Curiouser and Curiouser

"Curiouser and curiouser" is a quote by Alice in Alice and Wonderland. She said it when the world she was in got stranger and stranger.

Now, here we are in 2019 America and things keep getting weirder and more bizarre. I won't even mention that the U.S. president reminds me of a rabid baboon because I know so many people love him. Love away, folks.

I guess what strikes me most is that I'm told we live in a "Christian" nation yet our country is so extremely violent. Of course, evangelicals will say "it's a sign of the last days" rather than actually doing something about it. And to live the example set by Jesus Christ, well, that appears forgotten.

U.S. politics have become entertainment and we all secretly enjoy the president's continual crass statements and then the shocked liberal response. It's better than any reality show. Meanwhile, the wealthy business people continue to take over American politics and push policies that promote immediate wealth, at the expense of the environment and working class. 

Just this week in my state of Georgia the governor DID NOT appoint an esteemed congressperson to a vacant senator position, like he should have. Instead he put a wealthy businessperson in the senate seat, a woman with zero political experience who just happens to be a huge Republican donor. Sadly, she replaced one of the last few good Republicans, Senator Johnny Isakson, who was a dignified statesman that worked his way up the political ladder like a politician should. The senator is leaving December 31 due to health reasons. I wish him well.

Christmas

Christmas has always been a holiday that's hard for me to figure out. As a kid I was told it was to celebrate the birth of Jesus and then there was the guy in the red suit who gave toys, and then there were the lights and trees. Christmas is actually several traditions all rolled into one day.

The idea of Santa Claus mainly comes from a 4th century Greek bishop named Saint Nicholas, who gave gifts to poor children. Now we have hundreds of container ships coming from Asia and bringing junk to America. On Black Friday, people wait hours in line to buy the junk and run up their credit card debt. Poor St. Nick is now used as a retail symbol during holiday advertising. As hordes of shoppers rush into stores they may throw a quarter into the Salvation Army bucket, so the helping poor kids thing is covered.

Then there are the pagan traditions. While our Earth desperately needs trees to combat climate change, thousands are chopped down and put inside houses, and then tossed. And while we desperately need to reduce fossil fuel emissions, electric plants across the land must burn more fuel to power all the pretty lights.

I'm one of those few people who've actually read the Bible and I can tell you that if Jesus knew what we've done to his birthday he wouldn't like it. As for me, I've decided not to celebrate it anymore other than buying one gift each for my grandchildren.

For years I've called Christmas "environmental genocide," and I am then called a "Scrooge" for even questioning this bizarre holiday. Plus there is the issue of lying to children about a magic man coming down the chimney. Lying to children can never be a good thing and creates a bad precedent for their future lives.

As a simple man I don't think Jesus would want his birthday to be celebrated at all. And as for the mass retail consumption and various traditions that hurt the environment, I don't see the point. If you want to honor the tradition of St. Nick by giving a few items to the poor, well, that's what the holiday is really all about.

Back To Basics

Getting back to Alice in Wonderland I think author Lewis Carroll was a genius in his ability to depict modern America 150 years into the future. We are now living in a phase of our history where nothing is real anymore and truth, facts, and civility have all lost meaning. If there is something you don't like or don't want to deal with all you have to do is deny it or create a lie about it. Our society has become completely unmoored from facts.

I want to keep blogging and I want to maintain hope, but deep down my gut feeling is that the human species is doomed. We as a civilization are unable to do the things that make sense, and instead do the things that bring us immediate gratification. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die," is our collective motto.

What we need to do is actually follow the example set by Christ and live a simple and nonviolent lifestyle. We need to get our happiness in other ways besides retail orgasms and constant indulgence. We need to stop using people and start thinking about what we can do that really makes a difference. At the end of the day all the partisan chest pounding is meaningless. What really matters is our actions.

I'm an avid recycler and even recycle the items of others. I bring my own shopping bags to grocery stores. I try to lead a simple and humble lifestyle. I wish I could afford a hybrid car because even though it creates a ton of pollution to build one at least they are a good symbol and reminder for a green lifestyle.

One thing that particularly wears me down is the constant hypocrisy I see on both the political Left and Right. No one can smell their own shit any more. As a liberal I will always open my mind and arms to conservatives even though I see them as blind lemmings marching off a cliff. These people need love. To the Christians who provoke a fight with the gay community, I can say that my disappointment in you is particularly high. Learn to love people who are different than you and then you will get a real blessing.

The Earth

Oh, to get to the point of the picture above I wish that we could all just get back to the things that matter. Instead of buying carts full of junk at Christmas, instead of dwelling over gay marriage, or partisan bickering, why can't we just chill out and plant trees? I'm tired of all the comments of disconnection about climate change like, "it's unproven," or "Al Gore is just trying to enrich himself." The science supporting climate change is overwhelming and to question it is simply a form of laziness and denial. If we really want to go out and have a good holiday it needs to be Earth Day on April 22. Better yet, every day should be Earth Day.

So, get drunk on your eggnog, kiss your librarian under the mistletoe, and sing happy Christmas carols until you're hoarse. Worship your nationalism, religion, and your orange bloated cult leader. Go with the flow and enjoy the day, for tomorrow won't be so good. Hold your liquor mugs up high and shout that "America is Great." For in the end, nothing matters except for doing the things that matter.

Me with my foster dog and St. Nick, who is actually my old gym coach.

Yahweh and the Cosmic Egg

Yahweh continues to be the primary god for North America, and recently I've learned a lot more about Him. He doesn't like gay people and He doesn't like women ending their pregnancies, even though it's an ancient practice. He doesn't like Harry Potter, Starbucks holiday cups, yoga, and some new TV show on Amazon Prime called Good Omens. When I was a teenager and attending a fundamentalist Baptist church, I also learned that Yahweh didn't like guys with long hair, rock music, and jeans.

One thing that I do know about Yahweh is that he's a locally grown god that was invented by men (sorry ladies) during the Bronze Age in the land of Canaan. He was the official god of the Kingdom of Israel and later the Kingdom of Judah. He was worshipped not only by the Israelites, but also by other people in the area, including the Edomites, Kenites, Moabites, and Midianites.

Some scholars believe Yahweh is a spinoff from Canaanite religion, which had El as their supreme  god. At the time Yahweh was a sub god in charge of metallurgy. Following the Babylonian captivity era of the 6th century BCE, Yahweh was formalized and canonized into the Hebrew god we know today.

During the Second Temple Period (515 BCE - 70 CE) Yahweh decided to have a son, so he inseminated a young Jewish woman, which was likely quite a shock to her. She had a cute little baby boy named Jesus and thus began the Jewish splinter group called Christianity. Later, Yahweh became Allah and became the foundation of the Muslim faith.

In my last post I said that Yahweh was influenced by the Babylonians, who had their own top god named Marduk. In turn, the Babylonian religion was strongly influenced by the earlier Sumerians. Now, throw in a little influence from the Assyrians and Egyptians, and you have Jehovah, the one true, correct, real, proper God that American evangelicals worship today.

The Cosmic Egg

To summarize, the official, correct god Yahweh was not invented by goat herders in 3,500 BCE, as I said in earlier blog posts. More likely, he was made up by copper miners in the Timna Valley of southern Israel.

Now, if you want a more interesting story let me tell you about the Cosmic Egg, which for some unknown reason exploded 13.8 billion years ago and created the Universe. Yep, I'm talking about the Big Bang Theory.

The whole point of my blog post today is to tell you that the Universe has gone from a single electron hydrogen atom to the extremely complex living organism known as a human. So, if you are not really into the Hebrew copper miner god and are looking for something new to worship, it may as well be the hydrogen atom.

The real god is also gravity and heat, and the story of how supernova explosions and red giants turned hydrogen and helium into heavy metals. Our Earth is the product of dust from three previous stars and without iron and other heavy metals we wouldn't have a planet and we wouldn't have life.

Abiogenesis

The Solar System and planets are believed to have formed from a cloud of dust, with the Sun at the center. Not too long after the Earth was formed, life began to appear in very basic forms. Now, to clarify, the creation of life is called abiogenesis, and is not related to evolution. Secondly, I've heard creationists say that creating the first cell would be like dropping a bunch of parts from the air and have it all come together as a fully assembled B-747. This is nonsense because ancient cells were nothing like the sophisticated cells of today — they started out simple and then grew in complexity.

For life to form on Earth I believe we needed heat, provided by the sun and the cooling Earth core, and movement, provided by the gravitational pull of the moon. We also needed nucleobases and amino acids, which were provided in part by meteorites. How organic compounds ended up on meteorites freaks me out a little, but electrical discharges seem to have played a role.

As the Earth was peppered by organic compounds in meteorites it was only a matter of time before more life-like structures began to emerge. The first pre-life forms of gook had no complex protein machinery but rather simple fatty acids. Under a range of acidity (pH) they began to spontaneously form stable vesicles that were permeable to small organic molecules. Once the vesicles encountered the free fatty acids the life functions of eating and growth began. Slowly, a living cell began cranking up. Once a vesicle was broken off, likely by waves caused by the moon's gravitational pull, then you have a basic form of reproduction. Holy cow, the tough part was getting genetic code to emerge. But in the pre-life environment there were hundreds of types of different nucleotides, such as DNA and RNA, floating around. It may have been a trillion to one odds, but somehow, somewhere one drop of gook self polymerized, which paved the way for a modern cell. Recent experiments show that spontaneous polymerization is possible, such as in the creation of of Phosphoramidate DNA. Once polymerization occurs, it's possible to create new templates or extend existing templates. Now, we are just one tiny step away from life.

Having assembled all the things mentioned above, the goop floats in the ocean and perhaps gets caught in a hydrothermal vent, so now you have the movement of the current and heat. All these factors increases the sub-cell membrane's permeability to monomers. As the temperature cools, spontaneous polymerization can occur, and the cycle repeats. This starts an engine, using basic thermodynamics, where lipids are "stolen" from a vesicle with less polymer. This cycle begins evolution because the little bastards are eating one another and the vesicle that can replicate faster, and grow and divide faster, then dominates the population. Early genomes did, indeed, have a form of coding but it was completely random and thus provided no useful information. But evolution is all about mutation and natural selection and, eventually, increased information. Early mutations first changed the sequence to contain the most common nucleotides, and eventually the cycle stabilized. Next the secondary structures begin to form that begin enzymatic activity. Suddenly, a living, replicating cells emerges and life begins.

Evolution

Once that first living cell emerged the rest of creation was easy. Cells joined other cells to give them an advantage in getting food and self-defense. Over millions of years more complex life forms began to emerge.

Evolution can work both slowly (sexual selection, genetic drift) and through major mutations. Most of these genetic mutations end in disaster but occasionally one will give a creature a major advantage in survival. This creature then multiplies in greater numbers because it has a biological edge over competitors. Millions of years ago hominids left the forests and settled in the savannas of Africa. Continued evolution — both slow and fast — turned them into you and me.

Summary

The best way to understand ourselves, and appreciate our humanity in 2019, is to put our lives into perspective. We are simply part of a journey that started with hydrogen and eventually became humans, which, as far as we know, is the most complex structure in the Universe. There seems to be a natural law of ever-increasing complexity, and I have no idea where that will take us. Maybe we will just do a loop or maybe we will ditch our carbon-based bodies and become part of the fabric of the Universe.

As for the human-invented Yahweh, he showed up at a time when humans didn't have science and it apparently made us feel better to invent gods to explain the unknown. But a god who calls for the execution of gays and slaughters little Egyptian babies can't be all that great. If you want a real god, go to your grocery store and buy a balloon, since helium is the basis of everything and hydrogen balloons are a little too dangerous.

It's interesting that young earth creationists say that the Earth is 5,500 years old, since that is about the same time Yahweh was invented. Enough said.    

Sources:

• The Terribly Tiny God of MAGA Christians by John Pavlovitz

• Yahweh by Joshua J. Mark

• How to Make an Element, NOVA, PBS

• Organic Material in Meteorites and the Link to the Origin of Life, EDP Sciences, 2014

• The Origin of Life - Abiogenesis, Dr. Jack Szostak, Harvard Medical School

• Origin of Organic Compounds on the Primitive Earth and in Meteorites, By SL Miller, HC Urey, and J Oro.

Photo: Alexander Andrews

The 1,001st God

It's Thursday evening and I'm at the aquatic center taking my weekly swim. I go to the bottom of the pool and there I find my favorite thinking spot. There are no cell phones to bug me, no one can reach me. I am all alone and I'm enjoying the peace and serenity.

What am I thinking about? I could be thinking about all the times I had my heart broken or all the bad decisions I've made in life. I could be thinking about my poor country and its broken political system and broken healthcare system, and dying economy. But this time I am thinking about what a dear friend once told me. She said that God is compassion.

Now, my body is wanting to come up for air and I see the lights from the ceiling blurred and swirling on the surface of the water. Nothing is definitive down here because the water blurs the light. But I know that if I don't breathe the peace will soon become darkness.

But I keep thinking. See, here in America the predominant God is Yahweh, the God of the Bronze Age Israelites. It is no secret that the creation of this God was influenced by both the neighbors and invaders of the Kingdom of Judah. The Western God, you know, the "real" correct God is mixed with a little Babylonian and Canaanite theology, and for the icing on the cake is the ancient belief of Zoroastrianism. Later, Rabbinic Judaism emerged and splinter groups emerged as well, including one little salvationist cult called Christianity. The Roman gods just weren't cutting it any more, and in an act of brilliance the Empire morphed from a physical organization to a spiritual one under the umbrella of catholicism. As time went on groups who believed differently continued to spin away from the Roman Catholic Church, and soon there were the Protestants, Calvins, Baptists, and so on.

I let out a little air and see bubbles quickly rise to the surface where they disappear forever. Now I'm thinking about the people who have their own ideas of God. A person once told me that Jesus was an alien from space, while someone else said that God is simply a collective, universal energy.

I don't know, but suddenly air is my primary focus so I rise to the top, take a breath, and return to my own dark abyss. Now I'm thinking about a recent poll on Twitter that asked the following question:

If you could teach everyone in the world one concept, what concept do you believe would have the largest positive impact on humanity?

Now, we are getting somewhere. We are discussing the very reason of why I blog and what I futilely scream about all the time. The survey had 3,900 responses and I could hardly wait to read the answers. As I scrolled down and read hundreds of answers, there was a consistent theme about teaching the world empathy, compassion, kindness, and unconditional love. So, I'm beginning to think my friend is right. Maybe God isn't one of the 1,000 deities invented by men over the course of history. I now realize that God is our more highly evolved attributes that distinguish us from most other animals. God is altruism, compassion, sympathy, kindness, and love. I know that Yahweh remains the main God for Western civilization, but He could be a real bastard at times. He's the guy who murdered little Egyptian babies and ordered people executed for picking up sticks on the Sabbath. He is not my God, nor will he ever be.

And it's easy to talk about "concepts" like compassion but the reality of applying them is far more difficult. From birth, humans are pushed into a pattern of thinking and behavior that is influenced by their upbringing, religion, and other factors. Most people are unable to break from their patterns and mental programming. While they may acknowledge an attribute like "kindness," they may have more overriding behaviors built in like self-righteousness, piousness, arrogance, and selfishness.

The best way for everyone to make a difference is to accept and learn critical thinking, have an open mind, and tolerate competing ideas. This way of thinking creates the foundation for more higher-level behaviors, such as altruism. Many of us grow up in painful environments and the narcissism and sociopathic behaviors arise as coping mechanisms. Many people will go through life self-absorbed and even indifferent or neutral toward the actions needed to save our world, both socially and environmentally. So, those of us who can still feel must feel, and those of us who can still love must love. That is the collective and positive energy that will create the 1,001st God, and the God that becomes the catalyst for real change.

And now I can come up for air.   

Bottom Photo: Lina Trochez Top Photo: Cristian Palmer

Hate Preaching Resurgence

I haven't blogged in a while, but I feel compelled to say something about a new religious group called the New Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement. This is a group of 30 churches that take a literal and extreme interpretation of the Bible. Most shockingly, they call for the execution of everyone in the LGBTQ community.

My reaction to this group is not anger but more-so I'm tired of all the hate. It's strange to me that religions that supposedly promote love are responsible for so much hate in the world.

From childhood many gay people face persecution, and religious people appear to show the most zeal and hatred. LGBTQ members do not provoke fights and don't attempt to harm anyone, yet a group of fundamentalist Christians wants to give gays capital punishment.

For those who have lost their compassion and empathy, let me assure you that gay people have feelings too. They have dreams and aspirations, and they just want to be happy like the rest of us. They are put into this world "different" and must live their entire lives with their differences rubbed in their face.

To the hate groups who are disguised as Christian groups, I have nothing to say. The haters are always going to hate and those of us who can still feel love need to overwhelm all the evil in this world.

Stating the Obvious

The favorite gay bashing verse in the Bible comes from Leviticus, an old law book that evolved over time. Around 500 BCE a group of priests developed the book into its current form. I won't go into all the other extreme and weird rules in this book, but it's evident that Christian extremists cherrypick the versus to fit their agenda.

I also shouldn't have to mention that gay people have no control about who they are. They are simply wired differently than the majority population. To persecute people for this and call for their death is heartbreaking.

Conclusion

I've already covered the gay issue in an earlier blog post,  and I won't dwell on it here. I will only say that I am saddened and discouraged because all the hate in our world never seems to go way. While we have made great strides in the area of social equality, in the past few years I've been seeing a regression. I realize that Donald Trump has created a climate where it's okay to hate in the open again. I realize that America's conservative, religious whites are feeling threatened and are lashing back. At this point I don't know what to say anymore, other than I'm simply sad.

Photo:Jordan McDonald

It's Time To Eat the Rich

Yesterday, I listened to how the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is going to fight single-payer health care with full fury. For me, this is the final straw. The greed in this country is out of control.

Sadly, the red hat masses will swallow all the lies that the corporate elitists say about single-payer care and "Medicare for all." We are the only developed nation that doesn't offer universal healthcare for our citizens, yet we are told it doesn't work. Instead, we buy insurance policies and when we actually need them the insurance carriers fight us tooth-and-nail to get out of paying all of it. In fact, there is a law firm here in Atlanta that advertises the fact that they are "experts in fighting insurance companies." So, you often have to hire a lawyer to get a carrier to pay you, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is calling that a great system? Wake up, red hats!

The History

First we were told that Reagan's "trickle-down economics" would create jobs for the middle class, but it was a complete lie -- most of the money went to the corporate robber barons. More recently, we were told that Trump's corporate tax cut would "create jobs" and "bring jobs back to America." Again, a giant lie because the executives at the top simply kept the excess profits.

I recently read that the CEO of Disney was making $428 million a year, yet some employees at Disneyland in Anaheim, CA could barely get by and were living out of their cars. The wealthy elitists don't care if the underclass starves, and you red hats support this madness.

It's a simple fact that once you are wealthy it's easier to create more wealth. What is worse is that the millionaires and billionaires manipulate the political system to create more wealth for themselves. Soon, all the wealth rises to the top, which we are seeing now. Worse yet, people like the Koch Brothers create front groups that meddle in public policy at even the most local levels. Billionaires are not only trying to control politics, but they run for office themselves, and win!

A Better Economic System

James Madison, one of our country's founding fathers, was a true genius when he created a government that really is near-perfect. Our constitution is the absolute secret to America's success as a nation. Sadly, our democracy was damaged with the Supreme Court's Citizens United case, which gave corporations First Amendment rights. Despite this bad court case, the gerrymandering, and foreign political interference, we still have a good political system that works.

Now, the next step is to acknowledge that capitalism is an utter failure and we need to find a better economic system. I don't know the answer yet, and I've studied the ideas of tightly regulated capitalism and democratic socialism, but I think the ideal economy will be based on some kind of bartering. Greed is a negative human attribute and it's a shame that we have an entire economic system built around it. What we need is the opposite -- an economic system built around empathy.

Should We Really Eat the Rich?

Yeah, of course, I'm promoting cannibalism -- it's an excuse to enjoy ketchup. But, hey, after all it was Marie Antoinette who started the whole thing when she said, "Let them eat cake." That idea didn't turn out well because shortly afterwards the heads of rich people were falling into baskets all over France. 

The truth is, selfish, greedy people are not worth eating because they turn me off. Now, there are plenty of good rich people who give generously and I'm not talking about these folks. What I'm talking about is the overall nature of an economic system that is engineered to suck the last dollar out of the desperate middle class to greater enrich the wealthy. Look at the pharmaceuticals industry, for instance, which works to keep drug prices high rather than helping people. And there are many other examples of this behavior.

Holy Red Hats

When you look at history the religious institutions usually side with the powerful right-wing even at the expense of the people. In Turkey, Islam is siding with the right-wing government and in Russia the Russian Orthodox Church is on the side of Putin's party. A look at history shows that the church took the side of the conservatives in both the Spanish and Russian civil wars. So, it's no surprise that Christian evangelicals are supporting the wealthy elitists in our country now. Some megachurch leaders even justify their own wealth and the wealth of others by preaching the "prosperity gospel," which flies in the face of Christ's teachings and examples.

I've always been intrigued by the statement of Jesus that says: "Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth." Now, to me, this sounds like a green light for a revolution. But maybe what Jesus is saying is that humble people are more open to his teachings. So, yes, a economic system based on the teachings of Christ is a great idea -- love, kindness, etc...

Conclusion

I recently saw a news show where the speaker was saying that some people are incapable of questioning anything because there is something broken in their brains. For some, this is probably true, but if you are able to question, I encourage you to QUESTION EVERYTHING, including your religion, government, and economic system. Don't just swallow everything the corporate-paid talking heads say on the radio or TV.

It is human nature to simply adapt and tolerate a little discomfort rather than to seek change. Our standard of living is no longer better than our parents, and, in fact, we've now reached the point where it's declining. And all the while the super rich are getting richer and engineering the system to screw us over even more. If this is the environment you like, simply because you think you're better looking in a red hat, then I say, "wake up!" Throw that red hat in the trash and become an agent for change!

Look at all the social and political disruption that's going on right now in our country between the haves and have-nots. Rather than a violent revolution I think it's better to just circumvent the greedy and selfish bastards that control our country and then find creative ways to develop our own economy.

As for you red hats, wake up or enjoy your fall over the cliff. 

Photo: Sharon McCutcheon