Jim Wilson tries to make sense out of a dating poll:

“One of the most idiotic jeers against animal lovers is the one about their preferring critters to people. As a matter of observance, it will be found that people who “care”— about rain forests or animals, miscarriages of justice or dictatorships—are, though frequently irritating, very often the same people. Whereas those who love hamburgers and riskless hunting and mink coats are not in the front ranks of Amnesty International.”

A friend recently sent me a piece claiming that abstaining from meat consumption could hurt one’s chances with a lot of singles. The article referred to a recent survey of 4000 singles conducted by match.com with the help of Today.com. Among their findings was that some 30% of meat-eating singles would not date a vegan or vegetarian.

My first thought was that I could not imagine any self-respecting vegetarian or vegan wanting to date someone for whom that would be deal-breaker anyway. I have dated a few vegetarians and a vegan myself and I doubt any of them would want to have much to do with someone who would dismiss them without getting to know them first. After all narrow-mindedness and dietary bigotry are not what most people look for in mates.

At the same time, I did not find this result overly surprising. I spent a good bit of time living in the rural Midwest and know many people who are involved in the meat production business. For them refraining from meat consumption was affront on their way life. I have many relatives who are avid hunters and hunting for food is a major part of their lifestyle for them I could see this as a compatibility issue. I also know men and women who are ordinary suburban grocery store shopping meat eaters who despite not being farmers, ranchers, or hunters still feel very righteous about the good old meat-centered American diet and are unwilling to compromise on it.

Maybe it’s the stereotypes associated with meatless diets. Vegetarians and vegans especially are often seen as high-maintenance, left-leaning, self-righteous hippie-ish, judgmental PETA supporters. I found the vegetarians and vegans I have befriended or dated to be thoughtful, considerate, nonjudgmental, and rather self-reliant. Vegans tend to be forced to find their own food on their own time. That may just be my own bias as I tend to gravitate to people who show a willingness to question prevailing social norms.

Maybe this is why I am still involved in the Freethought and Skeptics movements. They seem to have a disproportionate number of non meat-eaters as well as libertarians, feminist, ethical non-monogamists, political creatives, and pursuers of strange hobbies. We fancy ourselves as pretty accepting people. Though I have to wonder how many of us would be willing to date a Christian.

Interestingly, only 4% of vegetarians and vegans said they would not date a meat-eaters which means despite the stereotype the veggie-folk are actually the less judgmental ones. Of course, for a vegetarian or vegan to limit themselves in such a way would greatly restrict their dating pool since they make up only 2% of the population. This it would seem would put them in fairly compromised position to be overly demanding.

Maybe I am missing something though. Maybe there are other reasons meat-eaters do not want to vegetarians or vegans. The whole issue of dietary choice is definitely one freethinkers should consider. It wasn’t that long ago I posted a piece on the practice of eating bugs. I wonder how much of deal breaker that would be.

The following post is an excerpt from this Book by Dr. Sthephen Uhl

editor’s note: In his book, Out of God’s Closet, a former faithful Roman Catholic priest-become-psychologist shares his inviting journey through agnosticism to atheism and The 21st Century Golden Rule. Dr. Uhl’s Journey was quite unique. Yet he clearly shows most of us how to get free and drop childhood prejudices and myths. This can deeply enrich individuals and families throughout our pluralistic society.

If you’d like to get the book or listen to Dr. Uhl read it to you, you can do both right here.

The Causality Proof is one of the baseline arguments for the existence of God. It’s one of St. Thomas Aquinas’ five ways. It’s important to do the research and look into these so called “proofs” with open eyes and ready reason.

St. Thomas’ Causality Proof Of God

Serious minded men, looking around and seeing the great realities of nature, wonder where all this came from. St. Thomas did just that, and, since he was a respectable philosopher, he realized that everything in the world had to have an adequate cause; nothing happens by itself; nothing can cause itself. All the mutable things in this world had to be caused by something else; everything is the effect of some cause. We see Johnson (effect) and know there had to be a John (father or cause of Johnson). But John also was caused by his father and mother, so John is a secondary cause, not the primary or initial cause of Johnson. The same can be said for John’s grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, etc. Everyone is the effect of a secondary cause. The long chain of secondary causes stretches back through history and beyond, every caused effect being a secondary cause, all the way back to an Adam, an amoeba, an atom, or whatever.

However, this chain of secondary causes cannot be infinite, said St. Thomas; it has to have a beginning; there must be a first link; it is logically, mentally abhorrent to suppose an infinite regression of secondary causes. “Therefore,” concludes St. Thomas, “there must be a primary cause, a first link of that chain, and this primary cause we call God.”

Now this logical “proof” convinced the Catholic Church and her theologians for centuries, the same dogmatic Church that so roundly condemned Copernicus and Galileo. It became a formal and official teaching of that church that God’s existence could be rationally proven, proven purely by human reason unaided by faith. Really, this was a dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church for centuries; it may still be.

Now if the Church were right that a good human mind unaided by faith could actually prove God’s existence, then it would behoove all of us of lesser intellects to believe in God’s existence. But wait; look more closely at that “proof” that St. Thomas and his church accepted as being a proof from pure reason unaided by faith.

St. Thomas’ GRAND Assumption Exposed

When St. Thomas’ reason rebelled at the possibility of an infinite regression of secondary causes, an infinite chain of great-great-great-great-…-grandparents, his faith apparently took over; he simply and quite gratuitously said “therefore there must be a primary cause which we call God.” This conclusion is not a conclusion of reason; it is a posited statement of faith based on ignorance: ”I cannot understand my own concept of an infinite regression of secondary causes, a chain whose first link I cannot find. Therefore, rather than humbly admit that logically I have to be an agnostic, I posit, suppose, assume, believe there must be that first link, a primary Cause, God.” Unlike Copernicus and Galileo some 200 years later, St. Thomas allowed his faith to get in the way of his science, which allowed him to draw the politically correct conclusion that God caused it all. This, in turn, allowed him to become the most respected philosopher/theologian in Christendom.

Instead of using a long chain of human secondary causes (the great-great-grandparent chain) as St. Thomas did, one could use the example of an oak table. But no matter what is used, as you approach the observable beginning, you will become an agnostic admirer of nature and humbly admit “I cannot know where the very first ‘acorn’ came from.” Like the ant and the dung beetle that enjoyed their natural gifts from above them, I really do not need to know, so I don’t need to act as though I know where it all came from. (Do you think perhaps the dung beetle considers the bull that defecates his playground to be supernatural? Surely the bull, creating this good world for the beetle, seems supernatural to the beetle. So should the balling dung beetle pay homage to such a Higher Power or just enjoy the bull feces?)

I am now embarrassed to admit that I had accepted the “logical” arguments from Saint Thomas with large crowds of other believers. I had gone through twelve years of seminary preparation, followed by post-graduate theological studies, and I still did not question adequately the validity of St. Thomas’ classical “proofs” of God’s existence. Just like St. Thomas, I let my faith at that time, now over forty years ago, get in the way of my reason. Back then, indeed, I enjoyed a blind and blinding faith. This embarrassing experience of mine helps me understand sympathetically the great difficulty many people have in letting go of old beliefs. We all develop at our individual rates. At the same time, I so strongly want everyone to enjoy the peace and security I have won, that I may seem impatient as I look forward to others “seeing it my way!” Many will not be able to succeed in this matter. As in the case of most victories, if success were easy, everyone would do it.

It was after about eight years in the priesthood, that I experienced that critical breakthrough and saw the inadequacy of Saint Thomas’ causality “proof.” I vividly recall precisely where I was in the monastery chapel doing my daily meditation on an especially insightful morning. This was really a memorable morning for me; for this was the morning I took a big personal leap from blindly credulous theism toward agnosticism.

For humankind trying to know something beyond or above nature turns out to be an exercise in futility. It is just as impossible as the brain trying to study itself in a state of total inactivity. That effort is just as frustrating as that of the man trying to lift himself up by his own ankles or an almighty God trying to create a stone so heavy he cannot lift it. We cannot know logically or rationally about any extra-natural or supernatural being’s existence. We can assume anything we choose to assume—anything—including an uncaused First Cause or a pope knowing more about reality than Galileo. Such assumptions are neither verifiable nor falsifiable. But don’t forget that anything that is freely assumed can be freely denied, whether it is culturally popular or not. Any gratuitous assumption, since it is simply asserted without evidence, can be just as gratuitously denied. This principle holds both in law and in logic.

Another short excerpt from Out of God’s Closet by Dr. Stephen Uhl (with permission)

WOMEN ARE INFLUENTIAL TEACHERS

Nevertheless, it is difficult to over-estimate the power of women, especially powerful in their roles as mothers and teachers of the impressionable upcoming generation. They are one of the most powerful reasons so many people still feel they must believe or at least act religious or follow old ways. Mothers’ values and beliefs make very deep impressions on their children. A big and common problem develops when mothers are not confident as to how to best raise or teach the children. Too often, in desperation, mothers lacking in self-reliance turn to confident-sounding dogmatic spiritual leaders for guidance. (Can you perhaps still remember your mother telling you that God would punish you if you did not obey her?) I personally shudder at the authoritarian advice I gave to mothers when I was still a celibate and naive young priest. Wow! Talk about the blind leading the blind!

“The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world” more effectively than even most mothers admit. One defensive young mother sent the following note by way of her son to his new kindergarten teacher: “Dear teacher, the opinions expressed by this child are not necessarily those of his mother.” Oh? If mothers and teachers of the very young are self-confidently fact-based, their charges are likely to grow in fact-based self-confidence. If mothers and teachers of the very young are myth-based or superstitious, their charges are likely to grow in superstition-based credulity. Surely no one should feel guilty or ashamed that such lessons from prerational days are hard to unlearn. I was in my thirties when I got free of them. Patience, fearlessly free inquiry into anything factual and open discussions produce growth in understanding of reality.

The central concept of superstition as understood throughout this book is very close to the concept as defined by Webster: belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation. I am confident that modern women are far less superstitious, less credulous and more self-confident than were their grand- mothers. So this generation of mothers and teachers has better ego- strength and greater self-confidence than grandma had. I deeply appreciate observing the current rapid decrease in male chauvinism in America and the related increase in modern women’s ego- strength. In this information age, intelligent women are breaking free of their tradition-bound past in unprecedented numbers and with unprecedented influence. This process of personal growth in independence is much easier than for their mothers and grand- mothers. This is a most encouraging modern development.

A great many related influences contribute heavily to human- kind’s belief in the supernatural even in our scientific times. I have very briefly summarized above some of the more powerful contributors to the endurance of supernatural faith in our society. Whether it’s woman power, the influence of wishful thinking, the power of hypnosis with its apparently superhuman power of prayer, the influence of longitudinal or latitudinal crowds, fear and greed for a great deal on free grace, a basic human drive to always want to progress ever further and further, or whether it is from some other source of a lack of self-confidence and self- adequacy, billions of men and women still believe in God, Allah, Yahweh, Satan or some other Power Higher than themselves. It is important, therefore, that we examine in the next chapter the validity of that widely held premise that some power higher than thinking man exists.

editor’s note: The next excerpt from Dr. Stephen Uhl’s book will be published on Monday.

This is the third installment from the book by Dr Stephen Uhl: Out of God’s Closet (with the author’s permission).

RELIGIONS DO A LOT OF VERY GOOD THINGS

Yet another reason so many people choose to believe in religion and God is that religions and religious people really accomplish good works. Many thousands of volumes have been written to sanctify and magnify these good works by religions. These volumes continue to flow from the presses in an unending flood, so I will not add much to that already great volume of testimony.

Who could ignore the helpful works of mother Theresa, the Salvation Army, the YMCA, the YWCA, Catholic Charities, and some religious schools? Thousands of religious groups work daily to feed the hungry of body and mind. Such groups often help drive the drug pushers from their neighborhoods, bring hope to the hopeless, run schools and social service clubs of many kinds.

Religious schools often do a superior job of educating youngsters. These schools achieve good discipline (by whatever means) that is basic to efficient teaching and learning. Recognizing the benefits that religious efforts often contribute to society, it is commonly accepted that religion helps society more than it hurts it. This evident benefit of religion is yet another reason so many believe in God.

Editor’s Note: 

While religion can have both a positive and a negative effect on society and I admire Dr. Stephen Uhl’s ability to see and report on what he sees as an overall benefit, I have a definite negative bias against religion. I cannot see the good outweighing the bad. Aside from the United States, the best societies in the world belong to the secularist countries and the worst belong to religious countries. We’ll never know what advances in science and medicine have been delayed because of the religiously motivated restrictions on research.

Keira Knightly (Tony Shek photo)

(CC-BY 2.0)

This article is from Jim Wilson:

But, this is not all going on in the same room… In this month’s issue of Interview Magazine (the Andy Warhol celebrity interview publication, known as The Crystal Ball Of Pop), Atheist actress Kiera Knightly, famous for her roles in Bend it like Beckham and as the lead female in the Pirates of the Caribbean films series, is interviewed by director, David Cronenberg, known for his pioneering work in the body horror or venereal horror genre. The full interview can be found here: http://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/kiera-knightley#page5

Toward the end of the interview, Knightly alludes to an upcoming film she is working on with Steve Carell titled Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, which will be available in June. Cronenberg responds with, “So you crammed in yet another movie–with another director.” Knightly explains that she is, in fact, cheating on directors in this way—left and right—by appearing in their films, but mentions that Cronenberg has cheated on her by working with other actresses, making theirs a bit of an admittedly open professional relationship.

At this point, Cronnenberg points out that the very Christian right-wing Republican Newt Gingrich approves of open relationships. Gingrich has been married three times, has a history of infidelity. His second wife in a recent interview has alleged he made his on-going affair with his current wife known to her and proposed an open marriage. Knightly says if you are a Republican you should not be shagging anything that moves. Then they acknowledge the hypocrisy of Gingrich’s affair, taking place while he was grilling Clinton for his sex scandal with Monica Lewinski. Cronenberg, who is also an Atheist, points out that as an outspoken Christian, Gingrich just needs to ask God for forgiveness and all will be right with him.

Knightly responds by saying: “If only I wasn’t an Atheist, I could get away with anything. You’d just ask for forgiveness and then you’d be forgiven. It sounds much better than having to live with guilt.” The two lament that as Atheists their chances of getting elected for office are quite slim.

It’s great to see a high profile figure come out as a non-believer and Kiera Knightly is one of the biggest actresses in Hollywood (she was, in fact, the second highest paid actress in Hollywood, having reportedly earned $32 million in 2007). It is not that I think people should emulate Kiera Knightly or other celebrities but many people view, atheists as dark, sinister, and anonymous. Having one more famous person (in this case, the person that plays Elizabeth in the hugely popular, Pirates of the Caribbean movies) to identify with atheism is a positive thing. As is the fact that this Atheist also has a reputation for doing socially beneficial things such as: fighting domestic violence, promoting human rights with Amnesty International, reading with the American Library Association, and supporting the Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) Trust.

However, less famous people coming out as atheists may be more effective in destroying the anti-Atheist prejudice of their friends and family. It is easy to be prejudiced against Atheists if you have never met one, but more difficult when they are among the friends and relatives you know and admire.

There is nothing inherently wrong with open relationships or marriages. Personally, that is not the option for me, but people should make their own decisions on such matters and all parties involved should be treated honestly, ethically and fairly. I think it would be great, if people were allowed to marry whoever they want, and as many people as they want. Just be good to whoever you are with, and know the risks involved in what you do. If you cannot make a relationship work, with just one person, adding additional people will most likely not work either, and it will mean playing with even more people’s emotions.

Finally, there is no excuse for hypocrisy. If you are all about free-love, legalized pot, gambling, and prostitution, you shouldn’t be publically campaigning against these things on a traditionalist, family values, and Christian platform. We should demand more of our leaders and remember when these self-appointed, conservative, moral guardians are caught in sex scandals, often involving homosexuality, drugs, minors, or prostitutes. Remember what Gingrich, David Vitter, Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart, Mark Foley and Larry Craig are famous for and act accordingly. It is likely that these people were just using the moral guardian rhetoric to manipulate concerned family values types for their own political gain. Or it might be possible that they are just strangely fixated on the sins they crusade against. Either way, they deserve to be called hypocrites.

Some recent comments require me to addres those who feel they or others have been “banned” in the comment forum of this blog:

(1) A comment held for moderation is not “banned” and does not usually indicate that the poster is “banned”. I approve the overwhelming majority of comments held for moderation. There is only one person (“RH” and his pseudonyms) for whom a significant number of posts have been not approved since I’ve been running the blog, and in that case it was for repetition and off-topic comments, not because of disagreement over ideas.

(2) The site’s moderation filter is very fickle and unpredictable. I can *add* things to the filter (usernames, specific words, etc.) that will result in comments being held, and a comment with “dirty” words or more than one hyperlink will reliably get held. But most of the time a comment is held for moderation, I have no good explanation for why the system held it and no apparent way to keep similar comments from being held in the future. Do not assume that if one of your comments is held for moderation, the next comment will also be held. Do not assume that if one of your comments is held for moderation, it is because I wanted it held.

(3) There is a separate filter for spam that I don’t even see nor approve comments out of. If something you’re posting is getting caught by the spam filter I think the page notifies you and drops the comment altogether. If that happens it’s probably because you used words commonly associated with spam. All I can suggest is try rewording your comment and resubmitting.

(4) In case it wasn’t clear from the above or from my past behavior: I am very reluctant to deliberately ban anyone and will do so only in extreme cases (if you were around when RH was completely free of moderation, you have some idea of what I mean by “extreme”). I’ll also comment publicly on the banning and the reasons for it. Unless you see a comment from me stating that you’re being deliberately banned/moderated, and why, then I didn’t ban you.

Atheists take a lot of guff from religious people for our ”materialism.” But what does that mean?

Some people treat materialism as a cartoonishly simple (and thus easy to dismiss) lifestyle: According to this view, atheists think that nothing in life matters beyond personally experiencing material pleasures and accumulating money and physical goods. Equating to hedonism and greed, this evil and supposedly rampant form of materialism is condemned as a consequence of atheism and secularism, especially during the holidays. People posit this caricature materialism as the only alternative to believing in gods, spirits, miracles, and other assorted religious nonsense.

Are there atheists who are nothing more than greedy hedonists? Yes, but in my experience they are as rare in atheist circles as they are in society in general. Which is to say, there are more of them than there should be because that’s a bad way to live – but there’s no reason to suspect that atheism is the cause of it.

Once we get past the cartoon caricature of materialism, we are left to consider a more serious definition. Here’s mine: The universe is made up of physical matter and energy, and the physical matter and energy interact according to laws, and nothing exists outside of the universe*. By this definition of materialism, there is nothing “outside” or “beyond” physical matter and energy and there are no “miracles” or exceptions to the laws by which matter and energy interact. Materialism by this general definition is accepted by every atheist that I know who has ever expressed an opinion about it. Materialism by this definition is also generally rejected by religionists, who believe in something “outside” or “beyond” the physical universe, and many of them also believe that whatever is “outside” or “beyond” also sometimes intervenes to create “miracles” - exceptions to the physical laws.

Thus, this definition of materialism is a good means of separating what atheists tend to believe about the world from what religious people believe. It still doesn’t address causality: does atheism cause materialism, or does materialism cause atheism, or is there some other cause for both? Let’s hold that question for a future discussion, as well as the aforementioned disagreement between religionists and atheists over whether materialism is true. For the sake of this discussion, let’s presume that the serious kind of materialism is true.

Unlike the cartoonish definition which describes an entife lifestyle, the serious definition of materialism still leaves us with important questions about life, meaning, morality, purpose, etc. The discussion of free will that Tip and I had uncovered what seems to me to be one rather important distinction: given the definition of materialism above, are the fundamental interactions of matter and energy the only things that matter and thus are “real”?

From comments on previous discussions, I gather that some people have a hard time even fully grasping this question. This may be because of the baggage and emotional weight applied to concepts like consciousness and free will. So I’ll try another example, one which should avoid triggering anyone’s emotions – either pro or con:

Consider a fair dice: six sides, equally weighted on each side. Consider throwing that dice onto a table in a game of chance, where you win if a “1″ comes up. You shake the dice in your hand, throw it onto the table with sufficient force and angle that it bounces off a barrier at the end of the table before coming to rest with one of the six sides facing up.

A non-materialist might believe that praying to a god or summoning a spirit could cause the “1″ to come up when it otherwise wouldn’t. Or perhaps they might believe they could use telekinesis or some other supernatural power of their own to make the “1″ come up when it otherwise wouldn’t. All such claims are rejected by materialists, and we need not concern ourselves with them further here.

Given the stipulation against any supernatural involvement, the question that arises for materialists concerns whether or not the number that comes up on the dice is “random”. At the level of forces, matter, and energy, the number that will turn up on the dice throw is completely determined the moment the dice leaves your hand, by the inertia and angle of the throw, the physical size and shape and surface characteristics of the table, gravity, air, etc. That’s not too difficult to conceive once you accept materialism. But wait - the force you apply and the angle you throw the dice at are also completely determined by your muscles and signals from your brain, which are completely determined by their physical characteristics and the state of your brain, and so on. Therefore at the level of elementary forces, matter, and energy, the number the dice is going to come up was completely determined not only at the time the dice left your hand, but before you even walked into the room.

If we accept all that as true, then does it make any sense to characterize the number that comes up on the dice roll as “random”? Isn’t the idea that the dice roll is ”random” just an illusion, if the number that was going to come up on the dice was completely determined before you even walked into the room?

David Deutsch, a practicing scientist (physicist), argues that concepts at an explanatory level above that of elementary particles and forces are both real and compatible with the underlying deterministic reality of those same particles and forces. I refer anyone who is interested in what Deutsch has to say on this topic to the chapter titled “The Reality of Abstractions” in Deutsch’s recent book, The Beginning of Infinity.  Dr. Deutsch doesn’t use the example of dice rolls, but I would characterize the randomness of such rolls as an emergent property of the dice and the method of rolling it, in the same way that Deutsch discusses other emergent properties.

Not to put words in Tip’s or anyone else’s mouth, but some materialists might counter that the “randomness” in the case of the dice roll is not an emergent property, and it’s not real; it’s just another word for “complexity”. They would say, the dice’s behavior is too complex for us to predict, so we perceive it as random and we call it random but that randomness is an illusion. The fact that the dice’s behavior is complex is true as far as it goes, but it’s also missing something important. A dog’s behavior or a human’s behavior may also be too complex for us to predict, but such behavior is not usually characterized as “random”.

The argument I think that Deutsch makes, and that I’m inclined to agree with, is twofold:

The first part is that abstract concepts about emergent properties like “randomness” in the case of the dice roll, have greater explanatory power than that of generic terms like “complexity”. Meaning: Saying that the outcome of a dice roll is “random” can tell us things about real events in the real material world that merely saying the outcome is “complex” does not. A human being generating numbers between 1 and 6 as they pop into his head cannot be substituted for a fair dice roll, even though either may be accurately characterized as both determined and too complex for someone else to predict. Why? The only useful explanations are of the form of “because the human is not random, but the fair dice roll is random.”

The second and in my view more important part of Deutsch’s argument is that we must regard emergent properties with explanatory power in the real world - like ”random” dice throws - as real, in the same way that forces, particles, and energies referred to by fully reductive explanations are real. ”Random” explains certain real events in the real world – in this case, real dice throws – better than any other explanation including that of particles and forces. Therefore, the randomness is real rather than illusionary. Meaning: If I operate a casino honestly, then apart from insuring the dice and the methods used to roll them are fair, I must treat all dice rolls as not just apparently random but as really, truly, random. I cannot increase my casino’s profits by treating the randomness of dice throws as an illusion and, say, trying to figure out a way to discourage or refuse entry to those customers who are predetermined to make winning dice throws. If an atheist materialist philosopher walks into my casino, neither he nor I can benefit in any way from treating his dice rolls as having been determined before he walked in the door, even though at the level of elementary particles and forces they were determined. This also means that while the explanation for dice roll outcomes at both the abstract level and at the level of particles and forces are true, the particles and forces explanation *is not useful* in the context of running a casino, whereas the explanation using the emergent property “random” *is useful* in that context.

So what say you, fellow materialist atheists, to this argument? Must one believe in some kind of “magic” (if so, what kind?) in order to treat a fair dice roll as being really, actually random rather than as only having the illusion of randomness? Or is Dr. Deutsch on to something with his argument that emergent properties with explanatory power are themselves real?

Those who believe in supernatural forces like spirits and sky fairies may also comment, but I’d appreciate if for the purposes of this discussion you consider only natural factors.

* I use “universe” here in the broadest sense of the word – for example, it would include all worlds in the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics.

I am sometimes reminded that civilizations don’t last forever. As great as they were, Sumeria, Egypt, Greece, and Rome didn’t last. We moderns tend not to have a sense of history and, as a consequence, cannot imagine the consequences of our collective arrogance and self-destructive nature.

The construction of the Collosseum  started in 72 CE under the emperor Vespasian and was completed in 80 CE under Titus.
It could seat 50,000 spectators for the most gruesome theater. I wonder if the Romans citizens of that time could have imagined what their grand city and empire would look like in 2000 years.

[I posted a photo of the Khalifa Towers, but it does not show up here. Don't know why.] Now we have today’s tallest building, a monument to human engineering and arrogance. The Khalifa Tower in Dubai is 2600 feet tall. The tallest building in the world of 1930′s was the Empire State Building at a pathetic 1250 feet in height. Would any of you care to suggest what the Empire State Building and the Khalifa Tower will look like 2000 years from now? jg

I know you have all been wondering why our Tucson  monsoon season has been so skimpy on the rain. Well, while on assignment to create my new super amazing website that will make me a zillionaire, I have been down here in Bisbee and Tombstone all day. And all day it rained…and rained…and rained.

Clearly the people of Bisbee and Tombstone have an “in”with the rain gods. And, by a freak of nature, they get the rain clouds before we in Tucson do. And what do they do with these rain clouds? Do they share the rain with us? No, they do not.

As the rain clouds pass over Bisbee and Tombstone, the Bisbeeites and Tombstonians grab all the rain for themselves.By the time the rain clouds pass over Tucson they are out of rain. This is unacceptable.

We Tucsonans must unite. The evil Bisbeeites and Tombstonians are sucking us dry. I say we sue. Who is with me? jg

Many of you, including myself, have been frustrated with the blog format when trying to follow a lengthy set of comments. So, if you want to participate in a lengthy discussion of a given freethought topic, don’t do it here anymore. Instead, follow the simple steps to get you to the new FreethoughtAZ discussion group. Jason created this discussion forum and below gives you the simple steps to get there.

Thanks Be To Jason!

jg

Blog entries often spark discussions in the comment section which are
difficult to carry on because of the blog format.  The “Freethought
Arizona” discussion group was created to address this. It has a more
free-form format that allows multiple topics to be pursued in depth.
The easiest way to join is at the web site:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FreethoughtAZ/

You can join the group there or by sending a blank email to:

FreethoughtAZ-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

If you join at the web site you will need to create a Yahoo! account
if you don’t already have one. Yahoo! asks for a lot of information
but most of it is optional – you don’t have to give it if you don’t
want to.

If you join via email you don’t have to create a Yahoo! account, you
just have to respond to the confirmation email they send you.

Either way, once you join, you will automatically be sent a file explaining more about the group.