Life After Death For Microbes

When you kick-the-bucket in this terrestrial abode and head off into that great eternal afterlife located in an even greater heavenly abode somewhere beyond the Pillars of Hercules (or equivalent), no doubt you expect an everlasting existence interacting with deities and of course your fellow, albeit also deceased, humans. But what about all the other terrestrial life forms (animals and plants). Don’t they too deserve their slice of the afterlife pie? No fear. You’ll find them too out back of beyond, or wherever ‘heaven’ resides.  

According to most religions, after your demise, you enter into the afterlife phase of your ‘life’. And apparently you will be sharing that afterlife with some rather exclusive company, just your fellow human beings*. There will be no other life forms present in Heaven, Hell or Hades, be they companion animals (pets), butterflies or vermin**. But if you stop and think about it, that’s nonsense. If you have an afterlife, all living things have an afterlife. 

Okay boys and girls, run this bit of wisdom past your local clergy.

Let’s be clear from the outset, you are not an organism. You are a colony of organisms. You call these individual colony members or organisms, cells***. Your body’s cells are living things in their own right.

Now chances are, you believe in an afterlife when you die, an afterlife that’s still within the physical realm of matter and energy. A non-physical afterlife would be hell indeed, since you couldn’t see, hear, touch, taste or smell, and all your lifetime memories, your personality, your creativeness, all encoded in your neurochemistry, your neurons, your brain cells, would go poof. Thus: that physical you, that’s now in a physical afterlife, is still a colony of unicellular living things or organisms. If you head to the afterlife, so do all the individual living cells that made you up, including sperm cells, eggs cells, blood cells and those all essential neurons.

The logical upshot of that is that each and every single-celled micro-organism, microbe, bacteria, etc. when it dies, goes to ‘heaven’, or whatever realm(s) you think houses the afterlife. For lack of something more suitable to label this location, let’s just equate afterlife with ‘heaven’.

Thus, every multi-cellular organism, in reality also a colony of single-celled organisms, goes to an afterlife upon their demise. Jellyfish, sponges, clams and oysters, snails and slugs, ants, newts, frogs, mackerel and  minnows, ravens and robins, pussy cats and puppy dogs, whales and dolphins, apes and monkeys, even plants go to a ‘life’ after death. So presumably, when you mow the lawn, all those soon to be dead grass cells will go to ‘heaven’. But at least when you get to ‘heaven’ any lawns there won’t need mowing – you couldn’t kill off anything that was having an eternal afterlife now could you? So, how cows and goats and horses get nourishment in ‘heaven’ would be a mystery.

Of course maybe you don’t need nourishment in the afterlife (so much for beer and pizza nights). That would solve a lot of problems, like the need for lions in their afterlife to kill lambs in their afterlife, but why then drag all of your digestive systems including blood circulation, liver functions, kidney functions, etc. along for the afterlife ride?

But then you can’t discriminate. Digestive cells are just as deserving of an afterlife as your (required) brain cells and neurons and nerve cells and sensory organs like eyes and ears. So in your afterlife you carry a lot of now useless baggage along, like your lungs. You no longer need to breathe in order to provide oxygen to your now immortal cells.

Further, any cell that’s part of a multi-cellular organism that expires before the rest of the colony of cells goes to ‘heaven’ or whatever (or should that be wherever?). Anything defined as alive, when it dies (as all things must even if it’s a bacteria that reproduces asexually generation upon generation), has an afterlife. That’s the logical upshot of believing that you have an afterlife. It makes no sense that your brain cells should accompany you to a ‘life’ eternal, yet a chimpanzee’s brain cells don’t because a chimpanzee doesn’t.

The proof of that pudding is that some animal cells, in the form of organs and tissues, can get transplanted into humans. Some body parts from pigs I believe are compatible for human transplantation, like heart valves. Now when the human who received that animal transplant dies and goes to ‘heaven’, isn’t it logical that the donated animal body bits go along for the afterlife ride?

As another little titbit offered up, consider the fact that 90% of you is not you at all. There’s all those trillions of bacteria and worms and mites and other hangers-on that live in your mouth and nose and guts and blood stream; those that are in your hair and on your skin thriving as parasites or even as symbiotic organisms. Most of these critters will die with you and go with you to ‘heaven’.  

Besides, you wouldn’t want to go to your afterlife without having all of your previously departed companion animals present to greet you at the Pearly Gates, now would you? And of course ditto for all those pets you now have whose demise will follow yours. You’ll want to be reunited with them too.

On the other hand, if pets ‘survive’ into the afterlife, and ditto microbes, then so will black plague bacteria, sharks, scorpions, man-eating tigers, icky spiders, cockroaches, rats, cobras, and any and every other nasty you can conjure up. Your own afterlife might not be so heavenly after all!

Now I keep talking about ‘heaven’ and not ‘hell’. Why? Because it would be difficult to argue that any biological cell can be or is sinful or evil. Therefore, all cells go to ‘heaven’ and by implication you must go to ‘heaven’ since none of your body cells deserve to go to ‘hell’!

On the other hand, maybe there’s no such thing as an afterlife, a ‘heaven’ or a ‘hell’ to spend eternity in, for anything from humble bacteria to the decidedly un-humble human.

The absurdity of it all! Not that the concepts that microbes have an afterlife, rather the concept that there even is an afterlife.

*That’s good to be with your friends and loved ones forever. That’s bad if it’s your ex, your mother-in-law, and your old supervisors that would just as soon fire you as look at you.

**That’s good – no pesky flies, mosquitos, cockroaches and rats. That’s bad – no pretty flowers, no good fishing (catch and release only of course) and no songbirds.

***Thus, when you die (i.e. – declared medically dead), you don’t really die in absolute totality in the interval from one heartbeat/breath to the lack of what would have been your next heartbeat/breath; you aren’t completely dead, since not all of those cells that make up you die at the exact same time that medical science says you have kicked-the-bucket. Of course all those not quite yet dead cells will shortly follow suit, but all up, unless you were at ground zero at Hiroshima or Nagasaki (or equivalent), the snuffing of all of your cells is a drawn out process, not something that’s instantaneous.



People Kill: God Doesn’t Care: Part Two

Following yet another mass shooting in the US of A, with all the predictable and understandable gut reactions that pour forth, my gut feeling is that nothing of substance will be done since American history, culture and the Constitution rule; gun control isn’t the real issue; things will get worse; people kill (it’s in our genes – deal with it); and it provides another reason why God is an increasing irrelevance in society.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

The Religious Element

I personally find it amazing, even astounding that in the aftermath of a mass murder episode, people flock to churches and pray and hold candlelight prayer vigils, and express total faith in the Almighty the He will look after the slain innocents. I’d of thought people, especially religious people, should be taking to the streets with raised fists screaming in pure rage and outrage against the alleged loving, compassionate, merciful, all-knowing, all-powerful God for standing by on the sidelines and not lifting a godly digit to prevent the tragedy in the first place.

Of course the obvious answer is that God gave us free will, and a person who slaughters the innocent is just exercising God’s free will gift and therefore God is not going to interfere. God does not want to get involved in the petty daily affairs of humankind.

Or, some might suggest that God works in mysterious ways and that the slaughter of the innocents is part of God’s plan, part of the Almighty’s Big Picture which us mortals can’t comprehend. Well, if mass murder is part of God’s plan, do we really want any part of God?

Some suggest that God doesn’t work in mysterious ways and this is just pure and simple another example of God’s wrath. While that would be keeping within God’s actions and reactions in the Old Testament, I somehow find it hard to believe that God would need to employ a middleman. Further, by employing a middleman, God would lose the benefit of letting all and sundry know that He was pissed off and this was an example of His wrath. So, sorry ‘bout that Westboro Baptist Church but God did not ‘send the shooter’ as per one of your favourite phrases – this time or ever. We do not need God’s help to kill.

Some, especially the extreme Right Wing Fundamentalists, suggest that humans have turned their back on God and therefore God has turned His back on us. That sort of spitting the dummy doesn’t quite ring true with those godly attributes of compassion, etc. I mean a child might in a hissy fit turn their back on Mum & Dad, but Mum & Dad aren’t as likely to reciprocate.

Of course the final answer as to why God ignores us, and allows extreme evil, is that there is no God in the first damn place, and this (mass murder of the innocents) is just part of that evidence.

In conclusion, in one sense, such mass murder episodes are in a strange way ‘good news’ stories for they should re-re-re-reinforce the concept that, sorry Virginia, there is no God, or if there is He does not give a DAMN about the sorry affairs of mankind. He does not want to get His godly hands dirty. So all the vigils, and all the prayers, and all the church attendances, all of which may be psychological comforting responses, in the long and short term, well these actions are absolutely meaningless and a waste of time, effort, energy and tears. Ultimately, it amounts to another nail in God’s coffin. 

P.S. - In a Darwinian sense, when you have a global population of over seven billion and increasing, well, life is cheap. The mass shooting of millions in one day would be of no lasting consequence to the human species; just the opposite, it might improve things – slightly.

People Kill: God Doesn’t Care: Part One

Following yet another mass shooting in the US of A, with all the predictable and understandable gut reactions that pour forth, my gut feeling is that nothing of substance will be done since American history, culture and the Constitution rule; gun control isn’t the real issue; things will get worse; people kill (it’s in our genes – deal with it); and it provides another reason why God is an increasing irrelevance in society.

One undesirable cultural phenomena, often witnessed in the United States, though hardly the exclusive property of the US of A, is the fairly indiscriminate and outright random killings of innocents that the killer has some apparent, albeit impersonal, grudge against. The most recent in a long line of case histories involved the Sandy Hook Elementary School at Newtown, Connecticut (December 2012). However, I don’t want to get into specific cases, nor dwell on the human element as experienced by those most intimately involved, friends, family, and authority figures like the police who have to deal with the situation. Rather, I’m going to focus on the broader issues, two of which are always present in the aftermath. There’s the human element, and often the related gun control issues, and there’s the religious element, an often focus being why does God allow evil and why do people seemingly ignore this facet?

The Human Element

People kill. We’re very good at it. That we are killing machines seems to be hardwired into our neural networks. Why is probably irrelevant, but no doubt can be traced back to our early hominid ancestors and the days of nature red in tooth and claw and that famous summation of biological evolution – survival of the fittest – kill or be killed - or in more modern phraseology, shoot first and ask questions later. Is there any human on this planet over the age of five who hasn’t secretly wished to bash somebody’s head in to a brain dead pulp? If so, the numbers are probably so low as to be statistically meaningless.

People kill. Again, we’re very good at it. And so now and again someone with a gun(s) goes off the deep end and lots of innocents die (or are seriously wounded but pull through even though the intention was for them to snuff it). Whenever one of these mass killing events ensues, especially in the US of A, there will be the inevitable outcry for tougher gun control measures. There will also be the inevitable outcome of keeping the status quo. It’s not easy to change the American Constitution which gives Americans the right to bear arms! American history and culture reinforce that right. Gun control isn’t the issue though that’s the gut reaction, but gun control just ain’t going to happen. But even if it does, even if not one private citizen in the US of A had a gun, so what? If I wish to kill someone indiscriminately or at random, I’m not going to be stopped just because I don’t have a gun. It’s a trite but accurate phrase that “guns don’t kill, people kill”.

How can I kill thee, let me count the ways. Well there are still knives, bows and arrows, swords, and spears. Eliminate those, well I can throw rocks or bang you over the head with a brick. No rocks, no bricks; well I can choke you to death. Maybe I have access to hand grenades, sticks of dynamite, Molotov cocktails, or have the know-how to make homemade bombs or make nerve gas or otherwise employ poisons effectively. Clubs, like baseball bats, are pretty effective too since they can clobber more than just a baseball. I can always drive my car into a crowd at high speed, and cars are unlikely to be banned just because their drivers can employ them to kill. If you really want to go out with a bang rent a fully fuelled plane and crash it into a crowded sports stadium. Then there’s arson via the humble match. No, eliminating guns is not going to end the slaughter of the innocents. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

People kill. We love it. You’d probably be hard pressed to pick up any general history text of any nation and not find, somewhere between the covers, at least one killing contained therein, and truth be known, probably lots of them. Recall all those human sacrifices made to the Aztec gods – slicing open the chest and ripping the heart out kills just as effectively as a gun. Closer to American hearts and minds, once upon a time it was peachy keen to slaughter the Native Americans including women, children and infants, as in “the only good Indian is a dead Indian”. Afro-Americans fared only slightly better. 

We almost tend to make cultural ‘heroes’ of those who kill, from Billy the Kid to Captain Kidd, Jesse James to Ned Kelly (Australian), Doc Holiday to Bonnie & Clyde, even villains like John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Jack the Ripper have acquired a certain mythological aura that surrounds them. The passing of time has a way of softening their impact. If you source though the histories of all nations that list could be extended a thousand-fold.

The total number of biographies of the bad guys (and gals), killers and serial killers, the gangsters, the outlaws, the pirates, the assassins, even famous celebrities who were murdered, would fill up the entire shelf space of many a good sized public library. There’s just something about the cold blooded killer that appeals to our genetic makeup.

Our works of fiction are full of human slaughter and not just war novels and westerns. There’s that whole genre of slasher films aimed usually at the teenagers.  We love a whodunit murder mystery and those with a ‘license to kill’ like the ever popular 007. Cop and P.I. TV shows do well; even courtroom dramas which usually feature a murder trial. The Bible (another work of fiction) contains more blood and guts and gore and slaughter of the innocents per page than the most graphic of novels, and you’ll find murder ranging from Shakespeare, Homer and even unto operas – there’s a least one murder in each of Richard Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” quartet of ‘musical dramas’. 

                                                                                                            

And if we get tired of humans killing humans, there are always aliens and monsters on the rampage to satisfy the bloodlust.

I forget exactly the number now, but a study was made of the number of fictional murders shown on make-believe TV shows but the end result was alarming. We are graphically exposed day-in-and-day-out to humans killing humans, and not just on the evening TV news, though that too of course.

I fail to see why people get all worked up over the mass slaughter of, say, 30 innocents. What they are worked up about is the fact that one person killed 30 people, not that 30 people were killed. I’m sure that everyday, in everyway, in the US of A, even a lot more than 30 people are murdered, but hardly a headline, apart from the local murder mentioned in the local rag, gives note to the daily 30 killed by 30 others. But if one individual does murder 30 people at one go, then its global headlines and hundreds of human interest stories follow. In either case it’s the same number of innocent people dead, so why does one rate a massive outpouring of soul searching and the other rates barely a whimper of concern? Is there really anything different in principle between killing 30 or the one? Murder is murder; mass murder is still murder.

And what of that other mass slaughter? It’s what humans do best, not only killing other humans but innocent animals, especially animals, for no reason. A ‘sportsman’ hunter kills 30 deer; a ‘sportsman’ fisherman kills 30 fish. If anything, the ‘sportsman’ gets a pat on the back for his skill.

Speaking of skill, doesn’t the military award marksmanship medals for such gunmanship skills? What about sportsmen (and women) in competition up through and including the Olympic Games for their shooting skills in not only marksmanship with a gun, but say in archery. We reward those who can shoot, and in a manner of speaking, shoot to kill (by hitting the bullseye).

The bottom line is that while most of us are restrained most of the time from acting out our primeval instincts by the laws of the land, each and every one of us can snap; some more readily than others, but snap nonetheless. Perhaps the really amazing thing is that the slaughter of the innocents is as at a low a level as it is. And though this sounds cruel, in the time it takes one person to snuff out 30 lives, another 30 are born. In a nation of 300 million, if 30 are murdered, well that’s a drop in the ocean, but in the real world, the world of nature red in tooth and claw, that sort of ratio wouldn’t cause Mother Nature to bat a proverbial eyebrow, and aren’t humans part of that real world (although we’d probably deny it, since we think we’re something special, like something special in the eyes of God). In the cosmic scheme of things, an elephant stepping on an ant hill, while a tragedy for the ants concerned, is of no consequence for the overall survival of the ant species.

So what’s going to happen? Nothing is going to happen except things will get worse! With every passing day there are more and more people – more and more chances for a massacre of the innocent to come to pass. With every passing day, more and more instruments that have lethal powers are manufactured. Even if there come to pass legal ways of preventing the two trends from interacting, there are always the illegal ways and means, and if history is any guide, what Lola wants, Lola gets, even if Lola has to beg, borrow or steal.

To be continued…

Where Was God When…?

Humans can and do die prematurely through no apparent fault of their own. It’s a common feature on the news. It’s reasonable to ask who’s responsible. There are various agencies that can be held accountable: God, Mother Nature and Mankind. Since God is allegedly the Top Banana, the buck stops with Him when it comes to a ‘please explain’ those premature deaths. So, here’s an analysis of possible explanations with God taking centre stage.

Either God exists or God does not exist. If the latter, God cannot be held accountable for anything good, bad or ugly. But, if God exists, and has those positive attributes given to Him, even by His own words in the Bible, then God has a lot to answer for when it comes to explaining why humans are allowed to die prematurely through no fault of their own. The basic charge is premeditated murder at worst, almighty godly negligence allowing death at best.

Let’s review some positive Godly attributes:

God is Loving – Jeremiah 32:18.

God is Merciful - Exodus 34:6; Psalm 103:8; Joel 2:13.

God has Compassion – Psalm 86:15; Psalm 145:8.

God is Forgiving – Daniel 9:9; Ephesians 4:32.

God is Kind – Nehemiah 9:17; Joel 2:13.

God is Gracious – Exodus 34:6. Psalm 86:15; Psalm 116:5.

God is Righteous – Psalm 24:5; Psalm 116:5.

And there’s a lot more besides but you get the idea. God is the good guy. God is your friend. God looks after you. Pure bovine fertilizer! In fact the extreme Christian Right Wing, those televangelists, the Westboro Baptist Church, etc. all like to stress some other of God’s attributes, like being a jealous God, a vengeful God, a God quick to anger and a wrathful God – they like a God who hates and who kicks human butts, hard, and fatally. To them, any premature death to anyone by any cause is attributed to God, thank God, full stop. That also strikes me as pure bovine fertilizer. 

Humans die thanks to God before their time is due:

Why God’s rush to judgment? Since everyone is doomed to die anyway, there’s no apparent need for an immortal deity to rush their demise. To God, a billion years either way, either side of now, is of no consequence, so a human lifespan is just a piddle. If other words, since God will get His pound of flesh, or the devil his due in the fullness of time, there’s no need for any human not to be granted the right to live to die of natural causes – old age.

Innocents have been put in harms way through no fault of their own. Who’s responsible? Where does the buck stop? The buck ultimately stops with the chief cook and bottle washer – the Almighty. 

We have humans killed by deliberate Acts of God:

An Act of God usually implies wilful death and destruction, pain and suffering, inflicted on humanity by well, guess who, the Almighty Himself. That’s murder in the first degree. What else would you call Sodom and Gomorrah; the Egyptian tenth plague on the firstborn; the invasion of the Land of Canaan? Nor does it have to even be a mass murder scenario – even God smiting a single individual is premeditated murder. Fortunately, there have been no unnatural actual Acts of God (as opposed to natural Acts of Nature) in way, way over 2000 years plus, at least defined as a major destructive event that happened without benefit of a natural cause, or even a single death that can only be attributed to “God” and so listed on the death certificate. So in the Common Era, God is off the hook for premeditated murder, though God should still stand trial for atrocities committed in the Old Testament. 

We have humans killed by random Acts of Nature:

That’s wilful negligence since God, if there be a God, ultimately controls nature, God being all-powerful and all that. But first, if it appears to be a natural disaster (flood, drought, famine, hurricane/typhoon/cyclone, tornado, bushfire, volcano, earthquake, hail, epidemic, pandemic, asteroid/meteor impact, solar flares, blizzards, icebergs, lightning, tsunamis/tidal waves, etc.) then lets adopt the duck philosophy – if it looks, sounds, swims, flies, and otherwise behaves like a duck, it’s a duck, or in this case, it really is an Act of Nature and not something deliberately set in motion by Mother Nature’s boss, God, though that’s not set in any philosopher’s stone by any means.

Acts of Nature have an apparent natural cause, but of course that could mean that God is hiding behind an apparently natural causality curtain, but in reality forcing Mother Nature to do His bidding. But why would an all-powerful God hide behind Mother Nature’s skirts? - Back to the duck philosophy. So let’s just assume that God just sits on the sidelines (if He’s still in the neighbourhood, don’t forget He hasn’t been seen or heard from in over 2000 years) and lets Mother Nature strut her stuff – the nice balmy spring mornings; the multi terror-tornadoes that strike in that afternoon.  

Now what does He do from His heavenly sidelines? Well, He can do nothing and wash His hands of the unfolding events, whether it’s the twisters that form in Tornado Alley, a Hurricane Katrina moving towards New Orleans or an Asian tsunami about to strike. But God failing to take action is akin to the parents of a toddler who’s crawling across a road busy with traffic and failing to take action to prevent the inevitable tragedy. That’s wilful negligence. Or, God could manipulate apparently natural events to suit His purpose – create winners and losers.

In any natural disaster (Acts of Nature) there will tend to be ‘winners’ (survivors) and losers – the newly deceased. If God got down off His throne and intervened then presumably He wanted the ‘winners’ to live and the losers to die and made sure the natural dice were rigged to ensure that outcome. If so, then the ‘winners’ can “Thank God”, at least for the surviving part, though God should still get the Big Finger from true believers for allowing that Act of God under the guise of an Act of Nature to have transpired in the first place. Is the credit due God for saving some lives outweighed by the blame for the deaths and overall destruction God caused in the first place?

We have humans killed by Acts of Man at God’s direction.

That’s God being an accomplice to murder in the first degree, for example the Battle of Jericho. Of course today such a defence holds no legal water. If I murder someone, the jury is unlikely to be swayed as to my innocence if I suggest that God wanted and directed me to carry out that murder. So let’s let God off the hook for Acts of Man, even if humans were inspired by God setting a bad example, summed up by that old chestnut, “do as I say, not as I do”. God may say “Thou shalt not kill”, but God’s own track record matches anything Jack-the-Ripper accomplished by many, many orders of magnitude over and above Jack, the serial killer.

We have humans killed by Unintentional Acts of Man:

Friendly fire is one such term, ditto collateral damage. It’s quite apparent from reading the newspaper or watching the evening news on TV that human related accidents cause the death of other innocent humans. A driver has a heart attack, loses control of his vehicle which slams into another car killing the occupants. A hunter shoots at what he assumes is a deer only to discover it’s a fellow hunter he shot by accident. It’s not a difficult assignment to come up with dozens upon dozens of accidental death due to some human error or unintended scenario unfolding, like that cigarette butt tossed out the window which starts a bushfire which goes out of control and ultimately kills dozens. The issue arises; we know why Hercules or Superman can’t come to the rescue, but why doesn’t an all-powerful deity, believed by the multitudes to exist, come and save the day? Doesn’t the deity, say God, care for the innocents? Or perhaps the multitudes are mistaken and God has no more reality than Hercules or Superman. If the former, God doesn’t come out of the situation smelling like a rose, that’s for sure. If the latter, the multitudes need to engage their brain into forward gear and question their beliefs, rather than have it idling in neutral, ever unquestioning.

We have humans killed by Intentional Acts of Man:

Though God ultimately has control over the actions of humans; God could argue that because of man’s free will, He shouldn’t get involved or be held accountable, even though parents are morally accountable for the actions of their children, and aren’t we, allegedly, God’s children? That analogy aside, though God probably thought it was none of His business, should He have really turned a blind eye towards what was to unfold in August 1945 at Nagasaki and Hiroshima? And what about the innocents caught up in the events of 9/11? What about tens of thousands of similar, but less memorable happenings like intervening before Jack-the-Ripper ripped? Again, God probably said it’s none of my doing; I’m not going to get involved. But, would such an attitude jive with all of those loving, kindness, compassionate attributes so noted and logged in the Bible? 

We have humans killed by their own stupidity: The Darwin Award:

Many a human has ended his or her own life prematurely through sheer stupidity, forgetfulness, negligence, and similar concepts. There are a whole series of books on what’s titled the “Darwin Awards” – those who benefit humanity by removing themselves from the gene pool and thus not passing on their stupidity genes to the next generation. Some people are their own worst enemy, accidents waiting to happen. While we’ve probably all experienced an ‘oops’ moment, some ‘oops’ are fatal ‘oops’. Now the question is should God save you from your own stupidity? Whatever your answer, God’s clearly answered that philosophical issue in the negative since people do die prematurely because of their own stupidity. Humans have a far better track record saving or rescuing people from their own stupidity – in the nick of time – than any deity.

Conclusion:

By way of final explanations, either 1) God does not exist or has left the building for parts unknown; 2) God doesn’t give a damn which suggests He isn’t compassionate or merciful, etc.; 3) God plays favourites which also implies He’s not merciful, etc. to all equally. It’s also statistically improbable that only those who were the losers in every natural or human related disaster deserved, in God’s eyes, to burn, baby, burn, and every ‘winner’ was a saint in human skin. When it comes to allowing even dictating the premature deaths of God’s children, well, God’s a god-awful parent! And this is the God you want to snuggle up to in heaven? If God really doesn’t have these positive attributes (mercy, compassion, etc.) then it illustrates that the Bible is full of it, and I don’t have to elaborate or spell out what “it” is.

Created in Man’s Image: God’s Virtual Reality: Part Two

Reality isn’t all that complicated. It resides 100% within that brain-thingy of yours. The Big Question is, is that (your brain) the sum total of reality or are their other realities outside of your own that reside as both an outside reality and in other brain-thingies? And where does the reality of a god (or any supernatural deity) fit into that Big Mental Picture? Perhaps God was created in man’s image.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

GOD AND THE INSIDE LOOKING OUTSIDE: IS THERE AN OUTSIDE AT ALL?

In theory there are two forms of existence – reality and virtual reality. You, or at least your brain, have reality. If someone, even yourself, dreams about you or writes a story about you, that particular version of you is a virtual reality you.

For all you know there is no external outside reality. All that is ‘outside’ is a figment of your imagination, of your mind, of your brain chemistry in the exact same way as your dreams (inside looking inside) are imaginary and not literally a part of external reality. Your dreams (while asleep) might be a dream within a daydream (your so-called external reality – life is but a dream), which is a variation on the standard simulated universe (virtual reality) scenario only substituting wetware for software. The only thing that is really real is your wetware, but that is subject to various outside forces, as noted above, assuming of course there are outside forces.

Even the body to which the brain is attached might be illusionary. There’s the famous tale of the two philosophers, one of whom said that a large rock was but an illusion and had no reality (Philosopher-I) and the other (Philosopher-R) who refuted that theory by giving the rock a really swift and violent kick, and in intense pain noted that he had indeed refuted the claim of Philosopher-I. But did he? Philosopher-I could argue that Philosopher-R was as imaginary as the rock; his kick was an illusion, and the pain therefore nonexistent. Philosopher-I could further argue that since he hadn’t kicked the rock not a thing about the reality of the rock was proved to his satisfaction. Even if Philosopher-I had kicked the rock and ended up with a black-and-blue big toe for his trouble, he could still argue that the pain was just his imagination, it resided only within his brain, and existed independently of his unreal illusory bruised big toe. All that was apparently outside of Philosopher-I’s brain, Philosopher-I’s body, Philosopher-R, the rock, the kick, etc., was just all make believe done via Philosopher-I’s brain chemistry.

So there may not be an ‘outside’ at all – your brain is the universe. But if there is an outside it could be drastically different than what you perceive it to be, as in the case of someone seeing sounds. Your brain chemistry has taken an outside reality and turned it into an alternative and inner reality, a personal reality, a reality unique to you and only you because your brain and brain chemistry is uniquely yours.

Contrast that when I’m asleep and dreaming ‘reality’ with your wide awake ‘reality’. Both can seem equally real, as anyone who has had nightmares can testify to.

Contrast your wide awake ‘reality’ to that when you are ill or exhausted or under the influence or after taking LSD or marijuana. Your ‘reality’ changes as circumstances change. Further, someone who is ill or tired or under the influence, etc. or is otherwise hallucinating, isn’t witnessing the same reality that you are.

Reality is a rather nebulous concept!

But either there is an external reality, or there is not. If there is not and you accept the validity of a god or a deity then that god or deity is a creation of your imagination and part of your fantasy world. If there is an external reality, then either a god (or gods) exists within that external life, the universe and everything or does not exist. In other words, either there is, or is not, a real supernatural deity who creates, controls and destroys, a deity that has an existence independent from your own. Regardless, let’s call this ‘is’ or ‘is not’ supernatural entity “God”. There can be no wriggle room between the two possibilities*.

Even in an external reality, Superman has no reality, only virtual reality. Superman was conceived in the human mind. In contrast, does God have reality, or just a virtual reality? If it’s the latter, then God was conceived and born in the human mind, where God resides to this very day. God is a figment of our imagination. In short, God didn’t make us in His image; we made God in our image since God was our creation. Of course if God was created in our image then it’s not surprising that what we like God likes and what we don’t like, well there’s God’s wrath we conjured up to deal with that. God’s virtual reality actions and reactions, as related in the Bible at least, are totally comprehensible to us. God is depicted as often violent, prone to temper tantrums, authoritarian, cruel, demanding, jealous, vindictive, vain, in sort, God’s human. But God’s not unique in that capacity. Zeus ain’t any better – he’s a downright sex maniac, even rapist. In fact if you examine any deity from any mythology you’ll find very, very human qualities exhibited. Hera (Mrs. Zeus) is a jealous scheming bitch; Zeus’s brother Poseidon is vindictive and bad tempered; his other brother Hades was a kidnapper. I’d better stop there; otherwise an essay turns into a full-length book!

How do we know for absolute certain that God didn’t create mankind in His image and not the other way around, as I believe? We don’t! But if God really wanted to make His humans a unique creation, really separate and apart from all else, He would not have moulded us with the same basic body plan and biochemistry as the rest of the animal kingdom. We might have been created instead with a silicon-based biochemistry and we certainly wouldn’t share any DNA with anything else, since that just confuses the creation picture. Further, the dust-and-rib scenario of Genesis is pretty ludicrous even to the relatively uneducated. Even Frankenstein’s monster is a more plausible account or act of creation than Genesis.

To be continued…

*There might be a third possibility. Something or someone masquerading as a deity, say ‘ancient astronauts’, who by artificial selection, starting with primitive primates through to the hominids and eventually to us, genetically engineered our wetware such that the concept of ‘god’ was hardwired into our brains, such that we would accept the external reality of a god(s) (with themselves in the starring role), all the better with which to control the great unwashed masses. ‘God’ carries a bigger more awe-inspiring stick than mere flesh-and-blood aliens.

Created in Man’s Image: God’s Virtual Reality: Part One

Reality isn’t all that complicated. It resides 100% within that brain-thingy of yours. The Big Question is, is that (your brain) the sum total of reality or are their other realities outside of your own that reside as both an outside reality and in other brain-thingies? And where does the reality of a god (or any supernatural deity) fit into that Big Mental Picture? Perhaps God was created in man’s image.

INTRODUCTION

God (or any supernatural equivalent deity) is a figment of your imagination and a creation of that same imagination, probably aided, abetted and reinforced by your peers, your culture and your society. God therefore has a virtual reality but not a really real reality not that of necessity there even has to be a really real reality of anything, apart from your very own mind and mind’s imagination, imagination that has its ultimate foundations and is rooted in brain chemistry.

INSIDE: THE BRAIN RULES THE ROOST

You are defined by your brain. You are not defined by your big toe or your set of lungs or your good looking facial features or how much you weigh or how old you are. What makes you, you is all that which is contained within those cubic centimetres of grey matter, wetware, the brain, the mind (a subpart of the anatomical organ), whatever you wish to call it.

Your brain, or more to the point your brain chemistry, defines you. Everything that you are resides in your brain under the control of wetware chemistry. Consider the following list of things that are you and that are part and parcel of holding residence in your wetware: Awe, wonder and a sense of mystery; spirituality; a sense of purpose; all learning; all memory; all your emotions; all your likes and dislikes; all that you see, hear, taste, touch and smell; all of your thoughts; all pleasure and pain; all of your creativity; all your questions (but not always the answers); art appreciation; your sense of right and wrong or of morality and ethics; your values, beliefs or faiths; your all encompassing worldviews; all of your behaviour; your sense of self; your ego; your intelligence; your choice of spouse or partner or for that matter, choice or decision making – full stop; your ability or affinity to learn languages; your degree of numeracy; and of course and finally your perception and acceptance or rejection of the supernatural, including supernatural beings like deities, like God (for example). All this and more in such a limited space, but it’s true.

All this and more comes to the fore via your five senses, perhaps starting even before birth (a sense of warmth, wetness, body sounds like a mother’s heartbeat) but certainly the moment you pop out of the womb. Throughout your life, all of this input via your five senses, brought to you courtesy of life, the universe and everything, all of this data, is filtered and refiltered and mixed and matched and contemplated and broken down and constructed and deconstructed and reconstructed again and manipulated into one you, one personality, one mind, one unique worldview albeit forever changing, until the day you are finally declared brain dead.

But all of the above traits and abilities of the human brain says bugger-all about the reality of a deity, which is a bit of an abstract concept in its own right.

Brain chemistry ensures that humans (probably uniquely so) can try, but not succeed, in coming to terms with other abstract questions like what’s the maximum number of leprechauns that can hold a picnic using a dime for a blanket; what is the sound of one hand clapping; what’s south of the South Pole; what’s the nature and extent of infinity; and what transpired before the Big Bang?

One has to be careful of not reading too much into abstractions. We often see messages or meanings where there is none to be found, like seeing ‘pictures’ in clouds or the face of Jesus on a piece of toast or, for example, people who listened to Aaron Copland’s musical composition “Appalachian Spring” would comment to the composer how that music so perfectly described an Appalachian spring day. But Copland said the composition had nothing to do with the Appalachians or with spring and the title was chosen to please his benefactor or sponsor. It was all wishful thinking on the part of the listener.

Images are all in the mind, perhaps aided by the power of suggestion as in the case of the title “Appalachian Spring”. Now not every listener in the audience would have had identical mental images when hearing the music. Even the same listener could have had a slightly differing mental image upon a later hearing. Does the “Grand Canyon Suite” really conjure up a picture of the Grand Canyon (if say you heard the piece without knowing the title) or might it suggest a different place or a lot of different places or maybe it’s just a nice piece of music full-stop, just as a god or God can be a nice abstract concept, full-stop.

Humans can mentally conjure up an image of the Appalachians or the Grand Canyon from a piece of music (with a suggestive title) just like they can conjure up and contemplate the existence of a god or a deity (from something equally suggestive like the Bible or from a sermon), but that doesn’t mean any god or deity actually exists in any shape manner or form, any more so than “Appalachian Spring” or the “Grand Canyon Suite” of necessity requires the actual existence of a mountain range or a time of year or a hole in the ground in Arizona. 

More to the point of the imaginary, and musical compositions stem from the imagination, actual objects like Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon exists in our culture, like God, though there’s way more evidence for those space heroes vis-à-vis God, as kids who routinely attended the Saturday matinees in the pre-Sputnik era would (if still alive) testify to. 

And that’s another concept we have that animals probably don’t; the ability to conjure up the imaginary. Animals probably don’t have a world of make believe or fiction. There are human fans, even fanatics, of all manner of make believe human characters like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, James Bond, Batman, Captain Kirk, to Harry Potter and Sherlock Holmes, even down to those who follow Greek mythology, the life and times of the Olympians, demigoddesses like Helen (of Troy), and demigods like Hercules. Even aliens like those in Star Trek or say Superman are still human otherwise we couldn’t easily relate to them. All of these and a whole lot more besides were created in man’s (and woman’s) image as the product of the human imagination. So let’s just add God to the list of imaginary beings created in the image of God’s collective creator. Why? Because it is not surprising or beyond the realm of possibility that God et al. also fits into that category of make believe, especially since there’s not any trace of any evidence that any supernatural deity, God included, has ever existed.

But is brain chemistry, the ultimate cause of all things mental, really all that important? We’ve all seen the unfortunate results of what can happen when brain chemistry malfunctions or misfires due to disease, genetics, physical damage or injury, drug use and abuse, so there is no doubting the importance of brain chemistry and the relationship between it and what makes you, you. It can produce all kinds of oddities as well like mathematical wizards who can do mentally in seconds what it would take you minutes to do using pen and paper. Then too there are the strange cases of people who can hear colours or taste sounds, etc. 

GOD AND THE INSIDE LOOKING INSIDE: OUR FANTASY WORLDS

Your mind can examine the intricacies of your mind. Your wetware has an existence independent of anything else. Your brain could be the be-all-and-end-all of life, the universe and everything. If nothing else, you can only come to terms with life, the universe and everything after it has been tucked away into one of those recesses within your mind. In other words, you exist inside the universe, but the universe in all its entirety has to exist inside of you, or your mind. Life, the universe and everything can only be dealt with after it has found a home within your brain and can thus be contemplated via your brain chemistry.

“I think, therefore I am” is a widely bandied about quote, but it’s a case of your inside wetware contemplating itself. Even if you are removed from external stimuli, say in an isolation tank, you can still think, imagine, compose, invent, daydream, and if you fall asleep, dream. I think of things, therefore they are too. Your mind creates internal fantasy worlds full of things. For example, children often have imaginary friends and playmates. As an adult, we sort-of outgrow that, but we still create every day in every way internal fantasy worlds as part of our worldviews.

As such, your creative mind is akin to being a god, an inventive mind which creates and controls and perhaps destroys all sorts of mental fantasy worlds. Haven’t you often pictured the sorts of things you’d really like to do to Person X or Country Y if only you could get away with it?

While ‘day-dreaming’, you will often hold imaginary conversations with others in imaginary scenarios as rehearsals for dealing with all those possible scenarios that the real outside reality of life, the universe and everything could throw at you: which leads itself to the next section…

To be continued…

Creation: God vs. Science: Part Two

Probably among the most familiar of familiar phrases in the English language is one that starts out “In the beginning God created…” However, there are alternative non-theological variations on that phrase that fall more in the realm of natural philosophy (or as we call it today, science). What’s at stake is the credibility of God’s alleged word vs. the credibility of the word of science. Christians might believe the Bible, but they put their real faith in science when they turn on their TV set or board an aircraft. So too should they put their money on the scientific scenarios of the creations.

In the beginning God said a whole bunch of stuff central to His creation of life, the Universe and everything.*

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Botany is next up on the creation agenda. Of course you need land and water before you can have a garden (hydroponics and phytoplankton aside) so the ordering is, well, in order. Except God then makes a mistake. He starts off all things botanical with grass, which, truth be known, is a pretty complex and highly evolved plant. There were lots of simpler plants that pre-existed grasses. Even the dinosaurs existed before grass did! What God should have said is that “let the Earth bring forth algae and phytoplankton and mosses and ferns”. That would have been a detail which would have made botanical atheists stand up and take notice of Biblical bona-fides.

But, just when you think the Biblical creations gets things in a reasonable and logical order, here comes the next bit – the creation of the Sun, Moon and stars. The relevant quote, in case there’s any doubt:

Genesis 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

Okay, the Moon and the stars aren’t all that relevant, but what did all those plants, those grasses, herbs and fruit trees, do for solar energy (photosynthesis) before the Sun got created? This is without question a major Biblical screw-up; the height of all that’s illogical in the scientific ordering of things, but then the Bible and science are not exactly bedfellows. Science on the other hand has the Sun and the Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago – plants came much later on and thus they never lacked for solar energy.

The screw-ups keep on keeping on. Next up we have the creation of marine life and avian life. Unfortunately for God, He screwed up by including whales among marine life. Okay, whales are marine creatures, but they are not fish. Whales are mammals. God apparently created whales before the end of the fifth day of creation. After the fifth day had ended, and the sixth day had begun, God then apparently created mammals, like cattle, and lots of other critters that in the fossil record preceded whales, as well as those things that “creepeth” upon the earth for example (I assume worms and snakes, etc.). What’s the relevant proof?

Genesis 1:21 And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

We note that whales were created before other beasts as outlined in Genesis 1:24. Yet, as any biologist will outline for you, whales evolved from land mammals and went back to a marine habitat. Whales are a relatively recent product of natural selection. They were hardly an animal that kicked off the mammalian branch of the tree of life, contrary to what God says. 

Take as a further example the creation of the male and female of the human species, which is I’m sure a bit more relevant and personal to all you readers. The barebones (as it were) were given in Genesis 1:26. Now, finally, God gives out the details!  

Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Genesis 2:21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

Genesis 2:22 And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

Well at least now we get some sort of explanation – the male created from common dust; the female from the masculine rib. Details are still thin on the (dusty) ground, but the dust-and-rib theory is at least something that scientists can explore and play around with. Hands up all of you who attended high school biology class or university Biology 101 and got the dust-and-rib explanation? I thought so. Biologists have found a more convincing explanation. If you don’t need dust, and you don’t need ribs, then you don’t need God either in the equation. That aside…    

Now if you’re a male, are you overjoyed that your original alpha-male ancestor was made out of ordinary everyday garden-variety dust? Would you be happy if you had been made out of dust motes? If you’re a female, does it tickle your fancy that you’re (well your sex is) just a second generation afterthought (there is quite a break in Genesis between Adam’s creation and Eve’s coming to the party); a creation from a masculine rib? Does any of this strike you as slightly ridiculous? That’s all the more so since the creation of the original alpha-male and alpha-female afterthought was just a one-off. Post-dust and post-rib it was creation by that time-honoured mechanism – sex, which is smelly and messy and rather hit-or-miss. I mean hey, if dust and ribs work, well when you’re on a winner, stick to the original blueprint. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. God should have left the dust-and-rib instruction manual behind. So, if a modern loving couple wants a bouncing baby boy, well a bit of housework will round up the raw material. If it’s a little girl, well hubby can have a rib job at the local clinic. Okay, that’s ridiculous. But if it’s ridiculous now, it was equally ridiculous back then.

Now kindly note another creation screw-up here. We’re all familiar with the concept of day and night; morning and evening. Now the question is what celestial object is responsible for there being light and darkness, day and night, morning and evening? Did I hear you suggest that the Sun was the orb responsible? If so, go to the head of the class.

But it comes to pass that we have this verse:

Genesis 1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

And then we have this verse (repeated from above):

Genesis 1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

So the upshot here is that day and night, morning and evening, existed prior to the creation of the Sun. Wow! Neat magician’s trick that!

Now kindly note yet another creation screw-up here.

Recall: Genesis 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Recall: Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

Now recall: Genesis 2:18 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone.

Now recall: Genesis 2:19 And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them.

In Biblical parlance, this is the equivalent of the chicken and egg question. Which came first, man or beast? The Bible provides statements for both that’s can’t both be correct, so take your pick. Whichever you pick, the alternative then has to be nonsense. Odds are neither version is correct.

Now if God is perfect, there can be no Biblical screw-ups. If there are Biblical screw-ups, then either God isn’t perfect or the Bible is NOT God’s Holy Word. A reasonable explanation is that the Bible was written by non-perfect humans, and God doesn’t exist since the errors, the screw-ups, were never corrected by Him. God never proofread His own Holy Words!

One further anomaly that proves just about beyond any doubt that Genesis is the work of man and not of God; we note the endless repetition of “And God said.” My question – prior to Adam, just who was around back then to copy down anything that God said? And if the answer to that is nobody, then presumably God is just talking to Himself! Or, more likely as not, the entirety of Genesis, creation and all, is just an early example of what would later become known as science fiction.

*Kindly note that all Biblical references have been taken from the Book of Genesis that appear in the King James Version of the Bible.

God’s Intelligent Design? Part Two

One alleged proof of an Almighty deity is that life, the Universe and everything (LUE) is apparently designed in an intelligent, not in a random way. Part of that life is of course human beings, like you. Are you intelligently designed? If you answer “Yes”, I’ll say “Bull”! Is the rest of LUE intelligently designed to optimise your love and respect of your alleged Almighty Creator? If you answer “Yes” yet again, I’ll say “Bull yet again”!

Human beings are apparently the apex of all of that which God created. As such, all of that which God created should benefit or be beneficial to us. Life, the Universe and everything (LUE) has been designed by God with us in mind since LUE was created before us, in preparation for us. It (LUE) therefore must be an intelligently designed, since God is, presumably, intelligent (though creating the human species sort of makes you wonder). Now, the question is, does the rhetoric meet the reality?

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

If God created everything, God also created the various principles relating to metallurgy. Now the creation of metal objects like knives and swords and spears and guillotine blades and bullets can put holes in the human bodies that God designed, holes big enough to make that human body an extinct human body. By allowing metallurgy, well so much for God wanting His apex of creation, human beings, to live long and prosper.

If God created everything, God created all of terrestrial biology. Terrestrial biology has a habit of getting in the way of the human ideal of utopia, like a Garden of Eden. I mean there’s food poisoning, all manner of natural venoms and toxins like snake and spider bites and wasp stings and scorpions and jellyfish; predators that can snack on human prey like crocodiles, sharks, tigers, wolf/hyena packs, etc. Then there are those fatal illnesses caused by killer viruses and other microbes that do you in with the flu, AIDS, Ebola, ALS (a motor neuron disease), and a hundred more nasties. Ask your family doctor for a list of how biology can do you a mischief, but allow lots of time for what will prove to be a rather lengthy lecture. 

If God created everything, God created all of our traits and characteristics. Just one generation after God created the pinnacle of all that was and ever will be (Adam and Eve), Cain murdered Abel. Things have just snowballed from there and also incorporate rape and incest and legalised murder (warfare) and enough variations on human atrocities to fill an encyclopaedia with. Did God create for us an intelligent state of mind (which isn’t quite the same thing as an intelligent mind)? Well, our intelligent state of mind can use those intelligent physics and chemistry and even biology that God so intelligently created to raise all sorts of non-intelligent havoc. We’ve all heard of CBR – chemical, biological and radiological warfare.

IMHO, God has got to accept some responsibility here in the same way that a parent has to accept responsibility for the behaviour of their children.

Speaking of parents, parents are usually given (or figure out for themselves) safety tips on how to keep their yard, home and contents a safe place for their kids – like keeping medicines out of reach is but one example. In the case of God the Father (and Mother) it appears as if He has taken the opposite route and bobby-trapped our yard, home and contents. I suppose that’s an intelligent design of sorts if that’s your objective, but God’s intelligent design message is then “boy have I got it in for you lot” (actually that’s just a continuation of His Old Testament ways).

On the other hand, Mother Nature is neutral. So, are we being cared for by a loving God, the apex of His creative intelligence, or a neutral Mother Nature who just requires that we pay our money and take our chances? At least Mother Nature is intellectually honest. Our Supreme Being, the Almighty Creator God, who’s all loving and merciful and compassionate, on the other hand, has intelligently designed all myriad of ways to snuff you out of existence!

Now let’s consider the subject of waste. To waste resources is not considered intelligent. To design an inefficient whatever when there are more efficient options available is not considered intelligent. It’s not very intelligent or efficient to design and build a car with square wheels! That’s a waste of resources. But God tends to waste a lot of resources. For example, since we are the apex of God’s creations, I ask if we really need any more resources and real estate that is contained with the solar system itself. The rest of the vast cosmos is a waste of space and stuff. Who needs it? We don’t. And when the Sun runs low on fuel in four or five billion years time, well surely we can rely on God to change the batteries, and thus life goes on.

More down to earth, we note that God created life. Okay, over the course of its lifetime, a tree might produce billions of seeds, of which perhaps one or two might survive and thrive and make it into tree-hood. All the rest are wasted effort on the part of the parent tree. Of course you might argue that the unlucky seeds ended up as a food resource supply for various animals and thus weren’t really wasted at all. And while there’s something to be said for that, what about those billions of male sperm cells and dozens of female egg cells that never get their act together and thus never get into the act. That too is an extravagant waste of time and energy and other bodily resources that went into that wasted production. God could have designed a system whereby one sperm was produced and one egg was produced and the two would unite and live happy ever after!

There are vast deposits of valuable minerals deep down inside the Earth – fat lot of good they do us. 99.999% of the Sun’s energy output misses our planet (and the rest of the solar system’s real estate) and heads off into the depths of interstellar space. More waste.

Lastly, and on a more philosophical note, if there is intelligent design behind LUE, then that implies that there must be a purpose(s) or reason(s) behind all of those bits and pieces that collectively make up LUE. But that’s clearly nonsense. Who’s the recipient or beneficiary? It has to be something living for non-living things cannot appreciate intelligent design. A grain of sand understands no design or purpose in being tossed about by the ocean waves, presumably a part of God’s intelligent design. But then a microbe has no comprehension of the existence or purpose or significance of say the planet Mercury or the planetoid Pluto (again a part of God’s intelligent design). Ditto that of a tree. In fact ditto that right on up the ‘tree of life’ until you get to us. So apparently we are the recipient or beneficiary of God’s intelligent design – the apex of God’s creation. Okay, that makes sense, except for one tiny flaw hinted at in the beginning paragraph – The intelligently designed Universe has been around for 13.7 billion years. Intelligently designed Planet Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years. God’s apex (defined as Homo sapiens) has been around for about 200,000 years - maximum duration. Oops – that’s a lot of waste. Waste isn’t intelligent, so the whole intelligent design bit ultimately crumbles like a house made out of playing cards. . It’s almost as if we were just a minor afterthought and not the apex of God’s creative abilities after all.  

God's Intelligent Design? Part One

One alleged proof of an Almighty deity is that life, the Universe and everything (LUE) is apparently designed in an intelligent, not in a random way. Part of that life is of course human beings, like you. Are you intelligently designed? If you answer “Yes”, I’ll say “Bull”! Is the rest of LUE intelligently designed to optimise your love and respect of your alleged Almighty Creator? If you answer “Yes” yet again, I’ll say “Bull yet again”!

Human beings are apparently the apex of all of that which God created. As such, all of that which God created should benefit or be beneficial to us. Life, the Universe and everything (LUE) has been designed by God with us in mind since LUE was created before us, in preparation for us. It (LUE) therefore must be an intelligently designed, since God is, presumably, intelligent (though creating the human species sort of makes you wonder). That intelligent design includes the design of God’s apex creation itself – the human being. Now, the question is, does the rhetoric meet the reality? Let’s start with the alleged intelligent design or construction of the human being.

Do you need a hearing aid? Do you need glasses? Did you require your tonsils or appendix or wisdom teeth to be removed? Do you suffer from haemorrhoids or back problems?  Have your hips, knees, and ankles let you down? Can your bones break? Do you suffer from baldness, tooth decay, arthritis, acne, colds, the flu, even cancer? Do you have issues with your sexuality or the functioning of your private parts? Do you suffer from mental illness? Who created the human species and therefore by definition created you? God, that’s who, created you! Who created your physiology and anatomy? Did I hear you say “God”? So who created all of your psychological, physiological and anatomical problems? Did I hear you say “God” again? Is this what you would consider Intelligent Design? I don’t think so! Did God fail Anatomy 101? I think so.

As an example of so-called ‘intelligent design’ our nakedness relative to our furry primate and hominid ancestors and current primate ‘relatives’ is another clue that God failed Anatomy 101 – there are multi-dozens upon dozens of primates; only one ‘naked ape’ (humans). Why did God create us without fur? I mean when the temperature drops much below the comfort threshold, we require in no uncertain terms clothing. When it hits freezing point, we can’t survive without clothing, yet our furry animal cousins seem to manage A-OK. There’s many an image of a furry mammal surviving, even thriving in the snow. Quite apart from the fact that fur is a better regulator of temperature than just sweating (our primary temperature regulation mechanism), loss of fur resulted in two other highly negative evolutionary rock and hard place restrictions.

We’ve been given (by God) a temperature regulation mechanism via sweating. Humans of all the mammals are the species that sweat the most. The retrograde step of temperature control via sweating instead of fur imposed two additional restrictions on us. 1) We were forced to stay close to reliable sources of fresh water. 2) It also makes us way more dependent on supplies of salt since salt is excreted from the body via sweat. Salt supplies in the natural environment are rare – so rare that once upon a time salt was extremely valuable and you got paid in salt. It’s where we get our word, salary from. If only the Almighty had given us our fur.

Another screw-up by our Supreme Being has to do with our bipedal gait relative to the rest of the mammals. Can you name me one other mammal that routinely walks on two legs?  No? That’s probably because there are many negatives to a bipedal gait, like loss of stability. Humans are more prone to losing their balance and falling over than say a cow or a cat. If you’re alone and quadrupedal (or an insect or even better a spider) and lose the use of a leg, you’re hurting but not critically. If you’re alone and bipedal and lose the use of a leg, you’re up fertilizer creek. God should have given us six limbs – four legs and two arms! Now that would have been intelligent design.  

Further, as a benefit to God’s apex human species, it would have been really intelligent to cap off the aging process at say the 30 year mark. No wrinkles, no balding, no grey hairs, no liver spots, no need for a walking stick/cane, etc. Now we still have to eventually kick-the-bucket, but why have to suffer through the afflictions of old age? Be a 70-year-old in a 30-year-old body then have a sudden death heart attack that ends things on a still relatively youthful high note (as it were). I mean God created the animals that way – when’s the last time you saw an elderly grey-haired, wrinkled cat? How about a bald-headed dog? Animals don’t tend to show the aging process as obviously as us humans. Thanks God!

Quite apart from human beings, did God design an intelligently constructed universe? If God created humans, the be-all-and-end-all of His creations, then surely He would, as any parent would, design an environment that would protect us from harms way and certainly not put us in danger. Well, considering that many bits and pieces of God’s cosmic construction that could wipe out us human beings, I’d have to answer in the negative. God’s a bad parent. I mean there are gamma-ray bursts, supernovae explosions, black holes that can eat us as just a minor snack, solar flares and of course the now and again loose asteroid impact cannon that could just about make our day our last day. Who needs the Book of Revelation with all this potential cosmic end of days that’s so part and parcel of God’s Universe? 

Then you have oddballs like planets having days longer than their years and planets that rotate on their sides instead of having a rotation axis up-down. Maybe the Almighty has a warped sense of humour or likes variety!

But back to the dangers to human life and limb, how many of God’s so beloved subjects are wiped out by terrestrial, never mind extraterrestrial, “Acts of God” every year? How can I wipe ye out – let me count the ways. Floods are a given, even after Noah’s time; landslides and avalanches of course; drought and famine; wicked winds via hurricanes (cyclones or typhoons) and of course tornadoes; wildfires; tsunamis; earthquakes; volcanoes; and God’s favourite, bolts of lightning from the sky*, and a host of other natural ways and means of translating the you that is you into the late you that was you. Why does God enact “Acts of God” when God created you and loves you, and is merciful and compassionate? Something’s screwy somewhere!

Speaking of screwy, I tend to find it pretty incredible that people who survive an “Act of God” (i.e. – a natural disaster) attribute their good fortune to a miracle (as in “it’s a miracle we survived”), as in a supernatural intervention when it was just the luck of the draw. And then to top it off, they will “Thank God” for having survived. Do you “Thank God” for an “Act of God”? I think not. How about giving God the Big Finger for sending the “Act of God” your way in the first damn place! 

If God created everything, God created the laws of physics. That includes the laws that govern nuclear fission and fusion. Nuclear fusion and fission can create items that go ‘Ka-Boom’. An atomic or nuclear explosion in your neck of the woods can also ruin your day! Even a peaceful nuclear power plant meltdown can be detrimental to your health. So much for God’s design of intelligent physics! Now of course our Sun is powered by nuclear fusion, but an intelligent all-powerful God I’m sure could have created an alternative form of solar energy.

But here again maybe God’s sense of funny-bone humour comes into play. If God created physics then He created quantum physics and no doubt God is rolling on Heaven’s floor laughing his posterior off at the inability of His subjects to come to terms with the associated absurdities that He mandated regarding all things quantum. Einstein said that God does not throw dice. Einstein shouldn’t tell God what to do. God not only throws dice, He throws them where you can’t even see them.

If God created everything, God also created the laws of chemistry. That includes various mixtures which, albeit on a lesser scale, can also go ‘Ka-Boom’, like gunpowder. How many of God’s human subjects, get to join God in Heaven somewhat prematurely as a result of the use and misuse of gunpowder or dynamite or nitro-glycerine? An intelligent God might have bypassed the design and need of chemical explosives.

As an analogy, does a rational parent give their ten-year-old child a loaded gun to ‘play’ with? 

To be continued…

*Oops – sorry, I meant Zeus. I have lots of trouble telling the two apart since they both look so much alike!