A little perspective.

My mother spent the night at my house the other night, because she did not want to drive back to Palmer in the dark.

While here she brought up the topic of religion and we had a long talk about my atheism and her very basic brand of faith.

I played for her Professor Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Most Astounding Fact, and explained how understanding that the entire universe, and everything in it, shared the same DNA if you will was both humbling and exhilarating, and how I saw the fables of religion as interfering with our understanding and acceptance of that simply truth.

She seemed to understand but also said that her faith gave her comfort, and she was worried that I would strip her of it just to make an intellectual point.

I said that I had no intention of doing that, and that at her age there was no reason for her to abandon her faith, so long as she was on guard against those who would use it to manipulate her or take advantage of her.

In the end it seemed that she understood me a little bit better, and that I certainly have no intention of doing anything that takes something away which gives her comfort and a sense of peace.

As I come to the end of this post it suddenly dawns on me that what I have written has virtually nothing in common with what is printed on that image up above.

Oh well it's my blog, and if think a story about a conversation with my mother about religion, and a Carl Sagan quote about the insignificance of human conflict are connected in some way, well so be it.

The true story of the origin of the universe. So much more beautiful and awe inspiring than those imagined by the religions of man.

It's just a touch over eight minutes long, but do yourself a favor and sit through it sipping your coffee and just marvel at the magnificence of our beginnings.

And then afterward you can go through your day empowered with the knowledge that you are the universe searching to understand itself.

The history of the universe in ten minutes.

Amazing isn't it?

Of course this is only for those who are willing to accept the brutality, beauty, and unpredictability to nature.

For everybody else the go to explanation is, God did it.

I feel badly for those people.

Bill Nye appears on Comedy Central to make an important point. (Video from Inside Amy Schumer so very NSFW.)

Now that was quite funny, and obviously quite crude, but it was also very on point.

It is a known fact that human sapiens are good at recognizing patterns, and identifying cause and effect, and that it played no small part in our intellectual development.

But what is also true is that we sometimes see patterns where they do not exist, and see a cause and effect that really only exists in our imaginations.

That is essentially the space that for many people is occupied by God, but for those who are less religious may play host to their idea of fate, or the karma, or, as in this skit, the universe.

And trust me people can be just as obnoxiously convinced that the universe is talking to them directly, as religious people are that God sent them a sign by having a bird poop an image of the Virgin Mary on their car window.

The simple truth is that what we often perceive in the world around us is completely subjective.

The trick is to remove the rose colored glasses and see the reality as it is, no matter how much that reality may terrify us at first.

Sure to believe that a god, or the universe itself, is watching out for us, or has our back, might be comforting. But it is also just this side of psychotic. 

Here's a little inspiration to start your day.

More on Alan Watts.

In the least surprising news of the day Stephen Hawking has come out as an Atheist.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

Stephen Hawking clarified this week that he was an atheist because science had provided him with a “more convincing” explanation of the origins of the universe. 

According to NBC News, Hawking made the comments to the Spanish-language paper El Mundo during the Starmus Festival at Tenerife in the Canary Islands. 

El Mundo’s Pablo Jauregui pointed out that Hawking had written in his book “A Brief History of Time” that scientists could “know the mind of God” if a unifying set of principles — or theory of everything — was discovered to explain the physical universe. But Hawking later wrote in “The Grand Design” that God was no longer necessary because science had provided a better understanding of the universe. 

“Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe,” the world-famous theoretical physicist told Jauregui. “But now science offers a more convincing explanation.” 

“What I meant by ‘we would know the mind of God’ is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn’t,” he added. “I’m an atheist.”

However Hawking DOES believe that we are not alone in the universe.

“The idea that we are alone in the universe seems to me completely implausible and arrogant,” Hawking told the paper. “Considering the number of planets and stars that we know exist, it’s extremely unlikely that we are the only form of evolved life.”

I am in total agreement with both of these statements. 

I have to say however that I have been counting Hawking as an Atheist for some time now, and am a little surprised that it took him this long to make it official.

Could have a little something to do with the fact that people generally have a lower opinion of Atheists than they do child molesters, rapists, and pond scum.

Professor Neil deGrasse Tyson on why some people fear a cosmic perspective, while others embrace it.

"I assert that if you are depressed after learning, and being exposed. to the cosmic perspective you started your day with a unjustifiably large ego."

I love that!

Religious people often attempt to portray themselves as humble servants of God, but I contend that such a thing is virtually impossible if you actually believe the planet and the universe were created just for you.

Are you ready to be amazed by the wonders of science yet again this evening?

From what I can gather tonight's episode is about comets and the orbits of the planets.

"When Knowledge Conquered Fear" - Ep 3 of Cosmos: A SpaceTme Odyssey premiers tonight 9pm on @FoxTV. Be there or be a sphere
— Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) March 23, 2014

My only question is, how many religious people will THIS episode piss off?

As usual I will DVR the show, and watch it after my Sunday night visit to the zombie apocalypse is complete.

Feel free to leave a comment about your impressions. And I will add mine after TWD.

Fox News makes mistake of reporting actual news, and about science even. Low information viewers respond with pitchforks and torches. Well Twitter pitchforks and torches anyhow.

Courtesy of Americans Against the Tea Party:

 Since Monday, the scientific community has been celebrating the discovery of what seems to be “smoking gun” evidence of the Big Bang. In a discovery that is touted as being on par with that of the Higgs boson in 2012, scientists now have found the first direct evidence of the Big Bang. 

About 14 billion years ago, when the Big Bang created our universe, it produced gravitational waves and, of course expanded at about the same rate at which advertisers are fleeing Rush Limbaugh. 

Data from the BICEP project, which deployed a special telescope in the south pole between 2005-2008 previously said that reading “strongly hinted” at inflation, but were “not sufficient to rule out other models of the early universe.” Something was missing. 

If you guessed that it is the detection of the gravity wave background–something that could only result from inflation–you are correct! 

This is exciting news! In fact, it was so exciting that FOX News actually reported it!

Apparently now that the Fox network is broadcasting the new Cosmos series, which is already freaking out the science deniers, they figured they might as well go all in with reporting on scientific breakthroughs. 

Now if you think that the Fox News viewers are now suddenly enlightened and ready to accept the scientific explanation for the origin of the universe, well you don't know Fox News viewers now do you?

There are many more at the AATP link I posted at the top, and every one seems crazier than the last.

Let's face it science is moving forward at an increasingly rapid pace, but these people are hanging onto the door frame of religion and refusing to budge beyond their superstitious foundations.

P.S. If you want to see something both historic and heartwarming here is the video of Professor Andrei Linde, who first formulated the inflation theory, learning that he has been proven correct.

This is an incredible discovery, and it moves us much closer to understanding how we all got here, and how everything around us came into existence.

Bill Nye: The Joy of Discovery.

This was taken from the recent debate between Nye and Ken Ham.

"We are, you and I, at least one of the ways that the universe knows itself."

I have been saying some version of this for years and I find it so much more profound and inspiring than anything I have ever read in any religious book.

We have a duty to strive to understand, and appreciate, and stand in awe of, the majesty that surrounds us.

Because if we don't then who will?

Final image of the day.

That is a picture of Saturn taken by NASA's Cassini probe.

I thought that after a day of fighting over politics, religion, and holidays it might be nice to recognize how petty our silly differences are when put into perspective.

We may feel that we are the center of the universe, and the most important creatures in existence, but the first is simply untrue and the second? Well the second has not yet been determined.

However if I had to venture a guess.

Humility.

I always find it laughable when religious people refer to Atheists as arrogant.

We are anything but. We openly admit how little we know and how willing we are to have our minds changed by new information.

All that we know for certain is that the answer to the great mysteries of life were absolutely not answered thousands of years ago by primitive desert dwellers.

Neil Degrasse Tyson answers mankind's most pressing question.

One of my pet peeves in life is the idea that we must find purpose with why things exist, and by definition why WE exist.

This idea irritates me to no end.

Only a true megalomaniac feels the need to have their existence justified.

As far as you are aware, leaving Descartes out of this, you do exist. To be honest that should be good enough.

However I know that for most people it is not, so here let me help you.

To be brutally honest, as far as the planet is concerned, you really have only one purpose. To procreate. To pass along your genetic material onto the next generation.

That is what all who came before you in your ancestral lineage managed to do, and now they have passed the procreation baton to you. So don't just stand there start fucking!

This is referred to as your biological imperative, and seriously as far as the planet and universe is concerned you can die just as soon as you have raised your kids and your job has been accomplished. If you need a further purpose beyond that you need to find it for yourself.

The universe owes you nothing.

And yet it gave you the chance to exist. So don't waste it worshiping false deities, worrying about your mortality, or following rules that strip all of the fun out of life's journey.

Now that is NOT to say that you cannot create a purpose for your life without asking God or the universe to do it for you. Personally I have always been grateful that I was born and have tried to give back at least as much as I have been given. My goal before I get to the last chapter of my story is to have had a lot of fun, loved a lot of people, and made the most positive impact possible for a grumpy old fart like me.

And then I get to die. And even THAT is gift, because before one gets to die, one gets to live.

So thank you universe. I'll take it from here.

Before there was a universe, there was glue?

People always get mad at me for ridiculing creationists and fundamentalists, but how can I not?

If you are going to say totally crazy things, with no basis in reality, you should expect exactly that reaction.

I would happily ignore them if they were not working so hard to undermine education, science, and American politics.

I think that this should be the guideline for ANY conversation involving religion or science.

By the way the most recent discoveries about the universe indicate that it may very well not be the ONLY one.

Evidence discovered which just might prove the existence of multiple universes. "All that I know, is that I know nothing."

Courtesy of the Mail Online: 

Laura Mersini-Houghton, theoretical physicist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Richard Holman, professor at Carnegie Mellon University, predicted that anomalies in radiation existed and were caused by the pull from other universes in 2005. 

Now that she has studied the Planck data, Dr Mersini-Houghton believes her hypothesis has been proven. 

Her findings imply there could be an infinite number of universes outside of our own. 

She said: 'These anomalies were caused by other universes pulling on our universe as it formed during the Big Bang. 

'They are the first hard evidence for the existence of other universes that we have seen.' 

Although some scientists remain sceptical about the theory of other universes, these findings may be a step towards changing views on physics. 

The European Space Agency, which runs the £515million Planck telescope, said: 'Because precision of Planck’s map is so high, it made it possible to reveal some peculiar unexplained features that may well require new physics to be understood.' 

Cambridge professor of theoretical physics Malcolm Perry told the Sunday Times that the findings could be real evidence of the existence of other universes. 

While George Efstathiou, professor of astrophysics at the university, told the newspaper: 'Such ideas may sound wacky now, just like the Big Bang theory did three generations ago. But then we got evidence and now it has changed the whole way we think about the universe.' 

Multiple universes. Just imagine how amazing it would be to learn that we are all just a vibration away from entire universes lurking just outside our ability to perceive, and waiting to destroy our concept of reality and our place in the cosmos.

I cannot help but wonder if after such a discovery were to be universally accepted it would signal the final death throes of religion, or if the need to cling to a faith would force a chameleon like metamorphosis that would allow religion to survive and adapt to the new information?

It would seem impossible for the Abrahamic religions to evolve past the outrageously egotistical idea that the planet, the stars, and the sun itself had been created by a God for the human creatures crawling across this tiny orb to encompass the idea of multiple universes. But then again I walked away at seven years of age, so what do I know?

For myself all I can say is that I hope that we learn more about this as soon as possible, because I would hate leave this life with so little understanding of the reality in which I once existed.

Whenever I hear religious people calling Atheists arrogant.

9 year old explains the universe. I suggest that people take notes.

This 9 year old is light years ahead of many grownups on this planet and has the kind of rational thinking skills that often do not develop until well into a persons late teens.

I am of two minds while watching this:

First why is it so hard for adults to fathom the simplicity of his explanation?

And second how soon can we send this kid to Congress? Because this is exactly the kind of intelligence that we desperately need to run our country.

Damn I wish when I was nine years old and questioning the universe, and my place in it, that I had met this kid. It would have saved me years of lonely research and solitary quests for knowledge.

(Source)

Final thought for the day.

I often think about how incredible our existence is, and then of course how miraculous it is that I am here as well. If you think about that long enough you feel overwhelmed, but if you think about it even longer you become inspired.

P,S, In case it does not enlarge enough for you to read it, click here.

Let's end the day with an image to blow your mind, shall we?

Most of us think of our solar system as illustrated by the above image.

But that is inaccurate. You see we are NOT simply rotating around a stationary sun.

Oh no the sun is FAR from stationary, in fact it is hurdling through space at 70,000 kilometers per hour.

So more a more accurate illustration of our solar system is of a vortex like this:

Do you suddenly have the urge to grab onto something? Well don't bother, because it is hurtling through space right along with you. And what's more everything has been, even back when the wise men of old believed the earth was flat and the stars were stuck in the waters above the firmament.

Just look how far science has expanded our view of the world around us.

If you want to learn more take a look at this video.