Hello, for my first post I have chosen to introduce an alternative cosmology.
(Let me preface this by mentioning that I am not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to cosmology and physics; I just happen to have read about this theory and found it interesting. I welcome anyone who is more knowledgeable about the subject to comment on it.)
In short, plasma cosmology argues that electromagnetism is the main force shaping the universe rather than gravity. The reason for this is that most of the universe that we know of consists of plasma, rather than regular matter. The stars are plasmas, auroras are plasmas, nebulas are plasmas, and on and on.
One of the most baffling things about the universe is its filamentary structure. However, novelty plasma globes also exhibit this type of behavior. When electrons flow through a plasma, magnetic fields form around it and compress it more closely together, resulting in filaments of plasma forming.
Another interesting fact is that electromagnetic force is much more powerful when acting on plasmas than gravity is. While the force of gravity is the inverse of the square of the distance between two objects, electromagnetism is only inverse to the distance. Therefore gravity tapers off far sooner than magnetic force does, meaning that at the macro-cosmic scale electromagnetism should be dominant rather than gravity.
Among some of the interesting implications of this theory is that the Sun is actually powered from external electrical currents rather than from within. As the theory goes, the filaments of plasma that streak the universe act as conductors for massive flows of electrons that cause the stars to burn, rather than internal nuclear reactions.
Oh, and it also holds that the universe has no beginning or end.
This post is going to be a personal one but in it I hope to bring to light how it was that I came to atheism. I didn’t wake up one day and decide that I would abandon the idea of god and reject the bible’s teachings. It was a long, arduous process throughout which I felt torn apart, confused, frightened and filled with inner turmoil. There was nothing simple or rushed in this transformation. But in the end I gained more than I could have ever thought possible.
I was born in October of 1984 and raised in a Christian family. It wasn’t a very strict family and though we did goto church it wasn’t all that often. The times I did goto church and/or Sunday school I was taught about the history of creation and what was right or wrong. Though I cannot personally remember, relatives have said that I used to imitate preachers and pray when I was just a kid.
Move ahead to when I was fourteen. I started to hang out with people who for the most part were Christian but a few of my friends were either agnostic or atheist. I would lecture them on denying their creator and would feel genuine sadness over what I thought would be their ill-fate when they would finally meet their maker. I had even gone to a bible camp for a few days once and I can honestly tell you that at the time I felt like Jesus or god or something had touched me. I know now what I felt was adrenaline and the rush of being with so many like-minded individuals.
Skipping ahead to seventeen years of age, I was in high school and had taken quite a liking to science, especially astronomy. This was when the first seeds of doubt had begun to form in my mind. I don’t know what exactly separates the believer from the non-believer but I do think one personality trait really benefits: skepticism. This is not to say you need to argue over everything but if you can question what you think and what you ‘know’ then you have started your first few steps away from the shackles of ignorance.
I was that type of person. I questioned myself and what I thought in other areas, not just religion. I remember once someone had challenged my belief in god and I immediately began to refute what they had said. I realized right at that moment that I was not answering their question from any logical perspective but was doing it in almost a reflexive way. That person’s question did not even enter the logic area of my brain but instead, just like in a cartoon where the character changes the train’s destination by pulling a lever, went down the emotional track and was answered in a purely emotional fashion.
I had to come to grips with my new found revelation later that day. I had literally almost felt my brain being retarded. Couple that with my new appreciation of science and I had a problem that I felt I needed to come to terms with.
I started to feel a sort of intangible kinship with science. Here I was questioning myself and what I believed only to realize that science behaved much in the same way. Science is set up to question itself, to challenge itself and it’s understanding of the universe. You have an innumerable amount of people that do nothing but dedicate themselves to the pursuit of knowledge. They question themselves, they question current theories, they question past theories. Many times they are right but many times they are wrong. And that ability to re-factor, rethink and re-examine concepts and ideas you have held true, regardless if it meant you were wrong, drew me to it like nothing before.
This left me at odds with myself, and prompted what was probably the most difficult step. I couldn’t believe in science and believe in god. No matter how the religious try to swing it, the two are incompatible. But I wasn’t ready to become atheist. I even felt real fear at calling myself agnostic. All the years of believing with every fiber in my being that god would strike me down and send me to hell affected me. Indoctrinating children at a young age will brainwash a child’s mind and to say otherwise is sheer and utter ignorance.
By the time I was eighteen I was a full fledged agnostic. Still not ready to go at it 100% and call myself atheist but I was on the band wagon and loving it. There were two main reasons why I couldn’t go all the way. One was what I said earlier: Afraid that if I was wrong god would punish me. But secondly, and this is why I have this site, I had no community. There wasn’t an “atheist church”. No place to meet with fellow skeptics and share our knowledge and experiences, or at least none that I knew of. Plus I was afraid of how my family would feel about me. Would they judge me? Would they disown me? (They didn’t by the way, much to my satisfaction)
When I was about twenty-one I read a book: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. I was immediately changed. I mean, here was a guy that understood me. It was ok to be atheist, it was ok to doubt myself and question what I believed and there were plenty of other people who felt the same. After I read that book I went on a crusade if you will; reading anything I could get my hands on. Watching debates all day, everyday, with people like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.
It wasn’t long after that I was able to call myself atheist with pride. No more feeling guilty about doubting god or challenging the Christian belief system. It was a change in me that was epic in scale and reward. I take the philosophy of science and reason and use it in all aspects of my life today. My only hope with this site is to help people in similar situations. I know what it’s like to believe in god and feel like everyone who questions that is ridiculous. I understand Christians and empathize with them. The only words of wisdom I hope I can convey to you is that you need to question. Always question yourself and your surroundings. Ask your self why? Why do you believe in what you believe. Try and step back as far away as you can from yourself, away from any emotional bias and figure it out.
Hopefully this helps answer any questions people might have of why I dedicate such a large portion of my life to this cause. And I say that without any embarrassment because this is a cause. Religion affects so many facets of our lives from individual rights to politics to how we even think as human beings that I couldn’t live with myself not trying to make some dent, however small it may be, in this world. If I only save one person from a life of ignorance then that will have made all of this worthwhile. Thanks everyone.
Today is just a quick post on a very renowned book from Richard Dawkins. I’m sure both atheists and Christians alike have heard of The God Delusion.
It is a wonderful book and I recommend it to anyone religious or not. The book was made to go into more detail, topics that were raised in Dawkins “The Root of All Evil?” a documentary which I also highly recommend and is broken into two parts: “The God Delusion” and “The Virus of Faith”.
Dawkins writes that The God Delusion contains four “consciousness-raising” messages:
Atheists can be happy, balanced, moral, and intellectually fulfilled.
Natural Selection and similar scientific theories are superior to a “God hypothesis” — the illusion of intelligent design — in explaining the living world and the cosmos.
Children should not be labelled by their parents’ religion. Terms like “Catholic child” or “Muslim child” should make people flinch.
Atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind.
This book is quite a bit more personal with me. My next article will be about my transformation into atheism but suffice to say that this is the book that took me from a frightened agnostic to an unapologetic atheist and is so well written and put together that I wish more fledgling agnostics read it to commit themselves fully to atheism.
That’s it for now, be ready for my next article “A Reasonable Transformation” where I discuss my change from Christian to agnostic and then finally to atheist and all the inner turmoil and fear that went along with it. And be sure to check out The God Delusion (The book) as well as the “The Root of All Evil?” documentary.
After a long hiatus I have returned. Let’s jump right into it then…
I have to really stop saying things to the effect of “Oh man, can religious people get any more delusional?” or “Wow, can they really believe that?” because I am quite honestly running out of things to say.
Todays topic is about a little protein called laminin. Laminin is a protein that basically help “hold” our cells together. Why is this such a fascinating subject you might ask? Because religious people have once again taken something natural and given it a supernatural meaning. Let’s take a look at the text book diagram of this substance:
Yes, I’m sure you can already guess. When Christians see something resembling a cross you can always expect them to explain it with a slight bias (aka god). They believe that this is akin to the “made in Taiwan” you see printed on the bottom of man made objects. It wasn’t enough that god created us but he had to stamp us too. Sounds a tad bit vain don’t you think?
I won’t even get into the actual origins of the cross because honestly I want to write this article and leave as quickly as possible without having the utter ignorance of religion to ruin what’s left of my day.
So we saw the textbook image of what laminin looks like. Let’s look at an actual image of this god-molecule:
That’s starting to look not so much like a cross but apparently this matters little to people with faith. So, Christians believe that god must exist because one of many molecules inside our body sort of looks like a squiggly cross. This made me laugh so hard that I thought this video of Louie Giglio talking about Laminin was a joke:
There’s not much to really say as far as refuting this. All I can really do is point out that just because you see a molecule inside us that vaguely resembles a pagan symbol representing the cardinal directions doesn’t mean that your god exists.
Now I want you to take a look at this next photo. It’s a picture of a distant galaxy:
So you can see where this is going. Christians are trying to say the evidence of god exists everywhere from the outer reaches of our universe to the smallest particles in our body. This sort of reasoning is so illogical, so ridiculous that it makes me unsure if I even should continue to post on a site like this. Aren’t we past seeing mystical representations in nature? Laminin is a flexible protein and it’s arms can fold into a multitude of configurations. Not to mention the Christian cross is simply two perpendicular lines. You’re bound to find two lines in nature somewhere if you look hard enough. And thats really what this sort of logic is. Christians don’t approach science skeptically. They don’t question themselves or what they believe and already have the answer. They simply try to mold reality to fit their desires and justify their mystic beliefs.
I think the best way to finish this article is with another “Wow, can they really believe that?”
I don’t really mind the mormons on their bicycles and their nice little ties. It keeps things interesting and them coming up to me randomly is just fun really. But what I don’t like is getting hassled at KFC by random Christian families. It was a mom and a few children asking random people in line if they knew who David and Goliath were and thought it was hilarious that only a few out of the many people did indeed actually know. One customer they asked replied with “Of course I do, enough people in this country are going to burn in hell.”
That stuff really pisses me off. I hate the blind arrogance these people have towards their own stockpile of fairy tales. Acting as if that little circle of knowledge they possess should be as common as knowing your ABC’s.
I once was in a bathroom at the urinal and some guy started talking to me. He asked if I had accepted jesus in my life. Now listen guys/gals, I’m glad that you found jesus and he helps you out and everything. But when I’m urinating and/or have the drunken munchies and am trying to eat some unhealthy KFC, can you please just hold it for a second? Bother me later with your stupid questions. Thanks…
Sorry for the lack of posts. I’ve been hitting the bottle harder than usual and have been pretty busy with work. I’ve decided to take this blog in a new direction (obviously) and add more personal information and experiences because there really are only so many things to talk about when it comes to religion.
I already know the responses I’m going to get “Oh you drink a lot? Of course you do, without god’s moral influence…” but it’s a risk I’m willing to take in order to get some more content on here.
To be perfectly blunt though: I’m pretty fucking lazy. So, this won’t become a personal blog per se, but will definitely have a bit more to it. We’ll see what happens. If you ever type in www.whereisyourgod.com and get a blank page then I probably drank myself to death and stopped caring about you people. Or maybe I just stopped caring about paying for my web hosting bill…whatever really. So, cheers! Towards a new direction and hopefully more regular updates.
Ever hear religious ’scientists’ talk about evolution? They might say something to the effect of criticizing evolution and/or even dismissing it completely. (Kent Hovind anybody?)
It’s nigh time to set the record straight on this topic. Religious people like to debate evolution but I’m sorry folks (Christians, etc.) this is not the case at all. To debate evolution or deny it’s existence is comparable to denying gravity or the speed of light. Evolution is more than just some scientific theory, comparable to theism in it’s validity.
Evolution is scientific fact, not a debate, that is self-evident in everything we observe in biological nature. For example: bacteria exposed to antibiotics but not entirely killed will become resistant to that drug. Tracing back the roots of evolution and the similarities between species is not some vague hypothesis that only atheists spout to debunk god. It’s a complex and easy to observe fact and a lot of Christians seem to have a misunderstanding of evolution.
I recently heard a clip from the movie “Expelled” where Ben Stein says something to the effect of “Well, Darwin’s theory doesn’t explain where life came from.” This shows what a basic misconception of evolution that people have. Christians tend to think of it as an alternative to the bible and our ‘creation’ but it really isn’t. It’s not even supposed to.
Evolution teaches how simple organism evolve into more complex organisms. How they adapt to their environments and where our ancestors came from. It doesn’t explain how life began per se and doesn’t claim to.
Scientists have categorized thousands of animals and their origins and how they all relate to each other in a biological classification that’s organized into eight taxonomic ranks: Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus and Species. Species being the one we are more familiar with on a day to day basis.
I’d recommend that anyone criticizing evolution to take a deeper look into it and study its many facets. There’s a lot more to it than just ‘random mutation’ though that is a part of it. It’s a very sound and observable function of biology and any religious person that tries to say otherwise has seriously ignored the tremendous amount of scientific data pertaining to it.
If you have ever debated a religious person you will find a few key arguments that they will turn to in order to try and prove their side. One of these key issues are morals and where they come from.
Christians will argue that morals stem from god otherwise “Why would we do good things or help one another?”. They say that all good things come from a god and that all evil acts arise from the devil.
If you really want to study morals and get into the “meat and potatoes” of it’s philosophy I recommend reading about moral relativism, moral absolutism and moral universalism. However, the purpose of this post isn’t to get down and dirty with the finer aspects of philosophical debate but to try and provide a more basic and practical alternative theory.
We generally live our lives not truly understanding why we do things. Why is it that women with bigger hips are generally found more attractive than smaller hipped women? Why are we attracted to each other? Where does the desire to do good come from? For each of these there is at least some sort of scientific theory which tries to explain them and usually does a pretty god job. Some better than others as it is hard to differentiate between upbringing and genetics (currently at least). One good example is women with bigger hips: Men might find them more attractive because of a larger pelvis bone, which can make birth easier. These are things we probably aren’t consciously aware of, but are there instinctively for an evolutionary reason.
But we just don’t really think about it too deeply (at least some of us). All of these are great questions and some can be argued extensively by philosophers and scientists. I personally subscribe to a more evolutionary explanation. In that, we as a race have come together like no other species before us. We have built great civilizations, come to understand our universe better than any other animal and have mastered our environment to such a degree that was unheard of before our reign on this planet.
I believe that evolution and morality go hand in hand. Because of humans working together and helping out others near them in a community, we were able to cooperate to a much higher degree, enabling us to advance both intellectually and technologically. This sort of cooperation led to tribes and other such small communities and kept expanding until we come to what we have today.
I also think other things come into play when it comes to explaining morality; such as genes, society, upbringing, taboos and the like. The main point I am trying to make is that there are alternatives to explaining morality other than resorting to a deity which controls our every action. And that if you have any self respect you should at least try to do some research before falling back on “god explains all”.
I wanted to post a link about a favorite video of mine. It’s an unmoderated 2 hour discussion between Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett.
I think it’s a great conversation and they cover everything from atheism to philosophy to science and much more. I definitely recommend this video to anyone who is interested in some of the more well known atheists of our time. This is a 2 hour video but it’s definitely worth it. Enjoy.
Today’s article will be a fairly common topic and I felt that I should more clearly state my position on religious references in our society. You’ll hear a lot of atheists that seem to want to take out any reference to god found in anything related to government. Some examples would be our currency saying “In God We Trust”, or the famous “One nation under god” in our pledge of allegiance.
At first, I was against things like this. I thought “Hey, if it’s always been there just quit complaining and leave it.” It wasn’t until later that I found out that it wasn’t always like this. “One nation under god” was added to our pledge of allegiance in 1954. It was pushed by The Knights of Columbus (a catholic fraternal group from New York) several times and failed until President Eiesnhower passed the bill saying:
“These words will remind Americans that despite our great physical strength we must remain humble. They will help us to keep constantly in our minds and hearts the spiritual and moral principles which alone give dignity to man, and upon which our way of life is founded.”
When I hear a Christian argue that you should not change our country or the principles it was founded upont religion I really want to laugh because that is exactly what happened to our pledge of allegiance. It made no mention of a deity until a group tried over and over again to change it. (A less obvious example would be “In God We Trust” which was added during the civil war”)
Our country was built upon separation of church and state. The founding fathers were secularists and that is something, we today, need to remind ourselves of.
I know there are probably hundreds of examples of religious references in our society. For example: the ten commandments that were removed from a courthouse. This one I had to think about for awhile but came to the conclusion that the decision to remove them was the right one. Though in themselves the ten commandments aren’t necessarily wrong or conflicted with morals we have today; they still have no reason to be advertised at a government building. All of our laws should be based upon the constitution, not an ancient book written in a different country.
If you feel differently please post a comment and get a discussion going. On a side note, I think I will figure out how to add forums to this site in order to have an easier way of debating.
Save to Browser Favorites
Ask
backflip
blinklist
BlogBookmark
Bloglines
BlogMarks
Blogsvine
BUMPzee!
CiteULike
co.mments
Connotea
del.icio.us
DotNetKicks
Digg
diigo
dropjack.com
dzone
Facebook
Fark
Faves
Feed Me Links
Friendsite
folkd.com
Furl
Google
Hugg
Jeqq
Kaboodle
kirtsy
linkaGoGo
LinksMarker
Ma.gnolia
Mister Wong
Mixx
MySpace
MyWeb
Netvouz
Newsvine
PlugIM
popcurrent
Propeller
Reddit
Rojo
Segnalo
Shoutwire
Simpy
Slashdot
Sphere
Sphinn
Spurl.net
Squidoo
StumbleUpon
Technorati
ThisNext
Webride
Windows Live
Yahoo!
Email This to a Friend
If you like this then please subscribe to the 
