I’m reading a book called The God Part of the Brain by Matthew Alper. Mostly, I think it’s a pretty interesting book. (there’s one thing that really bugs me about it, but otherwise it’s a good read). Anyway, he talks about how mystical experiences are found across cultures, which implies that there is a genetic component to them. In other words, every culture in recorded history talks about having mystical experiences so it must be something happening in the brain that is genetic. There must be genes associated with the way the brain works in certain circumstances that cause that phenomenon in people around the world.

Let’s define a mystical experience first. Dan Merkur, author of Gnosis: An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions and Unions, lists the five most common symptoms of a mystical experience (from The God Part of the Brain, pg 134)

  • a sense of unity or totality
  • a sense of timelessness
  • a sense of having encountered ultimate reality
  • a sense of sacredness
  • a sense that one can not adequately describe the richness of their experience

I was deeply religious as a child, from about age 4 to 12. I was so terrified of burning in hell that I was baptized 3 times in 3 different churches. I went to Sunday school, church, bible camp, I sang hymns, I prayed, I studied and read my bible, and had bible lessons for a short while. But in all those years, I never once had a mystical experience. I never felt god. I never felt the touch of the divine. Read the rest of this entry »

o i dare u!All day long I’ve been thinking about you. I wanted to write a nice post for you for Thanksgiving. Unfortunately I am feeling a bit frustrated and unable to focus on anything.

So, I thought I’d use this space to share some Lolcat love and also what I’m thankful for.

One thing I’m really grateful for is you, the people who read my thoughts and musings. It means a lot to me, so thanks!

I’m really grateful to science and scientists who have done such amazing work over the ages to observe and research the world around us. I am especially grateful to the science of medicines that make my life better, like allergy relievers, eye drops, ibuprofen and acetaminophen, acid reducers, just to name a few. Also hand cream makes my life better too. And eyeglasses, thanks Ben Franklin (…oh, he invented bifocals. Well, thanks to Ben Franklin anyway. He’s a founding father. But thanks to whoever invented eyeglasses!)

funny-pictures-cat-sees-pumpkin-brainsThanks to Tempur Pedic, and big TV’s, the inventor of the personal computer and the internet. Thanks to whoever came up with ergonomic stuff like keyboards and trackballs, and comfy office chairs! And dual monitors, too. :)

Thanks to my awesome longsuffering husband Butch, who lets me do basically whatever I like (don’t worry, he gets treated well in return!) and who loves me and makes me happy everyday, and to my awesome dogs that drive me crazy. I love my little family!

Thanks to my awesome friends and the people that are or have become like family to me. You know who you are. I love you.

Thanks to our founding fathers for the Bill of Rights, and making sure we had freedom of religion, and from religion in there, as well as freedom of speech, and the right to bear arms.

Thank you so much to the all rats and bonobos and monkeys and chimps and e. coli that die in the name of science every day. Thanks for research (oh, yeah.. see above.. obviously I really love science!)

Read the rest of this entry »

Darwin_2

The other day I was pondering how our bodies have features that are poorly designed. Not to get too personal, but I have a hard time with coughing over the least little thing. Sometimes if I inhale wrong, my uvula freaks out and I start to cough like crazy. It’s horrible.

So I wanted to write down some goofy examples to share with you, as if there were a god, he’s pretty bad at designing. Then my mind kind of fizzled out, so I thought, hell, I’m not the first person to come up with this brilliant idea. I’ll Google it. That’s when I found the following video, which sums it up in about 6 minutes rather perfectly.

Neil deGrasse Tyson did a talk back in late 2006 where he ended with the following: (I have reproduced most of his slides below for your convenience)

Read the rest of this entry »

thinking-cat-is-thinkingLast week, I ran some errands with Butch. One of them involved me waiting for him to take a test which he thought was going to be a half hour. It turned out that it was an hour and a half, which was actually good considering they had 3 hours allotted.

I was bored out of my mind after about 12 minutes of sitting in the car, and started to find ways to occupy myself. I got out and wandered around to look at all the different lichens on the trees, but I didn’t have enough light to get any decent pictures. I paced , looking at ants, then sat in the car and read my book for awhile, tried not to think about how much Monster energy drink I had consumed on the way there, and let my mind generally wander around. It was excruciating. :P

At one point I noticed that there was a decorative wall that had the top knocked off, around a little flower garden near the front doors (which were locked so I couldn’t go in and get rid of the huge amount of Monster now making me miserable). Next to it were lots of bits of broken concrete, but among them, like a shining miracle, was a smooth brown river stone. I picked it up and thought how lucky I was to find something so wonderful in all that chaos.

Miracle: An event that appears inexplicable by the laws of nature and so is held to be supernatural in origin or an act of god.

Neece's Miracle Rock

Neece holding the Miracle Rock

Of course, I was just being silly. It was just a misplaced stone from another flower bed, but I was thinking how easily it is to see something that stands out as somehow special or miraculous. I slipped it in my pocket with a smirk. My sacred touch with the divine (NOT!). It reminded me of the way people see patterns in randomness and claim it to be divine, such as the magical stump and the magical bird shit. It’s really nothing more than pareidolia.

Back in the car, waiting patiently, I glanced up at the rear view mirror and saw a sticker that I had put there probably 10 years ago. Now, in the 10 years that we’ve had this car, this is the only sticker I’ve ever put on it that was not practical. We have the registration stickers, and the oil change one, but no bumper stickers except this one, which I had placed there because it meant so much to me back then. I wanted to see it every time I got in the car. I wanted to be reminded of this message, which was:

The Universe arranges itself to accommodate your picture of reality!

Now, if you read HDC regularly, I’m sure you are aware that this is utter pseudoscience bullshit. It is completely and totally wrong and anyone who holds this as truth is crazy. I was crazy back then. I believed that thoughts were powerful and could help shape the universe. I was wrapped up in a lot of “spiritual” thinking that was completely bogus.

It was easy to selectively enforce those beliefs back then though. To me, this statement was accurate. It never occurred to me how ridiculous and nonsensical it was. I was a believer in “energy” and a conscious universe (even though I was an agnostic).

So as I sat there, I was amazed at how far I’ve come over the years. I now embrace science, reason, skepticism and logic, which to me, is much more rewarding, and certainly more consistent and satisfying than the desperate beliefs that were based on nothing more substantial than wishful thinking.

youz not our momSo, I got an email from a nice man yesterday. He read my de-conversion story and told me something I have never been told before, at least not this way. He told me I need to reconsider and have a child! Now, I’m 40, so I really don’t see that happening for a myriad of reasons, but the sentiment was so honest and forthright that I was taken aback.

This nice man found HDC and my story and just thought that atheists like me and my husband should have more children. You know, he’s right, in a way. I mean, if you can do it, and you’re a freethinking atheist, then yes, you should consider having a kid or two. Like he said, it would bring a bit more sanity into the world.

Unfortunately people who are more educated, intelligent and rational might think it’s a bad idea. But the movie Idiocracy does make a good point. Mostly people who are sheep, who follow the crowd, who think having unprotected sex is ok because, if they get pregnant it was “meant to be“! (my idiot neighbors told me this… they can’t afford their meager bills and the wife told me she doesn’t even like her husband, but he is “hers” so they might as well have a kid.. OMFG don’t even get me started on those two idiots… they believe drinking Mountain Dew is a good method of birth control! Seriously, WTF!)

I don’t have any specific numbers, but it seems that educated, intelligent people are having less children in Europe and America. While less educated, (more religious?),  lower income people (I don’t know a politically correct term that would be better to use. So try not to be offended, ok?) are having more kids. I know that Europe has been dwindling in population, especially in Germany, Italy and other countries. And muslim people are filling up the ghost towns, then immediately going on the Dole over there. That’s what I’ve heard, but I don’t have hard data. (that’s from NPR, from a year ago, so maybe things are different now. But I don’t listen to NPR anymore). Pat Condell is always talking about such things too.

I never saw the movie, Idiocracy. It looked really dumb, but the concept is what I’m talking about. It’s more about I.Q. though, and I’m also talking about education and belief systems. If more atheists raise their children to be freethinkers and critical thinkers, imagine what the next generation would be like instead of what I see when we go out these days?

Since when did it become “cool” to be ignorant? That makes me stark raving crazy mad. I know of only 2 teenagers who seem to value intelligence and they are in my family. Maybe I sound old and crotchety, I don’t know. It just seems that teenagers are having babies, and that everyone is purposefully embracing ignorance and mindlessness.

In my day… (just kidding… but seriously, in my day, it wasn’t like this!)

Ok, it’s getting a bit late, the weekend has been really long, and I’m tired. But I wanted to thank the man for thinking I’d make a good parent. I know I’d raise my kids to be freethinking individuals, even though it’s not very cool.

Maybe you out there can chime in. Are you raising your children to be critical thinkers? How is that going? I imagine with the societal influences and poor education system it must be tough. Then again, am I just out of touch since I’m not a parent? Or did you do what my husband and I did? Did you decide for whatever reason that it would be best not to have kids? As always, I look forward to your thoughts!

Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin celebrated his 200th birthday February 12 of this year. So of course many of the science podcasts I listen to, as well as many of the science and skeptic sites I visit, have been talking about evolution and Darwin and all that good stuff. Evolution is often paraphrased as the term, survival of the fittest, which is inaccurate. Here is how Dictionary.com defines it, as well as some other terms, just so we’re all on the same page:

  • Survival of the Fittest
    a 19th-century concept of human society, inspired by the principle of natural selection, postulating that those who are eliminated in the struggle for existence are the unfit.
  • Natural Selection
    n. The process in nature by which, according to Darwin’s theory of evolution, only the organisms best adapted to their environment tend to survive and transmit their genetic characteristics in increasing numbers to succeeding generations while those less adapted tend to be eliminated.
  • Evolution
    Biology. change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift.

I’ve been slowly forming some random thoughts regarding the human population and evolution and I thought I’d write them down. Your input would be most welcome, as usual. Read the rest of this entry »

peer prsur maks teen cat tri pot

You know, this seems to be a serious point of contention these days. The majority of sheeple toddling around on their cell phones, driving their SUV’s, barely doing their jobs, letting TVs raise their kids, all seem to be proud of their ignorance in different areas. Here are just a few:

  • Philosophy (in this sense I am referring to morality, beliefs, etc)
  • Science
  • Math
  • Computers
  • Critical Thinking, Logic and Reason
  • Finance and Banking
  • The Concept of Responsibility

Now I’m not all saying we need to be Socrates, Einstein, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, a brain surgeon and a rocket scientist all rolled into one. But understanding the world around us is pretty important. Also how we think and what we believe is critical to how we make decisions. It’s also important to understand that even if we’re ignorant of something, we can still be personally responsible for our actions.

My parents weren’t very good at raising kids, to be honest. But my grandparents (on summer vacations) and public school took the time to teach me basic manners, a bit of common sense, the concept of cause and effect, personal responsibility for my behavior, basic money handling, and I got a good foundation in science and math at school as well.

I sometimes deal with younger people and they don’t seem to have any respect for knowledge, information or learning. They seem to refuse to be personally responsible. And the idea of thinking logically is as alien as an 8 track tape player.

When did it become cool to be so freaking ignorant? When did everyone collectively stop thinking for themselves? I’d say it’s just the youth of today, but I know many people my age and even older that refuse to think about their own belief systems or how they see the world. Most people are quite content to let a priest or pastor tell them what their morals are. Read the rest of this entry »