PUTTING THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE

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OUR PERSPECTIVE - LIMITED IN TIME AND SPACE

The time that we humans have spent on this earth is but a flash of time compared to the total existence of the universe, the earth, or even the time that life has existed.

The universe is estimated to be more than 15 billion years old. Compared to the Age of the Dinosaurs, the Age of Humans is but a flash. While human life expectancy has increased markedly in the last 100 years or so, the time we each spend on this earth compared to the totality of time is hardly worth mentioning.

A quick perusal of your local newspaper's obituary page will tell you just how limited our time is on this earth and how little most of us travel from our origins. Even if you live to be 100 and traverse the entire United States, you have covered very little of the time and space of the universe. Even the most learned of scholars knows very little of the knowledge available to mankind.

Our true understanding of how the universe and life began and exists goes back at most a few hundred years. Remember it was only little more than 500 years ago that humans learned that the earth was round. Furthermore, at that time, those living in Europe, Asia and Africa did not know that the land masses we now know as North and South America existed and the inhabitants of North and South America had no idea that Europe, Asia and Africa existed.

There was much said now about the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. This has to remind us that we knew little to nothing about the entire western half of this continent as little as 200 or so years ago.

In fact, the most rapid expansion of our understandings of how things work have occurred only in the last 50 years or so. And two things have dynamically escalated our understanding only within the last ten years or so - the Hubble telescope and our research into DNA.

As animals, we humans must be concerned first with our survival. As humans we wish, also, to achieve some level of happiness. Therefore, it is natural to be concerned most with the present. Thus, our job, cleaning the house, mowing the lawn, getting the kids to their baseball game and such day to day important events allow us little time to look at the big picture. Granted, we do think about the next year or so and, if we are really intelligent, we will make plans for our retirement and death. But for the most part, most of our thoughts are restricted to what is happening today, tomorrow or this week.

Unfortunately, if we look only at the present in trying to understand life, our universe and our place in it, we fail to see the history of those things in proper perspective. Therefore, we must always be aware of and fight off our human tendency to generally think in the short term. The point here is that our limited perspectives, also limit our understanding. To look at everything from a human perspective that is limited in time and space is to miss the big picture and, of course, the universe is a mighty big picture.

Thinking in terms of the thousands of years of our human existence is rare, easily dismissed or left to scholars. But, in order to really understand religion and how it came about, we need to think in the very very very long term.

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OUR PERSPECTIVE - MAKERS OF THINGS

We humans spend our whole lives creating products, thoughts, songs, speeches, books, articles and ways to live longer and better for not only ourselves, but for our families. We modern humans do these things in a big way, but even hundreds and thousands of years ago, humans were doing the same thing, though on a simpler scale. Until a relatively few years ago, if a person needed a hoe, he would have made his own hoe from some product of nature. While, today, we go to the store to buy a hoe, we still understand that it is something that was made by someone.

Thus, when we look at our world, our sun and our universe, we see them in the same context as we see watches, chairs and automobiles - things that were created or made. It is hard for us to accept the possibility that something complex might exist without the intervention of work and an intelligence factor. We find it very difficult to believe that anything just happens along. Yet, as an atheist, I believe that to be true of our universe.

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CONFUSING THE NATURAL UNIVERSE WITH MANMADE THINGS

There is a vast distinction between what is made in nature and what we humans make. Everything that is made in nature is the result of the interaction of natural forces - we call the way in which some of those forces interact laws, such as the laws of physics or laws of nature.

Actually, calling the forces that govern the interaction of matter and energy "laws" confuses the issues, because we generally conceive of laws as things that are "imposed" to govern situations. The so called "laws" of physics or nature, for instance, however, are definitions of how matter and energy will act in a given situation. These laws of nature or physics are not imposed by any intelligence; rather we have found that matter and energy act in a certain way in a given circumstance and, therefore, a law of physics, for instance, is a definition of what will always happen if that circumstance is repeated.

Life, too, was created out of and is the result of chemical processes and reactions which operate in accordance with established "laws". Given enough time, those chemical processes can become exceedingly complex and, indeed, we see that they have by looking at the complexity of life forms as they are today. We humans and all life are, in fact, the result of very complicated chemical chain reactions.

Creations by humans, on the other hand, are much different than natural creations. While we are increasingly becoming able to direct nature through our understanding of DNA and other elements of cellular makeup, what humans have created to date, simply is not in the same class. Forming metal and plastic to make a watch or wood to make a chair is nothing like the natural processes that cause planets to circle suns, cells to divide and that sort of thing. We use the natural processes and alter naturally created things to create things that never would have been created in nature.

A watch, mentioned earlier, would have never come into being in nature. Our solar system did. Both must conform to the same basic forces and factors to which everything in the universe must conform. The difference is that in the case of the watch an intelligent being (human) has ADAPTED the basic laws of matter and energy to accomplish a prescribed function. In other words, while the watch uses the laws or principles of gravity, electricity, chemical interaction or whatever is necessary for it to give us the time, those forces are directed to a specific purpose by an intelligent force - we humans. Solar systems operate based upon the same rules, but without any apparent direction or adaptation from an intelligent force.

Similarly, if we wish a piece of space debris to fall in such a way as to not endanger humans, we analyze the basic gravitational laws of the universe based upon the weight of the item, angle of descent, atmospheric resistance, speed, location, and other such things and, hopefully, bring it down with as little impact on the earth as possible. The successful termination of the life of the Russian MIR space station is an excellent example of this.

The forces are complex, but from an astronomical aspect the numbers of important functions of the universe are fairly limited. In fact, most of what goes on in the universe involves solid matter expending its energy in the creation of heat or in moving away from, to or around other solid matter or energy. The size of the body or the energy does matter and the larger always dominates or consumes the smaller.

Additionally, all that goes on seems to be totally without purpose. That which can exist in its environment, does. That which cannot exist in its environment ceases to exist or never comes to exist. This is a truism not only in the cold or hot reaches of space, but right here on earth where every specie of plant and animal struggles for existence.

If there were ever an instance in all of time that there was some adaptation of the forces of the universe that was not attributable to humans, then I would begin to believe that we have either discovered another intelligent life form or a god. The fact is that no matter how many prayers are said, dances danced, sacrifices made, gods appeased or worshipped, the sun and moon appear over the earth in precise patterns. Calamities like tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and the like affect good persons as well as bad persons. Only in the last few years have we come to realize that what we humans might affect our environment on a world wide basis, but our effect is based upon what we put into our environment and not upon what god we might worship.

Over the centuries other societies have been fascinated by the sun, the moon and Venus, to name only a few. If Venus were to suddenly with no interaction with any other matter or energy begin to move out of its orbit at right angles to the Sun, then you can talk to me about an intelligent force or power. But as long as the universe operates entirely based upon established laws, how can we say that there is a god involved in it? He, she or it certainly has not been involved in a day to day operation of the universe since the origin or the universe.

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BURDEN OF PROOF

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REASON VS. FAITH - Why Faith Fails!

Beliefs (Conclusions of Truth)

We humans spend a huge amount of time trying to determine what the truth is, how to reach the truth and what to call it once we have determined what it is.

The word "belief" might work to describe a conclusion of truth, but there are a number of different definitions for the word in most dictionaries. There are those definitions that equate "belief" with faith or a belief in a particular religion. Those meanings do not work for our purposes here. Then there are those definitions that describe "belief" as a confidence in something or someone. Those definitions do not apply here either. The definition that works best for our purposes here is that a "belief" is "to accept something as true" and that is how we will be using the word "belief" in this section. Of course, we can also conclude that it is true that something is false, so a belief that something is false will also be a valid use of the word "belief" here.

Our next task is to determine the legitimate bases upon which we can reach a belief, i.e., conclude that something is true. We will examine the two most prominent (if not the only) bases upon which humans try to determine the "truth" - reason and faith.

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Reason

Reason is orderly thought based upon verifiable data and logical, rational, clear and coherent mental processes which are, also, free of emotion and self-interest.

Proponents of reason do not expect reason to answer all mysteries immediately. While they might use conjecture and speculation to imagine solutions to those mysteries, they never assume that those conjectures and speculations to be true and certainly do not try to force a conclusion not provable by reason.

Proponents of reason, if true to reason, will welcome differing evidence. Truth is their true goal, not a presupposed conclusion.

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Faith

Faith is a belief in something without question or logical proof - sometimes even contrary to logical proof. Faith is often impulsive and based upon hopes, feelings and emotions, as opposed to logic. Faith, certainly in the religious sense, often involves a belief in "ancient wisdom" even if brought into question by modern evidence.

Faith depends for its survival on that presently unknown and apparently incomprehensible - areas not resolved by reason. Then, when reason disproves the faith belief, faith believers often refuse to relent. Thus, we find faith believers interjecting a god into every mystery unproved by science despite the fact that there has never been any evidence of the presence of a god anywhere.

Advocates of faith often:

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Why Faith Fails!

If a belief were held based upon logical proof, it would be based on reason. There would be no reason for faith. Beliefs based upon faith can be the same as those based upon reason. However, it would be unnecessary to continue to believe in something based on faith if proven by reason.

The essence of faith is to consider an idea as true even though it cannot be proven with reason. Since faith must entail belief in the absence of rational demonstration, all propositions of faith are irrational. People turn to faith when beliefs cannot be defended by reason.

Faith does not erase contradictions and absurdities; it merely allows one to believe something in spite of contradictions and absurdities.

Both faith and reason are dependent on unexplained phenomena for their existence. Reason examines the unknown based upon a logical analysis of facts. Faith examines the unknown based upon hopes and dreams for and sometimes in contradistinction with reality. Faith is impatient and instead of waiting for a logical explanation for unexplained phenomena, gives up and assumes a conclusion without proof.

Faith is irreconcilably opposed to reason. Compared to reason, FAITH FAILS!

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