imagine... A former atheist raises hell into promoting beliefs in Christianity... And a Republican senator, Paul Broun, a medical doctor by training, claims that "All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang Theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell."

Nothing I can do about these rabid acceptances of religious illusion and rejection of scientific rigour... Hell and heaven do not exist but we can have faith, that is to say believe that they exist without proof.

I will say here that the reality of atoms ruling our lives — rather than an esoteric god breathing on our neck to make sure we behave — would frighten many people... Not because of fear, but because of being frightened by their complete inability to understand complexity. Thus these people will indulge in the religious simplistic. Piece of cake.

Believe and everything will be all right, pass the collection plate. I mean it. Morality through religion is an invention of human fiddle to deal with the management of relationships without understanding of the nature of things. Religion is akin to emotional blackmail... We often learn to live with it from the time we're toddler because our parents know nothing much else. Emotional intelligence has its pitfall: religion.. We become recipients for the "original sin", whatever apple tart that is, and told to eat humble pie daily because we're not worth the worm food that we become when we die, unless we "believe". It's a powerful trick...

The universe has not a single dose of morality in it... The only "morality" that has emerged in our consciousness, and was extended to become this religious blackmail, is one of the pathways that underpins survival, a system under which a sapiens adapts nature's balancing acts and evolution over aeons, for some enabling benefit. Other animals have their relative pecking order and learnt systems of behaviour doing the same on smaller scales. Animals have consciousness. For human, this consciousness, extended with religious illusion has sustained "progress" in the mind of some people for about 10,000 years (6,000 years for creationists), but human (homo sapiens) consciousness goes back at least 200,000 years. There are strong markers of human stylistic interpretation of the world around, recorded in the Australian landscape pointing to 50,000 years or more, of interpretations of what is out there and within. 

Worldwide, despite the infestation of the three Abrahamic beliefs, the diversity of beliefs systems in god and gods should awaken our scepticism about the self-importance of faith. Faith is structured ignorance multiplied with fancy ignorant fairy stories that do nothing to make us understand the world we are in. 

This cannot be denied. The Romans and the Greeks had philosophical interpretations that relied on studies rather than dogmas, though they believed in various godly interactions with thunder, wars and love, until the Abrahamic religion priests started to bamboozle the uneducated and unsophisticated, like door to door salesmen. But without emperors and kings allied to religious beliefs thereafter, religion would have faded away.

These decorated ignoramus religious dogmas that also use "mysterious" theatrics to convey the sting, were and are thus as silly as vicious as the rules and kings who often proclaimed their divine rights. It has been — and still is — very messy, as belief fight beliefs, and beliefs still deny the value of investigative sciences. Religious wars prevailed and still prevail. Religion is used as a prop for psychopaths to make wars in the name of the Almighty. It's ugly... Crusades and whose god owned what and who...

For many centuries after the Greeks and the Romans, science was in the dumps. Mathematics was ignored. Ignorance was rife till some clever men started to really ask proper questions, away from the dogmas: Newton, Pascal, Galileo, Kepler, Corpernicus... Obviously drawing the ire of the Catholic church...

In the 20th century, Einstein followed up on these early 17th and 18th centuries scientific investigation of the planet and developed impressive theories as to what made it ticked... Gravity, time, space, matter, fire, energy. E = MC2... It is difficult to find a more elegant equation — itself based on previous mathematic models of derivatives developed in the nineteenth century. 

When one looks at it in depth, the science of energy/time/matter relationship is an opening into the future and into understanding beyond lollipop beliefs. By lollipop beliefs, I mean all religious dogma which have never investigated processes that are scientifically explainable, and have used incantations and magic distractions (illusions) to gloss these over to control the human condition — especially that of those who are afraid of knowing the scientific truth. The main reality here is that we are descendants of ape-like creatures, themselves descendants of creepy-crawlies. We have evolved. Other Hominids also evolved in parallel but by fate of encounters and evolution these species disappeared as a whole, though some of their genes are within us: Neanderthals and Denisovans. 

When Paul Broun, as a doctor of medicine, expresses his disbelief in sciences, one should be horrified that he pits his religious faith against what is undeniably "proven". Yes I know: nothing is ever proven in science as new evidence often comes along to refine an understanding. Note: evidence does not include "beliefs'. There is a rigourous scientific process that has a need for necessary "proof" by repeat experiment. No such process exists in belief systems. Dogma is "dogmatic" — no proof is needed to deny or accept the belief, except indulging into a reinforcement through brainwashing until one realises the con of having been brainwashed, often since childhood as mentioned. 

By the 18th century, many "educated" people, those with a view to really understand what is out there via investigation rather than by believing in magic and prayer, began the age of "enlightenment". Many people rejected "enlightenment" of science because it debunked their comfy lot of simplistic arcane beliefs. Too many people still reject the notion. Some of them become door-to-door salesmen (and a few women) who give away brochures about the impending death of Christ and of an incoming Armageddon because we "have sinned"... Bugger orf! I do not sin. I might make mistakes, BUT I DO NOT F%$#&@* SIN !

"The Theory of Evolution" came along and still holds up — by and large — to the rigourous scientific system, with more understanding and improvements. This understanding of things has led to the "discovery" of the human genome and that of many other life forms. This has now led humans to performing one of the most unnatural technology — that of creating "new" beings by cross-genetics. True. Genetic modification is basically the creation of new species with their own characteristics. This has led to understanding hereditary diseases and other genetic defects. This "evolution" thingy that Broun rejects is at the forefront of medical research. He is an idiot... I must point out here, as I have done many times before, that GM crops should be banned for they interfere with other crops — organic or otherwise... I don't care much for cats that glow in the dark, though some tweetie birds might welcome the new trick...

I can understand, though, that people who believe in magic and god, would reject the proper explanation of reality. Is reality too harsh?

Chemistry rules genetics, thus life. All the processes inside our body, including cancer and other illnesses, are chemical reactions — some good, some bad. To the chagrin of the believers, most of these chemical processes have been mapped with precision — and the brain is also being mapped for such, including its amazing flexibility, adaptation to and rejection of information coming through our senses. Neurones are what makes us tick. Should our neurones be damaged or ineffective, we become less able to the point of being in a vegetative state. No brains. Neurones are chemical assemblages and communicate between each other with chemicals and electric impulses. This is nature at work. It works. 

Beyond these simple mechanics of chemistry (quite complex but once one "understands" the processes, it's not that hard) that thus include the make up of life in nature, including humans, there are other mechanisms that influence what is happening on this planet. 

We know with a very high degree of precision the elements which make up our body: at least 70 per cent of water (hydrogen and oxygen), carbon and a complex combination of various other elements, including nitrogen, phosphate and trace elements. We eat food to replenish these multi-chemical reactions which happen in each and every one of our billion cells — and discard the unused portions, till the combination of chemical reactions or a necessary process cannot sustain itself anymore. This is life. And death. Nothing more.

Most animals are in the same boat. 

Some (most) animals' existence has no bearing on human survival but have an incidental role in the iggledy balance of nature. Some animals don't matter except to themselves — and they may not know it. It does not matter. This is existential. Through evolution, humans have developed a characteristic beyond basic senses and animalistic reactivity. Humans have discovered the importance of "entertainment" to manage their uncertainty and the value of lying. Sorry, this is not a joke here. Entertainment and lies is what "religious beliefs" provide to fill a gap of knowledge, before science came along. I call this extra dimension to our being as a stylistic interpretation, in which our ability to lie is strong. Science rarely lies. It needs "verifiable" proofs.. 

This esoteric religious gap-fill of our uncertainty has been used to create a "morality" attached to who we believe (we lie to our selves) we are, in order to maintain order within a group of savages on the way to civilisation — and still on the way a long way away. And this stuck on. The illusionary fear from a supreme being becomes the ruling factor, rather than understanding of where we are. Reading religious text (whether Islamic, Jewish or Christian) is not "understanding", but have all to do with reinforcing the threat and idea of supremacy, in order to make us behave in a controlled manner and "pay our dues", under fear. Fear is one of the most basic necessary instinct of life. Thus we are easy preys... By hook or by crook, some of us, psychopaths, scrooges and egomaniacs used threats to instil anal fear in others, to become top dog. This process is still in use in this day and age by political systems and religious beliefs. Add glory to the con. I know, being an atheist might make us a bit more dull and less voracious. We do not have anything to sell. Religion is always selling something that does not exist, and religions need to sell more and more to gain traction against other religions which might also use violence and dubious laws to belittle people, especially women.

There is no morality in the universe, nor is there something called sin, but a relative interaction between energy/time/matter/space. Thus there no sin, but there is relativity of our consciousness (animalistic/atom based) becoming a self in the universe for a tiny amount of time... We are irrelevant in the grand scheme of the stars, but we become relatively relevant to ourselves and to each others and to the planet as a whole — as we demolish it faster and faster, until we vanish. Yes, WE don't reincarnate. The assemblages which made us will decay (yes, dust to dust) and our atoms might reassemble in a different configuration such as worms but it won't be us. Our "us" would have vanished. Gone. 

Based on previous observations, we know we are trashing the place at speed... The rejection of the scientific evidence won't arrest this fact coming our way. So what does science tells us?

Chemistry is the study of interactions between atoms, including hydrocarbon combinations. Life is part of this interaction as numerous quick/slow reactions for individuals and, as a long term survival, over 3.5 billion years of 'evolution" (bio-changes including extinction and devolution). 

Chemistry "started" a long time ago as various "knowledgeable" people used empirical processes such as making tools in the bronze age and the iron age and with alchemists "searching for ways to make gold out of lead"...

In fact these alchemists were onto something which was not understood until the last few years of the 1800s... The search for understanding some "natural" phenomenon led to the discovery and some "interpretation" of electricity, and the composition of atomic structures which on the surface thereof is dictating the chemistry. The process works. Without chemistry, we would not be able to have cars and burn petrol for example. And we would not be able to understand why candle wax burns other than by "magic".

As well, while looking at matter, something was not quite "right". Some elements were "decaying". As we all know, the emission of "energies" from these elements led to the science of nuclear reaction, atomic bombs and nuclear fusion. Science worked out the processes with precision and irrefutable models.

So far, here, we're still lingering in the " predictable" and the "postulable" but already contradicting all constructs of religious beliefs. 

Global warming, for example is but a very simple "predictable" system within a LARGE system of many factors — all of which are simple and interactive in a complexity that only exists because of the size of the process. This is where we need computers and Lagrangian mathematics to resolved 3D irregular interactions.

Even nuclear physics is somewhat "elementary" (don't mind the pun). The cost of nuclear power is another subject because of security, medical dangers and other issues. To a degree, nuclear physics is a low end of "energy physics". It is well understood, even the "fusion" which is still unable to provide us with more energy that it consumes in our attempts at duplicating the sun reaction. We know the sun possibly far more than the depth of our oceans...

The pointy end of physics is at the high energy level. This is where the special theory of relativity and quantum mechanics collide. Both work at their level of scale, but so far the collision is unavoidable despite a lot of physicists trying to bridge the gap. 

And there are calculation discrepancies. Those are not only going against the grain of common sense but going also against most religious beliefs known to humankind... The universe expansion is accelerating. The universe is boundless and growing, with no limits. No Armageddon. No end of the universal world. probably a dissolving whimper... We know through specific calculation of nuclear physics that our sun has only another 5 billion years left in it, before it becomes a red dwarf and explodes beyond Jupiter, burning planet earth in the process. That is a scientific analysis of the first degree within a few years of error. We know that some meteors can impact earth anytime and the search is on for those stones from the asteroid belt that could impact the planet and make survival difficult for ALL life forms. No gods involve in this, no sins involved in volcanic eruptions... Only sidereal processes. Like radio wave chatter from the big bang still haunting the "void". The "void" is full of stuff. The light we see from stars and sun travel through the void, thus the void is never empty. There are energies flowing through it, including "dark energy" we cannot see nor measure.

Exploding stars are not a new observation in our human history. There are many such "stars" exploding that have tickled our fancy, possibly one recorded at the birth of the "infant god" which gave three kings a reason to travel on camel-back— to another a few days ago, when a single star explosion, which lasted no more than 15 earth minutes, was recorded several times in succession due to time dilation as light went through various dust clouds and intense gravity zones.

The photon is a fascinating particle as it transmits energy — from light in all its spectrum to heat and electromagnetic forces— as a wave and a particle. There are other particles that transmit energy, such as mesons and bosons, but most are short lived in the 1/10 (to the power of minus twenty) second. Millionths of milliseconds. Electrons are longer lasting. Protons which are combination of quarks can outlast the age of the universe several million times over. Protons are indestructible in "normal conditions". But what is normal?

All these energy levels have been recorded, catalogued and scientifically "postulated" and verified. They do exist. 

This is where high-energy physics tune-in and use super large "smashers" to investigate the bits. 

In high-energy physics, many theorisation have been made, from the 1920s and for example, the existence of the "Higgs Boson" postulated in the 1960s which was only proven by experiments in 2013. For many physicists, the "proof" that such particle existed was an immense relief, confirming the general theory of quantum mechanics. It disappointed a few physicists, those who were investing time on other theories to explain quantum mechanics discrepancies which the Higgs Boson filled-in precisely as expected. The Higgs Boson (or mass boson) had been calculated to be within a specific range of electroVolt mass before its discovery, and experiment showed the calculations was spot on. It was not an experiment made to fit calculations, but an experiment that confirmed the calculations. 

Measuring small things which would make an atom look like planet earth compared to a pin-head is not easy.  The smaller the particles, the bigger the machinery. The more powerful the machinery — such as the Hadron collider known as CERN. There are a few large hadron (heavy particles such as protons and neutrons) colliders in the world but the CERN is the biggest so far (27 kilometre long donut), though the Chinese are preparing to build, one about double the size of CERN. 

Before the final sets of experiments on the Higgs Boson, the CERN was involved in a small controversy. A team of scientists working under the OPERA research program found that neutrinos were travelling faster than light, thus breaking down the concept of light being the limit of time/space transfer that had been formulated by Einstein. E = MC2. But a repeat experiment and a double-check of the equipment showed that the "light-clock", the reference beam travelling through fibre optics, had a faulty connection, thus there was a discrepancy in the measurements. New study showed that neutrinos travel at near the speed of light but do not overshoot it. 

Neutrinos are a breed of particles in themselves and demand our attention. They seem to be the most elusive particles so far known to physicists. Neutrinos, like quarks, come in various "flavours", but as "mass-less", and "charge-less" particles, they seem not to interfere with anything but. This is why they cannot be detected like other particles, such as the photon which gives us our light and energy. Neutrinos can switch "flavours" in processes that are not fully understood yet — unlike the quarks switch of flavours done through the various bosons. Nuclear physics 101. Neutrinos could be the stodge of the universe.

The study of neutrinos is thus the hardest so far. We know a lot about them but not enough. We know for example that it takes 40,000 (earth) years for the photons generated at the centre of the sun to reach its surface... Electromagnetism and gravity slows them nearly to a halt. If this was not the case the sun could burn out in five minutes and blow up (Gus' estimate). We know that photons cannot escape black holes. But Neutrinos? They barely take a few second from being "generated" (liberated) at the centre of the sun till they reach its surface. Millions of neutrinos from the sun pass through each square centimetres of the earth per second. This is measured with a high degree of accuracy despite the difficulties. This is why we can detect neutrinos from exploding stars, ahead of the light bursts... Unlike photons, neutrinos travel through all matter unimpeded... Neutrinos are suspected to be one small portion of the components of "dark matter" which pushes the universe to accelerate its expansion. Only a very few neutrinos get "captured" by atoms, should these come close enough to the centre. But as we know, atoms are gigantic energy "voids" between a nucleus and electronic shells, of which the upper shell dictates the "chemistry" of the atomic possible relationship to other atoms, creating compounds and, at the upper echelon of assemblage complexity, life.

In all of this there is no morality, only assemblages or particles in which life becomes its own dictate for continuum survival. In biological structures, higher assemblage create memory from which the memory-shifts create a field of consciousness.

Field theory is another kettle of fish... But very specific and one is strongly defined by the discovery of the Higgs Boson. There is no morality in fields, only interactions. 

So, as we investigate our spacial references at all levels, we can use humanism, a device in which we accept the relative value of our interactions without references to a supremo. There is no sin, but we can invent an accepted desire to become peaceful while understanding this planet earth and this universe, before we destroy our own comfort and ultimately our own existence — for being stupid and/or religiously blind, in  dogmas that do not exist beyond our limited lying imagination, which is all about selling salvation to other people for a buck... Religions are mercantile. 

There is no salvation.  We only have the acceptance of having understood and lived, before we die, without regrets. We love this life and there is no others.

That a superior being placed us in a corner of a gigantic complex universe does not make any sense. 

That we torment ourselves with the resultant of an Adam and Eve indiscretion belies the absurdity that the original sin is. 

That some people cannot accept evolution is an other absurdity of denial. 

That we dismiss the big bang theory is also a denial of what is calculable to within a whisker of time in this matrix of fields.  To say the least, the system went faulty when "matter" took a small prominence over "anti-matter" and blew up in an indefinite space in which the total energetic result is nil. And we have the luxury of a small window of time to contemplate our navel. 

Peace


Gus Leonisky
Your local atheist athlete...