Who Am I?

The question may come up regarding why I am writing about religion and supernatural beliefs.  What qualifies me?  I will admit that I am not highly educated, although I have read a lot.  I have not had a great moral life.  Indeed, I have made many mistakes.  Some of those mistakes relate to my recovery from fundamentalist christian beliefs.  If it really was true that Christians are all about love, truth and real ethics, I would stay mellow about believers.  But there is too much bigotry in the name of religion, too much hatred, too much interference in education, health, ecology, politics.

I am not a great academic or moral leader.  But I feel compelled by the Rick Perrys, Jerry Fallwells and Pat Robertsons of the world to discuss my experiences and the things which I have learned.  It's about adding my voice to the chorus of secularists, physicalists, atheists, agnostics, doubters and other people who are proponents of reorienting our perspectives to physical realism and cognitive clarity.  It's about sharing my experiences as I moved away from religion, supernatural beliefs and other negative cognitive filters.  it's also about looking at the facts before making negative judgments about people or discounting things just because they don't fit within your worldview.  It goes beyond religion and has to do with how we filter things.  It's about how I discovered and corrected, in part, my cognitive filters.  But I think that it needs to also be about discussing what I see as dangerous cognitive filters that hinder human evolution and happiness, as well as does harm to the planet and the future.  I hope to also discuss and, yes, discover, better ways to seeing things and to live.

Yes, I do believe that the better ways are secular.  Religion has and continues to cause conflicts, spread misinformation, limit happiness, and aid in damage to our planet.  I know that these are dramatic statements.  But I have seen the hatreds. I have seen the lies and false science. I have seen the carelessness toward the planet because of ideas of a second coming and afterlife.  I know about the killings of those who believe or live differently.

I want to end this post with a clarification about what I mean by cognitive filters.  We use what we know, what we think we know, what we believe, what we are taught, and so on as filters for what we do and how we interact with people.  The difficulties are that there is a lot of bad data that people use for filters.  Not only do people use these bad filters to make bad judgments but they teach these bad filters to children.  They want to enact laws that enforce the bad filters on other people and to block clearer filters from being available.  An example of a bad filter is when someone believes that an ancient collection of books of questionable authorship are really the work of a deity and they treat people, education and politics according to the dictates in those books.

Surprisingly Secular Quotes

 
 I'm starting this because I keep hearing religionists make religious claims about the U.S. "founding fathers".  The religionists are either ignorant or not being truthful about the early leadership of the United States.

"Actually, after further consideration, I've decided it is indeed possible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible" - George Washington

 "But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." - Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." - Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

"What is it the Bible teaches us? -- raping, cruelty, and murder. What is it the Testament teaches us? -- to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married, and the belief of this debauchery is called faith." - Thomas Paine

"It is the fable of Jesus Christ, as told in the New Testament, and the wild and visionary doctrine raised thereon, against which I contend. The story, taking it as it is told, is blasphemously obscene.”- Thomas Paine

"There is not one redeeming feature in our superstition of Christianity. It has made one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites." - Thomas Jefferson

"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise." - James Madison

Why I am opposed to Religions

Although I disagree with beliefs in the supernatural and gods, I accept that there are subjective elements to most of our world views.  Many of us have fantasies and some people confuse fantasies with reality.  People often find comfort and elements of personal control via religion and supernatural beliefs.  Although I believe these comforts and controls can also be found via secular means, I am able to coexist with use of religion for personal reasons.  What I have difficulties with are the ways which religionists externalize their beliefs.  Too many people use their belief systems as control mechanisms not just for themselves but for other people.  They make decisions about physical and social matters based on their filters of belief, often harming people and the planet in the process.  These parasites of illusion invade governments, schools and other institutions.  They attempt to use the government and schools to force their views and biased rules on other people and future generations.  Too many of them are willing to kill people over differing views.

Physicalist

There came a time when I needed to rebuild my thinking about life.  My doubts were too great to go back to my old religious beliefs.  I tried out the other larger and even some obscure religious and supernatural beliefs.  But I found them all short on evidence.  I realized that the best option for me was to start with what I could verify.  I started with the point that, as far as I could determine, I existed in a physical form in a physical reality.  Yes, there were other perspectives that debated that.  But none of those could really be verified.  It appeared that I was a physical being in a physical dimension.  So I moved on from there.  After substantial experiences and studies, I came to the conclusion that everything is either physical or has a connection to the physical which must conform to some kind of consistency which maintains that connection to the physical.

Even down to the quantum mechanics level, we are still dealing with physical existence.  Any valid discussion, theories or beliefs about existence requires some relationship to physical existence.  I admit that there are theories far beyond my understanding but any proposals to me about matters of importance to my existence needs to relate their discussion to the physical existence.  So far, all discussions about gods, the soul, afterlife and other aspects commonly called the supernatural have failed to supply any testable theories of the connection to my physical existence.

This is substantially simplified for this article.  In early stages in new discoveries in physics, there are things that appear inconsistent.  But that has to do with our tool kits for examination.  As we develop better tool kits, we see more of how things work.  Some people might say that this partly answers why I don't understand the gods and my soul.  But it seems to me that, after such a long time, humanity would have developed or the gods would have supplied better tools than the badly written documents and insane acting purveyors of supernatural concepts.  After billions of years, how can the gods still expect us to take anything about their existence on faith?

Transitions

I was once a devout christian.  I was even in the understudy for the ministry when I was in my teens.  I preached in churches which did not have a regular minister and some Sunday evenings in my own church.  But I was taken away from that for a time.  When I returned to the beliefs of my childhood, experiences cast doubt on the truthfulness of the beliefs.  Too many things just did not fit.  I eventually concluded that beliefs in gods and supernatural existence were either false or very inaccurate.  Although I didn't think that I could truthfully claim absolute knowledge that there were no gods or supernatural elements, I did conclude that all human beliefs in gods and the afterlife that I had investigated were filled with fallacies.  The best that I was able to determine was that we were physical beings in a physical universe.  I saw no intrinsic validity in theistic and supernatural beliefs.  I had to rebuild my life from a naturalistic perspective.

The abandonment of my old beliefs had difficulties.  For one thing, I was raised in a culture that associated morals with theistic commandments.  Without belief in any gods or the fear of their punishments, I had to rebuild my ethics from a physical standpoint.  This was difficult for reasons that I will explain in a separate post.  The difficulties were not because of any theistic exclusivity to morals.  On the contrary, the difficulties arose because my early conditioning about morals were tied to theistic dictates rather that physical and social realities.  Another psychological issue was the hell syndrome.  I had been indoctrinated into the belief that non-believers go to hell.  This caused substantial emotional and cognitive difficulties as I transitioned to purely physical perspectives.

One conclusion that I have made is that children should be taught ethics from social and physical perspectives.  My experiences indicate that societies will be far better off if people have common ethics based on physical, social and planetary requirements.  Some people claim bad human behavior as the proof that life does not work out correctly without spiritual beliefs.  But it seems to me that any correlation between increased unethical behaviors and the decrease in religious controls is because too much of society has left moral training as the domain of religion.

The Decline of Religion

 "I am totally convinced... that all the metaphysical claims of traditional religions are untenable; and I am equally convinced that, although here and there religious institutions may have done some good, for the most part they have caused a great deal of harm and mischief. In the short run, the dislocations and the sense of loss that accompany the decline of religious belief and of the authoritarian and repressive morality associated with it are likely to produce some distress and confusion. In the long run, however, the decline of religion will be of incalculable benefit to the human race."           - Paul Edwards, N. Y. C. 1985

I Want To Be Environmental

I was not raised with an environmental perspective.  But, over the years, I became aware of what humans in general and I specifically have done to negatively impact the quality and functionality of the planet.  In spite the extremism and reactionary perspectives both for and against environmentalism, I came to realize that we are damaging the very things that sustain life.  Yes, that is a strong statement.  I have looked at what both sides have said and, more importantly, have done.  Historically, we have a bad track record.

You know those English movies, like the Sherlock Holmes series, where there is what appears to be fog all the time.  I remember being curious about why that kind of "fog" is not present in the same places today.  Was it just a dramatic affect in the movies?  It turns out that the early industrial expansion was very bad on the environment.  So much unfiltered pollution was put into the air that there really was an ongoing haze in the air.  And, yes, there were health affects that were apparent but ignored.  At the time, industrialists argued against regulations to clean up the air.  But the negative impact eventually could not be ignored.  Now, the same mistakes are occurring in some newly industrializing countries.  To catch up, the mistakes of other countries are being ignored and industry is moving forward without the necessary controls to prevent harmful impact on the health of their people.

In the USA, so many harmful chemicals were pumped in coastal areas of the Great Lakes that people developed diseases by just swimming.  Again, industrialists tried to block regulations to clean things up and to minimize harmful dumping in the water.  But the affects were eventually undeniable.

There was a battle to stop using lead in gasoline and other products that were impacting health. Catalytic converters and increased fuel efficiencies were fought against.  The list goes on.  Humanity seems to have a pattern of doing whatever makes money or is convenient while ignoring, hiding or denying environmental and health impacts.

What about the general public?  As much as I think that companies and the government can be more honest and forward thinking, the general public does affect what is done by what we buy and how we vote.  A core factor is how we decide what is correct.  When it comes to the environment, we tend to go with whatever fits our general perspective.  There are people who are in general denial.  Sometimes, this denial is even a reaction to the opposite extreme where some people also jump to conclusions without looking at the facts and science.  Too many of our perspectives toward the environment parallels our ways of looking at things in general.  We believe one thing or another based on our leanings and won't be convinced to the contrary.  But the quality of future human life is dependent on getting things correct.

We need to go past what is comfortable for us to believe and look at reality, both current and historical.  Before we jump on a bandwagon and start condemning cleaner technologies and renewable energy sources, we need to look a little at industrial history and some of the science.  On the environmentalist side, we have to be careful with lumping things together, such as blaming all weather abnormalities on global warming.  The opposition will use these statements against us.  My wish is that we all will take a more thoughtful perspective and look at the facts, not just the statements and rhetoric that happens to fit our current perspective.  I think that we need to get past the placement of short term economics and growth above long term global health and stability.

Speaking of the short term, why is it so difficult to carry our trash to the appropriate disposal areas.  I think this is a micro example of the macro issue.  So many people are careless with their trash.  It is somehow too inconvenient to carry that beverage bottle out of the park.  Somehow, it is too difficult for industries to always put health first.  I remember reading a statement by one industrialist that said that he would stop using a harmful chemical when it becomes illegal or regulated.  Yet environmental regulations appear to be behind the abilities for industries to produce harmful chemicals.  Regulations on food and drugs are far tighter than regulations on air and water.  In some ways, it's the economy again.  If we keep placing the economy above the environment, we will be leaving future generations with a bigger mess than what previous generations gave us.

I know this has been a bit "stream of consciousness" but I wanted to put the ideas out there.  I will refine the discourse in future posts.  I hear so much emotional bantering about the environment and not enough discussion of the facts.  I had already been concerned about my personal impact on the environment and the track record of industry toward environmental health.  Although I am somewhat technically inclined, the science is a bit complex.  But I worked my way through enough of the information to realize that there are serious environmental issues.  One interesting book is Carl Sagan's Billions and Billions.  It was written a few years ago and covers a lot of other material.  But there is a quite good section about the environment, covering both historical and technical aspects.

I am open to seeing the reality of things, even if it contradicts with my current perspectives and behaviors.  I am a product of past experiences that got some things correct and some things wrong.  I realize that I have been ignorant about a good number of things and this ignorance has consequences to myself and others.

Let's Ride

I have been a rider for a long time, although I regretfully had some substantial gaps. As with many people, I rode a bicycle as a kid. I lived in a small town of about 4,000 people with a small college town (about 15,000 people) 9 miles away. For several childhood years, I lived near a rocky, hilly country road. Getting a car in my teenage years broke the bicycling lifestyle for a bit.  But, while in the Navy, I picked it back up for a while.  In the early 1980's, I picked up my first motorbike.  I was mostly stationed in San Diego and I later lived in Santa Barbara, CA for several years.  Along the way, I lived in other coastal California towns, most being good for 2 wheeled transportation, rollerblading and hiking.  For much of my time in California, I did not own a 4-wheel vehicle.  Santa Barbara is possibly the most bicycle friendly town larger than 150,000 that I have been in.  Most major roads have bike lanes.  There are bike lanes going the whole length of Santa Barbara County.  Santa Barbara was also where I became a rollerblading enthusiast.  Although I started mountain hiking elsewhere, I also did a lot of hiking and biking (motor and pedal) in the Santa Barbara mountains.

Regarding motorbikes, I have mostly ridden automatics. I learned to ride on a regular motorcycle.  As I remember, it was a mid-sized Japanese bike but I don't remember the make.  But the first motorbike that I purchased was an automatic and I stuck with them ever since.  My first motorbike was a Honda CM400 (Hondamatic).  It was not quite a true automatic.  It had a switch to toggle between gears.  But it did not require clutching.  A Navy shipmate had gotten one.  After a test ride on his, I was convinced and bought one.  Living in San Diego, I though it would be more convenient in the city.  At some point after the Navy, I stupidly sold the bike when I was tight on cash.  But that did reintroduce me to bicycling, which I wound up doing for years as my primary transportation.  In addition to riding the motorbike on tours, I also got into doing bicycling tours.

At first, I was into road bicycles.  This was, in part, because of the limited availability of mountain bike styles at the time.  My most memorable road bike was a Motobécane (The French bike not the USA/Taiwan version).  In addition to the frame being well fit for my 6' 4" size, I had put a lot of high end components on it.  I had spent over $1000 on that bike and had it for quite awhile.  But Santa Barbara eventually led me to mountain bikes and I eventually stayed with them for bicycling.  I've had a few mountain bikes along the way.  My current bike is a Trek 4500.

After a few years, I returned to motorbikes again.  Honda was no longer making the Hondamatic series.  I'm not sure why I did not get a used one.  But Honda was making the Honda Helix.  Although only a 250cc, it had enough power for the freeway and I think that I got a good deal on it.  For reasons that I don't recall, I only had that for 2 - 3 years.  I had a couple of small bikes.  When I was in San Diego in the early 90's and in between jobs, someone was selling an 80cc Honda Elite for cheap.  I did not like it.  Besides being small for my size, I had 2 accidents that involved its underpowered nature.  The first was when someone miscalculated my speed and turned in front of me, causing me to skid and jam my left knee between the bike and car.  I don't remember the second accident but it looked like someone rear ended me on a curve in the road.

Now, I don't want to scare anyone from getting a small scooter.  It's not that they are inherently dangerous.  But you do need to consider where you ride the bike.  I think that my mistake was that I had bigger bikes and may not have ridden the Elite within its limitations.  That being said, I personally recommend at least a 150cc bike.  You will have better ability to pace with traffic and better maneuverability.  After the 80cc, I had a Yamaha 150cc scooter.  I think I had some financial difficulties at the time.  I was going to college and had a tight budget.  I remember that I was in Santa Barbara and was bicycling full time again.  Then the bike was stolen.  I was going to just get another bicycle but found a deal for the 150cc Yamaha.  I don't remember the model.  It was OK.  It was not freeway legal.  I think that it maxed at about 50 MPH.  But that was plenty for street riding and hills.  I thank that the Yamaha had some repair issues after I had it a couple of years.

Besides Santa Barbara being easy to get around on a bicycle, it was also not too difficult to get into the mountains via bicycle, either all the way or after taking a local bus, which had bike racks at least by the early 90's.  So I did a fair amount of mountain biking in the 90's.  The Santa Barbara coastline also had some good trail riding.  I also got into longer bicycle tour riding.  I did some long trips with the Hondamatic and Helix.  My first long bicycle trip was between Santa Barbara and LA.  I then did Santa Barbara to San Diego and San Diego to Santa Cruz.  I subsequently made 3 more bicycle trips via Big Sur, a Mohave Desert ride and some deeper trips into the Santa Barbara back country.  I'll do some posts later about these trips and some hiking adventures.

In Houston, I was a bit overwhelmed by the size.  I did not know anyone and, for reasons better explained later, did not initially network well.  So it took a bit to discover that there are some fair bicycling and rollerblading areas.  Once I switched to a motorbike again for my main transportation, it got more difficult to get to the good bicycle area.  I rented a storage space for a while and also got back into doing more rollerblading.  I eventually moved near one of the bayous, which has a bike path.  Actually, I will be doing some posts about Houston outdoor trips.

Yes, my main transportation is a motorbike, once again.  In 2007, I got a Yamaha Majesty 400cc maxi-scooter.  The 400's and up can go over 100 MPH while, at better highway speeds, get around 50 MPG.  A few months ago, I got a Kymco Xciting 500.  I wanted to get a Suzuki Bergman 650.  But I was shopping for a used bike and the 650's kept getting bought too quickly.  But I knew someone who had an Xciting 500.  I rode the bike so I knew it would fit well.  Besides local commutes, I do Houston and Texas area tours, solo, with friends and a tour group.  I have a brother in Missouri and ride up to him every couple of years or so.  Next year, I'll be exploring Arkansas a bit more.

If you are in the Houston area and interested in riding (motored or bicycle), rollerblading or hiking, contact me.  I'm open to riders with any size scooter or motorcycle, mountain bike, road bike, trike.  Hikes can be urban or rural.  I'm also game for other types of outdoor trips.  If you're out there, I'm open to it.

What's up?

I decided to start this blog to share some ideas and events with the public.  Before you start following this blog, you probably want to know something about me.  I am a progressive, open minded physicalist.  I think that we need to do better with the environment.  I consider clean energy to be very important.  Socially and educationally, my perspective is generally liberal and progressive. As "physicalist" implies, I believe in only physical existence. You can refer to me as an atheist and that would be true. But "atheist" is a limited word in that it simply refers to not believing in a god. I don't believe in anything beyond physical existence. I don't believe in supernatural things. But I like to use a more positive term, hence "physicalist".

My intent for this blog is to put things out there.  I am interested in a variety of topics and I like to do things which I think may be interesting to some people.  I'll post topics and events which I think are interesting and I hope others will find so.  Some posts will simply be short introductions to ideas which I have.  I will flesh out some of these as I go.

I'm open to a variety of subjects and experiences.  This blog will include things that I have experienced and been exposed to.  But it will also include things in which I am interested, regardless of whether or not I have gotten there.