“Protect me from knowing what I don’t need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don’t know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen.”

Continue reading “Preface: Advance Care Directives”

Let me begin with a disclaimer.

I do not claim to have the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

I do claim to want to know the truth, and therefore rejecting the religious and social dogma dished out in my upbringing I investigated other options, and have changed many beliefs as additional or contradictory facts forced me to revise, not only my old beliefs, but even my revised beliefs, over the course of my study.

I encourage any reader who runs head-on into a thoroughly disagreeable concept to investigate that unaccepted idea in order to prove it is false, or true and important enough to adjust one’s belief system.

In stark contrast to emotion-based [i.e. anxiety and euphoria] religious strategies used to obtain and retain followers, this blog’s presentations are grounded in the same procedures used in scientific research,  and literary and legal hermeneutics to assess

• the reliability – internal consistency,
• and validity- external agreement of the historical and scientific statements

purportedly relayed by an infinite God.

Any reader who does not share my post-graduate training in research is not expected to read and comprehend the following, simply to scan over and, frankly, to be impressed with the rigorous methods applied to this blog’s evaluation of the claims made by rival authority figures.

Have you applied the same rigor to determining the trustworthiness of your believed means of salvation from catastrophe in this life and, especially, any possible after-life?

Continue reading “Foreword: Scientific Research Methodology”

Every human is forced to trust that persons, places and things will perform as expected. At a minimum, we go through the activities of our daily life trusting that our past experiences will be replicated as our present condition merges into the unknown future minute by minute.

“In God We Trust” became the official motto of the United States when, as the country became ravaged by the Civil War, religious sentiment grew stronger. A Reverend M. R. Watkinson appealed to Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, to add the phrase to all U.S. coins with the argument that “This would place us openly under the Divine protection.”

Not true.

The belief that proclaiming a condition brings it into existence is magical thinking. Common in young children but considered psychotic or New Age religion in grownups.

Trust is formed by neurological connections in the brain through interactions with those who prove to be trustworthy over multiple encounters over time.

Erik Erikson, a developmental psychologist, researched the importance of trust development infancy. He noted that when caregivers are a consistent source of comfort, food, and affection, an infant learns trust. The baby develops a belief that others are dependable and reliable. If caregivers are neglectful the infant learns mistrust. The baby then develops a belief that the world is an unpredictable, undependable, and possibly a dangerous place.

We’re forced to trust others whose superior

1. knowledge of facts that we don’t know
2. can lead to understanding of the root problem
3. with wisdom of which option
4. is the best action 
5. to resolve the problem.

Continue reading “SECTION I: In What Do You Trust For Your Unknown Future?”

Stephen Hawking is a genius physicist and “one of the most important scientists and public intellectuals of our time, if not all time.” 

But despite being a top ranked scientist among scientists, Stephen Hawking does not base his choice of belief system on evidence.

Note carefully that Stephen Hawking’s choice of belief is made to resolve his emotional response to the concept of an afterlife. As he states, he is grateful to conclude that there is no afterlife.

This is understandable, since he spent his entire adult life struggling with a severely debilitating physical disease, experiencing, in essence, the misery of a disembodied soul as postulated to be the condition of the afterlife.

But is someone’s emotionally disturbed coping mechanism a viable basis on which to base belief directing your own life’s choices and plans for your own soul’s fate after death? 

Continue reading “1) Endless Or Pointless Existence?”

Hyperdimensions – having more dimensions than observable by humans.

Material – in philosophy, the view that everything is caused by physical processes.

The choice would seem to be obvious. The conviction that there are parts of reality that can’t be observed by human senses – like, say, things way off in the distance, or things really tiny – is intrinsic to all scientific investigation. Aristotle articulated it as the logic that ‘nothingness’ cannot “be”.

The birth of modern science is the transformation it entrained in our conception of space –the concept of empty space where ‘nothing’ can “be”, asserted by Galileo during the Renaissance in the 1600’s.

From Physics Forum online: The “fabric of space” is not made 0F anything- it is just space itself.

This is not a scientific finding. It is, obviously, impossible for science to prove the existence of nothing. This a philosophical argument deriving from humanism’s postulate that there is nothing that humans can’t perceive, ergo understand, ergo control, ergo no Higher Power than humanity.

But further scientific developments in the 1900s beginning with Albert Einstein’s quantum physics determined that what humans perceive as solid matter, i.e. mass, is due to humanity’s perceptual limitations. In reality, the atoms that form objects and substances that we call solid are actually made up of 99.99999% movement, one form of energy.

Einstein elegantly explains how energy can be perceived as solid substance in his famous mathematical sentence E=mc2, i.e.

Energy become mass when acted upon by c² where c = the speed of light, the absolute upper limit of speed in our universe. Squaring it, i.e. multiplying it by itself cannot not realistically become meters² per sec² so is not a velocity but instead the crucial factor that unlocks one of the greatest secrets of the universe – the infinitely pervasive and powerful force outside the bounds of the laws of nature. 

This alone defines Creator God of the Bible.

And to further confound the sciences’ neat but kindergarten level classification of reality into energy OR matter:

Continue reading “2) Hyperdimensional Or Material?”

Hundreds of thousands of people died in the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. But as described in these news reports, others saw warning signs, and escaped with their lives…

a 10-year-old British girl saved more than 100 people because she had just studied the killer waves in school. When the sea suddenly began to boil, then pulled away from the resort she was visiting, leaving fish and boats stranded high and dry, Tilly Smith recognized that a tsunami was approaching. Fortunately, her frantic warnings were heeded, and the beach was evacuated just moments before the huge waves crashed ashore…

Many other people in the region were less attuned to nature and paid with their lives. 

As I’m typing, millions of people are tuned into live TV streaming news reporting on the progress of the latest hurricane barreling through Florida and up the east coast, making plans to save their and their loved ones’ lives.

Death is the biggest crisis we’ll face in life. The most important information, guiding our values and behaviors during our lifetime, is what happens after this lifetime.

Continue reading “3) Knowledge Or Ignorance Of Death?”

Why Religion Matters: The Impact of Religious Practice on Social Stability 

When policymakers consider America’s grave social problems, including violent crime and rising illegitimacy, substance abuse, and welfare dependency, they should heed the findings in the professional literature of the social sciences on the positive consequences that flow from the practice of religion.

• The strength of the family unit is intertwined with the practice of religion.
• Churchgoers are more likely to be married, less likely to be divorced or single, and more likely to manifest high levels of satisfaction in marriage.
• Church attendance is the most important predictor of marital stability and happiness.
• Religious belief and practice contribute substantially to the formation of personal moral criteria and sound moral judgment.
• Regular religious practice generally inoculates individuals against a host of social problems, including suicide, drug abuse, out-of-wedlock births, crime, and divorce.
• In repairing damage caused by alcoholism, drug addiction, and marital breakdown, religious belief and practice are a major source of strength and recovery.
• Regular practice of religion is good for personal physical health: It increases longevity, improves one’s chances of recovery from illness, and lessens the incidence of many killer diseases.

The overall impact of religious practice is illustrated dramatically in the three most comprehensive systematic reviews of the field.

• Some 81 percent of the studies showed the positive benefit of religious practice,
• 15 percent showed neutral effects,
• and only 4 percent showed harm, seen generally by most Americans of religious faith as a mispractice of religion.

The Protestant Reformation is a vivid example of how religious transformation could set in motion institutional changes leading to profound consequences for nation-wide economic and political development.

Continue reading “5) Reformation Or Retrogression?”