S00 Religion

Religion Table of  Content

S01 Subtle Themes
S02 Should Religion be Taught in School?
S03 My Encounters with Religion
S04 Beliefs
S05 Free Will
S06 '76 A Pivotal Year
S07 A Historians View of Historians
S08 1976 Again
S09 Deja Vu
S10 Desolate
S11 Prayer is not Enough
S12 The US will Eliminate Terroism
S13 The Conflict BetweenReligion and Science
S14 You can Accept Evolution
S15 School Vouchers
S16 Evangelist
S17 Literalness

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A11S01 Subtle Themes

Many people have asked me if I believe in God, no I don't believe in God because the word implies doubt, I have no doubt about God, I have faith in God, but I may appear to be very anti religion, but I am actually anti ignorance. I have discarded all religions. I do not believe any religion.
Most people think of religion as being 'good', but all religions have down sides. The most important down side occurs when under educated people adopt a religion. They believe they know the truth so they stop searching for the truth and stop learning.
Sadly, to many people are not aware of the insidious and dangerous side effects of political, philosophical, and religious stories. When ever we try to teach anyone anything, even in jest, words are very imperfect vessels to convey our thoughts. Also when we try to teach someone anything we are imperfect in our ability to teach and to predict what some one will learn from anything we try to teach them because we are to focused, to narrow in our view, and to limited. Most of the time the other person will learn much more than we intended and many times not what we intended at all.
For example, the Bible can be divided into four parts, the old testament into three: God to us, God with us, God for us, and the new testament is God in us. An ancient Hebrew would be aghast at the cracked pot story. How could anyone with a flaw even approach God, they would have to be purified, only the unblemished could go before God.
This is the trap so many of the born again Christians fall into, the Bible is without blemish; therefore the Bible is with out error and unchanging and they refuse to admit or choose to deny that the late writers of the Bible are 180 degrees out of phase with the beginning writers, alcohol for example, there many others. The Catholic Church made the same mistake only they converted the unblemished theme into infallibility.
Now, the Christian should be shocked by the implication of the cracked pot story that God 'uses' people to accomplish God's goal. This same error is committed through out the entire Bible, especially Pilate and Judas. This subtle and I would hope unintended meaning is why so many young people reject the Bible, most don't even know why they reject the Bible because they learned the unintended meaning subconsciously and they are completely unaware of their objection. They object to the unfairness of the unintended meaning. Young people have a very strong sense of fairness, they have not lived long enough to know that the world is not fair, never has been and never will be.
These subtle themes are very dangerous because they reduce our objectivity, increase our bias, and worst of all increase our prejudice. Look at our country, we object to OPEC decreasing the amount of oil we consume and increasing the price we pay and object to the rest of the world saying that we should reduce our CO2 emissions, how dare they, we have the God given right to consume and pollute as much as we want after all we are the 'choose people', we're number one. This is a subtle theme from our heritage. We have many more and very few people are aware of them.

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A11S02 'Should Religion be Taught in School'

Until more people understand the difference between data, information, and knowledge, the science Vs Religion debate will continue. Science is not against religion, science by its very nature is against ignorance, so when a religion is stupid, the people involved will feel threaten by science.
Science is neutral on religion because science can not determine the validity of the God question. Science can neither prove nor disprove such statements as 'there is a God', 'man has a soul', etc. Such statements have 'chosen' validity and are true only in a given value system. In other words, we can choose a system in which they are true.
Some statements are 'fixed truth', some are 'variable truth', and some are 'chosen truth'. For example, 'we must eat' is a fixed truth, it is fixed by our biological system as being true. 'I am hungry' is a variable truth, it is true when we need more energy and false when we do not. 'I ate bread and butter' is a chosen truth, it is true if I did eat bread and butter and false if I didn't, I choose to or not.
The scientist must always remember that an atheist position is no more tenable than a religious position, neither can be proved true or false.
Some religious people need to learn that their truth is chosen (I wish I knew how to teach them), it is only true in their value system (their belief system) and therefore violates our constitution to teach it in our public schools and all laws allowing creation science to be taught should be repealed.
Some statements can be proved to be true and some statements can be proved to be false and some statements can not be proved either true or false and the ability to know the difference is the mark of a educated person, and that's what our students should be taught.

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A11S03 My Encounters With Religion

My first encounter with religion came at age nine, my dad wanted me to attend Sunday school. In June of my eleventh year I received a Bible for perfect attendance. By September I had read that Bible from cover to cover four times, I had difficulty with the names. A task that would be repeated many times including many different versions. I told by dad that I would not go back to Sunday school because the little old ladies were teaching what they believed and not what the Bible said.
After my first readings of the Bible three things bothered me. First, the little old ladies kept telling me that Jesus was sweet. I could not find any verse that said that Jesus was sweet. Second, both the preacher and the LOLs kept telling me that the Bible was about peace, but the first part of the old testament was about killing their enemies. Third, both the preacher and the LOLs kept telling me that God was infinite so how could one book contain all that God had to say.
I was an unhappy child when I learned that Santa Claus was not real and was disappointed when I learned the LOL's were teaching me their beliefs not what the Bible said. Why were adults lying to me. After I read the Bible the fifth and sixth time somethings didn't make sense. First, when God told the ancient Hebrews they were the chosen people why didn't God tell the other people in the area and have them move away so the Hebrews could occupy the land. Second, I saw pictures of the promised land and it certainly was not the land of milk and honey, it may have seem like it to them after being in the desert, but it was a gross exaggeration. Third, why was there so much killing? Fourth, why was God allowing the Hebrews to kill other people?
Someone was lying and it wasn't God.
My second encounter came when my friends wanted to go down town shopping, something I don't like to do. As they went in and out of different stores I leaned against my car. A man with a Bible walked up to me and said you are a sinner and I said and you are going to throw the first stone. He stepped back and stared at me until he regained his composure and repeated you are a sinner. I said how do you know I am a sinner and he said because all boys do it and I said if all boys do it why is it a sin? He then quoted the verse 'and he spilled his seed and God slew him', but he did not use some of the words that I remembered so I repeated the same verse. Again he stared at me, then opened his Bible, and read slowly the same words I had said. Again he stared at me before continuing. I don't remember what was said except that I kept correcting what he said. I ended the conversation when I said and you are the one Jesus was talking about when he said you are concerned about the speck in your brother's eye and ignore the log in your own. He took several steps backward, the blood drained from his face, he turned, and walked away. At least he knew where in the Bible to find the verses, but I was instantly mad when he said the verse about the seed, I had spilled my seed during my nocturnal emissions, I didn't have any control over them so how could it be a sin. It wasn't until after I cooled down that I realized he was referring to self stimulation, oh well, I think very slowly.
My next encounter came in the fall of my sophomore year at college, a classmate kept asking me to join a discussion group sponsored by YMCA. I went to the third meeting. It was very interesting because there was a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Hindu, and an atheist. Their points of view were much different than any I had heard. Their comments prompted me to read the works of all the major religions and a few of the minor ones during the next three years.
Only the atheist and a few others, who were not members of the organizing group, came after the fourth meeting when it became apparent that the organizers of the discussion group were trying to convert us to their religion.
During the fifth and sixth meeting the atheist and I would rebut any statement made by the organizers that did not agree with the Bible. We were very blunt and several of the women would be crying before the end of the meetings. During the seventh meeting a man was crying along with the women. I got up and left the meeting and never returned.
The people were crying because the atheist and I forced them to confront the errors they believed to be true. I avoided religious discussions after that and later avoided political discussions because when people believe lies the truth can be a very painful event.
My next encounter came after I was married, my wife wanted me to go to church with her. Church, school, and the girl scouts were the stabilizers of her sad childhood and I did not want her to make a change.
When we moved to Alma, the Presbyterian church offered an adult class taught by the professors and visiting professors of the Alma college philosophy and religion department. Some of these people could read the ancient texts and one did archeological work in the Holy land. For one hour each Sunday for ten years I had a very interesting education. Combined with my experience with the YMCA discussion group I learned that most people, even members of the clergy, do not know their own religion and much of what they say is not true. If you doubt this, remember the clergy and politicians must say what their followers are willing to hear or they will not have very many followers.
This is one reason why lies are so difficult to eliminate. People want to be assured that what they believe is true, so the lies take on a life of their own. A second reason is that people resist change and do not want to lose what they have even if it is a lie and even if the lie faces mountains of facts that refute the lie and even when the lie is detrimental to them.
During my college years I would swing a broad ax when ever someone said the Bible was written in King James English or that the Bible was complete, consistent, and accurate. I could not understand how anyone could be so ignorant and I would become very angry and my response was not very kind.
Most people do not have any understanding of the length of time the Bible covers nor how it was documented. How could anyone say the Bible was written in King James English. When the Hebrew religion was first formed about 5,500 years ago people did not have a written language nor anything to write it on. For about 2,000 years the people took what the priests said and converted it into a song or a chant, much easier to remember a song than a sermon and they would repeat the songs and chants each time they met. In converting the words of the priests into song some words had to be changed so the song would have a melody. This is the second source of error introduced into the record.
Now would it surprise you that the oldest written record is the 'Song of Ruth'. It was written during the middle kingdom of the Egyptian pharaohs. Except for the Letters nothing was written sooner than 30 years after the event.
The third source of error in the record is the translation from the ancient language into a more modern one. For those who speak more than one language, they know that some words in one language have no counter part in another language; therefore it is impossible to have a completely accurate translation.
The fourth source of error is the meaning of words change. For example in old English the word meek meant charitable and look how very and real have change recently. The King James version had many such errors this is why newer translations were made.
The fifth source of error is the error of omission. When the early Roman Church councils met to agree on which documents would be included in the Bible they did not have access to all of the old documents and they choose not to include some that they did have. In other words people determined what was to be included not God. Some people say 'they were inspired by God'. My response is 'And you and I are not?' Add to this the fact that we now know that some of the ancient documents were edited later. We can never say we have the original document, all we can say is that some documents are older than others and when such is the case someone must choose as to which is the most accurate.
When the above is considered, how can anyone say the Bible is complete, accurate, and consistent and to add to my discontent, why do so many people think that God stopped communicating with us 2000 years ago.
If you are wondering what the first error is, it is this, how do we know that the first author converted God's non verbal message in to verbal format correctly.
The professors of Alma college showed us how they could determine which of the documents were older and which were newer and the additions and deletions that had occurred. The major additions were the first three chapters of Genesis, almost all of the book of Job, and the birth story and genealogy in Mathew. Plus many other minor additions and deletions.
Then they outlined the many trends in the Bible which confirmed my feeling that the Bible was not consistent nor complete.
Human sacrifices were common for the ancients. For the ancient Hebrews human sacrifices ended with Abraham. Later animal sacrifices stopped, followed by bird sacrifices, and cereal sacrifices. For Christians, Jesus was the last sacrifice. God does not want sacrifices, God wants us to listen and to learn. God communicates with us 24/7 at the non verbal level. We need to take the time to listen and then we need to improve our ability to convert God's non verbal messages into verbal format. Almost all of our thinking is done at the non verbal level. We can not communicate with anyone, not even ourselves until we convert our non verbal thoughts into verbal format. When you can talk to yourself without making a sound that is when the conversion is complete. There are more trends, you can look them up, crime and punishment, the view on drinking wine, the status of women, etc.
We must concentrate on the message of the New Testament, the gift of Grace, we are forgiven, not the words of the Bible. Jesus said, 'Come follow me' and 'the new has come the old has passed away'. Which means if people do not let the old pass away they are not following Jesus which means they are not Christians.
Previously, I mentioned the primary errors, now I would like to mention two secondary errors. I have read about Egyptian and Roman history for other reasons and I learned some things that increased my disquiet. The Biblical time line did not match with what I read and events were not confirmed. The Egyptian record is very incomplete and only mentions the Jews as slaves. What caught my attention in the Roman record was the fact that they did not crucify anyone until 30 years after Jesus. The Romans were good record keepers. They were also very brutal, they used fire most of the time. A Roman soldier could not touch a Roman citizen, but they could do anything they wanted to everyone else. They could torture anyone at any time for no reason.
The result of the primary and secondary errors that I have mentioned led me to conclude what has been said many time by many different people, 'The Jesus story is the greatest story ever told'. And that is just what it is the greatest story ever told, it is a story. But the most important point, one completely ignored by atheists, is that the story does not have to be true. What is true is God's message. It is our responsibility to sift through every religion and take the true message out of all the junk and discard the junk and keep the Message.
This is our dilemma, because of our limitations, we can never know the truth completely, we can only approach the truth, so we must be very careful. We need to share, (my definition), the more we share the closer we can come to the truth.
For me the following is true. I will only mention a few, remember the error of Allness. We are forgiven. God gave us everything in the beginning what more could God give anyone later. There are no chosen people, not even chosen creatures, we, all of us, are the children of God. We must learn the rules of the biosphere and obey them or the biosphere will kill us. After all Who wrote the rules of the biosphere. We will not cause the end of the earth; therefore there will be no rapture, we will only destroy ourselves.
When the above is considered, how can anyone say the Bible is complete, accurate, and consistent and to add to my discontent, again, why do so many people think that God stopped communicating with us 2000 years ago.

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A11S04 Beliefs

Most people are oblivious to the fact that our brains defines and assigns a value to all sensory input and to all thoughts we create. Since every person is unique so all definitions and values are unique.
Our beliefs maybe very similar to the beliefs of others, but because each person is unique our definitions and our values of our beliefs are never exactly the same as the other person's which means our beliefs are sacred only if we chose to believe they are sacred. Belief implies doubt, we can never know for certain, and if we can not be certain how can they be sacred?
Beliefs, like all other thoughts, are non material resources. Non material resources are only available to the brain that creates them, if so, how can they be sacred?
In order to share non material resources they must be communicated. This is a very error prone activity which again leads to the other person not having the same definition and value of the belief as we have. Again how can the belief be sacred?
To many people waste a lot of time arguing over differences in race, ethnic group, or religion and they support their arguments with beliefs. Rarely do beliefs have a basis in reality, which leads to my difficulty with religion.
When I first read the Bible I believed it literally, I didn't know enough to interpret it any other way. As I read and learned my beliefs were eliminated and as each belief was eliminated I became more anti religion.
In one of my classes we read about Luther's protest, it left many unanswered questions. Then I read a history of the Catholic Church and why Luther protested was obvious. I could not understand why anyone would remain a Catholic, but as soon as that thought came it was followed by another, they had not read it or if they did they decided to ignore the bad apples. Many years later this memory returned and merged with new knowledge about capitalists and greed. Many decisions made by the leaders of the Catholic Church did not come from the Bible, but as the result of politics among the leaders. They had a conflict of interest, it was subtle, but it biased their decisions. They were being influenced by greed for control and it resulted in many errors, the worst one was the infallibility of the Pope. We are all human, everyone makes mistakes, to say anyone was infallible was to say they were God which to me is impossible. Later when I reread the Bible I could recognize this subtle influence of greed for control in many places in the Bible especially in the first part. The ancient capitalistic priests were attributing what they said to God so the people would believe them, but in reality what they said was an attempt to keep the tribes together because if they didn't they would be out of a job and more than likely they would be killed. This same capitalistic greed for control and money still influences church leaders today. Two of the worst examples are the TV evangelists and the big box church preachers. They want followers so they said what other people want to hear, in doing so they perverted the 'Message'. Many individuals exhibit this same greed and when they confronted me, I was not very kind with my response. Later I learned the first three chapters of Genesis and the birth story and genealogy of Mathew were not in older documents and the book of Job was less than one page, someone had added a lot to it. This was not the word of God it was the words of people influenced by the greed for control.
As I read and learned more I became disturbed by the increasing number of errors I found in the Bible and many things that could not be true. By the time I went to college I was about as anti religion as I could be. When the professors from Alma college told about the difficulty in translating the ancient Hebrew into English I recognized another source of error. From my experience with the German girl on the way to the Rose Bowel, the foreign students in my advanced chem class, and my difficultly in trying to learn German I knew that in every language there are words that do not have a counter part in another language. Ancient Hebrew had many and the translators did the best they could, but the result was not accurate. Some words still do not have an accurate definition. I read many different versions of the Bible, for the most part they agreed, but in some parts the meaning was different and some did not have the same number of books. I had read the Gospel according to Thomas and it was not included because it had one verse that said a young man in a golden robe went to lay with Jesus. Thomas did not say anything more. Then I read about how the books of the Bible were chosen, the entire process was political. I was disgusted.
Of all the religions I had read, not one had an error correcting procedure, nor did a more recent document ever mention an error in a previous document, nor was a previous document corrected, and every document was the result of one person. Most religions said or implied that God was infinite, but all communications were in one book or a few and for some unexplained reason God has not communicate with us for more than 1000 years or even longer.
The ancients noticed when a person died something was missing. Some called it the life force others the spirit. They could not know what we know. What was missing was synergism. Every system has synergism when it is active, the synergism disappears when a system in inactive (dead). Every system is more than a sum of its parts (synergism). More complex systems tend to have more synergism.
Our survival depends upon learning the rules of the biosphere. We must be careful not to substitute what we would like the rules to be. To many people think we are privileged and do not have to obey the rules of the biosphere. People are unique, but we are not privileged. The biosphere is completely indifferent to our fate so if we do not obey the rules of the biosphere we will become extinct.
Many religions say the world will end in fire; however our world will end in heat instead of fire and arrogant and ignorant people will be the cause. God will not protect fools.

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A11S05 Free Will

Free will is a much debated topic. We do not have as much free will as most people think. Our growth program is controlled by our genetic code over which we have almost no control. When we reach maturity our growth program tells us to find a mate and we do have some free will as to who, when and where, but not much else. But there is one area where we have complete free will, what we believe and look at the junk people believe.
During an adult class at church, the discussion was about freewill. It was a lively discussion, many people were talking at the same time so the discussion leader asked everyone to listen to one person at a time. Most of the people said we had free will, we were not instinctive, we were above the other animals, we were rational, and made all decisions based upon what we had learned.
As it happened I was the last person to speak. If we had freewill and we were so rational, give me a rational explanation to why there are so many children. Silence.
It seemed to me, from my reading and experiences that our genetic code was the basis for almost all of our actions. The only area where we had complete free will was our beliefs and thinking, but even our thinking seemed to be constrained by our genetic code, it was how our brains worked. Everything else was driven by our genetic code and our response was modified by our environment and experiences. Yes, we did have limited freewill, we could choose what food to eat, what clothes to wear, which order to do which activities, etc., but I didn't consider that freewill.
It seemed to me the only knowledge many people would pass on to the next generation was the knowledge stored in their genetic code, I can not believe the amount of ignorance. When I was in the service training basic infantry I thought I would never see so much ignorance in one place ever again. A couple of meetings on the transport of radioactive materials came close. Every person should receive the amount of education they are capable of understanding so they can approach their maximum potential, paid for by the rest of us because their contribution to our society benefits everyone.

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A11S06 '76 a Pivotal Year

'76 was a very pivotal year for me, our children joined a hope club and our family began to recycle, which led me to read about global heating, and I discarded all religion and stopped reading about religion.
I hope you have the courage to read the following because what I am going to say will disturb many people. I hope it will help religious people protect their religion.
In '76 during an adult discussion group someone made a remark about the sad state of Christian Education material and that brought back a memory.
Several years before '76 the chairwoman of the Christian Education committee asked me to be the third member of the committee. She was desperate, she could not find anyone to fill the position and since I was on the maintenance committee she hoped that I would fill the position until she could find someone to do so. I agreed. At the end of the school year she called me again in desperation. She and the member in charge of elementary Christian Education were planning on going to a vendor show of Christian Education materials on Sat, but there was a death in her family and she could not go and the other member did not want to go alone. She had tried all week and could not find anyone to go with her. She knew I was aware of the problem with the education material for the elementary grades and hoped I would go in her place. I didn't have anything on my schedule and said I would.
The other member picked me up a 7AM, I don't remember the details, but it took two hours to get there. It was a small convention center, it had a long entrance hall with the offices for the center on one side and a lounge on the other side and then the exhibit area.
She wanted me to help her examine the materials. I did so for the first exhibit. She took much longer to examine the materials, she read the lesson plans even when she rejected the booklets. I read the over view first for the fifth and sixth grade, and soon would be disgusted with the content and would stop reading. Most of the material was based on a 40 lesson Sunday school year. Less than 25% of the lessons were from the New Testament. How can anyone call that Christian Education.
I told her I would continue to examine the other displays and if I found anything of interest I would come back and tell her. She continued at her pace and in less than hour I returned to her and said there was nothing I would accept. She wanted to look at them anyway. So I told her I would be in the lounge when she was ready to leave.
The doors were placed in the open position so the noise from the exhibit area could easily enter the lounge. The furniture was placed in three small groupings perpendicular to the doorway with the couches and chairs facing each other in each group and back to back with the next group. The aisles were along the left and right walls. I saw a tall wing backed chair facing away from the doorway at the back of the room. I choose it because the wings of the chair would block the air conditioning from blowing on my head and reduce the amount of noise.
As I was sitting there half asleep two men entered the lounge talking about their churches and congregations. My back was to them, I could not see them and they could not see me and thought they were alone. I did not like the words they used nor their tone when they turned to talking about Christian Education. One said, 'If we get them before seventh grade they are ours' and the other one said, 'I agree, but we need to choose their teachers very carefully'. I don't remember the rest of the conversation, but they sounded like two slave traders. Someone interrupted their conversation by saying, 'We are ready to leave'. They left the lounge without knowing they were overheard.
Some time later, the other member came, disgusted, she could not find anything she would accept and we left.
With the memory of 'If we get them before seventh grade they are ours' repeating when we returned home and ate lunch, I was in an agitated mood. After lunch the children were busy, my wife was reading, and I tried to relax in my chair.
The memory stopped repeating only to be replaced by the recall of the priests of the Aztec, Inca, and Maya. My brain repeated the recall, but before the next repeat it added the stories of the priests from the first part of the Old Testament. It did the same thing the next time and added the history of the Catholic Church followed the next time by the ancient Kings.
From the time I first read the Bible, before my twelfth birthday, I noticed a pattern in all the religions I read that I did not like, the priests and the kings, all used the same approach, 'I will intercede for you with God, you will be protected if you do as I say. Give me your money and your sons and I will create an army to fight any outside threat and we will be victorious and you will be safe'.
In 1975 I had finished reading the history of the Roman Catholic church. I do not remember how it came about, but the following winter I read a book about an influential Roman Catholic Cardinal who was very ambitious, he wanted to be Pope. He did not have enough support among the other Cardinals so he planned a Crusade in the hope that he could increase his support. His plan was ill conceived and it failed badly, he lost all support.
Later I read 'Against the Grain' by James C. Scott, a deep history of the earliest states. He came to the same conclusion by studying ancient civilizations as I did studying ancient religion. He points out that the capitalists could not easily gain control of a civilization until a civilization had a currency, grain became the first currency and the capitalists went into high gear and have been doing so ever since. A currency made it easy for the capitalists to collect taxes to finance their armies in return the capitalists told the people 'we will protect you'. If there was no real threat, the capitalists created one.
Much of what is claimed to be religious writing is not the word of God, it is the words of a capitalist trying to keep control of their followers. Besides, who said it was the word of God, another capitalist, of course. The same tactic is used today, one capitalist will lie and another capitalist will say it is true. Because people do not check they do not know that both capitalists work for the same parent organization, but in different divisions of the parent organization. For example, Buick and Chevy, both divisions of GM.
When an ignorant person says, 'Scientists only find what they are looking for', I know immediately that person will never know how ignorant they are. Because of my education, my work, and my reading, I consider myself a scientist. I understand the scientific method and I know what scientists find most often is something they were not looking for, myself included.
When I was a student of religion, I was not looking for capitalists, but that is what I found in the pattern. Capitalists have been using religion to promote their own agenda which is to have control and to make money, from the very beginning. I want to make religious people aware of the capitalists in their midst and the lies they keep repeating. I did not have a name for what they were doing until I read 'Against the Grain' by James C. Scott. He called it the 'protection racket' and the capitalists are still using it today.
Are you aware of what happened to the Southern Baptist Church? Many years ago Bill Moyers was on PBS TV frequently, explaining what some people had done to his church, he was very upset. He did not realize the people were capitalists. The Southern Baptist Church is again in the news, sex abuse.

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A11S07 A Historians View of Historians

In 1976 I read a historian's view of historians. At the beginning of the book he said 'Words are uncertain vessels to convey our thoughts'. I agree with the statement. To many people believe other people believe the same as they do because they use the same words and ignore the difficulty with words. Every person's vocabulary is unique, every person has their own preferred definition, and their own preferred connotation for each word so even if they use the same words it is not very likely they believe exactly the same.
Later in the book he said 'All of history is interpreted history and historians need to be careful not to reinterpret history'. This statement caused me to pause and when I applied it to religion it meant we did not have any words of God only interpreted words of God and I did not trust many who did the first interpretation which later were interpreted into English. I have no doubt the prophets did receive a message, but from my reading of how our brains work any message received in non verbal format would be linked to all similar memories and when the person converted the message into verbal format it would be impossible to separate the original message from the person's own thoughts and experiences. I have had this experience.
Then I read a letter to the editor of one of our small local newspapers from Julia Brabenec of North Port and I quote:
"This came to my attention and I think it is something that everyone ought to read, as it says a great deal about the nonsense being spread concerning the issue of marriage.
'The Presidential Prayer Team is currently urging us to: "Pray for the President" as he seeks wisdom on how to legally codify the definition of marriage. Pray that it will be according to Biblical principles.'
Any religious person believes prayer should be balanced by action. So here, in support of the Prayer Team's admiral goals, is a proposed Constitutional Amendment to codify marriage on biblical principles. Let us be satisfied with nothing less:

A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women.(Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5)
B. Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines, in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13, I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)
C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut 22:13-21)
D Marriage of a believer and a non believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)
E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any state nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9)
F. If a man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe. (Gen 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)"

It is an example of literalness and male chauvinism. When I first read these passages, at age twelve, I didn't think to much about them; however, when I read them again at age nineteen, at the height of my sexuality, I found them revolting. When I read them again much later, when I understood the context within which the passages were created, I came to an entirely different conclusion. Learning is recursive.
These verses are not the word of God, they are the words of the elders coping with a very difficult problem. Remember, most of these passages are a part of an oral tradition, they were not written until nearly a thousand years later.
At that time the tribes of Israel were struggling for survival and at the same time they were trying to maintain their identity as a people. They needed every child their women could bear, so the passages are not as male chauvinistic as they appear.
We can only guess, but at that time I would be willing to bet that half of the children didn't reach their first birthday and that less than a third reached age five. Very few women died during child birth, most died from infections following child birth and the men died in combat, the tribes were almost continually at war, fertile land was scarce.
It is an example of why you cannot interpret statements out of context, you may need statements from an entirely different source before you can understand the statements under consideration or you will miss the message.
It is an example of the danger of using history to solve a problem because the first solution, the old one, will inhibit other solutions and if you apply an old solution out of context you will force the problem to fit the solution, a terrible error because it will not solve the problem.
It is an example of the disadvantage of restricting solutions to an ideological frame work, the number of solutions are limited and could be zero and again the problem is forced to fit the solution. It is an example of not defining the problem, you can't solve a problem if you can't define it.
But when I combined the above verses with the verses about killing and sacrifices I realize that there was to many verses in the Bible that didn't come from God and I discarded all religions because of the paucity of the words of God and the many statements that were contradictory or illogical, something that God would not do. Most religions talk to much about procedures and being right with God. After reading the historians book I never read another book or article on religion and didn't think about religion for thirty years.

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A11S08 1976 Again

1976 Was pivotal year for another reason. I had been the manager of the computer department for five years and I knew I was emulating Captain Click. I used the systems approach and logic almost every day and was constantly reminded about the Error of Allness and how error prone communication was. In early spring I opened my wife's old Bible, it was the only Bible with a concordance. The binding gave way and the pages fell all over the floor. It would be the last time I would open a Bible.
In early summer I learned set and group theory and symmetry from biographies. I realized I could use set theory to prove the law of the excluded middle. I drew a circle and placed the letter S in it. Drew a larger circle around it with a small m in it and drew a larger circle around both with a M in it. The small circle with the S stood for the set with one entry, Socrates. The middle circle stood for the set of all men, I couldn't include all of the circles for all men, but I could imagine them. The large circle stood for the set of all mortals, again I couldn't include all of the circles for all mortals, but I could imagine them. If the middle circle was removed the link between Socrates and mortal is removed, proving the law. I then created sets for the logical operators and, or, and not and the truth tables for each was displayed in set theory form. While the sets were defined in verbal format, the drawings were non verbal and the knowledge displayed in the drawings was available to my brain at the non verbal level. I could remember the same thing happening when I worked with geometry. Even more so when I worked with equations. The equations were telling me something, but I could not share with anyone until my non verbal thoughts were converted into verbal format. Because we are herd animals we are very sensitive to body language, also non verbal, which explains esprit de corps. But the most common non verbal message was music. Obviously, we can receive messages in a non verbal format.
I firmly believe that God communicates with each and everyone of us 24/7 at the non verbal level. Which means we must not only listen we must be capable of converting the message in verbal format.
I have never heard voices, only my own internal voice after the message was converted into verbal format which makes it very difficult to determine the source, was it my creation or what. Many of the messages were about objects or events that I had never seen or heard or were about topics that I had never considered.
Many times I awoke during the night realizing that my brain was struggling to convert a non verbal message, but did not succeed. Many times years would pass receiving the same message before my brain could succeed in making the conversion. Non verbal people have difficulty converting their non verbal thoughts into verbal format. Verbal people convert their thoughts so fast that they think that they are thinking in verbal format. Remember that all communications between nerve cells is by electrical and chemical signals, they are definitely non verbal.
Many religions have various themes similar to the messages that I have received. The first message was God never told anyone to kill another followed by but not necessarily in order, help your neighbor, a version of the Golden Rule and the verse 'Seek the truth and the truth will set you free', forgiveness, meditation, reflection, thinking, etc.
God does not want our rituals and worship. Nor our eloquent supplications or sacrifices. God does not care where we pray nor how we pray nor the position of our bodies when we pray. God wants us to listen and learn.
Are you listening?

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A11S09 Deja vu

Shortly after 1976 I read an article on Deja vu. It was common for people ages 15 to 25 to have such experiences, but the frequency usually dropped off very rapidly after 25 and most people didn't have any after 30. The article didn't include ESP (extra sensory perception) and the articles I read on ESP sounded like they were written by quacks and I didn't pursue it further.
My first Deja vu experiences were the same as described in the article, I had always seen the object or the place before the experience and I can not recall another after my third year in college. My ESP experiences came before I saw the object or the place and came in a car and also stopped in my third year in college, but returned when I started to play duplicate bridge and only at the bridge table. I had ESP about every other week, but only for one hand.
Before anyone said anything I knew every card in every person's hand. I played well enough that most of the time it didn't change the way I played. But on three hands it did influence the out come and on two of them my partners knew something was out of the ordinary, they had a look of 'what is going on'. About the same time as when I started to play bridge I started to have dreams that I could remember, plus I would wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning with my internal voice talking to me, both came infrequently, some times years would pass before another came. Most of the time my internal voice would say something I already knew and I didn't think to much about them.
I divided my Deja vu experiences into three groups. The first group I tend to discount because the experience occurred after seeing the object or place. The second group I was able to describe the object or place prior to seeing them. The third group occurred during a dream or shortly thereafter. These last two groups I give full value. Unfortunately, I can't remember all of them.
Most of my experiences in the first group occurred shortly after I bought my first car, from sixteen to twenty one, and usually while I was driving. I would see an object or landscape and I would swear I had seen it before, but it was the first time I had ever been there. The second and third group occurred all through my life, but the second, mostly during my younger years.
The second group was the same as the first group, but I was able to describe the object or landscape before I saw them. One such experience shook me. I can't remember the place or time, but I do remember it. My brother and I and two friends were driving on a dirt road near lake Michigan. Sand dunes and trees blocked our view of the lake. As I drove into a small clearing I pulled over and parked the car and said, 'Over those dunes on our right is a small creek.' My brother responded, 'How do you know, you've never been here before?'
'Go over the saddle between those two dunes and see for yourself.'
'OK, lets go.'
The others got out of the car faster than I did and were half way up when I said, 'If you cross the creek near the trees you will find stepping stones, green, reddish, and blue. The green ones are covered with alga, they are slippery so don't step on them, but the reddish and blue stones are OK because they are dry. The reddish stones are in a diamond pattern with the blue stones around them.'
I was disturbed and couldn't believe what I was saying and stood still for a while. I could picture the scene I was about to see. When I reached the top of the saddle the others were running up and down the bank on the other side of the creek, exploring. The scene matched my earlier picture.
We explored the creek to a small swamp, not in my vision, and explored down to the lake and the beach on both sides until we were hungry. We returned to the car and drove to find a place to eat. The others never said a word about my vision then or later, but it was a major event for me, one I can still remember, at least most of it.
Many years later I tried to find the same spot, but I couldn't. The old road had been abandoned, a new asphalt road built further from the lake, the swamp drained, and houses covered the dunes between the trees, I couldn't recognize it.
I had two other major deja vu experiences, all of the third group. The first occurred when my sister's first child, she had four, died. Mickey was born with a heart defect, if he had lived until he was five the doctors were going to do heart surgery, he never made it.
I had talked with my sister several times over the next several years after Mickey was born, but Mickey's heart condition was never mentioned. One night I awoke from a dream, I couldn't remember the dream. As I lay trying to remember the dream, I bolt upright, 'Mickey's in God's hands.' My sister called the next morning, Mickey died silently during the night without any prior warning symptoms. Again, I was disturbed.
The second came many years later. My sister and her husband were visiting his old homestead. She had told me they would stop and visit on their return. During their visit, she called and told me, 'We have an emergency and have to return home immediately.' That's all she said and hung up. Obviously, she was disturbed.
That night I had another dream which I couldn't remember and again as I lay there trying to remember the dream I bolt upright and said, 'Roxie's in God's hands.' My sister called the following evening and told me the rest of the story. Roxie won her first bout with leukemia but not the second, two years later, at age thirty.
The first dream I can remember occurred during a tonsillectomy at age six. The doctors used ether and while I was under, a five point star rotated around its center, its three line perimeter was blazing white light everything else was black. Why a dream, why a star, for a six year old?
The second came several years after Roxie. This time I had a recurring dream every night for more than a month. I was riding with my brother in his convertible on a mountain road. The switch backs were hairpin curves and steep. With each switch back the curves became tighter and steeper until the car turned to the right and flipped over and we fell through empty space. At this point I woke up.
Nothing happened when the dream stopped so I didn't think very much about it, but I still wondered what it meant and why it had recurred so often.
About six weeks later our daughter's husband, John, was killed in airplane accident. My wife and I stayed with her after the funeral and went to the inquest with her.
When an eye witness told his story during the inquest the dream returned as he spoke. John had gone flying with his brother in a modified racing plane. The eye witness saw them take off, heard the engine sputter, saw the plane go into a steep stall, turn right, and fall straight down in a slow spin. John's brother broke the spin and almost recovered from the stall dive before they crashed, another five hundred feet of elevation and they would have landed safely.
I have never been able to answer the question, what was this dream trying to tell me? Many people have asked this question. I seldom dream or at least I don't remember dreaming, maybe that's why I place so much emphasis on the dreams I can remember. But other times, my dreams and internal voice had a message I could not connect to anything I had said, read, or could remember.
'Desolate' was the third dream I could remember and it came six years before I had read about global heating. Then thirty years after 1976 I woke at 4 in the morning with my internal voice saying 'God never told anyone to kill another'. Why did this message come now? I had not read or thought about religion in thirty years.
Then four years later I again woke at 4 to my internal voice booming, 'Your neighbor needs help'. I said, I don't know of any neighbor who needs help and my internal voice repeated. I said but at my age I can not be of much help and my internal voice repeated. I said OK I will find the neighbor and my internal voice went silent and I when back to sleep. I found a neighbor who did need help, I didn't even know her name, I waved to her when I saw her working in her yard and said hello when we met on the side walk, but I didn't know anything about her. She had breast cancer and had finished her first chemo and the following check up was good, but she was destitute. So I gave her food money until the cancer killed her.
I have had several minor deja vu experiences since John's death and two major ones, Desolate and the one above, 'Your Neighbor needs help'. Over the years I have heard other people tell similar stories so I know I'm not alone and they like me came to the same conclusion, God was trying to communicate with us. I can come to no other conclusion.
These events caused me to have a firm belief that I was receiving messages from God or at least a guardian angel or maybe her guardian angel and I was receiving them at the non verbal level which meant I could never separate the message from my memories or my thinking so how could I ever be sure. That is why I say I belief because I will always have doubt.
Some of my internal voices said things I had heard and read many times about forgiveness and maybe those internal voices helped me to forgive myself and later to forgive others. It took me many years to be able to do so. I didn't need to say it out loud, I only needed to say it to myself and as soon as my adrenalin subsided from any trespass, I did so and I was at peace. Forgiveness is the strongest point of the Christian religion, everyone needs forgiveness.
I had heard religious leaders say, 'Why do people treat their religion like a coat, they put it on before going to church and take it off when they leave'. To me it was obvious, religion is belief based and only comes when sensory input invokes the fast mode and disappears when the input disappears. Beliefs are not reliable and sometimes even dangerous, think Israel, Iraq, and Africa. We need to be cautious when we invoke beliefs because most people do not evaluate their beliefs.
So the only way we can approach the truth about such beliefs as mine is to share our beliefs using the slow mode. Many years ago I made a decision not to tell anyone the whole story about my beliefs because I didn't want anyone to think I had special powers, I don't or I was a prophet, I am not. I am not special and I do not think my experiences are special because they are mine. I am not privileged, I am not special, the only way that I am different from most other people is that I listen. Now I can not tell the whole story because I cannot remember the whole story.
I only found a few people who would share with me, they felt the same as I did, they didn't want anyone to think they had special powers. When I reviewed the dreams and internal voices that repeated what I already had read, I thought maybe they were trying to tell me what I had read was true which led me to how important first was to our brains. Again, we must be cautious to make sure what we say the first time is as accurate as possible because it is very difficult to correct an error later. People tend to remember the error and forget the correction. Again, we must be cautious because we cannot know the truth, we can only approach the truth, we are limited because of the way our brains work.
Many times my dreams and my internal voice said 'Be still', Be quiet', etc. My internal voice was only quiet when I was asleep, when I was listening to music, or when I was listening to someone else. It is difficult to listen when you are talking, even if it is only your internal voice talking to you. Maybe this why the messages came at night. This led me to believe we should listen and learn. Jesus said 'Seek the truth and the truth shall set you free'. Unfortunately, there is only one attestation of the verse. For me it is very important. He also said 'The new has come and the old has passed away'. I cannot understand why so many will not let the old pass away, but again that is the importance of first to our brains. I cringe when people assign a human attribute to God.
First is very important to our thinking, when we store a message as true and if we do not tag the message as deceptive our brains will continually create false conclusion each time it is referenced. But here is the most insidious facet. Our brains will ignore all following messages that refute the first one because it 'knows' the truth.
I am reminded of how our brains work every time I type. I must reread what I type at least three times and most times many more because my brain knows what is supposed to be there and it ignores the message my eyes are sending. By eyes can see the errors my fingers made, but my brain continues to over ride the message sent to it by my eyes. This is why we must be very careful what we say and how we say it.

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A11S10 Desolate

More than thirty years ago I had a very strange dream. In the dream I had a very restless night. I awoke just after sun rise to find myself on a very alien planet. The sun looked like a California orange, I could look directly at it without any difficulty. The sky was a deep purple and the sand, gravel, and rocks around me were an even deeper purple almost black.
Because of the early morning shadows, I could see very little detail. I sat up and watched the sun rise, not a cloud nor any color, just an orange sun slowly rising in a purple sky.
When the shadows shrank, I stood and looked at where I had slept. I had carved out a bed in a windrow of dark purple sand. It was very comfortable because it conformed to the shape of my body.
From the angle of the sun I knew it must be winter in the northern hemisphere, but I wasn't cold. I held my hand perpendicular to the sun, but I couldn't feel any heat. I wore a 'T' shirt and shorts, but my boots were odd. Then I realized that I was wearing a clear plastic globe over my head. I looked again at the odd boots and I could see two plastic tubes attached to the inside of each sole and looped through a attachment at the top of back of each boot and then to an attachment at my belt on each side. The tubes joined in the middle of my back and two tubes went into a filter and then one tube went into the plastic globe in the back near the top. With each step filtered air was pumped into the globe.
With the inspection of my clothing complete, I looked at my surroundings. I could see my foot prints in the sand. I climbed a small hill to my left and from the top I could see my foot prints in the sand for as far as I could see.
I had been traveling south in a dry river bed, a very wide river bed, I continued my journey. The gravel in the river bed was mostly pea gravel, but about every mile a mastiff jutted out of the sand, ten to fifteen feet high, jagged and stark.
The hills to the east were small, consisting of small rocks and sand, and the land around them was very flat. The hills to the west were much higher and much steeper, almost an escarpment. The strata of the rock layers were easily seen. I could not see beyond them.
After walking about a hour, I could understand why I had a restless night. As far as I could see in any direction I could not see a living thing. No trees, no bushes, no grass, not even an ant. I had never seen anything so desolate.
Soon, I became hungry. Without thinking I opened a pouch on my belt, removed and swallowed a small pellet, took a sip from my canteen, and waited until my hunger left me. That action spurred me to take inventory. I had a large number of pellets, but my canteen was only half full. I had to find water soon.
I continued my journey and absent mindedly looked at my wrist watch, it obviously had a built in radio. I pushed the talk button and said, 'Hello' and waited. I adjusted the volume on the small speaker, but the only answer I got was static.
I walked until noon, always looking for any sign of life or water. I stopped on a small rise, rested on large rock, swallowed a pill, dank a sip of water, and continued. I walked until dinner and repeated the same routine. An hour before sunset, I stopped, found a sand windrow, carved out a bed, lay down, and watched the sun set behind the high western hills. As it did so, a small notch in the rocks let one small shaft of sunlight beamed across the sky. Now I could see the dust. The shaft of light sparkled with millions of small diamonds, so many that the shaft became fainter and fainter until it blended in with the rest of the dark black sky. No moon and not a star was visible, I could not see a thing not even the back of my hand.
I repeated this same desolate procedure for six more days. On the third day, another very large river joined the one I was traveling, at least it broke the monotony, but only for a moment. I drank my last sip of water at dinner and didn't know what to do. I was almost in panic mode as I went to sleep. I didn't know how much longer I could go.
The next morning as I scanned the western hills looking for a sign of life or water an unusual prominence caught my eye. I swore that I had seen it before, but how could I, I had never seen such desolation, not even in the 'Bad Lands' on earth. I could not get it out of my mind, I could not go to sleep, I tossed and turned and finally dozed off just before sunrise.
I awoke the next morning when sunlight came through my bedroom window and from that day on I never forgot the stark desolation of that dream, I never felt so a lone, before or after.
Now comes the rest of the story. Several days ago out of the clear blue, I knew where I had seen that prominence before, we had stopped at small park on the east side of the Mississippi south of the Ohio river and looked across the river at it. The dream was about how our world would end if we didn't change our ways.

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A11S11 'Prayer is Not Enough'

Prayer cannot create virtue or value by itself and if prayer is not a part of a persons value system, a prayer by any other person is meaningless. Prayer never solved a problem, prayer may allow an individual to attain the proper state of mind to define and solve a problem, but prayer never solved a problem. This type of error contributes to such places as Israel, Ireland, etc. Each side praying that they live long enough to kill their enemies, is that type of prayer virtue or value?
Many people believe that prayer can influence the well being of others. Many years ago a University hospital did a study of the effect of prayer on sick people and the study indicated prayer did help those who were sick.
They followed standard procedure. They assigned patients randomly to either the control group or the prayer group, but the number of patients they used was small and the time length of the test was limited by their budget. They published their report which was a sensation.
Soon 15 other university hospitals did a similar study. Because each university had different budget limits the number of patients was different in each study, all used the same length of time. When they published their reports there was no consensus. Three found the same benefit as the first report, six found no benefit, and six found the prayer group to be worse.
Another group upon reading the reports wanted to know why the results were so different so they did a meta analysis. They found that the number of prayers each patient received and the religion of the prayers made no difference in the results.
When they checked the number of patients who had died during each study they were surprised and caused them to check other health issues of each of the patients.
This time there was a consensus, every study that indicated a benefit had healthier patients in the prayer group, all of the studies that showed no benefit had nearly equally sick patients in both the prayer group and the control group, and those that found the prayer group worse had healthier patients in the control group than the prayer group.
Their conclusion was that no one could choose equal healthy and sick people for either group and this is why drug testing is so expensive, they use a very large number of people in the hope that the random assignment of a large number of people will yield the same number of healthy and sick people in each group which fails very often.
So the question, 'Does prayer help other people', can not be answered by the medical profession. Science can not answer the God question which means the atheist position is no more tenable than the religious position, both are lacking because we are finite creatures, we have limited brain power, limited memory, limited knowledge, we are not rational, etc.

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A11S12 The United States Will Eliminate Terrorism

If we are to eliminate terrorism, we must eliminate the errors that allow terrorism to occur. One error is the fallacy of justification. Some religious, philosophical, or political fundamentalists, such as the Arab, Jew, Irish, pro life, etc. use their interpretation of their religion, philosophy, or politics to justify their actions. This is a very major fallacy, our actions should justify our religion, philosophy, or politics not the other way around.
We will have terrorism until this error is eliminated, a very difficult task, the United States, for example, has been perpetuating the fallacy since 1776 and the Jews for over 3500 years. If you use your religion, philosophy, or politics to justify your actions you are a hypocrite, you are not true to yourself, you are externalizing your value and how could killing some one justify your religion, philosophy, or politics?

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A11S13 THE CONFLICT BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE

Most people do not understand, there is not a conflict between science and religion because science knows it can not answer all questions and science has a mechanism for change. In fact, science divides questions into three groups. Those it can answer, those it can never answer, and those that it may be able to answer but cannot do so without spending an unreasonable amount of resources. Questions such as, 'Does man have a soul?', 'Is there a God?', etc., science does not even attempt to answer because science knows it can not.
There is a conflict between religion and science because most religions attempt to answer all questions and most religions do not have a mechanism for change except for minor procedural items. Most of the time the only way to effect a change in a religion is to create a new religion and generally creating great animosity. Because of these defects I must conclude that all religions were developed by man not God and therefore we will never have a one true religion.

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A11S14 YOU CAN ACCEPT EVOLUTION AND KEEP YOUR CHRISTIAN FAITH

Notice, I used the word accept and not believe. Science does not believe a scientific theory or law, science accepts them if they fit the data, if they don't they are rejected. A scientific theory or law must also meet three additional criteria, they must be repeatable, they must predict, and they must be able to be proven false. I don't know of any religion that meets these criteria. For me, religion must restrict itself to answering the questions that science knows it cannot answer and creation science is a sham.
Now, let me tell you how the title of this comment came about for me. I cannot explain why the thoughts came as they did all I can do is retell them as they happened. Each comma and period in the material below was followed by a pause in my thinking, some times for several minutes.
One day I was sitting at the beach reflecting on the latest blow up in Israel. All I could do was shake my head at the stupidity, I could not believe what the Jews or the Palestinians were saying. I did not believe either side now, I did not believe either side in the eighties, or the seventies, or the sixties, or the fifties, or in 1947 when I studied the creation of Israel by the United Nations in high school.
If I didn't believe the Jews then why should I believe the Jews at any time, was their word like a fine wine, does it get better with time. NO! Then why should I believe what they wrote more than 2000 years ago?
'Seek the truth and the truth will set you free.' 'In God we trust.' I stopped attending Sunday school at age twelve because the little old ladies were not teaching what the Bible said, they were teaching me their belief, I couldn't even call it their interpretation of the Bible, they were not telling me the truth and I didn't go to church again until I was married.
Now the same thing was happening again and as far as I was concerned neither side was telling the truth. When I replaced the word 'believe' with 'trust them to tell the truth' in my above thought process the whole basis for a literal interpretation of the Bible or of any religion, for that matter, came crashing down.
You can accept evolution and keep your Christian faith if you are willing to give up a literal interpretation of the Bible. All evolution is doing is explaining what happened between the time God spit in the dust and creation of man.
Now the parable 'Foxes have holes' took on a new meaning, one that had been discussed in our adult Sunday school group many times. Jesus was not talking about a place to rest our heads. He was talking about our ability to determine the truth. Together with my knowledge of logic, Godel's theorem, the uncertainty principle, the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, etc., I knew that we can never know anything for certain.
Think of it this way, Truth is at the top of a circle and ignorance is at the bottom, on one side place belief with faith above it and on the other side place think with knowledge above it. From ignorance we can approach Truth from two different directions but we can never reach it because of our inherent limitations. It also means we can never mix science and religion when we try to approach Truth. They must forever remain on their separate paths in our thinking.
'The New has come, the old has passed away' and 'No one can live by the letter of the law, we must live by the Spirit of the law' also took on new meaning. When religion conflicts with science we must change our beliefs and or faith because the conflict means that our belief and or faith was moving away from the spirit and toward the letter and no one but God can know the letter.
I'm well aware of how easy it is to draw the wrong conclusion from limited data sets. Especially conclusions drawn using the lowest order discernate. A discernate is a member of a hierarchical set of the following operators: counting, measuring, comparing, observing, and experiencing. For some questions, such as, the God question, we can not answer, they are beyond our capabilities.
For me the God question was answered early in life and I have never been able to determine which came first my answer to the God question or my adoption of the systems approach to thinking or a melding of both through time.
Because most of our thinking is at the non verbal level and we have great difficulty translating our non verbal thoughts into verbal format so our accuracy is low; therefore we can never know for certain what God is trying to communicate to us.
We chose the bits, we assign the value and create data, and we create the information. This is why I am a theist. Every religion I have studied is certain. From my experiences and education, the uncertainty principle, Godel's theorem, relativity, quantum mechanics, logical semantics, etc., we can know very little for certain; therefore I must reject all religions.

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A11S15 School Vouchers

Some of the values we accept are values forced upon us by well meaning people. They usually call it religious education when it is really religious indoctrination, I call it brainwashing. Such values, forced upon young children, are very difficult to change. Does the child really have freedom of choice after such indoctrination?
My parents ignored my religious education and I'm thankful because that allowed me to choose my own faith. From what I have observed that is the best thing a parent can do for their children.
Many fallacies would disappear if religious education was not allowed until after high school graduation. Children would be in a better position to judge for themselves. Religious education by its nature is very biased. Alternatives are never mentioned and errors are never disclosed because the religion is always the one true religion and it contains no errors.
In my younger years I studied many religions and I never found any that did not contain many errors and never did any religion offer any alternative to its point of view. If the younger generation is not allowed to challenge the older generations point of view, except superficially, the errors of the older generation will be perpetuated forever.
Most people think of religion as being 'good' and therefore ignore the down side of religion, a topic I have discussed many times.
Since religion has been the major impediment to the educational development for centuries, I can not support even the most trivial possible perpetuation of this impediment. Since most of the alternatives to public schools are parochial and the children would receive a religious education by default, I can not support school vouchers.

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Two young evangelists knocked on our door and of course they wanted to convert me to the one true religion. During the course of the discussion, I told them 'How it happened for me' and one of them said, "Very interesting." As usual I don't think very fast and didn't respond. She continued by asking, "Don't you think the men of the Bible are inspired?" Again I didn't think fast and didn't respond. She went on about the truth of the Bible to which I told her the Bible had to many errors to be the word of God. She ended the conversation with, "You must be a scientist," as if being a scientist was a dirty word.
Later, after reflecting on the conversation, I came up with the following.
How can that be, Jesus said, "Seek the truth and the truth shall set you free." So how can being a scientist be a dirty word. Doesn't a scientist seek the truth? Scientists evaluate different alternatives, have you ever know a religion to evaluate alternatives or even mention them?
When she said, "How interesting," I should have said, "The truth is not in you," because she was not interested in what I said. When she said, "Don't you think the men of the Bible are inspired?" I should have responded, "And you and I are not? So why are you placing so much importance on a document that was written so long ago, don't you listen to God?"
We must remember our limits, the finite cannot know the infinite; therefore we cannot know God's word, we can only know 'of' the word. We certainly cannot remember the whole truth, so how could we write the whole truth. All of our documents are limited no matter who wrote them, all must be tested. Every thing we hear or read must be checked.
Our knowledge is limited, we can only 'know' what we can test. To accept as true what we can test to be false is not faith, it's stupidity. God didn't call us to be stupid, God called us to be faithful. Because of our limits, to be faithful means we must seek the truth. Other wise we fall prey to people who constantly twist the truth to gain their own ends.
Another major error often made when preaching about the Bible, is that it is consistent. The Bible is not very consistent, let me point out a few trends. If you read the Bible piece meal the trends are hard to discern, but if you have a good memory and you read the Bible from beginning to end you may discover the following. Most were pointed out to me, but sacrifice, punishment, and God's activity were not, I had come to those conclusion before someone else mentioned them to me.
God to us, God for us, God with us, God in us. Sacrifices went from humans to large animals to birds to plants to Christ to nothing. Punishment went from extreme compared to the crime to 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' to forgiveness. Male power descends and female power ascends. What about the consumption of alcohol?
Let me end with the trend that I think is most important. In the first books of the Bible God is very active in human affairs and God's activity in human affairs decreases with each additional book until the letters, where God is not active at all. Now why is God's activity so important to me, because in the first books of the Bible, God's activity is centered around telling the Jews to kill sinners and helping the Jews kill their enemies. The Bible ends with 'Love your enemies and forgive sinners'. What a turn around.
God never told any one to kill another.

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A11S17 Literalness and Biblical Literalness

The problem of literalness was made very clear to me during discussions in my advanced German class. Knowledge of the German language was a requirement for all chemistry majors because much of the chemical literature was written in German at that time and to understand all the details of an experiment it is necessary to read the original documents describing the experiment or to have someone translate the documents for you.
Now there is a danger if someone does the translation for you, in every language some words and phrases can not be translated, there are no equivalent words available in your language; therefore the translator must choose from the words available, those words in his judgment that come the closest to the meaning of the other language. Unless you do the translation yourself how do you know the translator used good judgment, how do you know the translator didn't miss one or more innuendos or connotations. You don't, you can't, it's impossible to know.
This leads to the primary error of a literalist. By definition a literalist interprets each word in isolation, out of context, which means the meaning of all connotations, idioms, metaphors, hyperbole, allegory, etc., are ignored.
Many foreign students were in my advanced class, they were being taught German in English. Many times our professor, who was fluent in seven languages and could think in three, would explain the German to a student in their native language.
For me it was almost a mystical experience to listen to three languages being spoken and watching the face of the student as an understanding took place and say, 'Oh'. Almost always the 'oh' would be followed by a lively and joyful discussion. In order to bring the class back to the lesson, if the discussion didn't end quickly, our professor would end the discussion with, 'Until you can think in a language without translating, you can never completely understand the message.'
Now I ask you, how can you accept a literal translation of the bible? I can't because I know the translators have made mistakes, many of them, and some of them have been important to the true understanding of the message. Why do you think there are so many different versions of the bible? Because the translators can't agree.
Let me remind you of a change made recently. Do you remember, 'Faith, hope, and charity ...' it was changed to 'Faith, hope, and love...'
Now let's compound the problem. If we have several documents, all written about the same time but differing, how do we know which one is correct?
Also, we can learn the ancient languages and we can read the ancient documents and translate for ourselves, but how can we check the original translation, the person who received the message from God. How do we know they passed on the correct and complete message?
Now let's consider the worst error of all, the ERROR OF ALLNESS. A literalist is more apt to make this error than a non literalist because a literalist examines every verbal construct in isolation, out of context, and rush to judgment, a conclusion. It is this bull headed rush to judgment that leads to making the wrong assumptions.
For example, 'Go forth, be fruitful and multiply'. That's ALL there is to the message and because the statement does not contain any delimiters they assume we are to multiply indefinitely and indiscriminately and any other assumption THEY choose.
But if we defer judgment and include many other statements about being a good steward, we can come to a much more accurate assumption and closer to the truth, that is, being finite and living on a finite planet, we must limit our population to some finite number because if we don't we will bring about a catastrophe that will prevent us from being being good stewards and fruitful.
Remember, when we read or hear a sentence the information we gain is always more because we filter the sentence through our history. The previous sentence is a simple explanation of what is happening, now let me give you a more general explanation. When a system analyzes data to create information, the system analyzes all the coordinates of the data as well; therefore, the information will always contain assumptions, innuendos, and connotations not in the data.
To avoid making assumptions, never analyze a statement out of context unless it contains a delimiter for every aspect of the statement. If not then include the number of context statements that will supply the delimiters for the statement and all of the context statements.
Now, add the fact that except for the letters, no document was written sooner than thirty years after the event. Do you trust your own memory that long? Why do you think Jesus preached for the spirit and against the letter of the law. It should be obvious, we can't know the letter, it's impossible, we're not God.
From the definition of a system and its corollaries, a system is said to be successful if it attains a goal; therefore, the only required attribute of an evolved system is that it be effective. In other words it must be able to survive. It may have other attributes, such as, efficient, equal, perfect, fair, honest, beauty, true, logical, etc., but they are not required.
Also, remember that all of our systems of rules are evolved systems, such as, our system of laws, our economic system, our ethics, our morals, etc. We have applied the attributes of truth, honesty, logical, true, etc., because we have learned that if the systems aren't, conflict between individuals will arise. (Please note, learning, language, and knowledge are evolved systems, but are not a part of this discussion. Learning is also recursive.)
We have struggled through the ages to determine if our systems are fair, logical, consistent, etc., but because our systems are evolved systems, we don't know how the rules came about and as a result we are incapable of determining if our systems meet our desired attributes. Therefore I don't understand how any individual, even one having minimal knowledge, could examine our world, our bodies, our brains and claim that we were created in God's image or that all of the other ancient statements are true.
I'm not really anti religion, I'm anti ignorance. We are being stupid when with a little effort we could have done better, much better or with a little effort we could have known better, we ignored knowledge because we were to lazy to obtain it or we intentionally ignored knowledge because it was counter to what we want to believe.
From the scientific literature, I'm coming to the realization that we have not evolved far enough yet, our psyche needs a belief. Prayer, meditation, and spiritual endeavors enhance our immune system and increase our life span. What I would like is a new philosophy to replace religion.
Let me return to my German professor's statement, what I wrote is not his exact words, I can't remember his exact words, he spoke in German, but I can remember his message.
We must eliminate exactitude and the bull headed rush to judgment from our thought, we are not listening to the message. Until we eliminate the idea that we can know exactly what we are supposed to be doing, we know exactly the right way, we know our way is the only way; our very survival is in jeopardy, we will tear our society apart arguing over trivialities, over stupidity.
God didn't call us to be stupid, God called us to be faithful to the spirit of the message.

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