I asked,

"Where did Cain and Able's wives come from?"

I'm sure the question took the man off guard.  Looking back I'm guessing he was just a volunteer of some sort and might not have even thought about that part of the Bible.  On the other hand I'd tried to read the Bible many times.  My love of reading was something of a family joke as I had a habit of reading encyclopedias when I didn't have something else.  Yet I struggled with the Bible.

Here was the word of God and little things like the above quote didn't make sense but it was more than that.  This man wanted me to say Jesus Christ was my personal savior when I never met him.  If he'd asked me to say my grandpa was my personal savior I would have agreed in a second.  How could I do this for a man I only knew from words in a book I barely understood?  Jesus wasn't any more real to me than George Washington, Thomas Edison, or General Patton.  I asked him how could I find a way past my issues.  After all, God would know if I had doubts.

The man read verse after verse to me about Jesus and how much he loved me but none of it answered my core question.  The only answer is faith but for some reason he answered every question with a Bible verse that made the matter worse.  I felt myself growing frustrating and angry that this adult was try to trick me somehow.  Why wasn't he answering my questions?  Near the end I remember asking the man something that had bugged me for a long time,

"What is the Holy Spirit?"

I understood God as he had worked with Moses.  Jesus did things like turn water into wine.  What was the Holy Ghost's role?  The man didn't even try to answer the question and instead read me a couple of quotes by Jesus then told me Jesus was my personal savior and that I would always remember the date of (I've long since forgotten) as the day I was saved.  I wanted to ask more questions but I could tell the man was annoyed and as we walked out I saw the young adult service was over.  The last thing the man told me was to raise my hand the next week when they asked if Jesus was my personal savior.  I never went back.

In hindsight I've always found this story funny.  I'm sure this guy was a volunteer for that church and when he saw me he thought it would take five minutes to read a quote and get me back into the lecture hall.  Instead he got an hour long grilling by a pint-sized skeptic.

At the core, my question to the man was the role of certainty when it comes to understanding God.

In time I came to understand that you can't be certain when it comes to matters of faith.  All you can do is follow your instincts.  There are no certainties because there is no proof other than a book passed down from our ancestors.  Everyone has doubts but that fact is hard to explain to a twelve year old.

Yet looking at the poll where 63% of American are sure that God exists tells me that other men were far more successful with the people they took into that cubicle.  A majority of American have been taught to force back any doubt and lie.

On the other hand, since the dawn of the internet the number of skeptics has continued to increase.  Frankly I really think it would serve the church much better to embrace doubt and help their members work through it.  If they don't I expect the drop in poll numbers to continue.

Tweet

The Telephone Game

As a kid, I used to play a game called the 'telephone game'.  The rules were simple.  You'd sit a bunch of kids in a row and whisper something into the first kid's ear.  They'd whisper it in the next kid's ear and so on until you got to the last kid in the line.  He'd announce the message to the group and then the first kid reveal the original message which never matched.

The results always made us laugh though occasionally arguments would break out when kids claimed they were told something else.  This simple game mimics miscommunications that happen often between people.  This is especially true when no one investigates whether something they are told is true.

The other day my mom said she'd heard something that really upset her:

I'm worried for this country.  Just the other day a school decided to let Muslims pray in public but they won't even let Christians carry Bibles.

My first response was to laugh which I'm sure upset her.  After apologizing, I explained that there is no way anyone in the United States could ever stop a person from carrying a Bible as the 1st amendment gives people freedom of religion. She paused and said ...

Maybe not that but they won't let Christians pray in public but are using the school bells to call Muslims to pray five times every day.  They are allowing them to pray on their rugs on campus and won't let Christians do the same thing.

I hadn't heard this story and I asked if she remembered the school.  My first instinct has always been to take a skeptical view of things and I wanted to get a better understanding.

I think it was at Duke.

The words Duke and North Carolina are about the last places on earth I ever thought I'd hear claim say had become a  bastion of Islam.  My skepticism became acute and I googled 'Duke Chapel'.

I found that Brown's Schoolhouse was founded by Methodists and Quakers in 1838 but changed its name when the son of tobacco baron Washington Duke set up the Duke Endowment in 1924. This initiated a massive building campaign that quickly increased the school's facilities and enrollment.  The culmination of the building campaign was Duke Chapel, a huge church based on Canterbury Cathedral in England.  The structure holds 1,800 people and since it was completed in 1932 it has been the centerpiece of Duke University.

The church's original inspiration is shown through its statues of Methodists leaders like Francis Asbury, Thomas Coke, George Whitefield and John Wesley, Protestant leaders like Girolamo Savonarola, Martin Luther, and John Wycliffe, and American leaders like Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, and Sidney Lanier also adorn the structure.

In the 80 years since Duke Chapel was built it has moved away from the Methodist church to a more inclusive nature.  The mission statement of the chapel now reads:

Duke Chapel continues to be a Christian church of uniquely interdenominational character and purpose. Through its tradition of inspiring worship and music, and a calling to walk with people of all faiths and circumstances, Duke Chapel stands as a beacon of hope on campus and in the community that bridges faith and learning.

Duke itself has moved from a Methodist based education to a secular based education. but Duke Chapel still plays a huge part in the lives of its students.  The building holds Christian services on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, its church bells ringing from its massive tower allowing those within earshot to know that church service is about to begin.

In the spirit of inclusiveness, the church has given Muslims a spot in the basement for their daily prayer service.  Muslim's are required to pray five times a day, the start time based on the position of the sun.  A simple description of the timing is sunrise, midday, afternoon, sunset, and dusk.  These times change with the seasons which can make it tough to know when services start which is why mosques call out its members so they know when it is time for prayer.  Muslim Duke students requested that the church ring its bell to mark the start of each prayer session on Friday, a day the bells usually remain quiet.  

In January 2015 Duke Chapel agreed to their Muslim student's request and their timing couldn't have been worse.

The United States has been on a tentative war footing with multiple Islamic countries since Muslim terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.  Things cooled after the United States left Iraq but heated again when ISIS invaded northern Iraq last summer.  Their stated intention was to conquer all of Iraq to set up another caliphate.  Making tensions even worse was their success in getting Muslims throughout the world to heed their call to join them in making their dream a reality.

ISIS has also has told Muslims that can't get to Syria that they should attack their own country which some have done, the most horrific being the attack of January 7, 2015 on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, France.  

A week later, Franklin Graham, the son of the legendary preacher Jimmy Graham, responded to Duke's decision to allow Muslim's to use their bell tower.  He posted the following statement to Facebook on January 14, 2015:

Duke University announced today that they will have a Muslim call to prayer from their chapel bell tower every Friday. As Christianity is being excluded from the public square and followers of Islam are raping, butchering, and beheading Christians, Jews, and anyone who doesn't submit to their Sharia Islamic law, Duke is promoting this in the name of religious pluralism. I call on the donors and alumni to withhold their support from Duke until this policy is reversed.

Social media exploded as this message made its way through the internet and eventually found its way to my mom.  It's easy to understand why she was confused.  The second line says 'Christianity is being excluded from the public square' and while I'm sure Graham was speaking to things like nativity scenes at town hall, Christians throughout the country passed this message to one another on Facebook as the message changed.

It is easy to overreact to things on Facebook and Twitter.  A constant barrage of messages combines with limited space to make misunderstanding easy.  As each person sees something posted to their Facebook they each add their own opinion and the story changes.  It's a telephone game on a massive scale.

Having said that, I'm sure few Christians wants Muslims to pray inside a church and that would be especially true a week after a horrific terrorist attack 

That doesn't mean they are right.

• Yes - Religious items aren't allowed to be displayed on public property due to the 1st amendment but Christians have the exact same rights as Muslims at Duke, a private university.

• Yes - ISIS executes people that aren't Muslim with a goal of world domination and so far appears to be as intolerant as any organization in recorded history.  On the other hand, no Duke students are members of ISIS so far as I'm aware.

• Yes - Duke wanted to allow its Muslim students to use its bell tower to make a call to prayer every Friday in accordance with its interdenominational mission statement. 

Franklin Graham has a history of playing politics and stirring the passions of his supporters to create policy change in America.  This is in stark contrast to his father who stuck to a message of tolerance once he reached the national stage.  A week after Graham's post, Duke rescinded its decision but that didn't stop the hate which continued on Facebook long after the initial post.

Tensions between Muslims and non-Muslim are high throughout the world but more hate won't improve things.  Irresponsible statements by Christian leaders like Mr. Graham is akin to throwing gas on the fire.  Add Facebook to the mix and it's like a telephone game played with millions only with much graver stakes.

Tweet

We live in Miraculous Times

We live in miraculous times and each of us should feel lucky to be alive.

Think about it.  Our solar system in 4.6 billion years old.  That number is so big that our species that is lucky to see 100 years can scarcely fathom the magnitude.  At a constant rate of today’s human generational length of 25 years it means you’d need to got back from your mother’s mother’s mother almost another 200,000,000 generations to get to the real Adam and Eve.

Of course that is oversimplifying the situation.

Every person alive is literally 1 in a million.  We all hit the lottery.  We are long shots.  We are miracles.

Think of all the conveniences we have today that would seem like magic to our ancestors going back only ten generations.  These people lived in a time of enlightenment and set the stage for the greatest series of revolutions in science, politics, farming, transportation, etc. the world has ever known.  In a short 200 years we have gone from dark shelters to living in well-lit, climate-controlled palaces.  Even the poorest of cultures have amenities that would have stunned our ancient forebears.

Go back fifty generations to the Dark Ages and you’ll find most of the world living in huts, most people lacking understanding in a basic understanding of the world in which they lived.  In a geological sense, fifty generations is a blink of an eye yet it is long enough for the 8 billion people living on the world today to be interlinked 150,000 times (2⁵⁰ /8,000,000,000).  Despite our differences, everyone alive today is family, the only difference being how long you need to go back.

Modern Human Migration

According to the best current scientific theory, 200,000 years ago a woman scientist’s nickname ‘Eve’ existed in Africa whose DNA is present in every person living today.  No more than 80,000 years ago our forefathers began their last great migration out of Africa.  After a stop in the Middle East, homo sapiens moved north into Europe and east into Asia, crossing the Bering Straight into the Americas around 15,000 years ago and covered both continents in less than a thousand years.  We had the advantage of speech with the ability to learn patterns and to adapt to our surroundings.  Over 10,000 years ago tribes in the Middle East developed a systematic form of agriculture.  About 5,200 years ago their descendants learned how to mark symbols on clay tablets to retain knowledge.  Most tribes on earth either copied these learning's if they came in contact with the Middle East or discovered farming and writing on their own.

In a geologic sense, it only took a blink of an eye to the world changed forever.

Humans have made great advances in taming the world since that time.  Better housing for shelter, better plumbing for water and sanitation, and better medicines for health.  Every aspect of our lives have been impacted by our ability to learn and pass to our children the knowledge of previous generations.  This has swelled the human population from estimated 10,000 homo sapiens alive just before we left Africa to the 7 billion alive today.  We have forced the world to adhere to our wishes.  We can mold landscapes if they don’t suit our needs.  At our core we are builders but we can also destroy.

It’s amazing when you consider the grand timeline of our planet.  The Big Bang happened about 14 billion years ago and our Solar System formed about 4.6 billion years ago.  Organic life began about 3.8 billion years ago.

The formation of coal - About 300 million years ago, vast forests surrounded low lying seas created huge peat bogs and as it sunk into the ground, the resultant pressure created almost all of today’s coal.  Ancient humans used coal when they could find it but as most of it is buried deep in the ground we couldn’t get to it without the better mining technics developed as demand increased due to the invention of the steam engine and better heating fixtures.  Ignoring controversial topics like global warming and acid rain, coal has been a huge boon to society as it allowed us to grow much faster than it could have done otherwise.  The world currently uses around 8 billion tons of coal per year and current estimates say we have approximately 147 years worth of coal reserves at our current usage rate.


The formation of Oil - The earth’s oil was also formed over 300 million years ago.  Oil forms when zooplankton and algae settle into warm sea beds in such quantity that the ocean cannot decompose it fast enough and allows it to form into a waxy material known as kerogen.  Lack of oxygen is the key to preventing the rotting process and as the kerogen is covered by the earth’s activity, thermal heat transforms it over millions of years.  The ideal depth for oil is three kilometers to give the proper amount of geothermal heat.  Above that line you will normally find a different state of kerogen known as shale oil.  If kerogen goes too deep it heats too much which transforms petroleum into natural gas.  The current world estimate states we have 1.4 trillion barrels of oil reserves with a current usage of around 85 million barrels per day.  Assuming these numbers are correct (and they change frequently), that give us 45 years at our current usage rates until we completely run out of oil.

The world was a much different place when our fossil fuels formed over 300 million years ago.  All the world’s land was in the process of forming a supercontinent called Pangaea.  Human beings didn’t exist.  Dinosaurs didn’t exist.  It was about that time that the first vertebrates emerged from the sea to live exclusively on land.  An atmosphere rich in oxygen caused a massive explosion in the diversity of life on Pangaea.  Dinosaurs arrived about 230 million years ago and were the dominate life form for the next 135 million years.  The first mammal evolved to distinguish itself from lizards about 160 million years ago.  Around the time the first mammal appeared, rift valleys had formed into massive cracks in the supercontinent of Pangaea as the Americas started to separate from Europe and Africa.  By the time an asteroid finished off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, Pangaea had separated in to the 7 continents we can recognize.

Humans have used the carbon stored in wood for heat every since we learned how to make fire.  The Romans, Indus, and Chinese created mighty empires long before the Industrial Age yet it took the ability to retrieve the energy rich fossil fuels of oil and coal to give us the advances of the last 200 years.  The intense heat given off by coal was vital to the formation of the iron and steel industries which rebuilt the world.  The discovery of how to process and use oil took us even further as it is the foundation of modern industries like plastics, transportation, aeronautics, computers, chemicals, and explosives among others.  Even today’s advanced farming techniques depend on oil.

Modern society wouldn’t exist without fossil fuels yet no one can argue that we will run out of them eventually.  Even the most optimistic estimates show that sometime in the next century demand will outstrip supply which will cause world wide crisis unless we find an alternative source of energy. 

One way to look at it is it took the Earth 300 million years to create its fossil fuels and we will have essentially used all of them in less than 300 years of human consumption.

This has brought riches beyond anything known before our time.  It isn’t uncommon for someone in the United States to eat a meal of beef grown in Montana, potatoes from Idaho, and beans from California.  Dessert might be be made from fresh fruit from Chile and nuts from Georgia, spiced with herbs grown in the Caribbean, and all washed down with tea from China.  Water is pumped to millions of homes which has ended cholera epidemics in all but the poorest nations.  Air conditioning has made living in deserts and rain forests not only bearable but preferable for some.  Instead of being stuck to local knowledge spread by word of mouth, our world is connected as news spreads at the speed of light.  None of this is possible without cheap fossil fuel.

The universe is a cold, dark place and fossil fuels have made human existence bright for a speck of time on the geological clock.  Every person alive today should feel lucky as they couldn’t have chosen an easier time to be born.  Humans dominant the planet much like the dinosaurs did when fossil fuels were first forming. 

I know it’s pointless but I can help to think how much life has changed for the current generation as compared to our ancestors ten generations in the past.  These people broke the first bonds of autocracy just as science had started to enlighten the world.  What will life be like for our descendants in ten generations?

• What will life be like when we run out of fossil fuel?
• Can scientists develop a viable alternative and ensure the same quality of life?
• How many people can Earth support without oil?
• Will democracy survive the chaos of the transition?
• Will our ancestors look on our accomplishments with pride or disgust?

There’s an old saying that says the brighter the candle the quicker it burns.  The world has been a dark place for most of its approximate 4,600,000,000 years until we moved out of Africa around 80,000 years ago.  The last 200 years of human progress has seen things no other species could hope to match.  Can we make it another 80,000 years?  800,000? 8 million?  Can we surpass the dinosaurs in terms of longevity?

I hope so.

Either way there is no doubt that we live in a miraculous time and each of us should feel lucky to be alive.

Tweet

My first book

The first book I read, 'Fun with Dick and Jane' was a series written in the 1930s and it rose to popularity in the 1950s.  My school used it long after other schools had moved on to more modern works but the area was poor and we couldn't afford anything better.  My classmates and I didn't know that at the time.  All we knew were the words on the page as we struggled to translate them into words we already knew in our heads.

See Dick.
See Jane.
See Spot Run.
Run Spot Run.

It was a basic form of learning but I struggled mightily at first.  The teaching method my teacher choose for this book was a reading circle.  Each kid took turns trying to read a three word page and once they finished the next kid would tackle the following page.  It's been many years since but I can still remember the anxiety I felt as it grew closer to my turn.  I was too young to understand that this panicked feeling hindered my learning though it didn't really matter.  Even now I still blush uncontrollably.when speaking in public.  It is part of who I am.  

One other thing my teacher did was to split us into groups based on her evaluation of our ability.  She probably did this to spare our feelings so that kids that struggled wouldn't have to watch the kids that did better.  She put me in the B reading group and all my friends were in the A reading group.  I must have protested because other than the memory of the general terror I felt at reading in front of the group I remember one thing: she told me that I'd always struggle to be a good reader.

Kids are often told they are little angels and I think this was the first time I was told that I might not be able to get everything I wanted in life.  I didn't want to believe it.  I told my mom who promptly yelled at the teacher but I took it a step further.  I decided I was going to show this teacher that she was wrong.  I was a stubborn little kid (and a stubborn adult if I'm honest with myself).

When anyone asked me what I wanted for Christmas or my Birthday I asked for books.  One grandmother answered my request and bought me a subscription to the 'I Can Read' series that delivered one book per month for much of my early childhood.  She also spent a year driving past her normal store to one that would give you one encyclopedia book for free if you bought enough groceries.  I was too young to understand just how much I would come to value those later in life but I do remember my happiness as the bookshelf my parents had bought for our living room slowly filled from A to Z.  

I read everything I could find and sometimes I found it necessary to fake reading things I didn't understand as I liked the attention I got from reading advanced books in front of adults.  Despite that hubris, my reading skill improved far beyond other kids my age. When we took the standardized tests in 4th grade to determine our learning progress I remember testing at an 8th grade reading level.  Up to that point I'd always thought I was stupid and predictably my thoughts returned to my 1st grade teacher.  I didn't have the courage to approach her directly but I had beaten the words that had prompted my reading passion.  Later in life I realized I probably misunderstood her words and meaning.  In fact she probably would have been thrilled to know about my progress and her part in inspiring me.  Either way, her words kickstarted my learning using the power of books .

My parents divorced by the time I had gotten the test results and by that time I was no longer close to my paternal grandmother that had bought so much of my personal library.  That gap never closed and I regret never taking the time before she died to thank her for her part in making me who I am today.

Tweet

Being lost in the desert & Christian Hypocrisy

I had an 'interesting' experience with a church a while back.  It's a long story but I promise it has a point.

My parents live next to a desert park and when I visited them last year I took the opportunity to do some hiking.  The park is huge with a few mountains in it and after a few short hikes I decided to go on a much longer one and climb one of the higher mountains in the middle of the park.  I packed plenty of food and water but as I knew he worried, I loaded some software to my phone so my dad could track my progress on Google Maps.

Three hours later I'm at the top and call my dad to brag about my accomplishment and see that my phone has used about half its charge.  Since I'm halfway done with the hike I don't think much about it.  I climb down using a path I'd predetermined and make my way to a gully I saw on Google Maps that would take me to a path I'd used before to return to my parent's house.  When I arrived I saw the gully had a few vertical walls and looked impassible without climbing gear.

At this point in a hike you have a few choices.  The gully was the shortest path.  To go back the way I came would feel like defeat.  If you know the territory and have good maps you can explore but it would be getting dark in about four hours.  That made the choice easy and I turned around.  The problem was because of the way I'd descended there was literally a mountain between me and the path I needed to get to.  With no way to know how long it would take I decided to go with the safest option which was to walk out of the park (the park is probably 20 miles long but only 8 miles wide) to the nearest road and have my parents pick me up.

When I got my phone out of my pack as I saw the battery had dropped below 20% and falling fast.  I'd hiked with it before with no issues and I realized the tracking software I loaded had drained my battery so I turned it off (pretty dumb in hindsight and I've since bought a battery backup).  At that point the mountain was blocking my cell signal so I checked every 10 minutes until I could make a call.

My dad sounded relieved as his first comment was...

"We've been tracking you all afternoon but it just stopped about twenty minutes ago."

I only managed a few words before my phone went dead.

I've done a lot of solo hiking and while I know it is dangerous it is great to be able to hike at your own speed and take the paths as your mood and your legs dictate.  All I could think about at that moment is how that must have sounded my my dad's end of the call.  I considered going back around the mountain but I was pretty sure it would get dark before I got out of the park and night hiking is stupid if you don't know the area.  I set a fast pace for the park's nearest trailhead exit.  It took about two hours and the whole time I kept thinking about my parents and how they must be worrying.  When I got to the road that led to town I expected to see some businesses so I could make a phone call but found everything shut down as  it was nearly 5pm.  Not wanting to approach a strange house I headed towards town.

I saw a church in the distance.

It's always surprised me how many churches you can find in the country.  I've done a lot of biking and I love churches as I've found they are a great refilling location as they never turn their water off.  The sign in the front of the building said 'Church of Christ' and the parking lot was half full.  Surely I could find help here.  I heard singing as I approached the door.

That's when I saw it.  A water fountain.  Great!

Any hiker/biker takes the opportunity to refill whenever they see water and I made straight for it.  The water bladder I carry was about half full when I noticed someone had approached.  I'd been hiking for 5 hours at that point and knew I must have looked terrible as I was sweaty, covered in trail dust and hadn't shaved in 4 days.  The man didn't say a word but his stare looked apprehensive.

I spoke first.  "Umm.... I got lost in the nearby park and am refilling my water bottle."

The man didn't speak but I noticed the singing had stopped and two other men had joined him.

I asked, "Would you guys happen to have a phone?"

The man finally spoke.  "No.  The church doesn't have a phone."

I could tell he was lying but I decided to be pushy because of my parents.  "Not even a cell phone?  I know my parents are worried sick about me and I need to call them."

The man relented a little.  "I have a cell phone.  What's your parent's number?  I will dial it."

This part stumped me.  I didn't know my parent's number.  When I call my parents I push the little button on my iPhone with their name.

"I don't know.  I just push the button on my phone but it's dead."

The man shook his head.  "How can you not know your own parent's number?"

While I explained I saw a few other men had come outside.  At this point I was desperate.

"Guys.  I can see you don't believe me but I've been hiking in the desert all day and ended up on the wrong side of the park.  My parents are expecting me home now and they are going to going to be worried sick.  It wouldn't surprise me if they call out a search party soon.  All I need is the information service on someone's phone so I can call my parents.  Or if any of you have an iPhone, I could use your charger.  In fact, if you have a USB power hub, I have my charger cable in my backpack."

My worse fell on deaf ears.  "There's nothing we can do and you need to go out to the road.  Maybe someone there can give you a lift.  Or you can make your way into town.  It isn't far."

I was flabbergasted.  Was he suggesting I hitchhike despite being in a parking lot full of cars?  Why was he so hesitant to let me use his cell phone?  I always carried cash on me and was planning to pay him for the cost.

As I struggled for words, I noticed the man had crossed his arms.  He said, "Are we going to have a problem?"

At this point I think all the men inside the church had come out but not one said a word.  I was getting a little nervous.  Anyone that has ever seen a bar fight knows the phrase, 'Are we going to have a problem'.  That's usually the last thing that is said before fists fly.  I thought about mentioning that I'd pay for using the phone but decided against it as they looked to be getting pissed.  Of course, the man could have only been talking about calling the cops on me and in hindsight that would have saved the taxpayers a lot of money.  Instead, I walked out of the parking lot but not before asking a final question as my trail map only covered the park.

"How far is town from here?"

"About a mile."

I looked it up later.  It is six miles.

I'm a strong hiker and thankfully the road was smooth and flat.  The walk didn't bother me.  What bothered me was this was a church.  I was raised Christian but grew out of my beliefs by my middle teens.  Despite that I've always believed that Christians were mostly good people.  Of course this was only one guy in only one church and I know there are many other good people in other churches.

But it bothered me.  A lot.

Every step made me madder and madder.  Here was a group of people that had taken time out of their Wednesday evening to sing songs to a man that had spent 40 days in the desert and come out preaching psalms they supposedly believed in.  Things like 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone', 'blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth', 'turn the other cheek', and 'love thy neighbor'.

I spent 4 hours in a desert and they wouldn't let me use their phone.

I thought about approaching some of the houses I passed but after the reception at their church I decided that wasn't smart as the area is very fond of the NRA and technically I would be trespassing on their property.  It was pitch dark when I got to town and I got quite a few strange looks as I was carrying my hiking poles and wearing my headlamp.  After calling information and getting my dad's number I called his house but got no response.  As I was getting tired I thought about getting a room in a local hotel but they picked up on my 5th try.  My ordeal was over after about 9 hours and 15+ miles.  As you can imagine my parents were relieved as they had been out looking not realizing the only number I could call was their listed home number.

When I hadn't arrived, they had gone to dinner hoping that as an experienced hiker (and knowing me) that I was probably running late.  Word spread at the restaurant that I was missing and when I hadn't returned when it got dark they called the sheriff.  Two teams of deputies with dogs headed into the park to the location where my dad lost my signal on Google Maps while the county helicopter with a spotlight searched overhead.  A few of my dad's friends made it about a quarter mile up the darkened trail in a nice but futile gesture.  Somehow word had spread through the community and ironically a prayer vigil started at the trailhead where I'd entered the park.  It is too bad none of these people were at church that night though it would be funny if they were and didn't realize it.

My call brought an end to it all and in hindsight I know I made some stupid decisions that were the root of all that followed.  It is one thing to hike and only be accountable to yourself but sometimes you have to think of others before charging blindly to the next peak.  I didn't use enough planning and foresight.

On the other hand, it all could have been averted if one guy and one church stepped up and actually lived up to the words to which I'm sure they damn others for not following.  This whole episode reinforces my belief that church isn't about salvation or compassion but a selfish enterprise full of people not able to deal with the ambiguity of an existence that no one can fully explain and the reality of a death that will eventually come to us all.

Tweet

Has the United States crossed the Rubicon?

One game that I used to play as a kid was to try to turn things around and see the world from the opposite view.  At the time, the most memorable was the conflict with Iran and their attack on the US embassy.  I couldn't understand why they hated us.  We were good people but they took our people hostage and I hated them with the passion of the teenaged boy I was at the time.  I couldn't understand why President Carter just didn't bomb them as they were obviously evil.

I think I was typical of most 6th graders especially in a world where the information you are being fed is limited.  What I didn't know was in 1954 the CIA raised a coup against the democratically elected government of Iran.  The US Embassy was used as the base of operations for the coup and they reinstalled the Shah which led Iran to another 25 years of oppression and autocracy.  When the Shah got sick, the radicals took control and the result was the Hostage Crisis.

The ironic thing was this put Ronald Reagan in office and I think the nation has been thinking like my simpler 6th grade self ever since.  As a country, we've historically put our head in the sand and counted on American 'exceptionalism' to keep us world leaders but the Reagan years put that on overdrive.  One of the biggest advantages we have as a society is the freedoms our system of government gives to us.  The Constitution was the result of a lot of thinking by the founders who looked to the Roman Republic as a guide and tried to put together a document to avoid its fate.

For those that don't know, the Roman government was a marvel of its day and while it wasn't democratic like the Athenians their republic gave them great advantages as it allowed great men to rise and run its affairs while avoiding anarchy.  There are many reasons the Roman Republic fell but the primary reason was simple.  By the middle of the 1st century BC, the Senate was gridlocked and nothing could get done so army under leaders like Marius/Caeser/Octavian stepped in.  The leaders of the city objected but when Octavian ran better than the Senate, the people of the city accepted the idea.  By the time Octavian died, the idea of a Roman Republic was a forgotten memory of a simpler time.

Political theorist like John Locke used the Roman Republic as one of his guides when putting together his thoughts for a perfect society.  The founders knew when they put together the US Constitution the greatest historical threat to a free society was the military which is why they insisted they could not allow the army to ever have enough power to ever have a repeat of the Roman Empire on American shores.

The 6th grader in me has always wondered  - Is it possible that the United States could face a change in our government like happened to the Romans?

Things didn't happen overnight there as it took decades/centuries before the Republic ceased to function.  As a kid I thought the British parliamentary system was a better form of government but as I've grown older I've grown to like the US Constitution.  The framers were insistent on a separation of powers and created a strong tradition of separation between the military and government for them to ever be much of a viable threat to our freedoms.

I don't see a day when a general could conceivable take power like a Caesar but are there other threats?

This is the question I've always wondered.  Movies like the 'Manchurian Candidate' or 'Red Dawn' pose ideas of a future where the freedoms we take for granted are stripping and we are pawns to foreign power but neither are realistic.  Is there another way that we might end up pawns like the citizens of ancient Rome?

In recent years I have seen a disturbing trend.  The founders could have never seen just how small the world would become.  In their time no European had traveled crossed the continent but now we can do it in less than 4 hours in a plane.  Information flow is even quicker, zipping all over the world at the speed of light. Vast warehouses of information have been gathered by private companies in an effort to sell us their wares.  Public agencies with agendas we think we understand listen to phone conversations and track information on the internet.  We are told to give Google access to our emails and we do it because they give us good products.  We are told that it is ok for the government to track its citizens because they need these abilities to protect us.

This strikes me as something right out of the book '1984'.  We seem glad to give up our 1st and 4th amendment rights without a fight and the trend of increased scrutiny of United States citizens scares me like nothing I've ever experienced in my life (sidenote - previously the worst was probably sitting under my desk as my 2nd grade class had an atomic bomb drill - it made me fear Russians well into adulthood).  Add to this media that is consolidating so that 6 companies control most of how we get our information.  The governmet is increasingly controlled by lobbyists who pay politicians to make sure their interests are inacted and some even create public policy.

It is a wonder that anything gets done by the United States government.  Will a time occur when we are asking for a different type of leadership to get us out of this gridlock and if so, who will step in to save us?

Near Rome there is a river called the Rubicon that marked the boundary of Rome and its province to the north, Cisalpine Gaul.  Armies weren't supposed to cross this river which was a way to keep its generals from interfering with the affairs of the city.  Julius Caesar allegedly made the statement 'The die is cast' as he crossed the river on his way to take control of affairs in Rome.  He knew the Rubicon was the point of no return.

Has the United States crossed the Rubicon in terms of the freedoms and liberties that were given to us in the Constitution?  Did we cross a Rubicon on 9/11?  Is it only a matter of time before we need a Caesar to save us?  Does a Caesar actually exist?

We continue to trade our freedoms for the feeling of safety and an easier life.  I'm sure the Romans felt the same way until the 'barbarians' showed up but I don't have an answer.  I don't know if one exists and we may just have to get used to a world in which our every movement/action is monitored and politicians who no longer act with the will of the people as they obey their lobbyist masters and are re-elected with information fed to us from corporate media.

Tweet

Christian Religion – Can you believe what you can’t see?

My mom and I have a constant argument about religion.  She wants me to start going to church and relays to me the wonderful stories from her pastor during Bible study.  She’s encouraged me to go with her to these sessions but I have always refused as I know it would turn out badly. 

How do I know this?  Because I’ve tried to go to church many times and every time I get angry but I’ll get into the whys of that la ex ter.  When I was a child I went to church every week and loved it and especially the stories. 

Going to church is a rite of passage for most children and even many adults that don’t believe attend while their kids are small because they feel they need to.  I’ve heard it said many times something to the effect, “I need to expose them to this and when they are old enough, it is their choice.”

There is merit in this statement as many of my fondest memories as a child happened in church camp, at sunday school, or a church related activity.  After my parent’s divorce, my parents stopped going as the town was very judgmental of divorcee’s but I attended for a few more years with my brother and sister in what I recognize now as a desperate attempt to hang on to normalcy.

Things changed for me when I got junior high school.  Teachers started explaining concepts like the scientific method and evolution though they took pains to avoid the subject of religion.  It was at this time that my thirst for history knowledge grew and as I looked into religious history, many things didn’t make sense.  This was a frustrating time as I had many questions but it seemed like everyone seemed blind to obvious truths.

I recognize in hindsight that people feel uncomfortable talking in public about religion as most religions require blind obedience and arguing with the faithful is most times a pointless exercise.

That’s because religion is so intertwined into our culture and as I found myself in a church many times over the next decade I really tried to go in with an open mind.  About half way through every sermon, I got mad at what the preacher/priest/pastor was saying and my mind closed.  Every sermon follows the same routine that the Christian Church has used for almost 2000 years. 

“You are a sinner, Jesus died for your sins, drink his blood/eat his flesh and your sins will be forgiven.”

This is a great message to kids who are used to always being in trouble and like the idea of forgiveness.  Adults need more than that and I rebelled against the negative nature of the message as I always felt these guys didn’t know me and had no right to judge me.  As I’ve grown older I’ve modified my position somewhat as I do realize that everyone has flaws and inside the church’s message of blame is the hope that despite our flaws, we can be better people.  In fact the church can be something very useful as it binds communities and is a cheap form of seeing a therapist.  If that is all the church did, I would probably still belong to one.

The devil in the details.  As I’ve read over the years this is what I know to be true about the Bible:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

- The Old Testament is based on the Jewish Torah and the story of the prophets which are a a story of journey of the people of Israel from their enslavement in Egypt to their peak under King David and eventual defeat and re-enslavement in Babylon. 

- Much of the Old Testament was compiled after the were able to gain their freedom from Babylon and returned to Jerusalem. 

- Many Jewish scholars agree that the intent was to give the people a book that bound the spread out people once they won their freedom from Babylon. 

- Many of the stories found in the Old Testament are also found in many other local religions of that time but the story of Israel and Judaism thrived and grew throughout the area.

- The New Testament is the Christian part of the Bible.

- The New Testament is based on the story of Jesus Christ and his teachings

- There is no proof that a man named Jesus Christ ever lived.

- The gospels are the first four books of the Bible and written by men that were told the story by the apostles of Jesus.  None of these original manuscripts survive and changes occurred as scribes often make mistakes.

- The stories of the Jesus were spread by a man named Paul, who never met Jesus when he lived, but he wrote many of the other books of the New Testament based on their words.

- The gospels were finished between 80-100 AD but none of these texts survive.

- A good example of what happened during the next few years is at the end of Mark. It originally stopped after a boy next to the alter told Mary Magdelene and Mary Mother of James Jesus had risen,

“⁸ And they went out, and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them: and they said nothing to any one; for they were afraid.”

Here is the revision (sorry it is long):

“And they went out, and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them: and they said nothing to any one; for they were afraid. ⁹ Now when he was risen early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. ¹⁰ She went and told them that had been with him, as they mourned and wept. ¹¹ And they, when they heard that he was alive, and had been seen of her, disbelieved. ¹² And after these things he was manifested in another form unto two of them, as they walked, on their way into the country. ¹³ And they went away and told it unto the rest: neither believed they them. ¹⁴ And afterward he was manifested unto the eleven themselves as they sat at meat; and he upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them that had seen him after he was risen. ¹⁵ And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to the whole creation. ¹⁶ He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that disbelieveth shall be condemned. ¹⁷ And these signs shall accompany them that believe: in my name shall they cast out demons; they shall speak with new tongues; ¹⁸ they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall in no wise hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. ¹⁹ So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken unto them, was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. ²⁰ And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word by the signs that followed. Amen.”

This was added by someone about a hundred years after Jesus died and fifty after it was written. Why is it important? Well ignoring the fact that even through this is provable and many people proclaim that the Bible is word-for-word the voice of God look at the highlighted text. This text is the basis for faith healing, speaking in tongues, and snake handling in some religious faiths. All based on a lie by a 2nd century scribe that wanted a better ending to Mark’s tale.

- Another story that was adjusted was the story in the Book of John about the woman caught in adultery.  He choose not to judge her and said instead to the mob, “He that is without sin, cast the first stone”.  When the crowd dispersed he told the woman, “Go and sin no more.”  Great story but it wasn’t written by John.

- Over the next hundred years, other stories were added as there were competing messages of what the gospels meant.  A good example is the book of Revelation.  A man calling himself John said he heard a great voice instructing him to write the book in around 95AD.  He had nothing to do with Jesus or the apostles and drew inspiration from the Old Testament.  His writings form the basis of the idea of heaven and hell in the Bible.  Most other areas don’t mention it at all.  The apocalypse and the return of Jesus is described in this section which isn’t spoken about  by any other writer the Bible.  All written by a man that had a vision.

- As the new Christian religion’s message of hope and redemption got popular, Emperor Constantine of Rome adopted it as the new state religion after 300AD.

- The competing messages were causing distractions so Constantine called on the priests to resolve their differences.  In 325 AD they met in Nicea (about 280 years after Jesus’ death) and decided many things. One example is the Holy Trinity – this explanation is overly simplistic but it resolved whether Jesus that was equal to his father – the addition of the Holy Spirit that resided in Jesus meant he was both human and god

- Soon after this meeting, the new religion decided which books that had been written in the last 280 years were to be consider canon and part of the Bible.

- Many things we think we know today are interpretations of popes, priests, and other high ranking religious officials of what the Bible means.  Over time many people that haven’t read the entire book (like 95% of Christians) actually believe things that are really an opinion of what the men who wrote the meant.  This is understandable when you realize how haphazard the Bible was put together along with the fragmentary nature of the scribes writing these texts thousands of times so the apostles could spread the word.

- There is one thing I can state with 100% assurance.  The Bible was written by men and even if the original was divinely written, what we have today isn’t the same thing.

----------------------------------------------------------

I sure some could quibble with some of my assertions as it would take books to fully explore but I feel the above is close to the truth.  How can any reasonable person read those facts and come out with the belief that the Bible is 100% factual?  Yet many people believe that very thing.

Gallup has done a poll periodically since 1982 asking Americans a question of which statement is true.

A.  Humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms but God guided the process

B.  Humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms and God played no part

C.  God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years

You probably can guess the winner or I wouldn’t bring it up.  Answer C has won this in every poll with anywhere from 40-47% of the population.  Answer A is anywhere from 32-38%. 

Answer B is the correct answer and it hit a high in the last two polls of 15-16%.

This question isn’t  picking the wrong country on a map.  This is totally a question of belief as everyone has an opinion on Evolution.  From these numbers it appears that 85% of Americans believe that God is guiding us.  I could buy into that if by God they meant

Some higher power that created the universe and set in motion the laws of nature that led to the universe, the laws of nature, our solar system, the earth, and evolution.

They don’t.

They mean it in the sense that there’s an omnipresent being in the sky that is looking over every one of us.  Why do they believe it?  Because of a book written in the desert two thousand years ago by carpenters/fishermen, rewritten by scribes, modified by priests, and combined into a book by Romans with none of our current understanding.

The kicker to this whole thing is I’d bet Christians quality of life is better than most.  I know I’ve tried to believe in the fairytales in the Bible but can’t do it.  I envy those that can as I’m sure they live a happier existence.  They live each day in the bliss that someday they will be in heaven despite all evidence and it really doesn’t matter if it isn’t true. 

I can’t make my mind do that.

Even sadder is the fact that most Americans believe this, which means that everything has to cater to them.  Every president and every social leader has to bow down to the religious because no one can afford to lose 50% of the voters.  That’s a good way to lose.

I used to think I was alone in my knowledge and grew jaded at the world thinking that so many people were ignorant.  In recent years I’ve softened my position as I really do think a large majority question the existence of an intrusive god but in polite society we don’t discuss such things.  We don’t want to offend and it is sad because I believe a religion that mixed science with philosophy and psychology would be an amazing force for good.  It would be like town hall meetings that people actually cared about each other.  Instead we cling to ideas that were outdated 500 years ago.

Tweet