Archive for science

God, Sex, and DNA

Posted in Atheist, belief, Bible, nature, random, religion, sex, Social with tags , , , , , on October 1, 2012 by chouck017894

Thanks to “saints” such as Jerome and Augustine, the Christian world has been schooled to regard the natural attraction and mechanics of sex as being somehow an affront to the power that created and sustains all the diversity which it approved as “Creation.”  The magnetism that stirs the urges for intimate relationship with another person is, admittedly, a power that often confounds us, but that mystification of attraction is not a sign of “sinfulness.”  The fact that such magnetic attraction to others is experienced by us at all is strong testimony that everyone and everything is somehow interrelated, and demonstrates that it is natural for units of similar energies to attract, intermingle and invigorate each other.

All forms of life, in one way or another, experience the magnetic attraction called sex, which insures a perpetual display of energy diversity that glorifies the universe.  That is an awesome truth that fuels infinity.  And that truth can be traced back into the miniscule and infinite energy components out of which we become manifest as definable beings—an involvement of energy-substance activity that science has designated as DNA.  And that awesome creative power, contrary to some self-serving religious assertions, could never disown or reject any expression of itself.

DNA, Deoxyribonucleic acid, is the chief constituent of chromosomes; it can replicate itself, and is responsible for transmitting genetic information, in the form of genes, from parents to their offspring.  This is the famed double helix, the “ladder of life.”  It consists of two long chains of linked nucleotides (various organic compounds consisting of a nucleoside combined with phosphoric acid), which are connected to each other by hydrogen bonds between the bases adenine and thymine or between cytosine and guanine.  (Sorry for this bit of technological stuff.)  The chromosomes are organized in 23 pairs—which make up the famed “ladder of life”—that mysterious “ladder” supposedly seen by Jacob in Genesis 28:12–before his name-change to Israel (where he attained physical life).  Out of these 23 pair of chromosomes only one pair of X and Y—one chromosome from the mother and one from the father—determine the diverse and variable sexual features of the entity.  The other 22 pair are known as autonomies, meaning that they are not sex determinants.

Amazingly, the complexity and specialness of each human being is determined by only around 30,000 genes, which is an astonishingly small number to be responsible for the escalation and intricacy that results in all the variety to be found in human life.  A haploid (cell) refers to a single cell which has the number of chromosomes present in the usual germ cell, and this is equal to only one half the number in what is known as a somatic cell—or in a manner of speaking, only one half of a rung on that “ladder of life.”  Soma, in biology, designates the body of an organism (cell) which is present but is not actually part of the germ cells.  Thus a gene is a hereditary unit located on a chromosome, which determines a specific function or characteristic in an organism.  A complete set of chromosomes is known as genome.

Male and female development is dependent upon the different determinants or segments or genes that are distributed along the X and Y chromosomes.  Each and every individual has thus been created with different combinations of these factors which affect their body structure, brain activity and behavior patterns, and this includes how physical stimulants arouse a person.  This fact of life-inception clearly attests that the Creative Source does not indulge in or demand cookie-cutter sameness within a species.  Thus the holy truth is that the chromosomes assemble in this manner to insure a wide diversity of physical characteristics for species benefit—and this includes differences in sexual preferences.

The X and Y chromosome—X for female, and Y for male—demonstrate how the chemical process results in character traits and attractions that are of psychological and social interest.  For example, all males with an excess of either X or Y chromosomes are likely to be predisposed to produce an increased amount of male hormones which often tend to become expressed with a tendency toward aggressiveness and a lower threshold for committing violence in comparison with the so-called “normal” male population.  Perhaps the religious extremists and obstructionist politicians in our society could possibly be accounted for by having an extra Y chromosomal composition.

For the XYY males it seems that tendencies toward violence generally begins early; around the age of 13 instead of surfacing around 18 years.  The XYY males generally issue out of a fairly “normal” sample of the population, but nonetheless the XYY male often feels at odds with the “normal” environment.”

The religiously obsessed commonly choose to ignore this resourceful means by which life’s fluid “design” become active for providing the energy source for manifestation of a life form.  Instead, the priest-written “good book” encourages the idea that human propagation is the sole purpose of physical closeness.  The priest-authors who dared to presume Yahweh’s “laws” (probably driven by their own XYY chromosomes) sought to encourage the non-stop reproduction of their followers because heavy breeding activity insured the increase of followers.  This priest-issued sexual license also assured their authoritative influence in the face of the differently oriented societies around them.  Therefore, it was the scheming priests, not the Creative Principle (personified by them as God) who decreed that any sexual activity that did not contribute to the growth of their cult was a “sin.”  The fourth book of priest-written Hebrew scripture tales is entitled Numbers, and that objective is always what all religious and political would-be leaders want—a steady increase in the number of followers and supporters.  Thus the widespread encouragement of nonstop breeding by such power-hungry men has today blessed this little planet with an excess of eight billion persons!

Thus it was claimed by the priest-authors of “holy word” that the Lord (creative law personified) abhorred and condemned any unproductive sexual activity such as masturbation, coitus interruptus, fellatio, celibacy, homosexuality, and by extension any use of pregnancy preventive aids and abortion.  This feigned godly abhorrence of unproductive sex was/is, to be blunt, economically and politically profitable for their religio-political power base as well as being eugenic.

But if procreation was supposedly God’s sole intent for instituting sexual attraction in the human species, would he/she/it not have also established physical safeguards to assure that?  It would have been easy enough for god to have incorporated in the human species, as in most other mammals, sexual activity that is regulated by estrus cycles.  That is the mammalian feature where the regularly recurring periods of ovulation and sexual excitement in female mammals become ready to bear offspring.  Obviously, if the estrus cycle in the human species was altered by god’s sanction, the role of sexual attraction was intentionally liberated and broadened in mankind in the probable expectation that the value of love would be achieved among humans.  Instead, man’s organized and self-serving religions and politics have chosen to pursue the mindless premise that the propagation of ever more humans is a sacred duty!  With the human population of this little planet today swarming with more than eight billion persons, such indulgence in runaway breeding is demonstratively irrational and irresponsible.

  • Related posts: Sex Attraction, A Bogus “Spiritual” Dilemma, Oct. 2009;  Creation’s Law of Diversity, Feb. 2010; God Didn’t Mention Chromosomes, May 2010.

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Faith, Facts and Frustration

Posted in agnoticism, Atheist, belief, Bible, Christianity, culture, faith, freethought, history, random, religion, science, Social, thoughts with tags , , , , , , on April 11, 2011 by chouck017894

The “good book” tells us in the first chapter, verse 3, that light and darkness had already been established, and God had found the division to be good, and it was these which he called Day and Night.  Dry land did not appear by command until the second “day” (verse 9).  Consequently, the Earth came to be created before the luminaries of the Sun and the Moon, which occurred on day three (verse 16).  The assumption seemed to be that these later additions were something like polished balls put in place for Earth’s benefit.  But that had not been the general understanding which was taught in earlier cultures such as the Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians, etc.  But then those ancient Pagan civilizations had not been divinely blessed with revealed wisdom such as spewed out of 8th century BCE Jerusalem. 

Even when God’s son was sent into the Roman Empire a few centuries later, Jesus found no need to explain cosmic principles as means of teaching how his father ran things throughout Creation.  Not even Jesus’ disciples were clued-in, which might have advanced man’s potential considerably.  Of course it may be that mankind was supposed to discover these creative principles on his own by following a few veiled hints.  That, however, required concentration on things other than material gratification.  In addition, the unconventional interpretation of Judaic traditions advocated by Jesus set a course of  understanding that would schism into a hierarchical faith system in which the “saved ones” were groomed to dominate the world.  Any scientific principles were consequently smothered under a blanket of politically structured spiritualism.

Under the faith system that developed as the Roman Empire began to decline, the high political office of that faith system which developed was woefully short of any scientific curiosity.  There would, of course, be those who would step forth to shore up the reputation of the political head of the faith system so people would not  start to question the reverent one too closely.  There was, for example, good old political minded “saint” Augustine (353-430) who was of blessed certainty that scientific mistakes in the pope’s  pronouncements did not invalidate religious authority unless there had been divine support for the errors the pope made.  Such a stance made it halfheartedly tolerable that the pope apparently did not receive regular updates on heavenly actions. 

Augustine’s maneuvering tactics could, for centuries after that, be used to excuse any of the embarrassingly awkward incidents that have revolved around various pope’s scientific and political pronouncements.  This reverent scheming makes it possible for the faithful to continue to defer to the “authority” of the church in its supposed superior understanding of ecclesiastical matters.  Such faith merely requires the sacrificing of one’s skepticism upon the church altar and abandoning any thought that perhaps this wobbly claim of holy word infallibility might put one’s soul in peril.

This political sidestepping would continue to help excuse such booboos as the 1633 affair when the mathematician/astronomer Galileo was summoned before the Inquisition in Rome and forced to recant his writing that Earth moved around the Sun.  Because Galileo had pointed the new invention of the telescope toward the heavens, he had dared to look upon truth.  Contrary to biblical implications, the Moon was not a smooth orb, the Sun was not a polished disc but a flame-covered inferno, and the planet known as Venus displayed itself in periodic phases!  For reporting these wonders to the world, Galileo was promptly found guilty of heresy by the Catholic Church.  Galileo could not deny the truth that he had witnessed, and during his trial remarked something to the effect, “The Bible tells you how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.”

Galileo’s trial set the standard by which western religions brushed off any scientific endeavors.  Fortunately there were men who continued to feel intuitively that perhaps God had chosen not to reveal too much wisdom to man all at once, and the reason might be that man was to make himself worthy by seeking further wisdom.  Through the centuries men such as Isaac Newton (1642-1727) struggled to reconcile their scientific findings with religious texts, but there always seemed to be irreconcilable differences despite shared feelings of humbleness and awe when pondering the majesty of what we see as Creation.

Even one of the great minds of the 20th century, Albert Einstein, could not break free of the primal concept that some being must have fashioned the universe like some work of art or mechanism.  After decades of searching for the secrets of gravity, time-space, and quantum mechanics, Einstein would say it was not easy to catch a peek at God’s playing cards.  Typically, he would let “the Lord” off easy, saying that although the laws of Creation are subtle, “the  Lord” (creative law) was not malicious.  To a contemporary physicist, Niels Bohr (Danish), Einstein continued to refer to God more than was necessary, and he told Einstein to stop telling God what to do.  But perhaps Einstein’s speaking of God may not have been so much a statement of personal belief as it was the use of common beliefs to comfortably acquaint the unscientific pubic with the operational processes of the universe.  Certainly, in that timeframe, if Einstein had failed to acknowledge a “maker,” the public would have vilified him as  enthusiastically as they had glorified him. 

Today, in the 21st century, some astrophysicist may, in some interview, give mention to God when some newscaster questions how the laws of physics came into being.  It’s a loaded question, for as yet there is still no sufficient data or theory to give a satisfactory answer.  That does not mean, however, that the Bible gives a superior accounting of the creative  forces at work, for if any disguised scientific solutions to cosmic principles were embedded in those holy texts some astrophysicist would be mining them with celebrated results.

It is the magnificence of the living universe that keeps mankind’s faith systems and mankind’s sciences in wonderment and reverence.  Whatever man may deduce from his perspective of Creation, the truth is that there can be no center of infinity.  Most certainly planet Earth is not at its center; and it is even more certain that no man-invented, self-serving faith system is at its center.

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Where is the Divine Data

Posted in agnoticism, Atheist, belief, Bible, Christianity, culture, faith, freethought, life, lifestyle, nature, random, religion, science, Social, thoughts with tags , , , , , on March 21, 2011 by chouck017894

History has shown that from the timeframe of the mid-1600s, the awakening of a scientific approach to understanding the natural world around us opened the means for humankind to advance toward his higher potential.  Science has proven itself to be the exploration of the interrelatedness of all things, and as such it is not exactly a method intended for passing moral interpretations or guidance.  And this neutral position in the study of the amoral energy interactions that involve as Creation tends to traumatize those who feel that such a systematic study is in some way an affront to some divine Creator, Maker or Designer.

Science probes the unknown and benefits humanity by collecting testable information (data).  This long proven means of understanding the nature and functioning of life around us does not attempt to extend a system of moral guidance, however.  Any moral conclusions may be presumed only by how history within the data displays a customary outcome.  Data, plural of datum, refers to information that is organized for analysis and which is used as the basis upon which researchers collectively reach definitive  decisions.  In science and in the commercial world, unlike the faith business, a proposition may stand only as long as data supports the idea.  And herein is the major difference between science and mankind’s inconclusive faith systems. 

Blind faith, on the other hand, often declares itself as being in possession of soul-saving wisdom, but that wisdom is accepted without any cross-reference as “revealed wisdom.”  For at least a couple of millennia that approach to understanding the world and the universe around us was the imposed standard by which the human species coped with Creation’s mysteries. 

Science, however, seeks to understand the principles upon which nature and the universe function.  Delving into such mysteries does not extend to those studies the means to legislate how the Creation process fulfills itself any more than religious or political beliefs legislate those universal powers.  Strange as it may seem to the dutifully devout, a sense of spirit is always present in any scientific investigation.  In seeking to ascertain how some aspect of Creation functions only magnifies the researcher’s awe, which is further confirmed in their devotion to collecting more extensive data.  That awesome Creation process is not offended when mankind seeks to behold it. 

 Religious fanatics, on the other hand, feel threatened by every fact that scientific investigation discovers and will then labor devotedly to get Bronze Age speculations (religion) inserted into science classrooms.  In place of carefully amassed data, the faithful would install their favorite ego-pleasing scriptures.  The difference between these two approaches to enlightenment is obvious: The “faithful” seek ego-comfort from what they believe in, while those moved by scientific investigation find a higher serenity in what they have come to understand of Creation.  To the religionists’ disadvantage, their books of scripture, regardless of their age, do not confirm anything as does analytical data. 

Rationality is not a fundamentalist’s strong point, thus we have an army of Creationists that seek to impose upon academic institutions their religious interpretations of how the universe and life came into existence out of nothing.  (After a few God-saids.) Their characteristic indulgence in hypocrisy is in full bloom in doing this, for they dare to insist that the biblical version of Creation be a mandatory subject in classrooms.  It is deemed by them that to teach the scientific understanding that Creation took eons of evolutionary action is unfair to their improbable beliefs.  There is glaring hypocrisy in this fundamental stance.  Pre-college studies may, perhaps, include a fifty-minute-hour of biology five days a week where the concept of evolution may be briefly touched upon; but even so the principle of evolution is not addressed as being central in biology studies—or any other classes. 

The bogus squawking of alleged “unfairness” in school classes by religious bullies means only that fundamentalists want no free will choices offered to anyone.  The “fairness” balance that they claim to seek in school curriculum means that everyone else should ignore the fact that a school day averages out to be about seven hours of different classes for a student: the remaining 16-17 hours of each day—as well as the extra days of the weekends—are open for the fundies to program their offspring as they choose.  So how could offering a brief  investigative look at all the possibilities that are visibly present in a diverse Creation be such a severe spiritual handicap to the students?

Learning the facts and amassing data on how nature and the universe function has not yet disturbed the continuing process of Creation activities.  Could that obvious divine indifference to man’s curiosity perhaps mean that the “Maker” gave mankind an evolved brain with the expectation that he would use it for something more constructive than attempted domination of each other?

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History, Traditions and Religion

Posted in agnoticism, Atheism, Atheist, belief, culture, faith, freethought, history, humanity, random, religion, science, thoughts with tags , , , , on June 5, 2010 by chouck017894

History, according to most theologians of the western world, is the unfolding of God’s purpose.  And the stress that is placed upon the claimed historic value of their faith hinges upon a strategic rewrite of some unsettled conditions in one vicinity of the world in a narrow timeframe.  This perspective that it is their belief system which has historic value is quite unlike older faith traditions that were  more spiritually centered and which held that historical facts were of sparse value in terms of soul expansion.  The difference in the two approaches rests in the fact that the “miracles” credited to the central character in Eastern and older Pagan belief systems were accepted as incidental signs which attested to his divine authority.  Western religions, however, make the alleged “miracles” of the principal character the main essence of its alleged history.  The supernatural elements packaged into the scriptural accounts of Jesus, for example, are supposed to be accepted as historical happenings.  As summed up by an early Christian apologist, “If Christ be not risen from the dead, then is your faith vain.”

Genuine history always leaves tangible evidence behind that attests to particular persons and/or events.  Simply claiming historicity of biblical narratives is not legitimate evidence of historic happenings.  The time of the writing of various biblical accounts is of historical value, however, for the conditions of life in the region where the accounts were penned (not the setting of the story) colors the relationship to what is claimed as history.  That consideration of real-time and place is steadfastly avoided in both the Hebrew and Christian traditions, and by extension Islam as well, unless it happens to play into some claim that they put forward. 

God is presented in western faith systems as a being possessing an objective and permanent reality, a belief which for the faithful correlates as hard fact.  And this has made for western world cultures in which believers struggle with subliminal resentment over miracle happenings in antiquity that are apparently no longer granted to mortals by heaven.  Religious dogma does not allow sect members the luxury of logic, and as a result the devout (especially the fundamentalists) fail to see that miracles have been produced abundantly in modern times: we have received them through mankind’s pursuit of science and technology. 

Ironically, Christianity more than any other religion has served as the seedbed for man’s scientific and technological experiments in seeking some command over nature.   These pursuits for dominion over the physical world rest wholly on the Judaic/Christian scriptures that assert that man was meant to have rulership over earth life.  Other faiths never presumed such a thing, insisting that one should live in harmony with all life expressions.  But the holy word of God, as the western theologians chose to interpret it, subtly instilled a state of mind that lusted to impose transformational power over the physical world. 

If history is the unfolding of God’s purpose, as the devout theologians declare, the progressive movement of history has indicated that science and technology are Heaven’s favored path into transformation through the determined closing down of finite limits.

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Humans’ Place in Nature

Posted in culture, ecology, history, humanism, humanity, life, logic, nature, Pantheism, random, religion, science with tags , , , , on July 25, 2009 by chouck017894

Nature, the bearing principle of what we think of as material reality, has become strangely alien to western thought, and that mutant insensitivity has increased across the world—a situation due partly to religion and partly to science, the two answer-seeking indulgences which often rear up as opposing qualities.

Western religions have, by and large, pursued the notion that the creature man is meant to have dominion over nature and that humans are called upon by some divine overseer of the universe to control that life-sustaining organism we speak of as nature.  Science, drawn more to exploring how things work and evolve,  does so not in a drive to dominate nature but to (ideally) learn how to cooperate with nature and utilize the powers from which we became manifest as conscious life forms.

The western religious assertion that we must take control(dominion) over the wisdom that functions as nature and which produced our physical being is a rather infantile stance considering that as a complex species of nature we humans too often fail in even understanding or controlling ourselves.  We should take into consideration that western religious philosophy which professes to know so much about the nature of a supreme being remains curiously vague about the nature of man’s relationship to creative forces.  That vagueness attests to weak theology, and that lack of insight has infected humankind with a sense of estrangement from his natural being and his natural environment.

Science, which may be described as theoretical naturalism, customarily professes faithfulness to an indulgence in  rational consciousness which, unfortunately, is almost as indefinable as the mystical soul.  Both science and religion can only theorize from a state of limitation because the studies of both use humankind in nature as the object that is studied as representative of the subject.  And because such a technique focuses on external manifestations it means that neither of those theoretical approaches can act as a subjective observer.

Through such theoretical  exercises of science and religion we continue to feel that we are estranged in some way from the inner workings that function as nature.  Nevertheless, everything that is active as conscious life and all events active as nature are mutually interdependent.  Man cannot rightfully be understood as an object that stands apart from the subject nature.  Such a sense of estrangement from nature then encourages the self-destructive exploitation of the resources of the planet that have led humankind into the present day environmental predicament.

Like it or not, humankind has a total  involvement with nature.  Ultimately inhumanity toward nature is to deny humankind a future that holds any higher potential.

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Science on Clay Feet

Posted in history, prehistory, science with tags , , , , , , on April 4, 2009 by chouck017894

Unfortunately, science shares a number of nasty little habits that religion and politics have indulged in for millennia: the practice of suppressing or even disposing of evidence that runs contrary to the line of belief (theories) that they have put in place as being unquestionable fact. As in religion and politics, it is the fundamentalists of science that labor at obscuring truth to protect their financial and directional authority.

Making dogmatic pronouncements by persons held to be authorities in their field of interest betrays their loyalty to that discipline by doing so, for no line of science can remain a true research branch if it closes and locks a door of investigation. If the theorists truly hold a key to some truth then they should have no fear of questions or of further investigation. Equally deplorable are the scientists who refuse to look through–let alone step through–a door into something that is prejudged by them as too “outrageous” to even consider. More often than not such scientists–like the religionists and politicians–haven’t actually bothered to study the proposed investigation that they so freely criticize.

In the disciplines of archeology and anthropology, for example, it is held as fact that the anatomically modern human species could not have existed any longer ago than a few hundred thousand years. The theory has been that if such human beings existed million of years ago in parallel with primitive humanoids, then physical remains should have been found from sites known to be 300,000 to 400,000 years old, which could suggest the possibility of anatomically modern human’s being present before that time.  That theory of timeline for human development on this planet seems a bit too compressed, however.  But peer review literature acts as a knowledge filter which slowly and cautiously makes update corrections–a process that is constantly repeated. As example, in 1970 a new dating techinque revealed that tools found at a site in Ethiopia were at very minimum 176,000 years old–which set human presence on Earth back another 80,000 years.

A few little questions are raised in the opening of Time Frames and Taboo Data: A History of Mankind’s Misdirected Beliefs that anthropologists and archeologists shrug off. There have been found in 2.8
billion year-old rocks from South Africa hundreds of sphere-shaped metal objects, some slightly flattened on opposite ends and with three perfectly formed grooves encircling their center. There are two types of these objects. The more oval type is bluish-red with fiber-like flecks in the metal. The truly awesome thing about this type of sphere is that they were fashioned to be held in the hand and they have the ability to revolve on its own axis!

Okay, so that’s way too early for any intelligent exploration of planet Earth, right? Well then, what about a mere 200 million years ago? The Triassic Period? How could an imprint of a shoe sole–complete with tracing of stiches–exist in calcareous rock of that period? But it does: in Fisher Canyon in Pershing County, Nevada!

And what about a stele found at Quiriga in Guatemala that bears computations for its erection dated only 90 million year ago?

Are puzzles like these going to be scientifically pursued anytime soon? Don’t hold your breath.

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