War is Hell

I understand this expression ("War is Hell") originated with Sherman.  No doubt he used it as an excuse for his atrocities, not descriptively, but as a rationalization.  Nevertheless, it expresses a reality that people don't appreciate, until they think about the more traditional understandings of perdition.

Irving Berlin, in his song "This is the Army" got it I think right on (for those who listen to the words carefully) with this verse:

Do what the buglers command.
They're in the army and not in a band.

This is the army, Mister Brown.
You and your baby went to town.
She had you worried
But this is war and she won't worry you anymore.

On the battlefront one forgets other worries.

Since the last few days I've been on an ethics kick, it seems I should address the most serious ethical question of all that the ordinary person is likely to encounter -- war.

There is the concept of a just war and all the others, and in history there have been few just wars, but they do exist.  The Romans built their empire on "just wars," and even had silly rituals they went through to persuade themselves (or somebody) that their going out and conquering someone and pillaging their property and enslaving the population was "just."

One of the Ten Commandments is against stealing, and I have to wonder how it is that this never occurred to the Israelis as they conquered and displaced the Canaanites.  I could insert a snide comment here but I will let the readers insert their own.

I think it is pretty clear that wars conducted to occupy territory and take slaves and property can be ruled unjust.  What about a war to resist someone else doing this?  The right of self defense is questionable as a right, certainly not without boundaries and conditions (such as one has no right to engage in unnecessary brutality in such cases).  Still, the rule of minimizing harm seems to say one cannot allow bullies and aggressors to do their thing with impunity.  The have to be resisted if at all possible and with war if necessary.  Otherwise such types would rule the world and the harm from that would be immeasurable.

Now, what if you have reason to conclude that another country is preparing an invasion -- are you allowed to act preemptively?  Well it seems reasonable that if this will prevent an even worse war later on, then again by the rule of minimizing harm, it would be ethical.

Now we get into some deep politics -- what if the preemptive action is worse than the war, or results in conquest (not all conquests involve outright annexation -- just changing the regime in power to one more to one's taste is a form of stealing).  The outcome of war is highly unpredictable and may (usually does) far more harm than anticipated by the study institutes.

The personal ethical question, of whether or not to be a soldier, and whether or not to support one's nations' military actions, is complicated.  For the most part the attitude obviously should be pacifistic -- oppose war and support measures to reduce its likelihood (ironically that almost always includes supporting defensive military preparation).

Patriotism, when not taken too far (as is the case with all virtues) is a virtue.  One loves one's country, one wants it to persist, one wants it to prosper.  Being at war is counterproductive to these desires, but may be unavoidable.

There is also the horrible set of questions as to one's personal behavior when on the battlefront?  I know myself I could never kill another person, no matter what, so I guess I am lucky I was never in that position.  Still, it is not for me to judge what others may decide to do.  I would just ask that they mindfully review the options in advance.

The Ten Commandments

It's informative sometimes to ask a person who insists they follow or are guided by God's Law what law in particular they mean.

Of course one often gets "the Bible." Well obviously the Bible has some laws in it, but it is not a law book.  Besides, Christians, at least, do not follow most of the Bible laws, found in the Mosaic Law.  Various explanations are given for this,  having to do with that Law having been "fulfilled," or replaced by the Law of Love.

I have no idea how anything Jesus did could have fulfilled the law, and as I recall he went out of his way to be explicit that nothing in that law was to be ignored or broken -- just that common sense was needed in its application (the Sabbath can be broken in emergencies is, as I recall, the example he gave).

When asked to see some specific laws found in the Bible, we of course almost always get the Ten Commandments.  One has to ask, since the Mosaic Law is fulfilled and since the Ten Commandments are obviously part of this, why just it, and not all of the Mosaic Law, is considered valid.

The Ten Commandments are of course on the whole an excellent guide, so long as not taken too literally (the common sense rule) and not taken as anything near a complete ethics guide (for example it does not prohibit slavery or discrimination or using legal process to force others to observe one's personal ethics).  It is also composed of "shalt not" commands, and there are some affirmative things that should be in one's basic ethical beliefs -- such as giving to charities, doing safe and healthy things, etc.

The Commandment having to do with the Sabbath is of course specific to the tradition, but there is no problem I see with mandating a day of rest.  That it has to be one day in seven as a minimum is a bit silly, and this probably should not be part of a basic law as it does not rise to the level of honesty and fidelity in marriage, let alone not killing people.

The Sabbath law has also had the perverse effect of forcing a seven day week on our calendar, which has made it resistant to decimalization and unnecessarily complicated the calendar.  A ten day week with two or three Sabbaths would in my mind be better.  Going to church on a Sabbath is also inconsistent -- it is supposed to be a day of rest.

The main problem is with the statement that Jehovah (YHVH) is said to be a "jealous" God.  That is an obvious hold-over from the days when monotheism was not established and the actual existence of other gods was still believed -- otherwise what does Jehovah have to be jealous of?  The real problem here though is not its illogicality but its implication of intolerance.

God's jealousy also leads to to the ban on idolatry.  It goes so far as to ban the making of images entirely -- something Islam has taken beyond common sense and is of course impossible in the modern world (photo id's for example).  The fact is that there is no such thing as idolatry -- no one thinks the statue is actually the god -- this is brought out in the defense of Christian icons -- they are aids for focus and art works incorporating religious feelings.  When the Buddhist bows to the Buddha, no one thinks the Buddha is actually present in the statue -- it is respect and tradition and things like that, not "worship." (One day I must do a blog on the meaninlessness of the concept of worship anyway).  Ask any Buddhist -- the Buddha is dead.

If I were to scan the Bible for ethics, I would probably concentrate on the Sermon on the Mount -- something to be read from time to time for its lack of hypocrisy, its common sense, and its affirmative commands (along with things not to do).  I will maybe deal with this another day.

Atheist Ethics

As I explained in the previous blog, I am, or at least define myself, as an atheist.

Some people think that implies an absence of ethical or moral standards, but most understand that this notion is silly.  Still, I hear it often enough that maybe a few words about it are in order.

I may be an atheist, but I am also a human being.  The Buddhists have taught me that compassion for all sentient beings leads to peace of mind and happiness; Kant taught me never to "use" another person and to test actions based on whether I would be willing to allow anyone else to do the same; Socrates, via Plato, taught me that I should be careful in deciding that things are right or wrong, as in the end we don't know the ultimate consequences of what we do.  Regardless of all this, one does what is right because it is right and avoids doing what is wrong because it is wrong -- we do not really need a reason -- the difficult thing is not this but somehow discerning what is right and what is wrong.

One thing an atheist doesn't have is an authority, such as God, telling me what is right or wrong.  Is it so bad, this having to make my own choices, knowing that there is no deity handing out prizes and punishments?

Authority driven ethics suffers the often explained problem that I will here ask again -- does God decide on right and wrong, based on his power or something like that, or is it instead that in his perfection and wisdom he just tells us, his already knowing?  The problem with the first possibility is, can God tell us to do evil?  The problem with the second is that if God cannot tell us to do evil, or always chooses the good, then doesn't that mean that good and evil are something separate from God, and indeed his superior?

So then do I just follow my conscience and do what feels right?  I think largely that is a good thing -- do what your conscience tells you -- but this also suffers the problem of authority driven ethics, mainly in the issue of whether or not my conscience has got it right and not must making me feel better about doing something wrong.

What is our conscience?  Where does it come from?  Well of course this is pretty obvious if you note that the details of conscience varies by culture and over time.  Today in most of the world slavery is considered a serious evil, but through history it didn't seem to bother most people.  Today teenage sex, especially with full adults, is strictly off limits, leading in some countries to bouts of hysteria, but classical cultures (at least much of Greece) thought it an excellent thing, at least for boys.  (Don't misunderstand -- I disapprove too as I think being introduced to sex too young spoils a lot of things for the guy as he grows up, but I don't think it the horror one sees in the United States).

So conscience (aka "how we feel about it") is a reasonably good guide but not perfect.  I think it is okay so long as we do it "mindfully"-- that is, we give it some conscious consideration whether or not it meets independent tests.  Mindfulness, of course, is a virtue to be exercised in everything, not just ethical decisions.

In the end, of course, each situation has to be considered on its own, with the objective of doing the most possible good and the least possible harm (pretty much what everyone who has thought about it concludes).  We do what we do with compassion and wisdom (charity is good but can do harm if it creates dependency).  It ain't that hard, at least most of the time.

Proving there is no God (Hard Atheism)

How can someone possibly say for sure there is no God, let alone think they can prove it?

I think maybe I have set the question fairly, but of course right away I need to point out I avoided the word "believe." I don't "believe" there is no God, I only "say" it (or think it when saying so out loud would be inappropriate).

Actually, I don't even "think" there is no God -- I just don't think there is one.  This is a slightly different statement -- the first one is an affirmative assertion and hence has a burden of proff, while the second is a negative, subject to the rule that you can't prove a negative (you can't prove Santa Clause doesn't exist, but we all know it -- however, I think that approach is a cop-out).

The thing is, so often believers (aka "theists") insist they will believe in God unless I can prove otherwise.  If someone said as much of the jolly fat man, we would see the logical fallacy, but logical fallacies seem to be allowed when it comes to God (more of them later).

There are at least three standards that if met constitute "proof." The one usually meant goes:  "Beyond all doubt, for a certainty." This is more than just an unfair demand, it is an absurdity.  If this is the test for knoweldge, we do not know and can never know anything, since no amout of evidence and logic could achieve such a thing.  Even mathematical proofs do not achieve that standard, as there is always the possibility that there is an unseen error in the reasoning, or a flaw in one of the assumptions (axioms and definitions).

A slightly more reasonable definition of "proof," to be used, I suppose, in deciding whether to send someone to jail, is "beyond reasonable doubt." This of course is the legal demand in most criminal courts.  What it says is you look at the evidence and any sensible person will be able to see what happened, and any that say otherwise are just being perverse.  "I know the sun will rise tomorrow." I think that statement meets this test.

In civil cases, however, there is a different standard of proof -- it goes, "A preponderance of the evidence." It is hard to give examples of this because this rule and the reasonable doubt rule have no clear dividing line.  They merge, as it were, along a fuzzy boundary.

The first argument I would present against God's existence is as old as the hills, and has never been refuted, and yet theists continue to fool themselves into thinking otherwise.  It is summed in the bit of nonsense about whether God can create a rock so big he can't move it.  I do wish the problem historically had used something different, since God is not a phyical being (I think we will all agree on that) so rocks make the issue seem trivial, and it is anything but trivial.  Spiritual or not, can God create such a rock?

Modern mathematics (mainly in Goedel's theorems) has shown us that in systems complex enough (and numbers or geometric shapes are complex enough) there must necessarily exist unprovable but true theorems.  Can God prove such a theorem?  That the answer necessarily must be "no" will be obvious to anyone who understand this, but that is going to be a minority.

Can God believe something that is false?  Of course not.  Can God tell a lie?  Can God do something less than perfect?  Can he do something evil?  The answers to these questions imply that God is just a machine doing the right thing all the time, who has no possibility of choice in what he does since anything less that perfect in all respects is outside his capabilities.

There exists a standard, highly dishonest, response to this -- we will redefine God and deny him absolute omnipotence.  He can do anything except what is against his nature to do, and it is against his nature to do anything illogical or imperfect or evil. 

You really in that case don't have much of a God left, but, as I already said, just a machine.

To digress a bit, I remember having a certain person defend the idea of eternal torment in Hell as punishment for sins committed in a short human life.  This sort of notion of course blies the idea of God as just, (but then any sort of eternal punishment, even extinction, is unjust in this context).  What I was told was that Hell is something God could not avoid -- it follows from the nature of sin and God is so perfect he has to torture people eternally.

Hard to not want to throw up at such things -- if God does exist I guess such people are lucky he is merciful, the slander about him that people invent.

All I can say when I hear theists bandy about words like "omnipotent" and then explain the self-refrerential contradictions that any sort of infinity implies is they don't think they need be logical when it comes to God.

There are, of course, other gods about besides the "God" of the Bible and Q'uran.  Threre is the Tao, who by definition can't be known, so we might as well ignore him.  Then there are polytheistic deities, as in Hinduism and Paganism.  They don't count either since they make no claim to being God but are merely gods, with maybe superhuman power, but not omnipotence.

I dunno if you should pay too much attention to what I say about reincarnation; I am not an expert, and can only tell you what I think based on my somewhat unique background.  I know very little about Pythagoras except his theorem and that he started a mystical Greek philosophical school.

There is a story in the Buddhist tradition of a Prince who was very much into the hunt, and spent all his time hunting and killing animals, and which the Buddha indicated, because of the Prince's desires, would probably be reborn a tiger.  Interestingly he is reported to not have said so in so many words but just with gestures.  The Buddha was not much into animal rebirths -- this is much more a Hindu idea, and I have no idea whatever what the Pythagoreans thought.

Pretty much everyone around here, including the Communists, "believes" in reincarnation, in the sense that the idea is part of the furniture and just taken for granted.  When you drill down, however, one finds differing theories and some skepticism.

Personally I am very skeptical, and get more and more so as I age.

First one knows that the teaching originated in India, probably as far back as the Harrappa cultures (sometimes spelled with just one "r").  Unlike many of the features of modern Hinduism, such as casts and the panoply of deities, the teaching of reincarnation is common to all the religious traditions originating in India, and hence one can conclude it was probably there before the Aryan invasions (which brought in the Indo-European deities).

This is not to say the idea that we are reborn (the technically correct term -- "reincarnation" has to do with coming back to earth as a new incarnation, not as a new person) has not appeared elsewhere.  It is found as a speculation in Greek philosophy in such people as Plato, but was not as far as I know a belief in Greek religion.  Some assert that the Greeks got the idea from India, but records of such Greek thinking predate Alexander, so I doubt it -- more likely the Greek philosophers thought it up on their own.

As found in popular thinking nowadays, both in India and in the Buddhist areas, the teaching can be seen to have two components -- belief in karma and belief in the immortal soul.  Karma, as we all know, is the tendency to accumulate brownie points for good behavior and bad marks for bad behavior in a cosmic account.  Expressed in a more sophisticated way, what it means is that our behavior changes us (our soul) as we live, for the good and for the bad, and this accumulates and eventually, as a part of the universe's cause and effect processes, leads to good or bad "luck."   They also lead to rebirth in a better or worse position than one's present life.

What is seen to happen when one dies is the body is gone, but the soul or spirit persists, and desperately desire ("grasps") to get back what it just lost -- sensations mainly (hence the "hungry ghost").  The positive karma one has gives one somehow a certain power to influence one's rebirth (which is pretty much the only way to escape the disembodied -- ghostly -- state) -- to something desirable (maybe a heaven) or something undesirable (maybe a hell) but more likely to another human -- again to high or low state.  The widespread notion of being reborn an animal is also considered possible, but not likely since once having been a human there are very few who have any desire at all along these lines, and it is our desire that motivates the entire process (sentient animals are, however, seen as a virtually inexhaustible source of new human souls).

Unlike the Hindu approach, where this is seen as immortality, the Buddha saw it as a horrible trap -- called Samsara -- where one is trapped in a cycle of suffering -- dying is suffering, being born is suffering, life is suffering (I tend to see life, even the painful parts, differently).  Therefore he is reported to have discovered the way out -- through enlightenment, which is achieved through a life of meditation and goodness (basically by becoming a Buddhist monk -- which doesn't guarantee enlightenment but which is pretty much necessary).  Most Buddhists would like instead to go to one of the Buddhist heavens.

Enlightenment nowadays is seen as peace of mind, happiness, understanding of the human condition, and things like that, but the early conception was a supernatural awareness and level of knowledge that included memory of past lives.  In such a state one can die at any time and enter Nirvana -- often rendered "blessedness." Some see it as personal extinction, or maybe something like the Transcendentalist concept of rejoining the cosmic ocean of mind, or maybe just entering a special heaven where one's karma doesn't eventually run out.  Portrayals of it for children usually depict a (to me boring) state of people sitting around meditating.

Now some problems.  First, there is the convincing and I think very true Buddhist teaching of "no self." All of the above picture sees us as having souls, or selves, but Buddhist teaching from the very earliest tells us that this is an illusion.  Even mindful meditation can persuade those who know to look for it that there is no soul, no self, but only a process not unlike a burning candle or a wave on the water, or an electro-magnetic particle/wave duality we call a photon.

Then there is the modern scientific understanding that what we call mind is really just brain activity.  This concept has its own problem (the source of what are called "qualia" or sensations and emotions as we experience them -- the brain doubtlessly produces them but what is it that experiences what the brain generates).  Still, that problem aside, how does all this survive the destruction of brain (we see that mind tend to disappear even while the brain lives if it has some degenerative disease).  Where does the mind go -- into space as a disembodied ghost? -- the possible mechanism is an absurdity.

The general view in Vietnam is that there are ghosts everywhere -- spirits so evil they have not been able to be reborn (although why not one of the hells?).  These are frightening and malevolent and not even mentioned out loud.  There are also good spirits wandering around who for some reason haven't been reborn -- shrines can be seen here and there for these, to give them comfort.  Ghosts tend to be restricted to where they can travel at normal human speeds, so, except maybe for Pure Land Buddhists, we are reborn on the earth and the ghosts on the earth are those of dead humans.

One problem is expressed in the question, "Where is Mozart." The observation is that each of the world's great artists -- composers, authors, painters, etc., is noticeable for a clear "voice" that (at least in Mozart's case) is readily recognized from the very beginning.  Even though we are told we forget past lives, if the spirit persists, one would think that Mozart would by now have been reborn several times, further enriching our musical heritage, but we see nothing recognizable as such.

My main problem though is simply lack of evidence.  There is no credible evidence for ghosts, nor for past memories.  Unfortunately study of such phenomena, if there is any reality there, has been contaminated by air-heads and frauds and parents eager to make a lot of money from their precocious children by feeding them stuff.  As a result, I don't think it is possible for there to be an objective study, and serious scientists simply don't.  The few who do and who get results are soon denounced and debunked anyway, maybe properly.

There is also déjà-vu. There are efforts to "explain" this wide-spread phenomenon, and I think most of the explanations are valid most of the time, but it is impossible to rule out the possibility that a residue really are memories of past lives.

A lump came to my throat reading about the reception of the refugees in Germany and Austria.  The Hungarians should be ashamed.

It is true that most of these are probably "Economic" immigrants -- meaning their lives are in no terrible danger and the main motive is to improve their lives and the lives of their children.  I just do not see anything wrong with that.

Germany and Austria are getting an influx of young ambitious people willing to take risks.  The saying is, "When the going gets tough the tough get up and go." A nation can only be helped by an influx of such people, especially as their work will pay the pensions of the otherwise aging German population.

Of course there are cultural differences and there will be acculturation problems, and a few of the Muslims coming in will be dangerous radicals.  They will deal with them and end up a richer, more vibrant, wealthier, more powerful and certainly more admirable society.

Well this discussion has had the benefit of showing me that miracles cannot be accepted.  I tended to say they are unlikely and need evidence, but actually we have to ask what would constitute a miracle.  God coming down and curing my medical problems might be called a miracle, but in a deeper sense it would be no such thing -- it would be God coming down and curing my medical problems.  It would seem God is a better doctor than those I've been seeing.

This is perhaps playing word games, as the sense of "miracle" is not something without cause, but where the cause is divine or spiritual and not mundane or human or physical.  Well in that case I don't think miracles occur.  It implies the existence of God, something that is counter to logic (another subject altogether) so that I am persuaded strongly he doesn't exist but is a human notion out of wishful thinking.  Given no God, then, no miracles.  Still, that begs the issue here, which is more of a "show me" situation -- if there are miracles, they don't get believed unless there is damn good evidence there is no other explanation, and even then they don't get believed because it could be simply a trick where I don't see the trick or some event I don't understand.  

There is also a theological problem with miracles -- they imply God interfering with the working of the world as He designed it.  This is certainly problematic -- the artist (in this case a perfect, infallible artist) going back and retouching his work.  And then there is the question of why God works miracles to prevent some evil or other (we assume that is his purpose) and yet allows all sorts of horrid things to go on and on and on -- like babies dying in the gutter.  Once we say God corrects some evils with special dispensations, we make God into an unjust, arbitrary, kind-of circus magician.

Skepticism is healthy, cynicism is not.  Skepticism is to demand evidence for things that are less than obviously true, and never accept things because they are "human." The universe is what it is regardless of our wishes and fantasies.

Anything is possible, that does not mean anything is real, nor does it mean we should accept explanations for things that do not fit with reality.  In such cases the appropriate response is just that we don't know.  I think miracles are impossible by definition -- anything we think is a miracle either has a more mundane explanation or is just a sample of technology we don't understand.  It is possible Santa Clause could pop into existence in my garage (according to what the quantum people tell us), and if he did so it would not be a miracle but just a quantum event.  If Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, it was not a miracle but just his ability to maneuver the universe to make him live -- a modern doctor might have been able to as well, or a future doctor.

All that said, the wise course is to withhold belief and wait for further evidence.  Odds are overwhelming a debunking will come along -- tricks and misunderstandings and delusions and pious frauds are far more common than violations of physics.

It is conceivable Jesus Christ could have gone unnoticed -- there were lots of miracle workers and would-be Messiahs about and the whole topic must have been something of a bore.  My attitude is that absence of evidence is not proof of absence, but it is damn good evidence.  The thing is that extraordinary claims (and the whole Jesus story surely is extraordinary) require extraordinary evidence, not just rationalization of absence of evidence.

The reason people persist in such irrational belief has to do with meme theory, at least this seems the most readily acceptable idea.  Once an idea gets hold -- and it can do so for reasons outside rationality (emotional appeal, childhood indoctrination, etc.), our minds leap at anything that allows keeping the notion in spite of anything -- at least some people's minds do -- hence Bigfoot, lake monsters, flying saucers, hollow earths, alien abductions, ghosts, demons, visions of the Virgin Mary, miracles, and on and on and on.

The religious memes also have a cute trick -- they make what is called "faith" into a virtue, sometimes near the paramount virtue, rather than the vice of superstition and believing what we want rather than what the evidence supports.  It is all feel nice stuff, and for sure believing makes us feel great.  I'm more interested in truth than joy, although I'll take joy when it doesn't require that I lie to myself.

Yes, Dorothy, there are truths in all religions -- this is probably unavoidable about any belief system of enough complexity.  I would also assert that that coin has an obverse -- that there are falsehoods in all religions.

One can reach one of two (at least two) conclusions from this.  One might be that religion in general is a waste of time and worrying about religious truth and untruth are even more a waste of time.  The other might be that revealing truth is not a valid function of religion, but instead religion serves other human needs, probably deriving from our need to serve and worship and be comforted by whatever straw we can grasp -- derived ultimately by the natural selection of our evolution.

When one gets deep into a study of some place and time in history, it becomes clear we know really very little of what actually happened and even less of the reasons why.  That is no reason, however, to fill in the gaps in our knowledge with fantasies and guesses and fictions.  When we die what we know dies with us, so the vast majority of human memory is lost forever, and we only have the little that gets written down, and it is filled with biases and omissions and exaggerations and so on.

People of the future will have a slightly, but only slightly, better time of it studying us than we have studying what went on in, say, ancient Rome.  We do have a somewhat more objective discipline of reporting history, but there is still plenty written that is untrue or misleading, and of course we will leave film and so on, but selection effects here too will prevent anything like a completely accurate record.

Thinking about it, it is amazing we know as much as we know and can see an overall picture regardless.  I would only say a great deal of care and humility is called for if we are to draw lessons from this history.

People claim miracles all the time; I doubt a real divinity would stoop to such performances, but even if so the burden of proof (that it is the truth) for a real miracle is virtually insurmountable, and given that we have no independent contemporary testimony the stories of Jesus are easily discounted.  

As far as "belief" goes, this is foolish of anything.  The best we can honestly do is hold the opinion that something is almost certainly true, and this level of confidence needs to be held in reserve for things like the sun rising tomorrow.  Religions make a virtue of "faith," when in fact it is a vice -- a giving in to our desire that something -- usually something we were taught as children while we were still uncritical -- be true.  

The value judgments we make (right versus wrong, beautiful versus ugly, interesting versus tiresome, valuable versus worthless, etc.), are hard to pin down and there is an old question as to whether they are human abstractions or have a real existence outside the human sphere.  For example, 2 + 2 = 5 is "wrong," so also is beating a child.  Does "wrong" mean the same thing is both of these cases?  Most people think not but in fact we don't really know -- there are schools of thought (Asian karmic notions being the one I'm familiar with) that would say both are errors in the "wrongness" sense -- they both go against something that consists of "right."

We can't, however, depend entirely on our feelings in these things -- people can be wrong about mathematical calculaitons as much as wrong about their behavior and what is good and bad behavior.  We instead have to check our calculations -- in the end see if they stand up under deductive scrutiny from basic principles -- axioms or postulates or whatever.

With behavior I think the fundamental postulate is the "golden rule" or concept of compassion for all sentient beings.  How does violence and inflicting hurt or pain on someone stand in the light of this postulate?  Obvious.  That doesn't mean one is a total absolutist in such things -- scenarios can be imagined where the failure to inflict pain does more harm than not -- but such scenarios are usually far-fetched and uncommon.

Our evolution was a different matter.  Here we managed largely by killing and being strongest and so on.  But evolution was simple biology -- in the end just a blind natural process without moral standing -- and is therefore misleading to use as a guide for behavior.  Out instincts bring us to strike out, to "defend" ourselves, to get revenge, to judge -- and this leads us into morally wrong behavior.

To my mind, then, any claim that it is better to inflict pain and hurt than not to has the burden of proof -- that the correct, moral response is always to avoid conflict and only with a huge preponderance of the evidence does one behave otherwise.

To be dogmatic here for a moment, it seems to be obvious that we have no soul, no "self."  Just sit quietly and "watch" your thoughts (be mindful).  You can see that all it is is a process of one thought after another, loosely connected, sometimes branching and going in circles, sometimes starting off on a new track, sometimes influenced by an uprising emotion or memory or an external stimulus. 

There is a difference between things that.are processes (where each event occurs in sequence and pushes itself along) and material of even spiritual objects, that have tangible stasis and properties.  A wave is like our mind -- it generally pushes itself along but still is influenced by the lay of the land, by the wind, by passing objects, by interaction with other waves, and so on.  The water that is the medium of the wave moves in little circles as the wave passes, but is not the wave.

What happens at death is of course that the medium the mind has for this process -- brain we suppose -- stops functioning and decays.  What then can possible happen to mind?  It is hard to imagine it continuing elsewhere, without a medium, but of course this is the foundation idea of rebirth teachings.

I doubt there is any meaning in life, and good things we do end up working good largely by accident.  Indeed, there is probably no meaning in the universe.  Only existence, and it is something of a trap.  I express this all as probable, not sure, since on something so significant any kind of assurance is out of reach.

In the meantime we can be compassionate, try to avoid hurting others, and help where we are sure our help will really help.

Of course there are truths in the Bible -- no one doubts for example that there existed a city of Jerusalem or a country of Egypt.  That is like saying there are truths in the Iliad -- but that doesn't prove much -- few today believe in Apollo and Athena and so on.

All texts, even modern ones but even more those from ancient times, need to be read skeptically (not cynically), and texts that refer to outlandish things like talking asses and fire and brimstone from the sky and divine voices from burning bushes need a particular skepticism -- one that says the more "out" a statement is, the more evidence is needed.  Basically whenever an ancient text speaks of miraculous happenings, it should be doubted -- not just the miraculous parts but all of it -- until there is independent non-miraculous support.

This doesn't mean the ancient authors were deliberately lying, but only that they were recording stories that had come down to them in their culture -- just as the stories of Robin Hood or King Arthur came down to the Middle Ages in European cultures and later got written down as fact, when in fact they were myths.

A simple rule I wish everyone would practice, especially myself: one's personal experiences are proof of nothing and extremely weak evidence, and if they are self-flattering to boot they will only produce scorn.

That doesn't mean it is bad to tell personal stories, but only as entertainment or as illustration to help with understanding.  In short they should be treated as anologies.

On its surface banning harmful things sounds like a good idea, and it is always possible to think of things everyone will concede has to be at least very strictly regulated.

However, this requires restricting personal freedom, hiring police and judges and prison guards.  It also requires spying on the public, putting innocent people in jail, or maybe just naive kids and thereby ruining their futures.

In short although it seems bans are the first reaction to harmful things, it should in fact be an absolute last resort in any society that calls itself free.

Self awareness or mindfulness is something we can teach ourselves, but it doesn't hurt to get advice or read up on it.  So many people I fear go through life with little or no self-examination, or when they do examine themselves it is against irrational or even harmful standards, and full of rationalizations to enable them to excuse themselves or to continue doing and believing things that are not rationally based, but instead come from indoctrination or desires.  Religions are a major offender here, in particular when they encourage irrational beliefs based on their authority or tradition or some divine claim or another.

We tend to refer to spiritually advanced people as "old souls"(although of course all souls are really the same age, probably unlimited).  It is something about their personality and their approach to things.

It isn't or at least is not entirely a matter of interest in religion; indeed they may even be anti-religious in the usual sense of organizations.  Nor is it gullibility (those who tend to think "belief" and faith are important, or who want so much for the universe to be a big kindly teddy bear).  They tend to know and do the right thing automatically, without thinking about it and without goodness motives.  They tend to nod and find something in whatever you say that they can agree with, and reinforce that rather than getting negative.  Indeed they seem inherently happy no matter what.

I don't know if I am being too fussy or not, but the "dark side" of the moon is not dark and gets as much light as the side facing us.  The moon is not illuminated by the earth but by the sun, and it rotates relative to the sun.  We would be better calling the "sides" of the moon the front and back sides.

Seems to me anyone who has been in a country long enough to put down firm roots should be deemed legal.  The whole business of rules as to who can enter and who cannot is at root racism anyway and Trump is playing a racist card if he not not actually a racist himself.

If you insist on "justice" and therefore a penalty for the illegal entry, then impose a reasonable fine (let the punishment fit the crime).  America has, just as it also has with things like drugs and gambling, created a criminal class of non-criminals.  If they commit real crimes put them in jail, whether they were born in the States or not.  Twenty to forty million people just cannot be deported, and cannot be allowed to continue festering as a permanent under-class subject to exploitation by real criminals.  Have some sense, Americans, and stop being so self-righteous.

What or who is going to win a given struggle is only in a small way determined by how the forces look on paper.  Motivation, skill, training, leadership, domestic support, what the locals think, and all sorts of other things, including luck, enter into it.  It's the course of wisdom to avoid conflict even if one feels oneself significantly stronger.

Matters of courtesy and respect require common sense, but using examples where common sense makes the rule obviously inapplicable is "slippery slope" fallacy, and, to my mind just someone looking for excuses to engage in racist or sexist, or whatever, behavior.

So, for example, if someone were to whisper to you at a party about someone nearby, "You know, she's a dyke," (a mildly derogatory reference to a masculine lesbian), almost always one would let it pass except maybe change the subject or maybe excuse oneself and find other company.

I would say that being offended by such things, just as being offended when someone is disrespectful, does no good and the only harm is to oneself.  It's like when someone uses a harsh obscenity or commits a grammatical error or other faux pas -- our getting upset only raises our blood pressure, not theirs.

Still, it also seems to me that one cannot let especially bad bits of racism and other such things go unremarked.  This is tough.  It may be a cultural blindness (as what happened to me once when I used the word "spastic" in central England -- it seems this word is taboo in Britain but of course frequently heard in the States without offense.  The thing is, care is needed when protesting to such things, as one is more likely to reinforce the prejudice than anything else.

It may also be deliberate crudity for humor or a thrill or just a bad habit. I tend to avoid associating with such people, especially if they rationalize or complain about political correctness.  They aren't worth my time and I figure they say similar things about me when I'm not there.

We should only follow our mind and what we can see is sensible and fits the evidence, and even then never with  absolute belief or faith but only with well formed opinion.

Following what we find beautiful or makes us happy to contemplate or gives us joy or any of those things is the well-traveled road to regression and disappointment.  Peace and lasting happiness comes from accepting what is and not chasing rainbows and mirages and other things we would like to be the case.

There is such a thing as a sociopath -- a person commonly described as without a conscience -- and I suppose if you put that in the same person with a strong sexual sadism perversion, one would have a product we would easily call evil.

This however doesn't address the point I was making which is more philosophical and not psychiatric.  To call a person evil is a judgment and I think it is not only morally wrong but also unscientific and simply a  mistake to make judgment calls about people, good or bad.  The individual described in my first paragraph is extremely unlucky  to have such an inheritance or development, and needs help and deterrence, but thinking of them as evil distorts the reality.  They act out of internal desires and instincts, not much different from a cat playing with a mouse it has caught rather than dispatching it immediately.

In short I think evil is a word generally best avoided or just used as a form of shorthand to indicate strong personal disapproval but not as a description of something real in the world.

No one is either good nor evil.  Some do more good in this world and some do more harm, and that eventually works its consequences, but we evolve and learn and become (not necessarily for the better) as time passes.

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays I think mind is a spiritual thing divorced from my body and that goes on after my body dies.  That explains a lot, especially how it is that my mind experiences its existence, such as the terrible itch on the scab on my knee  I got being reckless on a bicycle -- what is an "itch" anyway and how in creation can molecules and electrons moving around generate this experience in my mind?

The rest of the time I realize that if I get Alzheimer's or something like that my mind will dissolve, so it seems a good predictor of what will happen when I die, and even though the experience of "qualia" is a more difficult problem than the typical materialist is capable of understanding, the fact that I see no way to understand it doesn't mean there can't be a way.

Quanta and so on are fascinating but seem irrelevant to all this.  More important is the old criticism of Cartesian Dualism, how does mind move the body?

It enters my mind that if you believe in the Devil or in demons or whatever you admit or presume that "evil" is a real thing, and have the burden of showing that this is so.

Now, lots of bad things happen to all of us.  Typhoons blow, volcanoes erupt, diseases come and we age and die.  None of that, though, is "evil."  It is just what is -- and all have both good and bad aspects to them, depending on viewpoint.

People too do bad things -- they steal and kill and whatever.  Do these things have a good aspect?   I rather think not -- some more subtle perspective is needed -- the harm the criminal does harms the victim and also harms the criminal (in either a karmic way or in the Western sense of accumulating sins).  We know, however, that the criminal is motivated mainly by the same sorts of desires and drives that motivates all of us to do bad things -- they are just less inhibited, perhaps, or less intelligent (they don't get away with it).  I find it hard to say that my impulses -- my ambition, my pride, my libido, my desire to have others like me, and so on.  These are desires derived from the subconscious -- even deeper down -- and evolved as instincts that get modified and made acceptable by our acculturation and morals and so on, and it is hard to say that an instinct evolved for natural reasons (survival of genes) is somehow "evil," even though sometimes it leads to harm.

It's really easy -- never believe anything without good reason for believing it, and the more outlandish the thing the stronger the reasons have to be.  The secret to successfully employing this rule to reach any sort of truth is rigid honesty with oneself and complete suppression of what we would like to be the case in favor of what really is the case.

There is nothing wrong with beautiful churches (nor any kind of beautiful building, including beautiful jails and beautiful garbage dumps), nor with beautiful music (although if the only motive is being beautiful, the music quickly gets boring), nor beautiful anything.  Nor is there anything wrong with well put-together speeches and rallies and rituals and so on.  The thing to remember is that there is a thin line between persuasion and indoctrination -- when it comes to bringing people around to our point of view, reason is really the only justifiable method.  The rest is fine as entertainment but essentially corrupt as persuasion.

Advertising is probably the worst offender here -- TV is the boob tube for good reason -- it is designed for boobs -- people who are persuaded by cute babies and puppies and stirring music and hyperbole and little play-acts and so on (and pseudo-scientific claims).

Religion also engages in this sort of persuasion, as well as the propaganda techniques known as stacking the deck (failure to mention problems with one's argument) and bandwagon (making one's views seem heretical and even evil).

And of course there are politicians -- with flags and bunting in the background and bands playing patriotic music and the husband and wife and darling family all there smiling.  Ugh it makes me ill that this sort of thing actually gets votes, but nothing like the literature and advertising they put out -- especially the "negative" ads that imply ugly things about the opponent just shy of slander, it being well known that people tend to lose interest in a candidate attacked that way and even though they may not vote for the person producing the garbage they may not vote at all, and that is what the garbage hauler intends anyway.   Of course the fact that such things work has soured me on democracy as a method of government anyway.

It seems to me possible that as computer science advances and we get better and better at simulating things, that someday we will simulate an entire universe (in its own set of dimensions so it won't get in anyone's way -- of course the computer would generate the appearance of dimensions -- there would be no need to actually create them).

Given that this is a possibility, and given that anything possible must necessarily happen given time, and given that in any such simulation intelligences would in turn evolve who would in time begin to make their own simulations (simulations inside simulations etc.), it begins to get scary.

In fact, it would seem we are almost certainly, given the laws of probability, inside such a chain of simulations now.

One sometimes reaches a point with someone where they just say the same things over and over and seem to be incapable of either learning anything or of thinking outside their particular box.  They are a waste of time and all one can say is one is glad they don't have inquisitional power.

It is interesting that some people ossify like that and others don't.  I know I have opinions now I never imagined I would have even five years ago.  I think the difference is how one forms one's views (by using what one has been indoctrinated to -- "beliefs," or by using reason and evidence -- "opinions"), and whether one sees one's views as "faith" or as opinion.  Those of the first group seem to have just too much arrogance to admit they might be wrong, and cover it with "faith" to prevent such a thought.

Rereading the above paragraph a weakness in what I said needs dealing with -- how can a thinking adult be "indoctrinated" against reason?  Of course most of it is desire -- they find a view exciting or desirable or something they wish were true -- but the main reason is they become persuaded by non-rational means -- appeals to emotions such as testimonials and beautiful churches and music and patriotism and tradition and authority (the list seems endless).  There is only one valid reason to form an opinion -- evidence and its proper application.

God has to be "human like" (anthropomorphic) in some sense or he cannot be "God."  For example God has to be a person -- if he is a process or a natural phenomenon or a machine then he does not qualify for divinity.

So also, he has to be purposeful -- have objectives and do things -- not just sit like King Log.  Otherwise of what possible interest to us could he be?

But then God must also be some things that are very not-human, such as omnipotent.  If there are limits on God's power then again he is not God, even though he may be powerful and seem omnipotent to us, if he is not truly omnipotent then he is only superman.

And, again, for much the same reason, he must be omniscient -- although that leads logically to a King Log -- but still I don't see how a being that doesn't know everything that is and will go on can be said to be divine.

These things lead to all sorts of logical contradictions, and I have to say I would say that to be God he would have to be free of such contradictions and truly consistent.

Long ago I realized that such a being is just human nonsense, and I think most people do, even theists, since they tend to hedge their definition of God so as to make him fit logical necessity -- although when you think about it that is not only dishonest but a bit much.  And, of course, superman always is lurking about.

And of course God must be both perfect (which means he can only do that which is perfect) and at the same time have unlimited free will.  Huh?  God can't lie as that would be imperfect but he has to or his will would be limited.  My word the contortions theists go through to deal with this bit of plain logic.

How arrogant of me to say what God is and what God isn't.  Well that coin has two sides.

"Free will" is a tough one.  I think it has to be real, at least now and then, but I can see no logical way it could be and asserting it leads to logical contradictions (something "chosen" but remaining without cause and not random).

Of course as I have said before, the fact that I can see no way something could be the way it is may only mean a lack of imagination or insight on my part and proves nothing.

I hate to tell everyone this but there is no such thing as "new blood."  It's an illusion invented by each generation so as to look down on their predecessors.  Human beings stay pretty much the same, with a few cultural tweaks here and there that cycle (what was hip to your grandparents was old hat to your parents and is hip to you) and of course we do evolve, but that takes millions of years.

I read Socratic dialogues and have no difficulty, separated a whole world and several thousand years from them, fully understanding their motives and humor and relationships and so on.  Part of that no doubt is Plato's genius, but still it tells me people everywhere and every-when are pretty much the same.

We do not need new people every generation (although I must say I like children so a world without them would be lacking) to keep things fresh.  We just need seriously enforced term limits.

I tend to think that if technology solves the aging problem that in itself will solve a lot of other problems.  We would of course have to have a sustainable economy recycling and using only the energy of the sun (in its various forms) and we would of course have to be sure everyone is part of the package, not just the wealthy.  I tend to think we are making good progress if you look at the statistics around the world, but have a way to go.

We will never live forever -- just indefinitely.  That, I have to keep repeating, since it doesn't seem to sink in.

There is a more serious danger I might predict if death from aging were to stop.  We would still be exposed to accidents, and there is a set of personality traits that make one more likely to die accidentally -- the thrill of taking risks, criminality, immediate gratification, and so on.  These people would selectively die out more than those who are more conservative -- leading over a few thousand years to an extremely conservative, risk-averse population.  This does not sound good.

If one would be happy one must not be attached to things -- to material possessions, to those we love, to our nation or religion or ideology, not even to our own personal existence -- this is all because nothing is permanent and we therefore necessarily must suffer when they go away if we are attached to them.

This is good advice, if taken in moderation (another Buddhist rule, but really a common sense one that most religions have, the middle way) -- don't be grasping -- let go when the time comes and one suffers less.  I see the grief at death so common in the West that is just not expressed here -- people here do let go.  Hard to explain.

This is all fine and I am so immersed into this kind of thinking that I can't avoid bringing up Buddhism in this context, even though I think it, or at least it, as it is often interpreted, is wrong.  The prescription for happiness may be not to grasp, but maybe it doesn't so much say we shouldn't hold while we can -- why be unhappy just to be sure one is never unhappy?

This is however a digression from my point.  What I wanted to talk about is overcoming aging and ultimately death through technology and medicine and what I see holding up the research in these areas that is of a superstitious and religious nature -- that death is somehow "natural" or a good thing.  That barrier cannot be overcome until we realize that it is wrong, and evil, and in fact probably the greatest single evil in the world.

It seems to me it requires an anti-intellectual bent (I think more common in the States than in Asia where scholarship is honored) to be a Christian nowadays.  Christianity runs so counter in its very nature to what we have learned about cause and effect (no curses, no original sin, no demon possession) as well as to what we know about nature (species are not fixed, it is possible to change genetic makeup of organisms artificially) and of course what we know about the mind (no soul).

Those who want to believe can do so in spite of modern knowledge only by holding their hands over their eyes and ears (sorry that takes four hands to do well) and refusing to hear.

The willingness to believe what we want to believe without evidence or even in the face of evidence is I suppose a form of insanity, although I always chalked it up to being just a bad case of dishonesty.

God, being benevolent, created evil so we could appreciate and enjoy good.  God, being malevolent, created evil just naturally.  It seems that we get the same world whether God is one or the other.

It is incumbent on us to live healthy lives and to teach our children to do the same, but when it comes to other people I've always kept my mouth shut.  That is their business and just as I stay out of their morals I stay out of what they eat or smoke or whatever.  (As a matter of fact as part of trying to avoid being judgmental I don't even pay attention to such things).

Now regarding some of the responses I've gotten, a lot of people don't get it and keep with the mantra that everything dies therefore it is not an evil and further that therefore we must die.  This is an empirical conclusion, but not one that is a logical necessity, and one I think that if minds could be changed and resources accordingly redirected could be fixed.

My point (agenda) here has been more limited -- just to get people to see that death is wrong.  Not that suicide and self-sacrifice are always wrong (wrongs often have worse wrongs to override them) but that all else being equal death is wrong.

I read a novel the other day about a woman who jumped off a bridge in London and became the goddess of the Thames -- the old god had abandoned the place as too polluted.  Of course the Thames is now one of the cleanest industrial rivers on earth, and she took credit for it -- the pollution was not something that "just has to be accepted," but a wrong that people can do something to fix.

Over the years I've discovered to be wary of wishful thinking.  We know unconsciousness is possible since we sleep and so on, and it sure seems to have been our state prior to birth.

Maybe I will be pleasantly surprised and find an afterlife as is so widely imagined.  I have to say though that it is just as possible, if our spirit survives our body, that we will find ourselves in a state of suspended nothingness, with the desires of people but no sensory input and no way to move or do anything (disembodied spirit -- not far removed from the Buddhist concept of "hungry ghost").

The ancient Stoics made the point that since death is nothingness it holds no terrors, nothing to fear.  Somehow I miss the point here.  Obviously I won't know what I'm missing, but now I do know what I will miss and I don't want to.

Oh, well, in the meantime life goes on.

OK I am frustrated, and not just by an unresponsive computer.

First, in the earlier posting I put my points in personal terms, trying to make it more effective; maybe I shouldn't have as this seems to mislead people to think I'm talking about a personal problem, and I am talking about death, a universal problem.  The point I make is that it is a problem, something wrong that we should try to fix.

Second, when I say I "fear" dying, it is not like I hide under the bed.  I rather resent people boasting about how they don't fear death so much but this or that instead.  Horse hockey puck.  Let us be honest, if not on these boards at least to ourselves.  Also, if there were no fear there, then what virtue is achieved in saying that those who lean on religious notions of personal after-lives are largely motivated by this fear?

Finally, let me make it clear that I agree there are worse things than death, although when one reminds oneself that death is forever the list becomes short.  There are circumstances where I would die for my family and friends, even for my country and certain ideals.  Indeed I would rather die myself than kill someone.  I have had this discussion before -- I think it takes a visceral understanding of death as a real thing to understand this, as the unfortunate notion of a "right" of self-defense is so ingrained in our cultures.

I need to follow up a little on my last post based on some feedback I've gotten.

I don't need any particular help dealing with all this, I just want to talk about it.  We all have angst about death from time to time and after a longer life we get experienced in dealing with it (although I am prone to depression anyway).

I don't think death is "natural," or if it is then that is beside the point -- we are not born to die -- we are born ambitious and rebellious and loving and forming bonds and grasping -- death is the last thing we are born to do.  The idiots who say they wouldn't want to live indefinitely should put a boundary on and then be prepared to kill themselves when they reach it, and not find an excuse.  The point is given health and security, we do not want to die, ever.

This idea that all must die to "make way" for others is in my view just silly Malthusianism -- all kinds of ways to deal with it other than killing off the old folks could and would be put in place if aging were to be defeated (defeating all death would be more difficult but would come in time).  More than likely population growth would stop on its own, as we see now in the more advanced countries where children are not as much needed -- indeed in many populations are now declining or at least would be if it weren't for immigration -- the United States included.  Besides, it's a big universe.

My point is that the fact of aging and death strikes me as evil, something wrong, something causing suffering and grief and fear and no end of religious idiocy.  That it is "natural" does not make it right any more than if it were unnatural that would make it wrong.  Right and wrong have to do with suffering and its avoidance and even with pleasure, not with nature.

My seventy-second birthday is in a few months.  Every year this thing called a birthday happens no matter what I do, and every year it gets worse, and every year it brings up thoughts about death and wondering how much longer I have.  Of course I am not alone.

Having, it seems, overcome the health problems I was having, I find myself in spite of my age able to continue my work, since it is mainly mental.  I can't travel as I use to but the internet nowadays makes that unnecessary, so I am productive and have no excuse for feeling sorry for myself.

Still, each year that passes is a year closer to death, and I fear both dying (the discomforts and emotional things and so on that it implies) but, more, I fear death.  I have no illusions that there is nothing there to be afraid of -- that is the problem -- there is nothing there.  Long ago I grew up and stopped believing childhood pablums about heaven where all the little puppy dogs go and hell where evil people like to imagine their enemies (since I don't think I really have any enemies and in my life can only think of one person I ever hated -- and now I just feel sorry for him).

We have a biological instinct to want to survive (animals that don't do their utmost to survive in the short term don't and therefore don't have progeny and their genes disappear).  Does this explain the human desire to live?  I don't think so -- otherwise we would not have suicide as the ultimate expression of despair -- nor do animals with such an instinct really have any conception of death anyway.  The biological survival instinct causes us to move our fingers from a hot stove, but does not cause us to sit and wonder about what we are doing with our lives, is it enough, and how much time is left.

I suppose it might be some sort of side effect of this instinct -- but how this would work doesn't suggest itself, to me, at least.  No -- it is plain enough to me that although death is real it is not right.  We should not die, and I trust someday in the future we will not.  In the meantime something is terribly wrong.

An object in rest naturally tends to say in rest; an object in motion naturally tends to stay in motion with the same velocity.  It takes an external object to change this.

Why?  Newton I think it was who first propounded it (although come to think of it I have a vague notion here he may have gotten the idea from others) but all it is is a naked assertion.  We look and we claim that this is what we find (after "adjusting" (rationalizing?) for all sorts of complicating factors such as air pressure and ground friction and gravity and magnetism and so on).  Are we so sure or is it not just a simplifying assumption to make the math work out.  Maybe we design our universe to fit our maths.

What has always bothered me, besides the point that some people take things like this to try to support -- absurdly -- pre-believed religious notions, is why that object out there sitting all alone in space insists so strongly that it doesn't want to move.  Believe me it is a rather profound problem in both philosophy and physics (the real tough physics problems still tend to be philosophical).

It won't do about anything to just say, "That's the way nature is."

Here very briefly stated and over-simplified is my take on consciousness:

What is "conscious" or "aware" is not a thing but a process -- more akin to a flame or a wave than to a gland or bit of brain tissue.  We realize this by sitting quietly and mindfully "watching" our mind do its thing.  What we "see" are short-term memories of where the mind was a moment ago, so don't let the ability to "watch" fool you -- it is all part of the process, not something separate.

What we see is a loosely connected chain of thoughts, sensations, memories, external distractions, what have you.  Sometimes a sort-of link or causal connection can be discerned, sometimes it seems random.  Of course we see only the surface and there is a lot going on unseen (below in the depths) that we don't see so the seeming randomness may or may not be real.

There is a lot of well established scientific evidence that this arises somehow from neuronal activity and the exchanges of chemicals and so on between neurons, plus other things.  This tells us little about how this electrical and chemical activity turns into mind and awareness and so on -- quite a little mystery there.

A couple days ago I posted a comment that the sexual promiscuity typical of many young male homosexuals, including myself for a few years, is something of a waste of time.

I've had second thoughts.  Of course, most of what we do in life, in the end, is a waste of time.  All the effort I made learning the ins and outs of, first, the insurance business, and then, second, computer programming (at about forty I abandoned underwriting and redefined myself as a computer analyst -- maybe more about that someday) were all a waste of time since I use neither skill today and the skills I did learn are now obsolete.  All the massive study time I spent on both in the end were a waste of time except very short term.  Similarly, the effort finding sexual partners is a waste of time only longer term -- short term it was pleasurable and in the end served me well.

For someone like me who doesn't like competing, a sexual drive forcing me to get out there and compete was, I think, a good thing.  Of course you have to remember that even though for a decent looking, masculine (or at least normal behaving -- excessive masculinity is as much a turn-off in my eyes as is femininity), young man, in a major American city, sexual partners and sexual flings were easy to come by, even though one might suffer a high rejection rate.

Also, I liked older men -- mainly in their thirties and forties -- not uncommon but not common either -- the main emphasis is for partners in their twenties and even younger.  I was I think lucky that way as associating with these guys helped me mature and got me a lot of advice and help in life, and in the end got me out of my typing job and into something where my degree was appropriate.

What happened is that I became friends with a guy who couldn't understand why, with Harvard and all, I had the (in his eyes) dead-end job I had.  He just didn't believe that absence of the degree should be such a barrier.  So he networked around a little for me and got me an interview with an insurance company looking to hire underwriter trainees (degree required) and talked them into taking me anyway -- and, once one has such a job, that does the trick for the future and the degree never came up again.

Competence wins out in practice but getting in the door requires either credentials or some sort of "in."

Indeed, thinking about it I learned a lot in those days.  I was typically naive and over-worried about pleasing my partner in sex, and I was taught how to say, "no."  Since there were certain things I found painful and unaesthetic, this was a good lesson.  Of course one must not be sexually selfish -- good homosexual sex is mostly a matter of two people "taking turns," unlike heterosexual sex where in theory a mutual climax is achieved simultaneously.  (A lot of gay guys try for this too and in some cases it works, but I don't think it is the rule and I don't think it is terribly important).

As I see it now the biggest problem with promiscuous sex is the law of diminishing returns.  One can never duplicate the tremendous excitement and pleasure that comes with the first few experiences, and after awhile one finds oneself fantasizing during sex as though one were just masturbating.  You then think about this and wonder what it was all for.  So a lot of people end up trying wilder and wilder sexual activities and, of course, mixing in drugs.  I did a little of that too and sometimes it was good, but, fortunately, I kept my head and realized fairly quickly that pleasure is transient and cannot be grasped, and there is no point trying.

And, of course, one also wants a permanent relationship.  At first one builds a network of friends -- some of whom are old tricks where the sex was not worth trying to repeat, but most of whom are just other gays one shares life with but not sex.  What about having a lover?  Even better, what about having a life partner?

I decided that if it happened and I found one, that would be great, but I wasn't going to worry about it. 

I don't think much is accomplished denying claimed miracles such as the virgin birth by saying they don't happen and aren't believable.  That is the idea of a miracle -- they don't happen and aren't believable, but, it is claimed, happened anyway -- hence there necessarily was supernatural intervention.

The only real problem I see with such claims is one of evidence.  They are extraordinary claims and therefore need extraordinary evidence before being worthy of acceptance.

There is also what may be a minor theological problem -- why should a perfect omnipotent being need to interfere with the workings of His creation?

Celebrities should not bellow opinions other than how to act or whatever.  They are not authorities on anything else, and I don't care if I agree with what they are saying or not -- they are given entirely too much credit and the press and everyone else should ignore them when they are out of their competence, just as we do with anyone else behaving like that.  Talent and intelligence, also, are only slightly related (you do have to have a few smarts to properly utilize your talent if you are talented).

The "God of the gaps" concept is one I have to constantly remind myself of in a slightly different context.  I fully know better and am repelled when people try to insert God into places where science doesn't have a full answer to something, but I have noticed it sometimes enters my thinking in a subtler way -- not God exactly but some form of mysticism or Taoist concept.

This is when I ponder the problem of sentience -- the fact that we experience the universe through sense sensations -- sensations entirely created by our brain that have only a loose connection with the reality "out there."  That some such interface would be needed to simplify and interpret incoming sensations is easy enough, but the way it manifests just boggles me over -- I "experience" things -- colors and sounds and smells and pains and itches and emotions -- they don't happen to me they are me.

I use to take that as evidence that a non-material, non-physical aspect to existence must be part of our existence, and hence part of the world, and it is easy to apply words like "spiritual" or "ethereal" to it.  However I think that is to go too far: all we can say if it is a mystery to us is we don't know and can't conceive any way it could be, but that could be lack of imagination, not real.  Just because I can't conceive how something could be a certain way does not prove it can't be.

A few days ago I mentioned that when I left Harvard and got a typing job, I discovered that there existed a paradise for young male homosexuals that I had never dreamed might exist.  At least it seemed a paradise at the time, although as I matured I came to be able to put it into better balance, particularly seeing what a waste of time it was.

The biological nature of the male is to be promiscuous.  Of course such a broad statement has to be hedged in with a lot of qualifications and exceptions, both as to species and to individuals.  Still, the picture remains -- the male generally makes little contribution, at almost no cost, to the next generation -- although our cultures and even natural selection often "fixes" this.

Females will be somewhat different.  They may also have reason to be promiscuous up to a point, but have other objectives, mainly to somehow lasso the male into helping with the rearing of children, and this doesn't work very well in an unbounded society.  So, then, many if not most males would be promiscuous except the females won't allow it.  Hence we see female prostitution far more than male prostitution (and what of that is largely to other males) and in the gay world the gay male society is largely promiscuous, while the gay female society much less so.

This sets up, when religious and societal rules have been weakened and by large numbers dismissed or rationalized, a situation in most American cities, and, indeed, many cities around the world, a situation of paradise for the high-libido young male homosexual, in that there are available to them in any city several thousand similar young men, each with pretty much the same agenda and behavior.

And they find each other -- a system of cultural institutions (mainly in the twentieth century the gay bar) and ghetto-like neighborhoods (this is diminishing) and the fact that male homosexuals gravitate toward certain career paths and of course various signaling methods that evolve.

Now there are drawbacks -- one must have free time and some excess spending power, but without children and other family burdens this is not hard for most.  One must also, since finding partners for flings or once-only "tricks" is not too difficult, not let the "law of diminishing returns" take over or one ruins the whole thing.  This "law" is the tendency we all have to get bored with what is easy to get and set ourselves greater challenges.  It also comes from the fact that sexual fantasy over-promises and sexual reality is usually underwhelming and often disappointing -- what do you expect in an environment where both partners are treating the other as a sexual object -- taking turns, as it were, in using each other's bodies for sexual pleasure?

Taken at face value and not letting it blow one's ego out of proportion, and just enjoying oneself, this lifestyle is a hell of a lot of fun.  My experience with it was before AIDS and all those other monsters appeared (which, with what I know of biology, seems to have been predictable, but that is a good topic for another journal entry).

I guess I would go the way of Bruno if some of the views here are to be credited, since I think people like the idea of extraterrestrials so much they grasp at it, when there is really no evidence to think they exist and a lot of good reason to think we are probably effectively alone.  All the arguments on the other side are grasps at straws, at "what ifs" and possibilities, not based on anything firm.

Oh, for sure "we" are "out there" -- the universe is BIG.  Still, things like us, and maybe even life, is going to prove to be excruciatingly rare.

The misinformation about galaxies that produce lots of excess radiation was a bit much.  These are active galaxies that do so from known natural processes.  We would naturally expect some to produce a lot and some not so much anyway.

I think about the long and complicated, and mostly fortuitous, series of events that led to us and to a planet like ours and to the evolution of things like multicellular life and photosynthetic organisms and plate tectonics and trees and arboreal primates and no extinction events and so on and on and I conclude we were extremely lucky, the corollary being that we are rare.

If "they" land on the White House lawn (or maybe at the Forbidden City) tomorrow, fine, I will be delighted but a bit scared.  Anything much less than that is not going to be persuasive.

In time the four years I had available to be at Harvard came to an end, and my aid and scholarships ran out and I had to leave.  I dare say without the pressure of graduating and getting grades and so on a university life is utopia, at least for someone like me.  I could go talk to really informed people, listen to lectures and take courses, all in the morning, and then have a job in the afternoon and evening that the university arranged, or at least provided a listing service for.

You have to picture me leaving Harvard.  No future that I could see, no longer any religious belief, overweight, and a fairly heavy smoker (I had picked it up in the process of leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses -- they don't make it easy).  I did have a nest egg set aside from my college work, since my living expenses had been nil and I am frugal and not interested in most of the things young people waste money on.  So I set out for home to visit my folks and give them a chance to air their frustrations about me and to do what they could to encourage me (I owed them at least that).

Depression runs in our family, and has haunted my mother's side, and I didn't escape it, and got seriously depressed.  One of the techniques I then knew was to find something not impossible but difficult to achieve, and achieve it, so I could rebuild myself, and so I determined to lose weight and to stop smoking.  Fear of gaining weight had kept me smoking so I decided to achieve these I had to do the two simultaneously.  I did.  I stopped both cigarettes and food cold turkey (they are both addictions -- a week or so of fasting and the body's addiction mechanisms are just as strong with food as with nicotine).  All I consumed was nutrient pills and water with a touch of vinegar.

(I digress here about depression -- there is a bushel of techniques available for managing it, and people who tend to this need to learn them, but they don't work dependably and never permanently.  One must by all means do whatever if one is suicidal, but in the end medication is the only way to go, and finding the right medication today is not too difficult.  Of course back then this was not available.)

So I stopped smoking (good) and fasted (bad).  At the time I did not know the consequences of rapid weight loss from fasting (my gall stones remind me of this every now and then, as I have yo-yo'd like that a dozen or more times in my life).  Then I went back to the Boston area and set about getting a job.  Well, someone with four years of a high-prestige college but no degree is basically unemployable.  The prestige college over-qualifies one for anything that doesn't require a degree and the absence of the degree disqualifies one for everything else.

One good thing is that I typed extremely well (I had made a lot of money on the side typing graduate theses -- I was fast and accurate -- wish I still were but word processors have spoiled me).  So after a couple weeks of frustration I went into a clerical employment agency and presented myself as a typist, and after taking the agency's typing test they agreed.  Now of course back then typing was done almost entirely by women, but I did get a job in a union-trucker-oriented outfit typing motor freight tariffs.  It was tedious work doing mostly boilerplate (if this kind of work still exists it has to have been automated by now) that required speed and absolute accuracy, and I did well enough and made enough money to get a nearby apartment with some roommates and begin living.

As one would expect being male typists, the place was a nest of gay guys, mostly too effeminate for my taste but at least I fit in and easily found roommates.  Now I was thin and young and probably handsome, at least to many guys' taste, and before long a world of sexual opportunity that I had never imagined might exist opened itself up, limited only by my willingness and stamina.