Bear vs Bigfoot
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9BD3UD80&show_article=1&catnum=-1
Video here.
See? He’s on all fours. And he went for the beer, not the jerky.
Creepy Cryptids
So, I had a couple requests for some cryptids – specifically, Bigfoot and the Beast of Bray Road. Knowing a little something about them, I figured I’d do this one this week. Bigfoot is one of the best known cryptids out there – an unidentified hominid that roams the wild places of North America. But first, what’s a cryptid?
Cryptids are, put simply, critters that mainstream science doesn’t recognize as existing. These creatures, and the field discussing them (cryptozoology) haven’t been accepted by most scientists, and there’s a great deal of debate over whether or not they even could exist. Famous cryptids include the mountain gorilla, the okapi, the coelocanth, and the platypus – all creatures that science insisted didn’t exist despite sightings by locals in the areas they were reported from. Eventually, somebody brought back a body, and in most cases people accepted that it really was real.
Except the platypus. They needed a live one for that – the assumption was made that it was just stitched together body parts, despite the lack of stitching.
Now, as for Bigfoot… we all know what it is. But, as I’ve been told that some folks haven’t heard any evidence about it that makes it seem more reasonable than Christian Science (AKA Young Earth theory, that sort of thing), I’m going to go into a bit more than that.
I tend to believe that Bigfoot is real – or, more accurately, that Sasquatch is. I don’t agree with the folks out there who hit the lunatic fringe though, like some folks who insist that Bigfoot exist in an extra-dimensional space out of phase with our reality, but occasionally step through to snag a Faygo or something (I wish I were kidding. Really, I do. But I’m not.)
I can’t prove that Bigfott exists, of course – if I could, I wouldn’t be blogging about this. All I can do is shoot down some of the most commonly cited ‘evidence’ against Bigfoot’s existence. So, let’s go to it!
Myth #1: The Bigfoot legend has only been around since the ’50’s – if this thing was real, why wouldn’t we have heard about it before?
Rebuttal: Well… we have. It wasn’t in the mainstream consciousness, but it was there. There are stories from lumber camps about massive hairy men basically busting up the camps. There are stories from the native Americans about them – where do you think the word Sasquatch came from? So this myth doesn’t really fit.
Myth #2: There can’t be a tiny little population of Bigfoots existing in Oregon forest – there wouldn’t be enough of them for a full breeding population.
Rebuttal: This is the most common one I’ve heard. And it’s been thoroughly, thoroughly debunked. Bigfoot sightings might be concentrated in Oregon, but they’ve been seen all throughout North America… almost. You see, some folks went and did an analysis of all the sightings out there, and they actually found that the sightings were concentrated in areas that have a set of common characteristics. The Coastal north-west, northern California, parts of Oklahoma, Georgia, northern Florida… they all have reasonably similar levels of humidity and similar climates. They’re all places that have fairly similar animal life, and all areas that lack one critical ecosystem element… a major apex predator. In places where grizzlies are common, Bigfoot doesn’t show up. In colder areas, Bigfoot doesn’t show up… except for a little bit in Wisconsin/Michigan. But that I suspect is misidentified – more on that later.
Myth #3: The footprints are all obvious fakes.
Rebuttal: If they’re all obvious fakes, I’d love to hear the explanation of why at least one forensic anthropologist – who specified in studying primate footprints – is convinced that many of the footprints he’s examined are proof of an unidentified large primate? I’d also like to know how it is that our hoaxers have made footprints that perfectly fit a natural bellcurve in the size. Now, it could be simple random chance. But you’d think that they’d just tend to get bigger and bigger, as they try to one-up the footprint before, rather than having a natural curve that seems to fit… a natural breeding population. Oops. I’d also like to know why many experts examining the footprints can see evidence of a natural foot movement, complete with a bending foot.
Now, are some of them fake? Undoubtedly. Of course some of them are. But showing that Exhibit A is false doesn’t mean that Exhibit B, C, and D aren’t still valid.
Myth #4: Bigfoot is merely a misidentified black bear.
Rebuttal: More on this later.
I could go on about this much, much longer – books have been written on the subject by far more knowledgeable people. but I’m going to move on for a moment to the Beast of Bray Road.
The Beast of Bray Road is the name that was attached to a wolf-man like creature in the Michigan/Wisconsin region. We actually had a sighting in our area a year or two back, when a man out collecting road kill carcasses for the county saw something tall and black stealing a deer carcass from the bed of his pickup, loping off into the woods carrying the carcass in its arms. More info can be found at wikipedia here, and in several different books (I recommend the Eerie Radio episodes on the topic.)
And this brings us to one of the major issues with both Bigfoot and the Beast of Bray Road.
This isn’t a black bear. Black bears don’t walk – they can stand and stagger, but they don’t walk, they don’t stride. Black bears don’t jump ditches on two legs. And yet, both Bigfoot and the Beast of Bray Road have been cited doing just those things. Black bears don’t have shoulders – and Bigfoot does. The Beast of Bray Road doesn’t have shoulders as much as the more bear-ish sloping of the body but, again, black bears don’t grab things in their arms and walk off with them. They take them in their jaws and drag them away, at least for significant distances. So few creatures are truly bipedal – which both Bigfoot and the Beast seem to be – that its being a misidentified creature we already know about seems highly unlikely, at best.
Can I prove they exist? Nope. But I think the proof is out there that something is there. Something that deserves real, sincere study, rather than laughter from the same scientific establishment that doubts its own first-hand observations if they don’t agree with their own convictions.
It’s been a long day
So I’m going to post a little oddity from my past, and my friendship with Vorex. This was written early in the morning while I was at college.
> Have you noticed that silence is always said to decend?
>
> It never comes up out of anything, it always falls down as if from the sky. Evidently silence is more dense than air.
Now you’ve done it. You’ve gotten me thinking. Let it be on your head. 
Actually, you’re right – silence is more dense than air, at least in some respects. When a sound is made, the particles through which it passes are excited, the energy of the sound wave causing them to vibrate. The increase in kinetic energy cannot be a 100% efficient conversion, and the energy lost in the transfer is expressed as an increase in temperature, or thermal energy.
It is a well-known phenomenon that, as a substance heats, it expands. While this is not very effective on most solids, it is observable with liquids and gasses, where the bonds between particles are weak enough that less energy is required to expand them. When a substance expands, its volume increases, given that it does not have an external boundary. When it does, the pressure will increase instead. But, as free air doesn’t have such a boundary, we can neglect that issue.
As density is determined by taking the mass of a substance and dividing it by the volume, an increase in the volume results in a decrease in the density.
Thus, when somebody heats a substance, the density decreases. As we have established that speaking heats a substance, it is a logical step to conclude that, all other things held equal, noise results in a decrease in density.
Thus, silence, as an absence of noise, is has a higher density than air that has sound waves passing through it. As such, the air higher in an area – being both slightly cooler naturally, and above soundwaves, will be denser than the air sound is being made in.
Thus, it can be logically extrapolated that silence descends.
And, in addition, it can be extrapolated that I *really* shouldn’t be allowed to think before I fully wake up in the morning….
Quantum of Lovecraft
Well, here it is, October… and am I doing a requested topic? Actually, kind of – I mentioned this one to Vorex, and he seemed enthused. So, this week, quantum physics and Lovecraft.
Next week, cryptids, including the Beast of Bray Road and Bigfoot.
Now, quantum physics and Lovecraft… what the blazes do they have to do with each other? In order to understand that, we need a grasp of the basics of quantum physics, particularly a multi-dimensional view of reality.
Now, quantum physics isn’t a new study by any means – Schrodinger was theorizing about his cat back in 1935, shortly before Lovecraft’s death of cancer. Heisenberg, Born, and Jordan were coming up with some of the first major breakthroughs ten years before. So quantum physics were being born right around the time Lovecraft was doing some of his best work. I feel that this helps to explain quite a bit of his work… and that he may have envisioned some of its more important elements before the physicists themselves ever did.
Okay, a basic grasp on quantum physics. We’re all fairly aware of the idea of three-dimensional space, and that time is the fourth dimension. So let’s break dimensions down a bit further.
Think about building things. If you have a surface that only exists in one dimension, it’s like trying to draw on the edge of a sheet of paper. All you can do is define a single line.
Now, if you’re building something on two dimensions, you’ve got the entire sheet of paper – you can draw whatever you want that’s a flat image.
But if you have three dimensions, you’ve got yourself a piece of clay. You can build anything that you can imagine that will be supported by your materials.
So, with three dimensions, we can define all of space. Everything that exists in space is defined with three spacial dimensions. The same principles apply for time though – and that’s where the next dimensions come from.
Time is our next set of dimensions – four through six. Apply the same principles as we have with space. A single temporal dimension allows you to define precisely one moment in time. Everything in all of space (the first three) that exists at 3:52:54.00000000001 in the afternoon on May third, 2010. As ridiculous as that might seem, this is the world we exist and perceive things in – a precise moment that streams out as rapidly as we can perceive. We don’t perceive multiple moments at once.
That would be what would happen if we perceived things on a five dimensions. Adding the second temporal dimension allows you to define a single timestream. Five-dimensional perception (three spacial, two temporal) would let you see everything that has been, is, and will be in your spacial range.
The sixth dimension is when Schrodinger kicks in. As you might remember, his little kitty had a fifty-fifty chance of dying, or of surviving. There’s no way to know which happened until you look. Well, actually, quantum theory suggests that both happen – you have a divergent timestream for the cat. In one version of reality, the cat lives. In the other, poor puss perishes.
That’s where you start looking at six dimensions – in the third temporal dimension, you not only define a point in time, not only define a timestream, but you’ve defined alternate timelines.
If we could move through the fifth dimension, we could go back and forth in time, but be unable to change anything. Being able to move through all six, we find that we can go back in time, change things, and possibly change our own future… or at least change our own relative future, since both timelines actually do happen. The only question would be if we could ’skip the groove’ into the ‘new’ future. Every single moment there exist countless opportunities for timelines to split, so you have functionally infinite timelines.
So – we’ve got all six dimensions here. Everything that exists everywhere, and that ever has happened, will happen, is happening, or could conceivably happen in our universe. So, that’s pretty much it, right?
Well… no. And that’s where Lovecraft comes in.
If we define every possible point in three dimensions, we define a single point on the fourth. If we define every single point in six dimensions, we definte a single point on the seventh – we definte the universe, as it can ever possibly be under our laws of physics.
But what if physics were different? Hypothetically, you could have another point on the seventh dimension where, say, gravity worked in reverse, or where photosynthesis was chemically impossible because the elements behave differently. Another where psychic powers exist, and are as commonplace as physical abilities. Perhaps even one where matter itself cannot exist, but only pure energy.
A single dimensional point defines a single set of physical laws.
Two dimensions on this scale is tricky for me to imagine, so let’s skip to the punchline – three full dimensions, that define everything in every possible universe. This, logically, defines a point on a tenth dimension… and that’s where even most quantum physicists give up, though there are some theories that try to stretch out to 11. We simply can’t comprehend the idea of anything beyond that tenth dimension of “every possible point in space and time under every possible permutation of physical law.”
But we only need to go out to 9, so let’s focus there. In the seventh dimension, logically, there are points outside of our time and space that should have lifeforms. Not ones we’d comprehend, or even necessarily be able to comprehend, but they’d be there.
Sound familiar?
“Yog-Sothoth is the Gate, Yog-Sothoth is the keeper and the guardian of the keyto the gate, all is one in Yog-Sothoth.”
Yog-Sothoth, an iridescent mass of protoplasmic bubbles, sounds kind of like he might be that tenth dimension, doesn’t he? Existing beyond time, beyond space – he is the essence of all things that are, were, or will be. His mass of bubbles like those countless, boundless universes, all existing and occasionally brushing up against each other when these dimensions – and maybe the stars – align properly.
And take a look at the ‘wizards’ in Lovecraft’s universe. The typical wizard in Lovecraft’s universe is one who wields mathematics, arcane formulae, and charts as much as yaks skulls and pre-LSD. They seek ways to pierce the barriers between dimensions for their unholy power, trying to tap into worlds where their mad goals have been met (and what faster way to go mad, pray tell, than by peering, even shallowly, into a scale of reality where you can see everything?)
Oh, and that pre-LSD?
Take a read of Frank Belknap Long’s “The Hounds of Tindalos” some time. Our ‘hero’ ends up finding and using a drug that lets him peer throughout the fifth dimension, looking back through time… and he ends up attracting the attention of the monsters that exist there, and who come for him… and who, after an earthquake, find a loophole in their own physical laws to come through his new fortress to get him.
References to a quantum universe – and the potential horror of a universe where we might end up brushing against another universe with laws completely inimical to our own – is a core of Lovecraft’s work. It turns up again and again, especially in some of his later works. And, as we gain a further understanding of the cosmos and its workings, I think it’ll be more important to remember those warnings.
Let’s look at one of SciFi’s more beloved ideas, after all – hyperspace. Shifting into a dimension where you can break that pesky light-speed speed limit. Well… how the heck do we know what might be out there?
And whether or not they might show up around here, hungry?
But then, all of this assumes that in all the possible universes out there, somebody’s figured out the way to get between them.
And in functional infinity, what are the odds of that happening, right?
Pleasant dreams!
Won’t Somebody Think of the ADULTS for Once?
“Won’t somebody please think of the children?” A plea often uttered comically on the Simpsons, but too often uttered seriously in real life.
“How can you dare argue against the MPAA? Don’t you care about the children?”
“How can you possibly be such a horrible person as to support gun-ownership? Don’t you realize that more children are killed by gunfire every year than by cancer, influenza, and pneumonia combined?”
“Don’t you realize that those… those murder simulators are teaching our children to be psychopaths? You went to school during Columbine, don’t you realize how dangerous video games are?”
“The Buffalo PD and the tabloids were, and are, perfectly within their rights to hound the Ramseys – don’t you realize that the statistics prove they’re the most likely suspects in their little girl’s killing?”
“Nancy Grace did nothing wrong in her interview with Melinda Duckett – even if she didn’t know what happened to her son, Nancy was trying to help everybody find her little boy! It’s not her fault that Melinda went and inverted her face with a shotgun after the interview!”
Time after time, people try to use the welfare of children to push their agendas through, to excuse their horrific behavior. In the name of the children, innocent people can be accused of murdering their own children, have their characters slaughtered by the media, and become pariahs for the rest of their lives.
In the name of the children, our rights can be trampled on, mauled, folded up into little balls, and ceremonially impaled on the ramparts for all to see.
In the name of the children, people can be ambushed by journalists and accused of being pedophiles, regardless of the truth.
In the name of the children, it’s considered perfectly valid to persecute other children – not for doing anything wrong, but merely for bringing nail files to school or wearing black.
You will find that each and every one of these things has been done in recent memory. Most of them are still happening today. That there is typically a perfectly good argument against whatever is being done is meaningless – the battle cry of “won’t somebody think of the children” is an even stronger one than accusing your opponents of being like the Nazis.
After all – it’s silly to say that somebody’s being a Nazi for wanting to disarm the public. Sure, Hitler was of the opinion that the first thing you did to dominate a populous was to take away their weapons, but the people trying to disarm us aren’t trying to make us incapable of resisting their excesses. They’re just thinking of the children, trying to protect them from those horrible, horrible guns!
If the children are so open and vulnerable, then how the Hell did our species survive to this point? How did they live through a time when every household had multiple firearms in it – and had to, as a matter of survival? How did they live through the early periods of Hollywood, before even the Productions Code, let alone the MPAA keeping an eye out for them? How did they survive through an era when their parents weren’t scowling at any adult who had the temerity to threaten their child by taking their hand and help them up after they fell?
How was our species not raped, murdered, and psychopathed out of existence, before everybody was thinking of the children?
The simple fact is that “think of the children” is the rhetorical H-bomb. Nobody is willing to argue with you after you level that threat. Nobody’s willing to say “yeah, I am thinking of the children. I’m thinking that their parents ought to do their damn jobs instead of expecting us to!” If they do, they immediately become horrible monsters who think that children ought to be left to the wolves, just because they were born to parents who weren’t able to protect them from the monsters pedophiles/media/firearms/bacteria that hide beneath the bed everybody knows are out there, just waiting to pounce 24/7.
On the internet, and occasionally in reality, there’s this thing called Godwin’s Law – the first person to reference the Nazis in an attempt to win their argument loses, unless they can support it firmly. I think it’s about time we put “won’t somebody think of the children” on the same level – it’s an empty rhetorical shield, used to deflect any argument or counterpoint.
After all… in the end, wasn’t Hitler just thinking about the children too?
Razor Burns
Just a brief thought before I’m off to donate blood.
Hanlon’s (Heinlein’s? The debate rages on) Razor applies thoroughly to my last post. For those unfamiliar with it, here we go.
“Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
So many people attributed Bush’s policies to malice when, frankly, I think it had a lot more to do with a painfully advanced case of BTD. I just think he was so myopic that he couldn’t see the ways his policies could, and will, be abused. The same goes of all politicians. Don’t rule out that somebody might be evil, but don’t jump to it as your first guess.
Off to go get vampirized now. Oh, and I’ve decided what I’m going to do for my annual October break from serious blogging – I’m going to leave the films and such for the Wolfemann’s Den, but take up some space here discussing assorted paranormal critters and topics. Magic, witches, ghosts, Bigfoot – all are plausible topics. So, what would folks like to see?
Unique Snowflake, Like Everybody Else
So, what is it that often makes BTD come to the forefront? Typically, it’s the thought that everybody else is just like you, or at least that they should be. This sort of mentality causes BTD to come charging out, screaming that everybody else is stupid or evil, and needs to be taught the error of their ways.
It’s not always something like racism though. Consider, if you will, groceries. You go out, and pick up some peanut oil to use for making dinner. You go ahead and use it, whip up a stir fry, and serve it up. Your dinner partner, on tasting it, completely freaks out about you using peanut oil. They storm out, and you find yourself staring in shock, trying to figure out just where this psychotic episode came from.
Well, obviously, you don’t think that using peanut oil is a big deal. Freaking out like this is ridiculous. Unless you realize that you’re eating dinner with somebody who’s allergic to peanuts, and who is probably off trying to stave off anaphylactic shock right this moment.
Of course, to them, the idea of that they’d have to *say* they’re allergic is as ridiculous as you thought their reaction was. How could you not have ever noticed? Or, if you did know, how could you have forgotten?
A simple mistake can end up being a major fight, all because neither side recognizes that, from the other person’s point of view, they didn’t do anything wrong.
I’ve seen things like this – equally ridiculous things, often – break up several friendships during my life. I spend a lot of my time online, in festering pools of Internet Drama. Binary Thought Disorder is the leading cause of these sort of things – “I am right, how can you possibly not see it, go away and never come back.”
What people need to try and do is recognize that their perspective on reality isn’t the only accurate one. Just because you can’t possibly see any way that somebody would, say, be sexually attracted to their own sex, it doesn’t mean that people who *are* have to be wrong. And the fact that they do doesn’t mean you’re wrong, either. You’re both right, for your particular circumstances, and both wrong, for the other person’s.
We’ve all been taught, since we were kids, that we’re supposed to be different from other people. And that we’re supposed to respect those differences. But I don’t think it’s something that we lose as we get older – I think that we’re just piss-poor at teaching it to kids. The end results include things like the ‘debates’ between conservatives and liberals – a great sound and fury, signifying nothing, because neither side is willing to budge an inch to look at why the other side feels the way they do.
Why do liberals want universal, government-provided health care? Because they obviously want to undermine capitalism and reduce the people to slaves of a government they’re dependent on.
Why do conservatives not want it? Because they’re obviously psychotic racist hypocrites who can’t grasp how much better they’d be when the same guys who run the DMV are running the health system.
Obviously, neither side is 100% correct… but try saying that, and you’ll find the one thing they can agree on. That they don’t like being told the Emperor’s nekkid.
Binary Thought Disorder
So, once we accept that BTD is a problem… how do we fix it?
The first thing that has to be dealt with is frequently a matter of bias. Consider the following story.
The ATF, under Bush, serves a weak warrant on a compound of fundamentalist Muslims. Attempting to serve this warrant, they approach the building, opening fire on the dogs outside. The people inside, hearing gunfire, some being struck by bullets from the outside, return fire. This touches off a nearly 2 month siege that ends only when tanks are used to knock in the walls of the compound, teargas being fired into the building at over 10 times the normal rate. During this confrontation, a fire begins, burning down the compound and killing those inside, at least those who hadn’t suffocated because of the tear gas (hard to tell which is which). Women and children were among those killed. During the investigation afterwards, it becomes clear that it’s possible incendiary grenades were fired in along with the tear gas, that the ATF passed up opportunities to arrest the leader of the group a week before the initial raid, and that methods used during the siege to try and break the people inside included sleep deprivation methods that would later be used at Gitmo.
Now, had this actually happened, I suspect we’d have practically had riots in the streets. The trick is that several key words changed… namely, this happened under Clinton, and it happened to Christian fundamentalists rather than Muslim ones. Maybe you remember the name of the city it happened in – Waco. And there’s a lot more that happened there, sadly, that makes the story sound even worse for the government. But this got brushed mostly under the table – Congress cheerfully whitewashed it, and the media accepted said whitewashing, despite obvious factual errors that anybody with a passing familiarity with the gear being used could have pointed out.
Everybody has biases. Race, religion, politics – these things divide people quite efficiently. These divisions have been used to justify horrors for centuries – Hitler slaughtered Jews by the million for practically no reason besides their faith. Stalin slaughtered even more because they owned farms that he wanted turned over to the state. Both of these people used inflammatory, division-based messages. Why? Because you don’t think of a travesty inflicted on somebody you’ve been taught not to like as a travesty. Similarly, you’re a lot quicker to cry foul when something is done to your best friend than to your worst enemy.
I try to eliminate these types of biases, myself. Admittedly, it can be difficult at times, but here’s the main thing I try – and something I recommend for pretty much anybody to try.
Before you let something pass, or get ticked off about it, reverse the buzzwords that you’ve heard. Christian fundamentalists killed in a government raid under Clinton? Would you accept the official story so readily if they were Islamic fundies killed in a raid under Bush? Of course, it’s equally offensive to be ready to accept that raid, but be incensed by the actual facts that happened. Reversals are the most blatant way to point these things out – consider the Ricci case, for example.
If they’d only had minority officers pass that test, and had thrown it out because it clearly had some sort of undetected bias that disadvantaged whites, what would have happend? The liberals would have screamed that it was obvious racism, and been right at that. Conservatives would have pointed out that it obviously did have that undetected bias, and possibly been right.
Try this out some time – you might be surprised how often it changes your results. I was recently challenged on my being ticked off by a scene in Ghost Rider (at my other blog), with the question of “if it hadn’t been a black kid who was spared in that fight scene, would this be as big a deal for you?” Well, yes, it would have been – my issues weren’t racial there, they were purely artistic. And I had played my little reversal game, and been just as pissed off by the scene.
Other times, of course, it does come up. I’ve found that I do tend to be more likely to blindly accept a claim that a woman was assaulted by a man than the other way around. It’s difficult to accept it the other way quite as easily, but something that I need to watch out for. Rather ironic, given that I have had issues with women (younger ones, at that) knocking me around in the past (long story.)
This is one of the easier ways to start trying to fight your own case of BTD. Other ways to try and deal with it on a larger scale will come along later.
Pandemics and Cures
It’s official. The world is suffering from a pandemic.
No, not H1N1. That’s on its way there, but that’s a disease you can medicate, and they’re finding better medications already. The real pandemic that’s destroying society has been around for millenia, if not since the beginning of time… but that doesn’t make it any less destructive.
This disease is known as BTD – binary thought disorder. It’s that disease that everybody who reflexively disagrees with you suffers from… and that you probably do too. The symptoms include a steadfast belief that you are right, and everybody who disagrees with you is wrong, which can result in feelings of pity, irritation, or even hostility towards them.
Of course, BTD isn’t an actual disease. Instead, it’s a way of being for much of the world. A closed-minded inability to accept that people have the same information as you do but disagree with it – all without being misguided, stupid, or outright evil – is something that manifests among people of all political, religious, and racial stripes. The right falls into it – witness the last 8 years or so. The left falls into it – witness the last 8 years or so. Religious people fall into it – look at the Crusades, the Holocaust, and the very concept of jihad, among other things. Atheists fall into it too – just look at the vitriol that’s sometimes been vented at people like Dave Ramsey, who simply express that they have religious views, or the legal battles over so much as mentioning the concept of God at a school.
Why is BTD a problem? Well, I hope that’s obvious. It’s pretty well responsible for a good number of the wars and atrocities throughout history. It’s responsible for any of several thousand other crimes, fights, injuries, and ruined relationships. But it falls apart under logic.
BTD involves a thought process that demonizes the ‘other.’ It assumes that all criteria are equal – for example, the valuation of the afterlife. Let’s take a look at religion, shall we? Here’s the standard argument.
There is no scientific proof that God exists, let alone that the afterlife does.
Following religious doctrine involves making choices in life that restrict our enjoyment of life, in exchange for the promise of a utopic afterlife.
That’s immensely simplifying things, but it’s the basics. Now, if you believe, in defiance of the lack of empirical proof, that the afterlife exists and that your God is real, then you’ll be a religious person. Why wouldn’t you? You’ve got an eternity of paradise promised to you, in exchange for a short-term restriction on your activities. Further, when you work in the concept of Hell, you have a duty to try and convert others – failure to do so is to condemn the souls of non-believers.
Anybody who has the knowledge that following God’s rules and accepting His faith will bring you to paradise, while failure will condemn you to Hell, but who fails to convert, must be either foolish or actively evil, serving the great evil of their faith of choice.
However, if you don’t believe? There is no proof of an afterlife – all we know really exists is the here and now. Therefore, following religious strictures is inherently foolish. You’re exchanging your freedom in life for absolutely nothing. Without scientific proof that God or the afterlife exists, you’re trading in the only life you’re going to have for squat… and even if the afterlife does exist, you’re gambling on whether or not any given book is actually correct about how to get the good seats when you get there. If you’re wrong – and you’ve got no way to know you’re not – then you’ll end up in Hell anyways.
Anybody who tries to promulgate religious belief, given these facts, must be foolish at best, or evil at worst, trying to manipulate the beliefs of people to control them.
But ultimately, it’s a matter of varying values. The person who believes in God and religion and accepts these teachings whole-heartedly places greater value on their potential afterlife – which they do believe exists – than the atheist does – who doesn’t believe it exists.
There’s no actual proof that either person is right or wrong… simply an absence of such proof. Atheists have as much blind faith in their beliefs as the religious fanatic does. And yet, both sides will cite endless amounts of ‘proof’ that they are right, the other is wrong, until such a point in time as they decide that the stubborn refusal of the other to so much as accept that they might be wrong drives them to give up… or to blows.
BTD has also created the vast quantities of hypocrisy we tend to see. Remember a few years ago, when protesting what the government was trying to do was considered the highest form or patriotism? Great, when you were protesting W and the Iraq war. Now, when the other side is protesting Obamacare, it’s unamerican or a sign that you’ve been duped by The Great Evil… exactly the same things that the Right said about the Left during those protests. What’s the difference? Well… now it’s the Right protesting, and the Left being told they’re wrong.
BTD is the greatest threat to modern civilization. And if we can’t get past it, our society is doomed to tear itself apart, just as every civilization that has come before has eventually fallen to pieces. How do we do that? I’m not sure… but I’ve got some ideas. I’ll be getting into those over the next few weeks.
