As we destroy our planet and wallow in our social problems we must soon decide whether to continue the insanity or start making positive changes. This blog is dedicated to social evolution, or the lack thereof.
During this difficult time please spare some money to help the artists — the musicians, painters, chefs, actors, dancers, and comedians. They are the ones who showcase the good side of humanity — our creativity and richness. Many of these artists were already just barely getting by, and now their industries have stopped cold. Send some money to an entertainer who touches your heart. Not someone famous, but one of the hundreds of wonderful, creative people who are just getting by.
Secondly, build up your immune system. Take extra Vitamin C. Contrary to what you may hear, don't stay inside — your body needs sunlight to produce Vitamin D. If you smoke or drink excessively, now might be a good time to give those bad habits up. And exercise!
While the death rate of 2 percent may seem small, if left unchecked the virus would kill 200 million people, which is four time the total death toll of World War II. If no action is taken it would only take 60 days to infect the entire world. The risk of death increases based on your age. People who are in their 70s have an 8 percent chance of death and those 80 and above a 14 percent fatality rate. If the Coronavirus mutates, it could kill far more people.
A lockdown of the entire Western world may be necessary to stop the virus, and it could last 6 weeks. Even then, it only takes one infected person to start another flare up and restart the 60-day clock. So, it's essential that we develop good testing systems and quick response procedures. Every time there is an outbreak it will need to be isolated, and this will need to continue for at least a year when a vaccine is available.
If you get the virus, there is little anyone can do. If it goes into a secondary infection in your lungs, you can get antibiotics, assuming that supplies are available. If you are having trouble breathing, you can be put on a ventilator, assuming there's enough of them.
If you want to explain this pandemic with a conspiracy theory, well, it's unlikely. Viruses have existed for nearly as long as life on this planet. They've had plenty of time to mutate into their current state. Saying that some scientists created them in a lab is an insult to the little bastards.
Please don't describe this virus with a religious explanation unless you like irony. So, you are telling me that God made 8.7 million animal species in a single day, but he couldn't even stop a bat from drinking someone's soup? And now that this virus is spreading around the world, do you think God will say, "Oh, little Johnny is praying for me to protect him. I'll make sure that Uncle Eddie stops sneezing on him." I mean, come on, folks.
Oh, and please don't give me the "God is punishing us" explanation. He already drowned us once, and only one holy family survived. And they were a mighty strong family considering that they built a giant wooden ship that would be hard to build even by today's standards, and even with a shipyard, dry dock, and cranes.
I don't want to hear the prophesy stuff either. If the Coronavirus is a sign of the last days, then what was the Black Death of 1347 or the Spanish Flu of 1918? Was God just messing around with us a little? Heck, we're little shits and certainly deserve it, but the fact is that viruses just live with us. In fact, some of their DNA or RNA is even included in our genome, and their coding helped us to evolve into humans, in certain ways. Hey, if you don't believe me, find someone from the Genetics Society, buy them a drink and get them talking.
Now, on the one hand, we are packing the world with people and making the Earth warmer, which are two things that viruses like. But we're also getting better at identifying and killing them. It's like playing whack-a-mole, which I happen to be very good at playing. Viruses are one of the prices we must pay for being alive. We are fragile, organic creatures who live in a universe that doesn't seem to want us here. Sure, we killed or wiped out most of the large animals that ate us, especially those saber-toothed tigers, which scared the poop out of cavemen. Thank goodness my ancestors were fast at climbing trees. But, see, little Willie, all of us species living on the planet must deal with viruses.
And the strange thing about viruses is that they don't care if they kill their host, which would defy common sense. They don't really think or play poker with the boys, or do anything very productive. They just hijack cells and let you blast them to other creatures when you sneeze. I don't know why they are here — they just are.
For some reason, the 1982 music video below is stuck in my head. Every time there's a government press conference, the music below starts playing in my brain. It's about a scientist who checks into a center for deranged scientists, falls in love with a staff member, rebukes science, and then leaves. The song gives me comfort in a weird, sort of way. It's like when the orchestra played music as the Titanic sank.
It was the height of the Vietnam War and I was 9-years-old, and living in Miami, Florida. I was laying in the living room watching TV with my sister, who had fallen asleep. Suddenly I noticed a light and looked out into the backyard. A small, cylindrical object came into my yard at an angle, hovered for a few seconds, and then shot straight up. It made a "swoosh" sound as it landed and then took off. I had seen a UFO.
My immediate neighbors quickly learned of the sighting and an explanation was given to me. I was told that it was the neighbor's sprinkler system cutting on and spraying water in part of my yard. What I saw was light hitting the water. And the "swish" sound I heard was the sprinkler turning on. Well, maybe that explained it, or maybe it was a rip in the fabric of our universe. After all, I'm the guy who believes that nothing can break the laws of physics. So, maybe the object came from the world where dark energy, dark matter, and God lives. Maybe there are no physics in that world.
Whether it was real or not, the experience did instill in me a lifelong interest in aliens and UFOs. I read books and watched documentaries on them and have always wondered what I really saw. But, now in my older age I've almost given up on the idea of flying saucers. Sure, my obsession with crop circles, cattle mutilations, and spaceships taking away the Big Foot corpses was fun, but it probably wasn't real.
See, the first radio telescope went online in 1937 and over the years scientists kept building bigger telescopes and even started launching them into space. Other than a few quasars and some old Happy Days episodes that bounced off the moon, all we've ever found in space are crickets. So, we humans keep building bigger telescopes, but still crickets. In 2025 a new, massive radio telescope will go online, which will be known as the Square Kilometer Array. As its name implies, this telescope will be a freaking square kilometer large. I'm hopeful that this super telescope will find something in the universe in my lifetime. Since childhood I've had two dreams: to see humans land on Mars and to see the discovery of life beyond our planet.
The Problem
In June I wrote that without the moon and the tides it creates, evolution could have never happened. But it's even more complicated than that. See, without our moon being just the exact right size our planet would wobble and spin too fast. Evolution needs eons of a relatively stable environment, it needs water, and a planet must be at just the right distance from its sun, so that the water doesn't freeze or become steam. This range is known as the Goldilocks Zone or the "habitable zone." So, to find life there must be a Goldilocks planet with a Goldilocks moon.
The good news is that scientists and amateur astronomers are discovering planets all the time, and the total of known planets is now at about 4,000, with more being discovered each week. One estimate is there are 1 trillion planets in the universe. Now, let's look at the hurdles any civilization would need to reach to became a spacefaring species. Assuming a life form is on a warm and stable planet there are many more challenges. First, it only takes one giant solar flare or astroid to destroy an evolving species. Secondly, there are many more challenges, such as having all the needed ingredients for life and getting past volcanos, wars, and the list goes on.
When people say "it would be a 1 in trillion odds for an advanced civilization to emerge from organic materials," well, they are probably right. We won't even start getting data from the new, super radio telescope until 2027 and by then I'll be 67 years old. So, I don't know if I'll get to realize my dream of being alive when extraterrestrial life is discovered or not. I would be thrilled if we even found living cells on another planet, but getting from a cell to an intelligent animal that builds spacecraft is a massive leap. Unless astronomers prove otherwise in the next few years, it is my belief that we are all alone in the visible universe. Now, I'm not sure how big the universe is beyond what our devices can detect and there may also be billions of universe, so having an advanced civilization in one out of every trillion planets may be no big deal, but for me it is.
Cosmic Loneliness
What makes humans exceptionally unique is our consciousness. We are the poets, writers, and musicians who give our universe life. We even have a super evolved feature called altruism, where we will sacrifice ourselves to help others. We are an incredibly amazing species. The one thing that really freaks me out is that our brains evolved to make us much smarter than we need for basic survival. That doesn't make sense to me because it breaks the rules of evolution, which only adapts enough to avoid prey, get a good meal, and reproduce. So, somewhere in our evolution there had to be some wild mutations that created a human with a bunch of extra brain mass. Or, maybe an earlier alien civilization altered us, or maybe there is a God who somehow lives in the non-physical world. Whatever the case may be, a consciousness developed in our big brains, and along with that I believe there must be responsibility.
Maybe other civilizations never become advanced because they kill themselves with war and pollution. I look at our own civilization and I grieve deeply. We are wasting our planet and the incredible miracle that is us. Our religions and obsession with living in the present are both great evils because they distract us from what is important, which is taking care of our planetary home and the billions of creatures that we coexist with.
Our Responsibilities
Through thousands of years of selective breeding we turned wolves into dogs, and as I write this I have three of them in my backyard. They have no control over the fact that humans are digging up ancient swamps and burning them. In fact, for 500 years we've been burning swamps to keep us warm, to give us light, and to power our transportation system and industry. At the same time, our human population finally hit 1 billion in 1804. Since that time population has doubled six times and is about to hit 8 billion. I have already seen population double once in my lifetime, and if I live long enough I could see it double again. All these people want to burn fossil fuel to make their lives more comfortable, and the end result is we are creating a disaster.
So, what I'm trying to say, is that we are a 1 in a trillion miracle and we have a great responsibility to care for our beautiful planet and all of its inhabitants, including my dogs. It took several billion years of evolution to get us to our current point and in just a few decades we are fucking the whole place up. The pollution in our air, soil, and water is bad enough. Fishing our oceans to depletion and destroying millions of other species is bad enough. But our greatest disaster is how we are releasing 37 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year. For billions of years we had a relatively stable climate that allowed life on our planet to flourish and advance; we fucked it all up in 50 years, and I believe it will take us 1,000 years to recover. WHAT IS WRONG WITH US? I believe the 1,000-year punishment to ourselves will become known as "The Era of Learning."
Humans are a stubborn species and we don't learn lessons easily. But I do believe some of us will survive the climate disaster and slowly work to repair the massive damage. More and more fossil-burning engines and plants will be taken offline and replaced with clean energy sources. Millions of trees will be planted to mitigate the damage, and slowly we will heal. The people leading this effort won't be the general, brainless, masses, but rather it will be the handful of activists who give a damn. To those of you who are climate change activists, I dedicate my blog to you.
As a species we are finally starting to do a fairly good job of avoiding war, so I'm seeing some progress. There is still the risk of bio terror, nuclear accidents, and astroids hitting us. It's been a long climb to get to where we are now and I believe that we'll continue to get through our challenges. We are a tough and hearty species — we can do it.
The Future
Perhaps it's our destiny to seed the universe, and I think it is. I used to oppose this idea because humans destroy and foul everything we touch, but after the Era of Learning I think we will have our act together enough to be responsible spacefarers. I hope so.
In the mean time, I can't say enough how I have the most deepest and incredible respect for activists who work for social, environmental, and animal welfare causes. You are the ones with the special callings and I love each of you deeply. You are the ones who are saving the world. Thank you.
Ayn Rand was an author, philosopher, and scriptwriter who died in 1982. She is most famous for her popular novels "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged." Her name and book "Atlas Shrugged" enjoyed a resurgence a few years ago when politicians Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, and Ted Cruz began talking about her work.
My initial take on "Atlas Shrugged" is that it promotes laissez-faire capitalism and the idea that companies should do what they want without government interference. The idea of both the book and Ms. Rand's philosophy is to allow individuals to obtain their highest objectives, which will add to the betterment of humankind. The insinuation is that government regulation, the poor, and federal programs all put a stranglehold on individual rights and personal achievement. Her book is a complete flip of Karl Marx because she sees the capitalists as the good guys and the government and poor as "parasites," "looters," and "moochers," who want some benefits from the capitalist's labor. There are plenty of things wrong with this philosophy, most notably the deck of cards in this country is stacked in favor of the capitalist and the poor worker or welfare recipient is only wanting a little equity.
I do understand Ms. Rand's perspective. She lived in Russia during the Communist takeover and she saw her middle class family transformed from a good life to a hard life where they were required to share an apartment with two other families.
Objectivism
At the core of Ms. Rand's writings and lectures is a philosophy she developed called Objectivism. To put her ideas in my words I'll say that Objectivism is all about recognizing reality. We can only determine reality from our five senses and even then the facts in our world must get through our reality distortion filters. We taint our realities with all types of delusions that fit in with our preconceived notions of how the world should be. It is my lifelong struggle, and it should be everyone's, to get through the white noise of life and discover what reality really is. For me, reality is my religion.
In this part of her philosophy I agree totally. If everyone practiced critical thinking and made decisions based on rational thought rather than emotion, our society would be much better. But then her ideas take an unpleasant turn into the world of self-interest. First, she said that the pursuit of happiness should be the moral purpose of life. This ideas belies Christianity and my own philosophy. Christianity says the purpose of life is to "glorify God," by living a Jesus-like life. According to my philosophy, known as "Todd's Tenet," the purpose of life is to make a contribution, either by helping nature, other animals, or fellow humans. Yes, the Rand doctrine promotes self achievement to make the world better, but you can also be a greedy, selfish ass, and if that makes you happy, so be it. As for me, I have zero respect for people who live for themselves. Wealth does not impress me one iota and it's not a criteria I use for sizing someone up.
Granted, most people on this earth are just trying to survive, and have nothing left to give to others. But then there's people who focus on their own self-comfort, hedonism, and hoarding wealth. The Rand philosophy says this is okay, but I put these people in the EPS category — all they do is Eat, Poop, and Screw and make no contribution to the world. Sadly, 80 percent of humanity falls into this category.
Altruism
So, okay, hold on here. We are about to dive deep. Ms. Rand dismisses altruism as a standard for morality. But I am the opposite. Only a few animals in the animal kingdom show this highly advanced behavior and it's one of the few things that make humans stand out from other creatures. Altruism is what makes humans special. When Atlanta was flooded in September 2009 I think of the guy who drowned trying to save a complete stranger. He is the greatest hero to me. You can drive around in your luxury car and enjoy your big house, but I respect you not. You are nothing but a resource user and your large environmental footprint is simply sinking humanity faster.
However, having said all that, many people misinterpret what Ms. Rand means by "selfish." Indeed, we are all selfish because it is essential to our survival and happiness. For instance, Ms. Rand rightly argues that even love is a form of selfishness, and she's sort of right. According to one of her essays, she argues that selfishness is a virtue because it enables one to achieve and guard their own well-being. Furthermore, she argues that one must have a serious concern for their own interests to have a "healthy, purposeful, and fulfilling life." I'm okay with this definition, but where things go wrong is when people put their own comfort and welfare over others and the natural world around them.
Environment
Sadly, Ayn Rand and her followers neither had nor have any love for the environment. A search through the Ayn Rand Institute website and similar sites show a general attitude that environmentalism is a move backwards in human progression. Now, Ms. Rand was a smart cookie and if she saw the current environmental problems now she might change her tune. Her followers trouble me because they are supposed to be supporting Objectivism, the search for reality, but they push it aside in their quest to push human comfort at the expense of the planet's health. This is the typical right-wing hypocrisy that I see every day.
In my research I found articles where Rand disciples support GMOs, oppose compact florescent lightbulbs, and say that a bigger environmental footprint is better, as opposed to a smaller one that would compromise our lifestyles. Rand lovers accuse us tree huggers of installing fear and guilt into people. So, listen to me, you objective Rand people — do the research yourself, turn off your pro-corporate filters, and if you think that we can triple human population, and if you think corporations can do whatever they want, and if you believe all that won't harm the environment, then you have lost your reality.
Religion
On March 29, 1974 Ayn Rand did a fantastic interview with James Day, focusing on the topic of "The Ideal Man." I encourage everyone to view this 25-minute interview because she succinctly and brilliantly summarizes her positions.
Both she and I have the exact position on religion, which is to say it's dangerous. Religion is where someone exempts themselves from reality and invents a story to explain something that's unknown. Sure, there are a lot of things we still don't know in this Universe but that is the purpose of science — to expand our knowledge. Ms. Rand sums it up perfectly when she says, "I don't believe that a lack of knowledge is a license to start inventing fantasies." She said it's not necessary for humans to be omnipotent, but we need to act appropriately with the knowledge that we do have.
Ms. Rand was a confirmed atheist and also pro-choice, so, again it's weird that Christians have no problem crawling into bed with pro-Rand capitalists.
Summary
Ms. Rand spent much of her career talking about a rational person who is guided exclusively by reason. The "ideal man" in her mind is independent and has great self-esteem. A key tenet to her philosophy is that all people must have the right to freely choose and determine their own destiny, without control or domination by anyone else. Now, I can understand her viewpoint since she grew up in the Soviet Union and saw the failure of collectivism first hand. In fact, I agree with her that communism and socialism are failed systems, but I also think capitalism is destined to fail, and especially her brand of hands-off capitalism. To the contrary of her beliefs, I don't think regulated capitalism strangles innovation, but, rather, it's the best of several bad economic systems. Unregulated capitalism offers short-term wealth but destroys the environment and exploits the working class, and ultimately self-destructs. Unregulated capitalism is where the wealth moves quickly to the top, and at least regulation slows the process down. And to say that regulation smothers innovation is not necessarily true since 60% of rich people inherited their wealth. We live in a country of spoiled 1-percenters who want even more, and justify their greed and selfishness with books like "Atlas Shrugged," which views any challenge to their avariciousness as mooching and parasitical. No wonder Paul Ryan digs this book, you squirmy little pig.
The only economic system that will ever work on this planet is one that is driven by the best human attribute, which is altruism, and NOT one that is driven by our worst attribute, which is blind selfishness at the expense of others. To me, wealth makes you look bad, not good. You can still be a fantastic innovator and live a simple life because that gives you humility, which is an attribute I respect.
Now, getting back to Jesus Christ. As I've said before, Jesus actually provides the model for a sustainable society and environment. Where I am troubled is when Jesus pushes his exclusivity stuff, basically saying accept me or else be a roasted weenie for a billion years. But I believe Jesus was just a man and I do not believe that the Universe has any supernatural element whatsoever. So, when I take the teachings of Jesus allegorically instead of literally it makes Him even greater to me. By that, I'm saying that when he talks about the "kingdom," he's talking about everyone who's accepted his model for living. In that term, I am a Christian. And Jesus was all about altruism and Ayn Rand was not.
I guess Todd the Toad is a philosopher too, and my vision is a society where we CONNECT to nature, and not DISCONNECT just because Ayn Rand says that makes us primitive. She is dead wrong. In my world grass lawns will be gone and we will all live in small houses, powered by clean energy. We will have vehicles built to last 20 years with zero emissions. We will lead simple lives and get our happiness through relationships and community and not by hoarding junk, and NOT by going to the mall every Christmas season and running up credit card debt. Materialism is the antithesis to both environmentalism and true Christianity, and even though Ms. Rand gives you the green light to reward yourself with junk, you will never find the happiness that she talks about.
Ms. Rand was a great philosopher and gave us at least a benchmark that allows us to compare and contrast our own feelings. Even though she has become a role model for right-wing ideologues she didn't think of herself as a conservative and only subscribed to one political belief — radical capitalism.
She was a firm believer in individualism, but it's unrealistic to talk about that when human population has nearly tripled in my lifetime and all our selfish actions are simply sinking our mother ship faster. She believed that government should only do one thing — protect individual rights. This belief makes the wild assumption that corporations will do the right things and a few will. But most will pillage and rape the environment and working class to make the maximum quarterly profit. See, Ayn, there is so much you didn't think about. These corporations that you loved are locusts and beasts that consume everything. Didn't you care about the future of your planet?
"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 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.
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.
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.
