Thou shalt neither condescend nor be WAY too serious and profound

The previous post was also posted to a couple of anti-theist FB pages including Holes in the Foam. I include here the response from the moderator/"owner" of the page and my response.

Holes In the Foam commented on your Wall post. Holes In the Foam wrote: "Thanks for your thoughts Bill. I too am not sure what your point was, and to be honest, it sounds rather like a condescending lecture, that may I add... is WAY too serious and profound for this page and blog. :P"

Your honesty is appreciated. I apologize if my post came across as a “condescending lecture”. There is no reason for me to consider myself superior to anyone, and when I wrote it I truly thought I was just putting out some ideas to people with whom I share at least a modicum of like-mindedness rather than speaking down to you and your other FB followers. I suppose that I was basically writing to myself to see if I could begin to clarify some ideas generated by:  a recent re-reading of Michael Shermer’s  “Why Smart People Believe Weird Things” ; listening to podcasts in which professed atheists express belief systems at least as weird as having faith in an all-knowing, all-powerful sky god; listening to the interview with the Vatican astronomer;  watching two video clips, in one of which Dawkins says “It (science) works, bitches”, and in the other Dawkins in response to a criticism  from Neil deGrasse Tyson quotes a former editor of the New Scientist as saying “…science is interesting, and if you don’t agree you can fuck off”, and, last but not least, trying to understand how a surprising number of highly intelligent scientists continue to believe in some kind of god, when I, relative ignoramus that I am, find the idea verging on silly.

Yes, of course, you may add anything you like, as after all it is your sandbox. If my musings are “WAY too serious and profound” for this arena, and if I ever deign ;-) to post here again, I will try to be more appropriately flippant and shallow.

Science and/or Religion

Science and/or Religion

In case my following post causes confusion as to my personal stance: I am and as long as I can remember have always been an atheist.  

I know that many of us have to suffer and struggle against the influence of certain sects of Christianity and their ongoing attacks against secularism. However, as important as it may be, fighting such Christians’ encroachment on the separation of Church and State is, to merrily mix metaphors, tilting at the windmills of low hanging (rotting?) fruit. We must not underestimate the intellects, sophistication, discipline, psychological/philosophical knowledge and historical perspective wielded by the original Christian church, i.e. the Holy Roman/Catholic Church.

Unfortunately, against the sophistication of the Jesuits and their complex Christian apologetics, barbs such as “It (science) works, Bitches” or “Science is interesting, and if you don’t agree you can fuck off” are ineffectual attacks against a straw man. The Vatican supports the search for “what it’s all about” via science, including evolution, modern physics and cosmological theories. Here is a quote, mined from Wikipedia, from a Vatican Astronomer and astro-physicist, Brother (Dr.) Guy Consolmagno: "Religion needs science to keep it away from superstition and keep it close to reality, to protect it from creationism, which at the end of the day is a kind of paganism– it's turning God into a nature god. “

To begin to understand how sophisticated the Soldiers of Christ (Jesuits)  and the philosophical apologists of the Catholic Church are, you might want to check out the Vatican Observatory website (http://vaticanobservatory.org/) and google Brother Guy, as well as listening to his interview on  Quirks and Quarks  (a CBC science radio program and  podcast) at http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Quirks+and+Quarks/ID/2363230875/. Brother Guy does not believe in a 6,000 year-old earth, but rather accepts the current understanding that our universe is 13.7 billion years old; understands and accepts modern evolutionary theory (though I suppose he magically inserts the soul at some point); accepts plate tectonics and would scoff at the idea that the Grand Canyon was created by “The Flood”; and he has a much better understanding of Quantum Physics than 99.99999% of the Homo sapiens not so sapiens living on this blue dot.

I am not sure what point, if any, I am trying make here, except that we should not write off theists as being stupid or ignorant. Moreover, I have much more in common with Brother Guy and the deceased theist Martin Gardiner, than I might have with many atheists. I only believe in one fewer god than they. Visceral non-skeptical atheism can be a strange reverse type of faith, though I must admit my atheism is as much visceral as it is based on scientific skepticism.  I do not understand those who do not believe in the existence of god(s) but accept a wide range of bat shit crazy woo woo (sorry, Seth, I know you have difficulty with the second “woo”). Woo woo = e.g., ghosts, auras, acupuncture, anti-vaccination, alien abductions, “there’s a reason for everything”, psychics, speaking to the dead, astrology, reiki … ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

Wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf, wolf . . .

For those of us interested in trying to understand where we are, how we got here and what the future may hold - following are links to two articles from the Ohio State U Department of History Origins website

1) http://origins.osu.edu/article/feast-and-famine-global-food-crisis
My FB comment: A historical explanation of some of the reasons why you eat what you eat, and why there is a glut of calories in the so-called first and developing worlds, while starvation looms elsewhere. History rules.

2) http://origins.osu.edu/article/climate-human-population-and-human-survival-what-deep-past-tells-us-about-future
My FB comment: Hard times are a'comin, but is it too late to change direction enough to ensure that life for our descendants will not be one of many possible worse case scenarios?
Just two quotes from this article:
"In the life spans of the past five to six generations, the double-edged sword of science and industry has carried humanity through a great and paradoxical transition to prosperity and peril. After two decades of sounding the warning, most in the scientific community are exhausted and depressed."
"Whatever the future holds, it is coming at us with breakneck speed. And just as a long historical horizon allows us to look back at the circumstances of previous generations, it demands that we think forward to the fortunes of generations to come."

In conjunction with reading this article I recommend you listen to the CBC Ideas podcast "The End of Growth" (http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2013/03/13/the-end-of-growth/) by David Suzuki (no intros necessary, I hope) and Jeff Rubin (former Chief Economist and Chief Strategist at CIBC World Markets).


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The "American Dream" for all (all 7 billion, i.e. 7,000,000,000++,  plus of us????): 2 car 2 child family; cheap gas = cheap everything;  spacious one family individual dwellings; any type of food any time of the year with lots of meat and cheap carbs; ever more goodies; ever increasing wealth, health, security and happiness. . . up, up and away to a glorious,safe ever improving future for all ...but, but, but . . . something has definitely gone awry.

 Awry, awry it has gone. You might want to read To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up  Her Nest with the Plough by Robbie Burns in 1785. Below are the last two stanzas of that poem translated  into standard English:

But little Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes of mice and men
Go often awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
For promised joy!
Still you are blessed, compared with me!
The present only touches you:
But oh! I backward cast my eye,
On prospects dreary!
And forward, though I cannot see,
I guess and fear!
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Don't worry, do nothing, and be happy. Things can only get better if we don't think about it. Live it up in an eternal imaginary afterlife (my favourite oxymoron).  All prosperity and no peril . Wolf, what wolf?

The Drunkard's Walk

The Drunkard's Walk

The above evolutionary tree is copied from  http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/overview-of-hominin-evolution-89010983

My Just pretending to think blog will just be random thoughts with a stream of consciousness organization on whatever I happen to be contemplating, reading, or dreaming about at any moment.  

Who am I? Like all of us I am a product of the universe's proverbial drunkard's walk - (recommended reading: The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow). A big bang about 13.7 billion years ago , inflation, quark-gluon plasma, hydrogen, helium and lithium, the formation of stars, fusion creating all elements heavier than H, He and Li - such as C and O, the formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago, a cooling period,  organic molecules,  self-replicating organic molecules (RNA, DNA), the still unexplained genesis of life around 3 billion and half years ago (God of the Gaps begone), a few billion years of evolution leading to me and you, Homo sapiens that we are. Our direct ancestors evolved in Africa around 200,000 years ago, and almost became extinct 150,000 years ago (genetic researchers estimate the breeding population may have dipped to as few as  2,000 breeding pairs). We began spreading  into Eurasia between 125,000  and 50,000 years ago ( yeah, I know 75,000 years is a wide range, but I was just playing it safe, as the dates are anything but easy to clarify, though we learn more each and every day), and we haven't stopped moving and expanding ever since.   Is this knowledge written in stone? No, but the expanding knowledge of our past is a work in progress that will continue to be refined as we learn more via paleontology and human genetics, though as we do not have time machines we will never know exactly what happened. Sooner or later I will pay my money and take an inner cheek swab and send it off to be analyzed - to add my personal genetic data to the Genographic Project (see : https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com)
However, if it makes you feel good,  you can have faith in any number of  creation fairy tales invented by us before we stumbled upon science.


We are all descendants of survivors. Duh, as the kids say in the modern vernacular.  Genghis Khan survived to procreate and it has been claimed based on genetic studies that 1 in 200 of all living males have Y chromosomal genes passed down for 750 years from this famous marauder, who was  responsible for the ruthless slaughter of somewhere between 10 and 50 million human beings, plus the rape of who knows how many. If you are into podcasts, I highly recommend Dan Carlin's Hardcore History's Wrath of the Khans I-V. Given  an average of 20 to 25 year generations more or less then there would be between 30 to 35 or so direct male forbears of a present day descendant of this illustrious being. If you were a descendant by rape or otherwise, would  this be something to be proud of as many Mongolians are, or is it just another happenstance? Knowing about his very successful genocides, would you feel guilty if you happened to be related to Genghis? You should not really, as in the long run back in time all of us Homo sapiens are really very, very closely related. We are all members of the same species. A moment of silence please for the great-great-great ...grandmother of all living Homo sapiens, known as Mitochondrial Eve (Google it , and please forget the biblical crap), whoever she may have been.
Also, how lucky are we really to be descendants of survivors?  It seems that we had a very close call, and unfortunately for the rest of the species on this planet close does not count.

Speaking of close calls: 

My maternal grandfather, Wilhelm Herrmann 1914

The Herrmann family 1943 -my Mom, Oma, Opa, Onkle Fritz, Onkel Richard, Tante Gertrude

Onkel Willy - Tante Gertrude's husband

  The first picture above is of my maternal grandfather, Wilhelm Herrmann,  in 1914 just before he marched off to invade France, where it seems his closest call was being hit over the head with a loaf of heavy rye bread upon entering a French bakery - so the family legend goes. Had that surreal blow been fatal, yours truly would not exist. In the Herrmann family photo  from left to right are of my mother, grandmother, grandfather, Uncle Fritz, Uncle Richard, and Aunt Gertrude (all deceased, but all lived more than long enough to have descendants). This "happy" family photo was take in a studio in Ludwigsburg, Germany in 1943 when my two uncles happened to be on leave at the same time. The randomness that ruled their lives ensured that they all survived WWII. My mother lost her best childhood friend in a bombing raid. Had the bomb fallen two houses to the left, and /or had my mother not been in the cellar, her body parts would have been scattered and splattered about , so  she would not have met my biological father and given birth to me a scant 3 years after the end of the war (500,000 estimated deaths due to "strategic" bombing of civilians  in Germany ). Moreover, in another close call my mother while cycling home was also strafed by an American fighter plane, but  saved by an old man who pulled her under a railway overpass. Also, if my biological father had not caught malaria in Italy and been sent back to Germany to recuperate, he could have been killed in action (as were well over 1.5 million German combatants). All  of my uncles, including my aunt's husband, Willy, survived to pass on their genes. Drunkard's walks galore: Uncle Richard had his orders changed from being posted to the Bismark to serving on a U-Boot in the North Sea; both Uncle Fritz and Willy survived the the Russian front; Willy was wounded, lost an eye, and part of his stomach, recuperated , was sent back and ended up at the siege of Stalingrad and very improbably survived.  There are no pictures of my  also deceased biological father's family, as all contact with him was broken off when I was only 7. 

We are all descendants of survivors, against crazily improbable odds