Religion and Joe Space Tourist

So what do I believe?

Well, reading what I've written the past few days, it would be easy to believe that I am atheist, or at least agnostic, but that is not the case. However, that doesn't mean that I take any of the organized religions at their word; that is also not entirely the case. My beliefs are a little bit more... confusing than that. Or perhaps just confused. Could be either one.

So let me start with a little history.

When I was growing up, at least until Middle School (Junior High for those of you living in other parts of the US), I attended a fairly open-minded sort of church. As I mentioned before as an example, I learned the Big Bang Theory in Sunday School. However, it was not without its flaws. When I was in Middle School, a cousin of mine (who is much older than me) finished Seminary on the way become a priest. However, my church wouldn't sponsor her for the position because (duh duh duh) she is a woman.

Oh my god! A woman priest! What a travesty! How could we have that? What if she got pregnant?!

Seriously, though, in a church where they teach the Big Bang Theory in Sunday School and they let ministers get married, they won't let a woman become a priest? Well, to cut a long story short, my family abandoned that church in protest, in favor of an even more open-minded church that was closer to where we lived anyway. We even had an openly gay priest for a while. Doesn't get more open-minded than that.

Which reminds me of another little rant that I have to go on while I'm still on the topic of religion. Gay marriage. Seriously, people. You're going to make a big stink about that? Really? Okay, there are two, and exactly two reasons to oppose gay marriage. One is tradition, and the other is religion. I'll take these topics one at a time.
1. Tradition. Traditions change. Get the hell over it. Or stop letting women vote and go buy some slaves and start knitting all your own clothes because guess what? Those were traditions too.
2. Religion There are exactly two places in the Bible where it is stated unambiguously that it is bad to be gay. Those places are called Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13. Seriously? Have you even read Leviticus? If not, I highly recommend it; it is very entertaining. Let me give you a few choice examples:
Leviticus 25:44: Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves.
Leviticus 19:19: ...Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.
Leviticus 11:10: But all creatures in the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales – whether among all the swarming things or among all the other living creatures in the water – you are to regard as unclean.
Oh, and there are at least six chapters on how and when to ritually sacrifice various animals. Seriously, people, there are maybe five verses in this whole book that are in any way relevant to modern life. So we're going to basically throw out the whole book and say these rules don't matter, except for this particular rule which oh my god if you break this one rule you are the worst kind of person! Yeah, get over yourselves. Let these people find a little happiness.
I had a friend who was kicked out of church for being gay. His priest literally told him in front of his family that he was going to go to hell and he wasn't welcome there anymore. Now he is one of the most critical people against organized religion I know. Yeah, you guys are really helping yourselves there.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yeah, middle school. So I was in this new, even-more-open-minded church. I was a good, churchgoing kid. I even sang in the choir and helped design part of the church grounds. However, the damage was already done. I was observing what I perceived as flaws in the implementation of organized religion. My main problem with it was that it seemed to preclude the notion of independent thought. This partially came from my experience in changing churches. My parents literally had to go hunting for a different church with a mindset like theirs when they couldn't convince the clergy at the previous one to understand and accept their point of view. I was young, but from what I understand, they wouldn't even listen. I've found this to be normal among organized religion; even considering another point of view is extraordinarily rare. However, my line of reasoning went something like this: if God gave us the gift of independent thought, why doesn't he want us to use it? Assuming he put us here on Earth, made us intelligent creatures, then decided to rarely or never interfere directly in our affairs, isn't it logical to believe that he wants us to have free will? Wouldn't that have to be the point of all of this?
The other event that started me down the path of rejecting organized religion is that during church one time while the congregation was reciting some prayer or creed or something, I spontaneously stopped, took a few steps away, and realized that everyone sounded exactly like the Borg. Yeah.... that didn't help.

So for a long while, I was in a state of limbo, not sure what to think or do. I stuck around at church. After all, for all its flaws, the people were friendly. However, I started to come to the realization that people of other faiths were just as passionate about their beliefs as Christians were about theirs. I began to reject the notion that there might be one "true" faith. I started doing a bit of research in other faiths; I even read parts of some of their sacred texts (well, those that had sacred texts). I found (and this came to me as rather a shock having been a lifelong churchgoer), that some of the others appealed to me and made a lot more sense to me than Christianity. Buddhism, for example, or Wicca, or some of the Native American beliefs. However, none of them really settled completely with me. I suppose my newfound faith in, well, free thought kept me from embracing anything wholeheartedly.

When I was studying up on these various belief systems, I also found myself with a growing interest in astronomy and cosmology. I suppose the combination of the two topics of study brought be to the realization that I couldn't reject religion altogether. I was in college by the time I realized that I had sufficient evidence to convince myself that there definitely is more going on in this world than we can see, taste and feel. In fact, I came to realize that I actually had two pieces of supporting evidence, and they (irony of ironies) are based in part in science.
1. The existence of the universe itself. "Where are we from" is often considered our most basic unanswered question. When you really put thought into it, there is no logical explanation for the existence of the universe. There are two possibilities: it would either have had to originate spontaneously, or it would have had to exist forever. Currently, the most widely accepted scientific theory is that the universe was born in a massive spontaneous explosion, emerging from a sort of multidimensional bubbling cosmic soup. But where did this soup come from? Why does anything exist? But on the other hand, can you imagine a lack of existence? Can you imagine a formless void, yet without the void, because even that is a thing? I can't. But I can come close enough to come up with some weird existential quandaries. I originally had this thought when I was young and reading Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time (highly recommended, by the way), and only later did I realize its full potential as possible supporting evidence of the supernatural. How was the universe born if not through some supernatural means?
2. The existence of human consciousness. Well, I should simply say consciousness since I believe it is highly unlikely that there aren't other intelligent beings out in the universe somewhere, and since I believe that animals are also conscious on some level. I'll talk about those another time, but for now, it suffices to say that consciousness exists at least in us. So what is consciousness exactly? Democritus, one of the first philosophers to suggest the existence of the atom, also suggested that souls were composed of special, spherical atoms that allowed intelligent thought to exist. These days, that doesn't seem like an adequate explanation, but nothing else does either. It is difficult to deny that there is something there experiencing sights and sounds and manipulating our behaviors, that we are more than the sum of our parts. However, that cannot currently be defined by science, and I'm not sure that it will ever be. This, too, seems to be potential evidence of the supernatural.
More recently (as in the past month or so), I've come up with a third potential piece of evidence, and its basis is even more rooted in science than the first two.
3. Quantum Mechanics. In recent years, the field of quantum mechanics has become more and more strange. Today, some widely accepted theories themselves border on the supernatural. Everyone has heard the principal of Schroedinger's Cat, in which a cat is placed in a box with a vial of poison that has a 50% chance of breaking. According to the literal interpretation of quantum mechanics, this cat is both dead and alive simultaneously, until the box is opened and the cat can be observed. I would argue that the cat is observing itself, but again, I'll save that discussion for another time. These days, quantum mechanics gets even stranger. Some physicists have even come up with certain sub-molecular events that subtly differ based on whether or not they are observed. In particular, a story came out recently suggesting that a principal called the "Quantum Zeno Effect" aides in the long-distance navigation of migratory birds (this also serves to lend evidence to one of my other theories, but again, more on that later). This observational aspect of quantum mechanics is undeniably strange, but let me throw a new brick into the mix that I've never seen discussed: all of this suggests that human thought influences the universe on its most basic known level. Think about it; if we can influence quantum, and therefore chemical reactions simply by choosing to observe them, then our thoughts and the choices we then make actually serve to change the outcome of events, albeit subtly. Other supernatural concepts like group consciousness or spirits or even God suddenly aren't that big a leap. Who knows? Perhaps everyone has it all wrong and science will end up proving the existence of God. Now wouldn't that be a bit of irony for the ages.

So, I guess that's where I stand. I firmly believe in the existence of things beyond what we can see or feel, meaning I am not atheist or agnostic. However, I don't deign to say that I know what those things are, meaning that I am not religious. So I suppose that I'm just confusing. Or confused. It could still be that too.

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Religion and More Religion

For the third post in my potentially blasphemous series on Religion, I will explain my belief that religions don't have to be mutually exclusive to each other. I'm going to describe my thoughts on this on a couple of different levels.

On the most basic nitty-gritty rules-and-regulations level, all religions with which I have at least a passing familiarity appear to have at least a few clauses in their religious texts or other bases of belief that, at minimum, suggest that followers remain friendly to members of other faiths, and at the extreme, suggest that it is okay to become cozy to the beliefs held by other religions. Now, I won't claim to be an expert on any religion, really. I was raised Christian and I've read more than my share of other religious texts. Some very interesting (and lesser-known) passages can be found:
Christianity: this appears to me to be one of the more hard-lined faiths when it comes to getting cozy with other religions. Even so, examples can be found to the contrary. 1 Corinthians 7:13 says, "And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him." To be fair, there are also examples (2 Corinthians 6:14) that suggest the opposite. The Bible is a difficult text, because many passages contradict each other.
Islam: Yes, Islam. Remember that crazy middle-east religion that hates freedom and wants to kill us? Well, I suggest getting to know some Muslims. I have. Doing so can be a study in the falsehood of stereotypes. The common belief is that the Koran says directly to be unfriendly toward Christians, Jews, and others, and that it portrays them as evil. However, it appears that some (not all) of those are taken out of context, and there are some lesser-known passages to the contrary: [60:8] "Allah does not enjoin you from befriending those who do not fight you because of religion, and do not evict you from your homes. You may befriend them and be equitable towards them. Allah loves the equitable." [5:46] "Subsequent to them, we sent Jesus, the son of Mary, confirming the previous scripture, the Torah. We gave him the Gospel, containing guidance and light, and confirming the previous scriptures, the Torah, and augmenting its guidance and light, and to enlighten the righteous."
Judaism: There are a lot of misconceptions about the origins of Judaism, but those can be easily cleared up simply by looking at the wording of the earlier books of the Torah, known to Christians as the Old Testament. Ron Wixman, a university professor with an uncommon amount of common sense, originally enlightened me on this subject. Judaism's origins were not as a big, bad religion hell-bent on converting everything with a pulse, characteristic of the behavior of many Christians and Muslims in recent history. On the contrary, it was a local religion, initially intended to co-exist with other beliefs. Take Exodus 20:3, the first commandment: "You shall have no other gods before me." This wasn't originally meant to state that other beliefs were false; it was intended as a message specifically to the Jews, the "chosen people" that they were to revere this particular god more than (or in exclusion of) the others. Many passages refer to other gods, such as Psalms 82:1: "God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods." In fact, around twenty other gods are mentioned by name in the Torah. If there was such co-existence back then, I don't see why there can't be now.
Buddhism: Of all the religions I've read about, Buddhism is definitely the most friendly toward other religions. The Dalai Llama himself has stated that it is desirable that there are so many other religions in the world. Buddhism, in many forms, is openly acceptive of other religions, and even holds that many other religious beliefs are based in truth. These values likely arise, at least in part, from the fact that Buddha himself taught different people in different ways, suggesting that one single belief doesn't work for everyone. Makes sense to me.

In a higher, moral values and be-nice-to-others sense, I have always believed that one of the most sacred things to any person is what they hold in their brains. Forced belief is one of the worst crimes possible, and all those people who spend their lives trying to convert others, at gunpoint or otherwise, need to get a grip. Some of the world's worst wars, some of the most horrible events, boiled down to one group trying to get another group to believe their unprovable assertions about spiritual beings that never show themselves. I think it's wonderful that you believe what you do, but don't try and force it on others. This goes for pushy asshole atheists just as much as it does for staunch loudmouth missionaries; let people believe what they want. And to all of you evangelists who lie outright to others to frighten them, or worse, to trick them into believing your way, I'm sure your religion has an appropriate place in hell for you. Agnostics, you're still alright with me.

And to all of you out there who have had some near-death experience where you've seen a vision that proves to you that yours is the one true faith and how could anyone ever believe anything else? Well, other people have had those experiences too and attributed it to their own religions, so get over yourself!

Okay, I'm done now. Have a nice existence.

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Religion and Science

Today, I would like to delve into my second discussion about religion: how it relates to science.

I said yesterday that I have never thought religion and science need to be mutually exclusive. I suppose this probably originated from the fact that I grew up attending a fairly open-minded church. Were you ever taught the Big Bang theory in Sunday School? I was. Well, a more churchey version of it at least. "All of God's people and all of God's plants and animals and the sun and the moon and all of the stars were crunched up into a little ball, and then God made it explode, creating everything we see today." Certainly an interesting twist on the Adam and Eve story. But this serves as a perfect example of the co-existence of science and religion. Why can't the Big Bang Theory be taught in Sunday School?

Let's take a more classic example of this controversy: the Theory of Evolution.

(Whew. I didn't get zapped by lightning.)

I apologize in advance; I'm going to focus primarily on Christianity here because it is the religion with which I am most familiar. Any of you who belong to other faiths, I'm not trying to snub you; I just don't know enough to adequately discuss how science relates to your religion. So it goes like this: The Bible says that God created the world and all its creatures in six days, and on the seventh, he held a party or went to a rave or something; nobody is sure what. However, the Theory of Evolution says that all of the plants and animals emerged through hundreds of millions of years of incremental changes in their physiologies based on natural selection. And, if I remember elementary school math correctly, 6 is in fact less than 100,000,000. Clearly, this poses a problem.

But does it? Frankly, not even many churchgoing people take the Biblical creation story literally. Even the Catholic Church has stated that the Big Bang Theory is acceptable. Those few who take the Biblical account literally are called Creationists. In fact, they have somehow nailed down the date of creation to October 23, 4004 B.C., at 9:00 in the morning. That's a strange thought. I wonder what it would be like, to feel so certain of the exact age of the universe. Kinda creepy. Anyway, I'm not going to try to convince Creationists to accept science. That would be silly and I would probably fail.

Here's a thought that I like to tinker with: partial creationism. I personally don't take the Biblical creation story as fact, but couldn't it be partially correct? Couldn't it basically be a metaphor for what did happen, put in terms that people of the ancient world could understand? Let's take it one step at a time:
The first day, God created the Earth, but "darkness was over the surface of the deep", so God created the light and separated the light from the darkness. Now if you believe the Big Bang Theory (I'm only about 50% on that, but I'll talk about that another time), that is in fact the first thing that happened. The big bang occurred, releasing the Universe's matter, including the matter that makes up the Earth. However (and this is a lesser-known part of the theory), during the first few hundred million years, the universe was completely dark, except for the microwave background radiation. There was no visible light at all for a very, very long time, and in effect, "darkness was over the surface of the deep." Only when the clouds of gas that made up most of the early universe had a chance to coalesce into the first stars did nuclear fusion begin, and the first light was released.
The second day, God said, "Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water." So God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. (Genesis 1:6-7) When you look at the history of the Earth, that is what happened next. After our sun coalesced and started nuclear fusion, our solar system was mostly a formless spinning gaseous dust cloud. Only when the cloud had a chance to coalesce into the planets, and the "water" of the Earth was separated from the "water" of the sky, was the Earth really born.
The third day, God separated the water from the land. Well, that's close enough for me. Most of the water most likely came from comets striking the earth, and the emergence of seas and land masses is what happened next. Then, God created the vegetation. And, well, plants did emerge before animals, albeit in single-cellular form.
The fourth day, God created the sun, moon, and stars. Yeah, that one is out of order. I never said that partial creationism was a perfect theory.
The fifth day, God created the sea creatures and the birds. This is partially in order. Sea creatures most likely came first, then land animals, then flying animals. Close, though.
The sixth day, God created land animals. This was probably a mistake. Keeping those things alive causes way too many headaches; endangered species regulations can be a bitch. However, there's no denying that animals are very, very tasty.
The seventh day, God created laziness. And partying. That's what I like to believe.

Anyway, let's get back to my main argument. If you're going to take the Biblical creation story as a metaphor or as simply a story instead of literal fact, what the heck is wrong with evolution? We all had to come from somewhere, right? It seems that some people think that evolution somehow negates God because it suggests that God didn't create us. However, I've never considered that to in any way be good reasoning. Can't you take the original thought of 'the creation story as a metaphor' just a tiny, minuscule, microscopic smidgen further and conclude that God invented evolution? What the hell is wrong with that? Seriously, if you're already going to conclude that God didn't literally snap his fingers (or tentacles or whatever he has) to create the world in six days why the hell would you get all up in arms whenever someone suggests he didn't snap his tentacles and create us in an instant either? Come on, people! Have a freaking independent thought in your head for once!

Sorry, that's kind of one of my pet peeves.

Also, about the whole evolution in school thing: I'll meet you half way on that. Evolution should absolutely be taught in school! But as a widely accepted theory, not as solidly proven fact. Because that's what it is. The theory of evolution. However, Creationism shouldn't be taught in schools, at least not in science class! A theology class, sure. You know why? Because it is a hypothesis. That goes for "intelligent design" as well; that is also just a hypothesis. There is a difference between theory and hypothesis. A theory is something that has been tested and is based on verifiable evidence, whereas a hypothesis is, at best, an educated guess that has yet to be tested. Basically, my point is this:

If you want to believe in and live by a religious faith, that's absolutely perfectly fine. But you need to come to terms with the fact that there is no solid evidence that you can present to others to prove that your faith is correct! If everyone simply accepted that, 90% of the wars in this world would end! Or, at least, they would be fought under different pretenses. Be nice to others, because they're just as sure that their faith is correct as you are that yours is! Neither of you can prove it, so stop squabbling already! Stop it! Stop! Right now! It's annoying!

Stop it!

Agnostics, you're alright in my book.

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Religion and Aliens

Yeah, you heard me. I'm going to make a foray into potential blasphemy. I've certainly made my political views well-known, so it's past time that I venture into the one other topic of discussion that tends to be just as dangerous: religion.

All this came up when a friend pointed out a news story about a Vatican astronomer who came out and said that belief in aliens isn't contrary to belief in Christianity. Click here to read the full interview.

My first thought was, "Well yeah, I've been saying that for years."

And I have too. I've always been greatly amused by the debate between science and religion, because I have never believed that the two were in any way mutually exclusive. As a matter of fact, (and this is where many religious people get mad at me and the Vatican and I part ways), I don't even believe that religions are mutually exclusive to each other. I'll explain all this, but let me take it one issue at a time, starting with the aliens.

First of all, I've done some reading on various religious texts, and at no point in time have I ever seen a single sentence, a single word that contradicts the possibility of life having been created on other worlds. Even if you take, for example, the Christian creation story at its word, there's nothing that says God couldn't have created Adam and Eve here, and Gazonkiplatz and Burf%ol$*a somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy. Heck, some people belive passages like Genisis 6:1-2 refer to aliens: "When people had spread all over the world, and daughters were being born, some of the heavenly beings saw that the young women were beautiful, so they took the ones they liked." I have my own theories about this verse and others, but there it is. So, I applaud the Vatican for the basic premise. In my humble opinion, they are absolutely right.

With that said, I would like to nit-pick over portions of the interview, because I feel like being an ass right now, and it amuses me.

First of all, the astronomer states, "Let’s borrow the image from the gospel about the lost sheep. The shepherd leaves the 99 of the sheepfold to search for the one that got lost. Let’s imagine that in this universe there are 100 sheep, corresponding to the different forms of creatures. We who belong to the human race, could very well be the lost sheep, the sinners that need the shepherd."

What? What? Okay, I know this is all hypothetical, but is he really suggesting that we're a planet of sinners in a universe of saintly, well-behaved aliens? I wonder how many ways I can take this hypothesis apart.
1. This hypothesis is based on the idea that said extra-terrestrials would believe in the Christian god when most of the people on Earth don't even believe in the Christian god! Holy crap, man! Are you really so arrogant that you honestly believe the five billion non-Christians on Earth are the only intelligent beings in the universe who don't share your faith? Well, I guess if you weren't, you wouldn't work in the freaking Vatican, would you?
2. This hypothesis is based on the idea that even if said extra-terrestrials believed in the Christian god, that they would be required to live by the same morals and standards that are laid out in the Bible! You may ask me, "Why would that be a problem?" Well, let me give you an example. The Bible says, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." Okay, that's all well and fine for us, but let's say that there's a species of intelligent creatures out there with three genders, all three of which are needed for reproduction. Don't laugh; that possibility has been explored by astrobiologists. Okay, laugh anyway. But how are these three aliens supposed to reproduce under the confines of biblical law? Well, the natural conclusion is that they would all have to be in a three-way marriage. But wait! We've all heard the mantra over and over! "Marriage is between a man and a woman." So even if these aliens could be classified as "male", "female", and "other", which is a stretch in and of itself, the "other" alien couldn't ever be married. Such an alien society, following God's laws to the letter, would be very very saintly, and very very extinct after only one generation.
3. Even assuming that extra-terrestrials believe in the Christian god, and assuming that they are allowed to live by their own biblical laws that are more suited to their unique biological and environmental paradigms, this hypothesis assumes that every single one of them would actually live by these laws and remain sin-free! As if there could be 99 other species out there, not one of them evolving in such away that promotes the emergence of violence. Oh wait, that's evolution. We're talking about religion here. Um... As if God would have created 99 perfectly peaceful well-behaved species and only one that was prone to sin. Right.

But wait, it gets better!

At the very end of the interview, the astronomer says something very interesting when asked about possible alien redemption in the case that they are sinners: "Jesus incarnated once and for all. The incarnation is a unique and non-repeatable event."

What? Where the heck in the Bible does it say that? Or, for that matter, where does it say that there couldn't have been a different, alien "Son of God"? That's one of my problems with organized religion in general. They make too many assumptions about their religious texts. Those assumptions turn to dogma, the dogma turns to prejudice, that prejudice leads to fear, fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. </yoda>

Anyway, where was I... Oh yeah! The reason I started writing this is that a friend of mine said that I should urge the Catholic church, based on this interview, to fund space travel activities. However, I'm not going to do that. I get too many strange visions about that South Park episode where the Evangelical Church builds a missionary ship to convert aliens, all the while Pat Robertson is on the TV urging everyone to donate money for a proton cannon so that they can prevent poor Ethiopians from escaping Earth to settle on more hospitable land on planet Marklar. That would totally happen, and I'm not going to be a part of it. Sorry, Geoff.

That's it for now, but stay tuned! Tomorrow, I delve into religion and science. Duh duh duh!

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