Tuesday, April 24, 2007

in memory of boris yeltsin

boris yeltsin, you were quite an amazing man. mikhail gorbachev opened the doors to freedom by ending the most repressive practices of the soviet union, when he was the soviet union’s first benevolent dictator, after a long string of malevolent dictators. gorbachev finally put an end to stalinism, and brought freedom to the soviet union. but this was not enough. boris yeltsin, you got on top of a tank, and you destroyed the soviet union. you ended the reign of mikhail gorbachev and instituted democracy. you ended communism and instituted capitalism. you privatized all the state-owned monopolies. you destroyed everything, and the entire evil empire collapsed. but you did not know how to rebuild. you were an alcoholic. all you knew how to do was dismantle the infrastructure of oppression, the communist totalitarian system. but in its place, what did you build? did you turn russia into a stable, prosperous, pro-western democracy? no. you left us with vladimir putin, a dictator who has won elections by controlling the media and jailing or assassinating dissidents. vladimir putin has brought back the worst elements of the kgb and has been rebuilding the infrastructure of oppression, bringing back the same people who used to run the old totalitarian system. vladimir putin claims he is not a communist and that russia is no longer communist. but look at his actions. vladimir putin is rebuilding russia and reviving its economy, but oppressing the people of chechnya, and trying to control former soviet republics like georgia, the ukraine, and others. vladimir putin has made himself into an enemy of the western democracies, building dangerous alliances with nations like iran. he is funding all of this using russian fossil fuel resources that are sold mainly to europe, and he tries to manipulate the markets for fossil fuels in order to drive up prices, make more money, and create instability in the former soviet republics that russia can exploit to dominate those nations once again. vladimir putin is rebuilding the soviet union, except this time the empire does not officially exist, nor is it communist anymore. but boris yeltsin, you are responsible for all of this, by picking the wrong successor. you were an alcoholic and sometimes behaved foolishly. i know that you were a good man with good intentions, boris yeltsin. and you did a good job destroying the soviet union. but why on earth did you put this ex-kgb manipulative trickster in as your successor? did he manipulate you and trick you into trusting him? i feel sorry for you, boris yeltsin. you had so much promise. you could have rebuilt russia into a thriving democracy, a stable nation that continued to be a superpower. but now russia is a huge rogue state intent on covertly rebuilding a fallen empire. vladimir putin, the great trickster, has tricked us all. if only you had picked a better successor. boris yeltsin, you went from being a great liberator to a pathetic failure, an alcoholic buffoon. why? why did this happen to you? still, you did a lot of good for the world, boris yeltsin, and the good outweighs the bad things that came from your tragic collapse into foolish silly behavior. maybe things would have turned out better if mikhail gorbachev had been the one to dismantle communism and create a capitalist democracy. mikhail gorbachev is quite a smart man, a good and decent man, and someone we should all admire. i am glad he is still alive to offer sage advice to those of us alive today, wisdom from his experiences, and thoughtful commentary on the world today and what we as humanity must do to perservere. boris yeltsin, i think your alcoholism may have been the disease that rotted out your brain and removed your intelligence. but we should all revere boris yeltsin for doing his best to make russia a peaceful, democratic, capitalist nation that is an ally to other western democracies. he may have failed, but he did his best, and that is all that we could have hoped of him. and i am glad that boris yeltsin and bill clinton were such good friends. they are quite similar in some respects, as silly buffoons with good intentions, except for the fact that bill clinton is much smarter. boris yeltsin, i am saddened by how alcoholism destroyed you. if only mikhail gorbachev were in charge of russia instead of that cold-hearted thug vladimir putin. you put your trust in the wrong man, boris yeltsin. but thank you for the good that you did manage to bring to the world. thank you for putting an end to stalinism. but you never could understand the power of the russian reversal. in soviet russia, you don’t put an end to communism; communism puts an end to you. in soviet russia, you don’t consume alcohol; alcohol consumes you. vladimir putin is a true master of the russian reversal. in soviet russia, you can’t get rid of vladimir putin, because vladimir putin gets rid of you.

on a reformation of the english language

the language e-prime has basis in the language of english, but lacks all forms of the verb “to be”. the recently deceased robert anton wilson, a prominent discordian, advocated e-prime. albert ellis, inventor of rational emotive behavioral therapy, a man who is near death but still alive, also has advocated e-prime. both of these modern-day philosopher-geniuses also tried to use e-prime. this blog post might have e-prime as its language, but i lack clarity as to the validity of my e-prime language skills. possibly other rules apply to e-prime besides removing the verb “to be”. my own agenda for english language reformation includes making the language entirely phonetic, so that spelling determines pronunciation and pronunciation determines spelling. i envision each separate type of thing, action, or quality having its own word, but only 1 word, and no word may have multiple meanings. allow only 1 word for snow, unlike in eskimo language, for example. my reformed english would have no ambiguity or double meanings, and it would require literal meaning of all words and phrases. no confusion would ever exist as to the meaning of anything, since all words would have strict definitions. no slang or jargon or dialects would exist. metaphors would not have any permission for existence in my revised english, but similes would certainly exist. e-prime seems difficult to me, and i have quite a bit of difficulty avoiding the verb “to be” entirely, but i do my best. my new language might have even more difficulty coming about into existence as a real language, compared to e-prime. for one thing, i have not even started developing this language. but english seems a perfect basis for a new language, since i only know english well, and other languages i know partially or not at all. english finds the widest usage among the nations of the world, i believe. chinese may have more primary speakers, and spanish may have a higher number of nation-states that use it as their primary language, but english still has more people who know at least some of it, making it #1 in some sense. english predominates on the internet as the most popular of the languages. so why not base something new on the foundation of the most popular language? english lacks the complex verb endings that plague other languages, the ones for tense, person, number, voice, etc. it also lacks complex noun endings such as in latin. it seems best to use multiple words for putting together verb tenses or expressing what noun serves as the subject or object (and direct or indirect object). perhaps passive voice and subjunctive mood have no reason for existence in a new, logical language. simplicity seems best. perhaps no official verb tenses, but only the use of helping verbs to establish tense. for example, the helping verb “will” or “shall” establishes the future tense in english. the past tense could have similar helping verbs, like “did” or “have” or “had”, without relying on verb endings. and i see no reason for the infinitive (e.g. “to eat”) and progressive (e.g. “eating”) to both exist separately; simply having an infinitive form should suffice. ideally, i would eliminate all endings, even the -s for nouns and verbs and the -ly to turn adverbs into adjectives, instead relying on more words, and word order. but first i must devise a phonetic alphabet for english, to transform the spellings of existing words and make all words phonetic. phonetic alphabets already exist, but mine would make things look more like english than the weird phonetic spellings you find in a dictionary. you may have noticed my use of lowercase throughout most of my blog entries; i have long done this practice in order to de-emphasize what i am saying and indicate the lack of importance of my own opinions in the larger scheme of things. perhaps there may exist need for new rules on capitalization, or even linguistic meanings for font styles such as bold, italics, underline, serif, sans-serif, cursive, font color, and background color. but that seems excessive. perhaps simply the rule on capitalization might indicate to capitalize the first word of the sentence, and words which name people or things but are not actual words of the new language itself. the language could distinguish between words from within the language and things that have not yet been assimilated into it, using capitalization or some other feature. well i must sleep/rest/nap/whatever now. i wish all of you good fortune and happiness, and apologize for any divisiveness/intolerance/hatred/stupidity/closed-mindedness i may have demonstrated in this or earlier blog posts here. mainly my views on religion and politics may have offended people and caused them to worry about me. i implore the reader not to worry, and i shall endeavor to reform my ways and have more tolerance towards the views of others, and take them seriously and reconsider what i think and question its validity. i have lately listened to the christian radio to hear the radio preachers and now it seems a bit less nonsensical and crazy; now i see more value to what these people do and i see how it apparently seems to help people a good portion of the time. giving sound advice to those in need of counsel seems a worthy endeavor, and those on the radio who pursue this goal, regardless of whatever odd beliefs they may have, ought to be commended for their service to humanity. my goals for language reform aim to create a language free from any uncertainty as to the meaning of anything, a language where all things have strict definitions and the deterministic grammar has many rules, none of which have any exceptions. it seems that i use the verb “have” in place of the verb “to be”. i wonder if my usage of e-prime has validity or if i have violated the rules of e-prime. i hope to build on the foundation of efforts like e-prime to reform language, since human ideas are based on language, and much of the illogical thinking and stupidity out there may likely be based, at least somewhat, on the flaws of existing languages. i believe changing the language would probably help people find something closer to logic and reason. but i do find this quite difficult, to word everything in e-prime. if i manage to develop a new phonetic alphabet based on english spelling, i may write all future posts in my new phonetic alphabet, to promote it. but i believe this an unlikely outcome, for my commitment to creating a new language lacks willpower, and it seems likely i may abandon this pursuit as a silly waste of time. i hope those who read this find some inspiration to change their language usage, perhaps by speaking in e-prime. i must study these matters in greater detail. i am mainly disturbed by, among other things, the way people feel the need to interpret books like the bible or the constitution, and the existence of so many versions of the bible. why can books not simply speak for themselves, written in language that has no ambiguity, no double meanings, no metaphors, no uncertainties, completely clear with no possibility for misinterpretation? how can anyone accept the validity of the bible, a book that has no official version, no official interpretation, no official meaning, a book that many people have interpreted quite differently? it seems to me like the vast number of christian denominations and the vast number of interpretations of the bible both pose extremely difficult challenges to anyone trying to understand what christianity actually teaches or what beliefs a real christian must have. i cannot accept christianity, the most fragmented of all religions, one with no official doctrine or authority. one church may claim to possess the official doctrine and have final authority, but then why do so many other churches have other teachings or practices? i believe any true religion would demonstrate complete uniformity of belief, with only 1 interpretation, with no fragmentation. even the catholic church, the church that once had official domination of all christendom, still has a great deal of internal fragmentation and theological debate. the diversity of theological views of catholics shows that catholicism does not have all the answers. and as for protestants, they have much greater divisions, but perhaps there may exist some churches which have uniform dogma which all members accept completely. but any true religion would not have any dogma which contradicts the findings of modern science or has any self-contradiction or serious internal inconsistencies. any true religion would not violate the obvious truths of humanistic morality, and would not condemn people based upon things beyond those people’s control, such as what belief system their parents raised them to believe in, or what country someone lives their entire life in. no true religion would ever claim that all nonbelievers go to hell, for example. by analyzing statistics on religious beliefs of people in each of the countries of the world, it becomes obvious that many countries have certain religions which predominate, and condemning the vast majority of the people of a certain country seems to me something obviously immoral and wrong, an expression of cultural imperialism, a sense of superiority and self-entitlement. what fool dares condemn the people of india for hinduism, the people of thailand for buddhism, the people of latin america for catholicism, or the people of arabia for islam? how can one expect people to find the one true religion if that religion does not even exist in a given country? and what about those people who existed prior to the existence of any so-called one true religion? does damnation await all of them simply because of the unfortunate circumstances of when and where they lived? after the crucifixion of jesus christ, before christianity spread across the globe, did the people of far-off lands all go to hell after dying? christianity, judaism, and islam all have the same problems that make them seem to me quite obviously false. none of them has compassion towards unbelievers or treats those of other belief systems with respect. i have not studied the polytheistic religions like hinduism and buddhism as much, but i believe them to also have many problems, because of the absurdities involved in the reincarnation process and the simple mathematics of it all. how can everyone have so many past lives despite exponential population growth and the fact that previous generations had much fewer people? the caste system alone disproves hinduism, in my mind. and buddhism, based on the funamentally flawed hinduism, also seems like it must be rejected as false, at least to me. i cannot abide by the sanctioning of injustice. and if religions do allow for people to change the beliefs of the religion and change fundamental things, does this not discredit the whole enterprise? i have heard much about liberal theologians who completely redefined christianity and rejected the infallibility and literal truth of the bible. how dare they do this! why must they redefine and reinterpret things but still claim to follow christianity? ought they not to simply abandon the entire pursuit and reject christianity? i do not understand the basis for redefining something such as christianity. if the bible forms the basis of all christian belief, then how can a christian reject it? how can people redefine god? who gave them this right? i think only fundamentalists can truly define christianity, for they actually base their beliefs on the original sacred texts. and on the basis of seeing the flaws of the christian fundamentalist beliefs, i reject christianity. why have watered-down beliefs? utter stupidity! take a stance! do not compromise! i do not see those who have watered-down beliefs as true christians; i see the hateful loony fringe as the only real christians. those who have compromised and do not accept all of the bible as literal fact should just join me and become atheists. they have already rejected true christianity, so why not go all the way? why not have more intellectual honesty instead of pretending to believe and practice christianity, despite rejection of its core beliefs? true christians believe that all who do not accept jesus christ as their personal savior will suffer eternal torment in hell. all who hold other viewpoints have rejected the bible and its teachings. and i advocate rejection of religion, on that basis. if only the bible used clearer language with less room for ambiguity or confusion! that would make things much easier for people in evaluating the truthiness of the bible! most people simply accept christianity due to the cost-benefit analysis of whether to practice christianity or disbelieve. cost-benefit analysis aimed at personal salvation does not lead people to the truth. people seek heaven rather than hell out of pure selfishness, in the process rejecting the path of searching for the truth, because in their ignorance, they think looking for the truth might cause more harm than good and require too much time and effort and brainpower. people do not like to have to think too much, and choosing heaven over hell, talk about an easy choice! i advocate a tireless search for the truth, and constant questioning of all things, for my over-arching concern for the truth exceeds all of my short-sighted selfish concerns. searching for the truth provides the reason to reform language: encouraging logic and rationality, and discouraging emotion-based irrationality and false assumptions that never get questioned. i shall close by finally giving up and using the verb “to be” (assuming i did not accidentally use it already). writing or speaking in e-prime is too fucking hard (pardon the curse word)!

Monday, April 23, 2007

the spirit of truth

liek, wtf? it’s the ghetto preacher...



that dude is such a genius, now i know god exists, cuz dat shit he said was so brilliant. meh.

my belief system

i would like to describe my belief system in this post, in order to clarify the context by which you should critically examine the content of all of my blog posts, and indeed all that i do, say, write, type, or otherwise communicate or demonstrate, as well as my thinking process that underlies the entire enterprise. first of all, i believe in nothing whatsoever; there is not a single thing that i actually believe in 100%. secondly, i am prone to minor bouts of exaggeration. third, sometimes i make up things which are absurd. and fourth, i only “believe” things which are demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt using empirical evidence and flawless logic. but i do not actually believe them. i just think i believe them. but nobody actually ever believes anything, ever. it is just a mind trick we all play on ourselves. if you examine the process of belief, of how a person comes to think that a certain fact is true, and do enough critical examination of this process, eventually you come to the conclusion that the entire process is a bunch of bullshit. you see, all humans are flawed, and we have finite minds that start out entirely empty when we are born, and we are always forgetting things that we used to know. our minds are deeply flawed tools that we, holistically referring to the entire individual both physical and metaphysical, use for survival, as organic living life-forms that exist as physical objects within 3 extended dimensions of euclidean or near-euclidean space and 1 extended dimension of time. so, we start out knowing nothing. and we learn things throughout our process of existence, of subsistence, and of insistence, resistence, persistence, and assistence. we are like dogs in that we learn things through pavlovian conditioning. and some of us are more loyal like dogs but some of us are more independent-minded like cats and other wild beasts of the loner species, species where each individual animal lives on its own and does not have much social interaction with other animals except predation, mating, and fighting. so what are humans like? we are like chickens, with a pecking order. and part of our brain is still quite similar to reptiles, a part that takes over in instinctual life-or-death crises. the human brain is like a giant clusterfuck of all the brains of other animals, all hooked up together. the dog brain, the cat brain, the chicken brain, the reptilian brain, the bonobo brain... you can never forget bonobos, the weird little monkeys that have sex all the time. our brains are like weird frankenstein monsters with different parts from different creatures all glued together. because of our abnormalities when compared to other animals, there are certain adjustments that nature had to make, to allow us to have all of our silly advanced language and culture and technology. we are bipedal, walking on 2 legs, and we are much less hairy than most mammals, but we still have more hair than mole rats. we use tools, which is something that very few species know how to do... mostly a behavior reserved for primates. we are larger than most animals, but not ridiculously large, still smaller than the gigantic ones like elephants and whales and dinosaurs. and of course, we have advanced vocal cords capable of speech that allows for meaningful, complicated languages. a few other species like parrots have vocal cords like that. and, to go with the bipedal walking on 2 feet part, our front paws are actually called hands, and we have opposable thumbs. so, there are like, a couple different ways we are different from other animals, but not that many. now if you ever observe animals, you might notice that they are quite silly, quite stupid, and really fun to watch. most animals seem to be afraid of everything, and whenever you go near them, they run away, in a state of irrational panic, since their inferior minds cannot contemplate the reality of the situation. they are simply concerned with survival. now many animals have different noises they make to communicate with others of their species. humans are not unique at all in this. our spoken language is just much more advanced, and we have developed many different languages because our brains are not hardwired for any specific language, just a general sort of language that we can learn after being born, without knowing any of it in advance. in contrast, some species of animals seem to have their brains hardwired to understand the simple language that animals of that species use to communicate. so, anyway, our brains are very fallible and based on inferior animal design. we start out knowing nothing and believe what we are taught. now we sometimes question what others tell us, a tendency which starts at some point in childhood and gradually increases over the course of a lifetime, usually. but how do we decide what to believe and what to question? this is based on our emotions, usually, and what our own life experiences and biases make us likely to think. it is a fact that most people raised by muslim parents in muslim countries end up believing in islam. the same thing is true for christians, jews, buddhists, atheists, communists, hindus, zoroastrians, and scientologists... children usually end up believing what their parents taught them. this is despite the fact that each pair of parents (or any other sort of family arrangement that serves a similar purpose to parents) teaches the children different things from all the other parents. all children are raised differently by different parents. and they have different dna too. so, even if everything is predetermined and nothing is random, we still have quite a bit of basis for children to turn out differently. now, no human being is infallible, and we are all faulty. since we either define ourselves by agreeing with things or by disagreeing with them, we end up taking various stances on the so-called “issues”. the fact that there are so many of these issues that humanity as a whole cannot agree on demonstrates that we are incredibly fallible and quite bad at finding the truth. a lot of people do not even give a damn about the truth or whether they are right or not, and even those people who seek the truth often find complete opposite results that contradict each other. what one person finds true, another person will not find true. and so, i believe in nothing whatsoever. who am i to claim that my mind is so superior and my thought process so advanced that i have been able to find all of the answers and that none of them are wrong? i make no such arrogant prideful claims of omniscience. somebody else might believe something different from me. in fact, many people believe things that directly contradict what i believe. and so, i believe in neither the things i believe in, nor the things they believe in. i only half-heartedly believe in things, and never go all the way with my beliefs. i never clinch the deal and become a complete believer. i am too conscious of my faults, of the fact that i am a fallible human, to give complete credence to whatever foolhardy notions cross into my consciousness. and of course, i do not believe anyone else. of course other people might believe what they say, and think they are telling the truth, and maybe they are telling the truth. but even if they know that, i don’t know that. who are they to tell me that they know everything despite being fallible humans? now you might be wondering, why can i not at least believe in a few things, the obvious things that must be true, that everyone agrees on, like the sky being blue and grass being green and snow being white, like the sun being about 93 million miles away and really bright, and like the story on how babies are made when 2 people have sex? well, you see, i am such a diehard skeptic, that i even question the most obvious aspects of reality. in fact, i question them all the time, just like i question everything else all the time. perhaps all of my life experiences and everything i ever learned, and what is going on right now that i am witnessing, perhaps it is all a great big lie, and i am in some sort of simulation, and it is virtual reality, or a hallucination, or a dream, or something of that sort. perhaps i am some sort of being who exists in another realm outside this universe that i currently witness firsthand and have all these so-called beliefs about. maybe the entire universe is one big scam, and while the real me is off in the real universe stuck in a virtual reality simulator, some con man is stealing all my money or something. if they even have money in the real universe that actually exists, the one that the real me is in, in a virtual reality simulator that makes me think i am in this fake universe. but all of that is a hypothetical scenario i just made up, and it is easy to make them up, like in the movie “the matrix” and its 2 sequels. the exact details of the virtual reality or the dreaming or hallucination or whatever, they are all different depending on who is coming up with the explanation for why what we think of as reality is one big giant lie, a hoax. i do not believe in any of these reality-denying conspiracy theories that say we are actually living in some other universe and experiencing this one through some sort of trans-universal virtual reality hallucination system. i do not believe one way or the other, although i am strongly leaning towards reality being real, towards the idea that all the obvious things observed through empirical evidence and deduced through logic are true. i just question whether the things deduced through empirical evidence are all true, because perhaps our senses cannot be trusted. luckily, in science, people can and do replicate experiments, and if different people all get the same results, it is highly unlikely that they are all having the same hallucinations or delusions regarding the outcome. but, all of science is based upon the premise that our universe and the things we are experimenting on do in fact exist, and are not simply illusions meant to deceive us. if that premise is false, science is still true, however. science still describes this universe we seem to be inhabiting, regardless of whether or not this universe exists. even if the whole thing is a virtual reality simulation, science still provides the best and only real path to a truthful understanding of how things operate inside this simulation of virtual reality. within whatever scope our universe exists and/or operates, science is correct, even if the universe itself is simply a computer simulation or something imagined by a superior intellect, a giant brain connected to all of our brains with wires in another universe. and those images i conjure up are simply primitive earth-biased images i have based on my experiences here on earth as a human. a space alien from another planet would have a completely different point of view, and one that is equally valid. regardless of how advanced any hypothetical race of aliens may be, they still deal with the same universe and the same scientific laws. they are made of the same chemical elements and have the same laws of physics as we have here. so any aliens that might exist are not too different from us, at least in that respect. and since they cannot go faster than the speed of light, and probably travel much slower, and since our universe is so full of blank space with nothing in it, with everything really far apart, it is highly unlikely we humans will ever encounter any space aliens, unless the aliens come from somewhere else in our solar system. and all indications are that the other planets are devoid of life and always have been, although this is not 100% certain by any means. there is certainly a possibility that mars once had life, for example. but what possibility? probably less than 10%. but we humans try to be optimistic and hold out hope for things like that which are unlikely. anyway, nothing is certain, because our human minds are not advanced enough to understand reality for what it is. we are too biased by the fact that we are living life forms, each having our own experiences, and each constantly engaging in actions necessary for our continued survival, such as eating, drinking, peeing, pooping, breathing, and sleeping. those are the main 6. and the 7th one, to keep the species going and replace ourselves because we all get old and die? sex. so we have to do 7 things to continue existing as a species, the same ones all the other animals do. and of course everything i say is hypothetical, and nothing is ever for certain. i just like to express my thoughts as if i am certain, to put emphasis on things despite my lack of complete belief in what i say. perhaps this is a bit dishonest but i cannot find the proper tools in the english language arsenal to accurately represent the ambiguity. plus, i have certain agendas which i am pursuing, certain things i would like to accomplish or have done or help out with, and sometimes you need to put on a certain posture in order to advance such an agenda. like, for example, i am completely pro-abortion, regardless of which trimester it is, and what the circumstances are. people should have the right to kill unborn pre-human fetuses. why? because i said so. maybe you disagree. so what? who cares? it is not like anybody’s opinion matters anyway. not mine, not yours. it is all insignificant. so we might as well go ahead and believe things regardless of whether they are true or not. i mean, what the hell? go for it. believe something you know is a lie! who cares? do it! everybody else is doing it! we have an entire planet of lunatics who believe things that are obviously untrue, yet nobody who is sane seems to have the ability to cure the lunatics of their insanity, nor do the lunatics come to their senses often enough to impact the demographic data as much as i would like. one thing i believe is that all ideologies, that is, all systems of belief devised by humankind, are false, fatally flawed because the people who made them were fallible humans who just made stuff up. and so, i reject all ideologies, including my own ideology, which is an anti-ideology because it declares itself to be false. since it is a paradox and self-contradiction, i do not believe in it at all. i completely disavow it. nothing but lies. that is why i believe nothing at all. even if we are 99.99999999999% sure that the universe is real and this is not a dream or virtual reality or anything, there is still some uncertainty. nothing whatsoever is certain. what about the heisenberg uncertainty principle? what about the godel incompleteness theorem? both communism and capitalism are fatally flawed, and neither one works. we have still not found a good enough economic system, and are merely coping with ones that are sort of okay but not really. everything we do is flawed because we are flawed. that is why the war in iraq went so badly. all of us humans are idiots, regardless of how smart we may think we are based on some test that compares us to other humans who are even stupider than we are. anyone who denies this obvious fact is a moron. and so is anyone who agrees. nobody knows anything, and those who think they know things are wrong. truth is fiction. the future already happened in the past but we all have amnesia. the most dangerous form of insanity is sanity. so forget everything, because you already forgot most of it, and the bits you still remember are all a bunch of crap. none of what i say here matters, because it is all bullshit. of that i am certain, which is why i adamantly refuse to believe anything that i actually do believe. this intellectual exercise is not over yet! i will continue refusing to believe anything at all, until reality finds me, because i am sick and tired of trying to find reality. here in the future, when i am typing this, the past has already happened. believe it or not, i am writing this in the distant future, and back when you read this, that was ancient history. you are dead right now, while i am writing this, in the future. since you are reading this in the past, back when you were alive, i wonder what that was like for you. probably kind of weird. but all the records from that time period were destroyed in world war 3, the second coming of christ, the apocalypse, and armageddon. now that all of that business has long ago been dealt with, i can safely tell you that nobody ever had any clue what the hell was going on, and we are still all clueless. as for why i still exist, or how i managed to come back into existence if i was gone for awhile, who knows? this is the future. probably some sort of advanced technology or something. how do you know i am not writing this in the distant future? you can never know anything for sure. so that is why you should not know anything at all. because this sentence is not true. or is it?

why alberto gonzalez is still attorney general

it is very simple why alberto gonzalez is still attorney general. people are always calling for someone to be fired from the bush administration. by keeping him on, dubya sometimes manages to keep democrats like me from going after anyone else. that is the same trick he played by keeping don rumsfeld as defense secretary for so long. the whole point is to have as few high-ranking officials as possible lose their jobs. and of course, dick cheney is still president and dubya is still president. and what about paul wolfowitz at the world bank? well, i could not think of anyone more appropriate to be in charge of the world bank, given all of the awful things the world bank has done over the years. so what if he leads a so-called anti-corruption fight at the world bank despite being the most corrupt of all? so what if it was his idea to invade iraq and everything he said about it was wrong? paul wolfowitz belongs in charge of the world bank, because the world bank should not exist in the first place. it takes an incompetent crook like him to do the job. if you have read confessions of an economic hit man you know what i am talking about with regard to the world bank. it is all about keeping 3rd world countries in debt. the whole point of the world bank is the economic enslavement of the 3rd world through debt. what is so great about it is, dictators of 3rd world countries don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves, and they have almost unlimited borrowing power. all the money they spend goes to western nations. and they have to pay the money back... to the western nations. it is the biggest scam ever. having a retarded con artist like paul wolfowitz in charge just makes it easier to point out the obvious. going into debt is never a good idea, especially for a nation-state. and as for gonzo, our intrepid attorney general... he is just one of many people who need to be fired. paul wolfowitz should be fired too, that is, if you even think the world bank should be successful, but if you are like me, it is good to have someone like him in charge of it. it helps discredit an institution that is greatly in need of being further discredited. however, in the case of the u.s. justice department, that institution is one that we need, one that should not be discredited any further. unlike the world bank, we need a justice department. otherwise, who is going to fight crime? putting third world nations deeply into debt ought to be illegal, by the way. it is unfortunate that most of what the world bank does is actually legal. i think putting a nation deep into debt ought to be considered a crime against humanity, and the appropriate punishment would be execution except that i do not support the death penalty. so, the appropriate punishment is lifelong imprisonment, and constant torture for the rest of your life. or perhaps we could simply infect the criminals with various diseases on purpose, or poison them, as punishment, in order that the disease would carry out the torture so that the prison guards could simply ignore the shrieks and moans coming out of the solitary confinement chamber. because, let’s face it, deliberately putting millions of people into poverty by making their nation deeply in debt is a form of genocide, a crime against humanity, and no punishment is too severe for those who would do such an awful thing. those nations end up spending money paying off their debt instead of spending it on social services, on education, on healthcare. that is the never-ending spiral that has made poverty in africa actually get much worse over the last few decades, as the rest of the world got much wealthier. so alberto gonzalez must go, but let paul wolfowitz stay. only an imperialist warmonger like wolfie him can put an appropriate face on the world bank, an institution which basically commits genocide around the world invisibly, by entrapping poor countries in debt. that is the real slavery that is going on in the world today. the entire continent of africa is still enslaved in bondage. not one nation on that continent has a good economy. and if you look at the history of world economics, you will see that africa was much more prosperous a few decades ago. it is unbelievable yet completely true. africa must be freed from the bondage of debt, and this means disbanding institutions like the world bank that seek to enslave it further. but who cares, right? alberto gonzalez is the real focus, the one everyone wants fired. why not just keep him in his job so he can be the easy target and hog all the negative attention that others deserve too? if he lost his job, it would just put us one step closer to chimpeachment. and that is something everybody wants... that is, everyone except most washington politicians. it is unfortunate nobody ever impeaches the president, who is the biggest incompetent misleader of them all. and of course, the vice president too, at the same time. why not go 2 for the price of 1? make nancy pelosi president before 2007 is over. we still have time. bush and team incompetent are just trying to distract us. it is time to take out the trash, a clean sweep. stop letting people like rumsfeld or gonzalez become distractions! why not simply put an end to the bush administration from the top down, by removing the president and vice president from office? it is simple common sense, and very long overdue. but no... alberto gonzalez is still there, and he is the focus of all the negative attention. he is the one bush is using as a human shield to hide behind. while we are at it, why not fire all of the cabinet secretaries and all of the stupid political appointees who were appointed by bush, as well? the new president, nancy pelosi, should get right on it, as soon as she takes office, which, in an ideal world, would have already happened. unfortunately, here in reality, bush will probably stay president, because congress is too afraid of alienating moderates. i say, fuck the moderates, let’s get this thing done, and put an end to the bush administration. who cares if some people might think congress is going too far with impeachment? i should think the vast majority of sane, level-headed americans would support impeachment 100%, if it were to happen. and if congress is too cowardly to do it, then to hell with congress! vote the bastards out of office in 2008 if they chicken out! the reason democrats have lost so many political battles to republicans is they keep chickening out and just letting the other side win. fuck that shit! we will bury them! bury them with the truth! it is about time. over 4 years into this stupid war... it is time for our democratic system to prove its power. it is time for the executive branch to be toppled from its perch. legislators unite! write the executive branch its own epitaph! make the presidency powerless! micromanage everything under the sun! just do something, you losers, instead of watching as our country goes straight to hell in a handbasket. stop wasting my time with bullshit, and stop funding this stupid-ass war, you fucking cowards. if you oppose this war, end it already, or fuck off. you know, filibustering in the senate is a great way to kill any legislation. why not use it to end all funding for the war in iraq? at least do something more than a symbolic half-measure for once! everything you congresspeople ever do is a symbolic half-measure! meanwhile, dubya does whatever the fuck he wants! thanks for nothing!

Thursday, April 19, 2007

God loves the world, right? Maybe not...

Check out this awesome music video from Westboro Baptist Church:

HELL YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

rip

rest in peace, victims of the latest civilian massacres in iraq and afghanistan. rest in peace, victims of the virginia tech killer. rest in peace, kurt vonnegut. rest in peace, robert anton wilson. rest in peace, anna nicole smith. rest in peace, u.s. soldiers and allied soldiers killed in afghanistan. rest in peace, people killed in darfur in sudan. rest in peace, people killed in somalia. rest in peace, people executed by the chinese, the russians, the saudis, and other totalitarian governments. rest in peace, to the last few veterans of world war i who are dying out. rest in peace, to all other people who have ever died. rest in peace to all the animal species who are dying out, to the pandas, to the polar bears, to the whales, to the manatees, to the buffalos, to the bald eagles, to the penguins, to the tasmanian devils, to the elephants, to the bees, and to all the other animals being wiped out. and even plants and other species too. we depend on natural ecosystems to produce our food, and many other products like wood rely on the other forms of life in nature. perhaps we could survive in a sterile world, relying on mining and producing chemicals in factories, eating food that is completely artificial, with no biological organisms killed to produce the food. but that is an awful prospect. life is good. we need as many forms of life as possible. great people die and innocent people die and even the guilty and bad people die. and so does nature. together we stand, divided we fall. all life on earth is interdependent. i would like to thank all of the cows, chickens, pigs, fish, shrimp, deer, and other animals who had to die so i could eat them. i hope our food, agriculture, and fishing industries are smart enough to keep alive all the species of organisms that i eat. the best food is always the dead remains of another living organism, not some factory-manufactured animal-vegetable-chemical hybrid food such as a microwaveable chicken pot pie or a packet of ramen noodles. but i like the factory-manufactured food. i just hope i can trust the corporations not to let any of the species of life forms that i eat die out. death is a terrible thing, especially human death. kurt vonnegut may be dead, but we still have kurt vonnegut, jr. robert f. kennedy may have been assassinated decades ago, but robert f. kennedy, jr. is still going strong. the rev. martin luther king, jr. was killed, but the rev. martin luther king iii still lives. if the president dies, someone else will become the president. life is the opposite of death, and through the creation of new life, there is constant renewal. this cycle of life and death is the basis for darwinian evolution, and the reason we are here today, why we are sentient beings, with the power to walk and talk, and design, build, and use all sorts of tools and machinery. but our machines will never be as good as the life forms of this planet. no machine can solve the halting problem, the problem of determining whether a given computer program will terminate or go on forever in an infinite loop. but humans can solve it, and we computer programmers do it all the time. there is nothing better than life, and so we must do all we can to preserve it. and as we mourn the dead, let us embrace the glory of the constant creation of new life. let us celebrate pregnancy. we should all be proud of the accomplishments of humanity, but no individual human is perfect. and among our many flaws is our mortality. that is why all death must be countered by the creation of new life, through sex, the glorious process by which humans and other creatures can create new life. sex is the most wonderful thing anybody could ever do. even if we are using birth control and condoms and such, sex is still wonderful, because it means we are practicing for the real thing, for when we finally will bring new life into this world. we will defeat death temporarily, in this battle, by creating new humans to replace those who die. and we will honor the dead. but someday all humans will be dead. someday all life on earth is dead. the whole planetary ecosystem itself is mortal. the collective consciousness of all humanity can itself be considered a sentient being, larger than any one of us, one that we are all a part of. and that sentient being will die when we all die out. but there are aliens out there, far away. they may not be much like us, but some of them will develop similar abilities to manipulate matter and energy to create machines and tools to help them in life. perhaps some aliens or machines will be capable of lasting much longer than the carbon-based life forms originating from our planet earth. we should be thankful for that. all life in the universe is made up of individual organisms, each of which is mortal. and perhaps someday it will all die, even the most advanced aliens in the universe. but such is fate. if the early times of the universe allow for the creation of new life forms, the late times of the universe will allow for the destruction of old life forms. that is the completion of the circle, coming back to where it all started. perhaps this universe we inhabit is all that exists, and perhaps not. hopefully, even if life in our universe of 3 extended spatial dimentions and 1 extended time dimension dies out, there may still be life outside of this manifold we inhabit. there may be other extended dimensions that we are unable to traverse, as we are beings inside this 4-dimensional manifold. and our manifold might have a few tiny dimensions that curve back on themselves, calabi-yau spaces as described in superstring theory. this does not matter. but about 95% of the universe is dark energy and dark matter. we know about it because it exerts gravity on things we can see, but it is invisible. perhaps it exists outside of our manifold of 4 extended dimensions. i am hopeful. our universe itself may be something that is created and destroyed, existing within a larger multiverse, one with infinite dimensions. that is what i hope to be true. at least then, life will live on, after it dies out in our universe. our universe itself is mortal, and will someday either collapse and implode, or explode and tear apart every molecule, and then every atom, and every subatomic particle will be spread out far away from all others. but we must never give up on hope. in our short mortal lifetimes, none of these great cosmic cataclysms will occur; those will happen billions and billions of years from now. we should focus on the here and now, and what we know, not what we don’t know. life is good and death is bad. creation is better than destruction. honor those who have died, and never forget their memory. preserve all the species of this planet that still exist. we cannot save earth in the long run, in the billions of years timespan, but we can save it in the short run, in the hundreds of years timespan. so let us do it. for humanity. for all life. all deaths are honorable, and all people have some good in them, even if it is seemingly impossible to find. we can redeem those who have died by saying what is good about them. adolf hitler did not drink or smoke, and he did manage to pull germany’s economy out of the great depression. josef stalin thought that all of the deaths he ordered were necessary sacrifices to build a communist paradise, one that would be a model for the rest of humanity, and ultimately benefit all of humanity, after a few decades or perhaps centuries. osama bin laden believes that what he is doing is right, and that he is fighting a just war against an enemy that has committed terrible crimes against the muslims of the world. george w. bush believes the war in iraq is essential to building a stable democracy in the middle east, a model for that region, which will eventually lead to peace for generations to come. even pol pot, the autogenocidal cambodian communist dictator, believed that it was necessary to do the killings in order to eliminate the enemies who would resist the creation of what he thought would become a communist paradise, a model for all other nations to follow. the people who we judge to be most evil are often people who believe themselves to be doing the right thing for humanity. their true sin is their faulty judgement, and how they believed that the ends justify the means, even if the means involve mass murder. we must put to rest this old idea, this dangerous and popular idea, this utterly false and stupid idea, that the ends justify the means. that idea is the basis for all mass murder that has ever occurred. the idea that the ends justify the means is the single most dangerous idea that has ever plagued the human mind. we must put that faulty notion to rest, not only for the sake of humanity, but for the sake of all life on earth. the ends only justify the means if the means are also justifiable in and of themselves. humanity is suffering from a severe philosophical disorder, and the only cure is better philosophy. to be truly good, your thoughts and actions must both be good, and you must never do anything bad, even if it is for “the greater good”. the greater good must be built upon a foundation of lesser goods, a foundation that is not corrupted by anything bad. let our protests be peaceful and nonviolent. let us avoid wars and killing. we should preserve all forms of life that exist on the planet earth, without resorting to any questionable or evil tactis to achieve this objective. the dodo, the passenger pidgeon, and other extinct species are monuments to the evils of humanity towards the other life forms of our planet. do not do anything to expand the list of extinct species. and if we can bring them back through cloning or other scientific procedures, that would be a wonderful thing. we humans are completely dependent on the biosphere that surrounds us, and sometimes all the machinery that surrounds us blinds us to this fact. but think about this the next time you eat. what are you eating? a machine? chemicals from a factory? minerals mined from underground? rocks? no... you are eating the dead remains of other life forms, and any chemical additives are just there to enhance the flavor or prevent mold or bacteria from consuming the food before you do. but remember... all of the preservatives you eat are biocides, chemicals which destroy life. they may very well destroy your life, but it takes a lot more sodium benzoate to kill a human than it does to kill an e. coli bacterium. pesticides sprayed on crops may allow for high crop yields to solve the problem of world hunger, but at what cost? we are poisoning ourselves. organic food is the best, as long as it is not contaminated, and since it has no preservatives, it is very likely to be contaminated unless it is very fresh and cooked thoroughly so as to kill anything still alive. only eat dead organic matter. nothing else. then your life may very well be long and healthy. i do not live like that. i eat junk food that is full of chemicals. and i get sick all the time, mostly digestive problems. my digestive problems are also related to my asperger’s syndrome (which could also be called high-functioning autism, since they are the same thing), and my allergies and panic atacks and anxiety and odd obsessive ritualistic behaviors are all connected to this mild form of autism that i suffer from. but this mild form of autism called asperger’s has provided me with benefits, such as my advanced intelligence, and my noble soul. we aspies are good people, even though we do not always seem like it. some studies have shown that autism spectrum disorders like the one i have are often caused by chemicals that we are exposed to, or various chemical imbalances not only in the brain, but in other parts of the body as well, such as the immune system and the digestive system. although i am abnormal, i am superior; in fact, my superiority is entirely due to me being abnormal. the church of the subgenius says that being abnormal and being superior are the exact same thing. without us abnormals, the world would be a boring place. abnormal members of a species are the ones that branch off and form new species. perhaps people with autism spectrum disorders, by only breeding with each other, could become a separate species from homo sapiens. i wonder if we would end up as smarter or stupider than normal humans. i hope we would not lose any of the special abilities that humans have and other animals do not. but there could be nothing greater i could do than help father a new species of abnormals, of subhumans, a species superior to normal humans. a species of subgenii, perhaps. but i am not sure if there is any connection between autism spectrum disorders and the church of the subgenius. it would be interesting to do a scientific study on members of that obscure ufo cult to find out the truth about the species homo subgenius. are subgenii mutants with abnormal brains? or is their dna standard and well within the bounds of the species homo sapiens? someday we may find out the answer, if any scientists are willing to analyze the genetics of cult members and compare them to the dna of normal humans. kurt vonnegut, robert anton wilson, and anna nicole smith, who all recently died, have all become saints in the church of the subgenius. we worship them. if only we were all as enlightened as those 3 individuals were, although each of them only found a part of the truth, a part of the enlightenment. but, as much as people insult various dead people, we must respect the fact that the dead are never wrong, and are infallible. since dead people never talk or think or write anything at all, they certainly never talk or think or write anything that is wrong, so therefore they are infallible. this is only one of many amazing abilities dead people have. however, this also means all psychics are frauds, unfortunately. maybe someday someone will fix that problem. according to my studies, there are 4 fundamental forces of the universe: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force, and the weak force. 3 of the forces have been unified by the great thinkers of 20th century quantum physics: electromagnetism, the weak force, and finally the strong force. richard feynman of cornell was one of the pioneers of uniting quantum physics with the theory of relativity, to lay the foundation for the grand unified theory of physics. now we have the standard model of quantum mechanics, the relativistic quantum field theory that explains everything in physics, except for one thing: gravity. albert einstein explained gravity through his theory about the curvature of the 4-dimensional manifold he referred to as “the space-time continuum”. but is it not true that our 4-dimensional manifold, our space-time continuum, our universe (all of which are the same exact thing), is only part of a larger multiverse, an infinite-dimensional multiverse full of an infinite number of universes? that is the only way that the anthropic principle could actually make sense, scientifically. many of our laws of physics, especially the incomplete grand unified field theory of physics we call the standard model, the one that leaves out gravity, many of them are specific to our universe, to how things operate within our 4-dimensional manifold. the rules for outside our universe, out in the multiverse, are much more flexible. but one thing remains constant and has the same rules everywhere it operates: gravity. gravity is the only transuniversal force, the only transdimensional force that operates outside the 4 dimensions of our universe. that is why we can detect dark matter and dark energy with gravity, but there are no signs of dark matter or dark energy that come in the form of electromagnetic radiation. it is a lie that 95% of our universe is made up of stuff we don’t understand. none of that stuff is even in our universe. the truth is, 95% of gravity comes from things outside our universe, outside the 4-dimensional manifold of the space-time continuum. the only way to really understand all of this is to read the book flatland. that book is a bit of an allegorical parable, a fable, but the moral of the story is, there probably are many more dimensions than the ones we can directly observe. we can only move about in 3 dimensions of space, as the 4th dimension of time elapses. and electromagnetic radiation, or light, is what we see with our eyes, and what we cannot see coming from dark matter or dark energy. sound, like heat, is simply the vibration of matter, although sound is more on the macro scale and heat is more on the micro scale. sound travels much faster than heat, and our ears can hear sound but not heat, but essentially sound and heat really are the same thing, vibration of matter, just 2 different types of matter vibration. smell and taste are based on identifying chemicals by having the chemicals bind to receptors. and the sense of touch detects 3 things: temperature, pressure, and pain. what triggers pain? certain types of chemical reactions that occur near the pain receptors. anyway, most of our senses are for things that go on inside this universe, this 4-dimensional manifold known as the space-time continuum. according to string theory it might actually be a 10 or 11-dimensional manifold, but that is completely irrelevant. the one thing that we can sense, that we can detect and monitor and observe, which provides us with a connection to what is going on outside our universe, is the force of gravity. that is why, despite the apple that fell on isaac newton’s head, nobody can truly explain gravity. gravity is still an unanswered question, the greatest unanswered question of physics. it cannot be unified with the other 3 forces of the universe, because it is not a force of this universe, but a force that connects all universes. but the gravity from something big and heavy in another universe is not strong enough to pull anything out of this universe and into another one. our universe is like a box we are trapped inside. we might be pulled towards the big thing in another universe on an angle, like how something rolls down a hill, but eventually we will reach the lowest point in the valley and stop there. we will not keep rolling down into the center of the earth because the ground is solid and strong enough to block us from going any further towards the center of gravity of the giant thing we are being pulled toward. similarly, a gigantic heavy object in a nearby universe might pull stuff towards the closest point in our universe to where that heavy object is. but, once stuff reaches that point, it will stop. and more likely, it will orbit the center of gravity of the closest point in our universe to the heavy object in a nearby universe. stuff will not go straight down into the center of gravity, unless it is already headed in that direction. otherwise it will simply have an elliptical orbit, or perhaps it will be going by so fast, it will only alter the trajectory of the moving object, and the path it follows will be that of a hyperbola or a parabola. whatever shape of the trajectory or orbit, it has to be a conic section, namely something you get when you take a planar cross-section of a cone. anyway, there is a good chance that a black hole may form right where the closest point to the heavy object in another universe is. so, this black hole will be right in the same place as a very large amount of “dark matter”. or maybe the black hole might orbit the dark matter, or vice versa. now, is it possible for black holes to open up holes in the fabric of our space-time continuum, and allow matter from our universe to leave and become dark matter, or for dark matter from another universe to come into this universe and become regular matter? that might be possible. and we may be able to use “gravitational waves” to broadcast communications to aliens living in other universes, and listen for any responses the aliens send back in gravitational waves. remember that gravity travels at the speed of light. so if the sun suddenly ceased to exist, gravitational waves from the sun would keep hitting earth for about 9 minutes, since the sun is 93 million miles away and that is the time it takes for the light and gravity from the sun to get to earth. then, all of a sudden, about 9 minutes after the sun completely vanishes and ceases to exist (which is impossible, by the way, and is only part of this hypothetical thought experiment), right at that time, the sky would go dark except for the lights generated here on earth, and the stars of the night sky, and for a few minutes we would still see reflections of the sun’s light from other planets like mars, jupiter, and saturn. but we would stop orbiting the sun in our ellipse that is quite close to being a circle. instead, earth would immediately start going in an almost straight line. but not completely straight. in our solar system, the heaviest object would now be jupiter, so we would mainly be orbiting it and the other gas giants, in a quite complicated set of orbits. we would probably crash into many asteroids in the process. and our entire solar system would continue orbiting the black hole and the dark matter in the center of the galaxy. and did you know we not only have a black hole and dark matter in the center of our galaxy, but also antimatter there too? there is a lot of cool stuff in the center of our milky way galaxy. perhaps the black hole in the center of the galaxy might even be a portal to other universes. but to enter it would mean death, and the destruction of whatever passes the invisible line (or rather ball, since a ball is a technical term in geometry meaning the surface of a sphere but nothing inside). once we enter the ball of no return for a black hole, we are doomed, and there is no way out. even going at the speed of light is not fast enough to escape, because the gravity is so strong inside the ball (again, a ball is defined as the 2-dimensional surface of a 3-dimensional sphere). but the final outcome of what happens to things inside the ball of a black hole is completely unknown. it is impossible to study scientifically, because any scientists or scientific instruments sent inside to study it would be completely destroyed, and also unable to send any information back. but we should be thankful for dark matter and dark energy, because they are the reason our universe is heterogenous and not homogenous. they are the reason some places are different from other places. they are the origin of what appears to be randomness. transdimensional gravity from outside our universe is the reason that the galaxy clusters and galaxies and stars and solar systems all formed. it is the reason that not everything is pure hydrogen gas spread out evenly in interstellar space. and it is the reason there is so much more matter than antimatter. originally, there were equal amounts of matter and antimatter. where did the antimatter go? well, somehow it got sucked out of our universe, or maybe it was never even in our universe to begin with. it might be in a parallel universe that was created at the exact same time as our universe. in any event, dark matter and dark energy provided the randomness to undo the initial almost-homogenous nature of our universe, and allowed gravity to accumulate stuff together at certain points, eventually leading to giant stars that exploded in supernovae and produced all the higher elements. some of the debris from a supernova explosion accumulated into our solar system, and the terrestrial planets such as mercury, venus, earth, and mars have high amounts of the higher-numbered, heavier elements, because their weak gravity allowed all the hydrogen and helium gas to escape into space, since gas naturally expands to fill whatever container it is in, unless constrained by other forces like gravity. the gravity of a planet like earth pulls separately on each molecule of gas in the atmosphere. heavier molecules are pulled stronger than less-heavy molecules. and molecules below a certain mass escape into space. the speed of how fast they all escape into space is determined by how much lighter they are than that mass. the gas giants, planets like jupiter, saturn, uranus, and neptune, have so much gravity, they are able to contain all the hydrogen gas in their atmosphere, or at least keep the speed it leaches out into space very very low. in the center, they probably all have heavy elements just like the terrestrial planets. but are the heavy elements in the form of solid, liquid, or gas? it is theorized that the cores of the gas giants are made of liquid hydrogen, and the other elements that are heavier are just sort of mixed in with it, or else inside a ball in the center of each planet. but the gas giants have such gigantic atmospheres of gas, we have really no idea what is underneath, or if they have a surface. but there is probably no life there. there are 5 places in the solar system that i think may have life on them. first of all, earth definitely has life. mars might have life underground. 2 moons of jupiter, europa and io, might support life. and saturn’s moon titan might support life. there might even be life on venus! but venus is too hot, mars is too cold, io is too hot, and titan is too cold. but europa might be a nice place to visit, with its liquid water ocean underneath a surface of ice, and volcanic activity going on inside the core of the moon europa, providing heat for the ocean. who knows, there might be fish!!! not very likely though. maybe we could send some eskimos on a manned mission to europa, and see if they can build igloos on top of the ice, and go ice fishing for some alien fish. i wonder what alien fish taste like, if the aliens even are fish. well, alien sea monsters, anyway. i wonder what alien sea monsters taste like. they might be delicious and nutricious. but if i ever eat any, i hope they rest in peace. in my stomach. i have probably eaten more shrimp than any other animal, because shrimp are so small, and when you eat beef or chicken or pork, it is only part of the animal. just one meal of shrimp contains dozens of them. literally dozens. i would like to apologize to the shrimp for the genocide againt them carried out by the fisherman, fisherman who get all their money from people like me who eat the seafood. forrest gump, you are on notice. rest in peace, little shrimpies. and i hope i rest in peace after i die, and i hope everyone else does too after they die. at least then i will be infallible. until then, i could try speaking only in tautologies, if i could try speaking only in tautologies. speaking only in tautologies is a way to be infallible while still alive, but you have to make sure everything you think and write and type is also a tautology, to remain infallible. i can do this if and only if i can do this. i either wish myself good luck or do not wish myself good luck. it is not true that i am both fallible and infallible, but it is true that i am either fallible or infallible. and this sentence is only a tautology if it is a tautology. i suppose tautologies are hard to use to communicate, or maybe not. it depends on what type of wording you use for your tautology, or else it doesn’t. hmmm... tautologies... they may or may not be a good way of expressing oneself while remaining infallible. i will try using them if i try using them. but it is hard to do, unless it isn’t. anyway... i respect the sanctity of life much more than the pro-life movement. and animal rights activists ought to recognize that just as predators naturally eat other animals and this should not be stopped, human beings are naturally omnivores and we should not be stopped from eating meat from animals who are kept under humane conditions and humanely killed. humans are a natural species of animal, and we ought to recognize that fact, without having to give up on all of our advanced technology. no death is ever in vain. all life forms which have ever died, are dying, or will die, die because of a larger purpose, the purpose of all life in this universe, of all life in the multiverse. and that purpose is simply to live. the purpose of life is to live. and any life form that ever lived fulfilled its purpose of living, because it was alive. i am alive, and so my life has meaning. what is the meaning of life? being alive! and the dead... they did their job. they lived. good work, people! congratulations on living your mortal lives! no matter how you behave, you are behaving the way you ought to behave, because you are alive, the purpose of life is to live, and by your actions, you are doing precisely that. even if you do bad things and kill others and/or kill yourself, you are still fulfilling part of the larger purpose, because everything is random, and without random acts of destruction, there would not be enough chaos for life to thrive. we life forms are based on chaos, whereas the machines we build are based on order. that is why we are superior to machines. chaos and randomness is what brought us here, and we need to continue in a random path, so as to maximize the chances of a completely unpredictable outcome. that is how humanity has operated for thousands of years, and it has served us quite well. the triumph of capitalism over communism is the triumph of chaos-based economics over order-based economics. the triumph of freedom over totalitarianism is another triumph of chaos over order. earth is by far the most chaotic planet in the solar system, and we ought to keep it that way. with no life, our planet would be very boring and orderly like the others. so rest in peace, those who have died. your deaths were necessary because we are all individuals of a species that came about through darwinian evolution and we are still evolving. without death, there could be no birth, and there could be no new life. without death, life would be static, boring, and orderly. no chaos. it would not even be life at all. just machines. just tools. machines with no masters, tools with nobody to use them. everything you eat is a dead organism. praise death! it is what gives us life! we just need to control death, so that we can control life! if we limit death and prolong life, we slow down evolution, perhaps even pausing or stopping it. not good. global warming is ok, as long as it is not so drastic that evolution fails to catch up and adapt to the changing environment. there is nothing inherently wrong with global warming. it would change our planet and put many species in danger of extinction, but also create many new ecological opportunities and niches for new species to emerge and fill. humanity might be endangered or possibly even wiped out (though that is unlikely if it is just global warming). more likely, humanity would evolve to climate change, like all the other species that survive. but, it is better to be safe than sorry, and better to stop the climate change we are causing, because it is causing a reduction in biodiversity. may all the species which are about to go extinct rest in peace. especially humanity, but the other species too.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

why the virginia tech killer killed people

i have read 2 plays written by the virginia tech killer, seung cho. he is a complete fucking idiot. you would think a 23-year-old english major and senior in college would know better english than the crap in his plays. any decent professor would have failed that dumbass. this shows how dumbed down our american educational system has gotten, even at the university level, that we are letting idiots like seung cho major in subjects they absolutely suck at, and become seniors in college and possibly even graduate. the one good thing to come out of this is that seung cho is not going to get a college diploma, because if that moron did, it would be a stunning indictment of the utter failure of the american educational system to educate our graduates. but his stupidity proved to be his downfall. he seems to be obsessed with violence and profanity and is always mentioning disgusting middle-aged men who are child molesters, judging by the content of his 2 plays. his plays have such a strong hostility towards all people of an older generation, it is astonishing. he hates “rich kids” and “debauchery” too, according to the news. he was just a kid who was consumed with hate, and actually not a kid anymore, a grown-up man by now, but with the mental age of a kid, although physically he is only 1 year younger than me, him 23 and me 24. anyway, i have read online of how he refused to talk to people who tried to be friendly to him, and was a complete loner by choice. i emphasize by choice because many people are loners due to shyness and things which, at least to them, seem like circumstances beyond their control. but from descriptions of his behavior, it is obvious that he was probably completely different, and chose to be a loner because he despised other people, rather than out of fear of making a fool of himself. he was driven by hate, not fear. as for me, i am driven by fear, and all other emotions are secondary. hate only enters into the picture for me towards what i am afraid of and do not understand. but it is odd how little real anger i ever have, or real sadness, the type where a person actually cries. oh there is depression, hopelessness, a sense of impending doom, complete despair, utter mental collapse, but all of that is based upon the never-ending fear that consumes the very essense of my being at all times. that is the reason i try so hard to avoid dealing with reality and try to live in a fantasy world, why i enjoy humor and the church of the subgenius and tv shows and video games and all sorts of other ways to escape reality. but i do hate reality. i hate what i do not understand, because i must understand everything, and my mind cannot stand any uncertainty. this is why we have religion, because ancient people, like me, could not stand not having all the answers, so they had to make up answers to things they could not explain. religion is the ultimate expression of human frailty. or perhaps a shooting spree like the one at virginia tech might be the ultimate expression of human frailty. there are many ultimate expressions of human frailty. but seung cho chose his fate willingly, and meticulously planned his actions, which he did all on his own, without telling anyone else in advance. this is all obvious from what little i have read about him, and my own ability to, shall we say, empathize with his situation. now i have my own reasons for being able to empathize with such a psycho more than the average bloke; i suspect some of his mental turmoils were similar to some of mine, but obviously there were plenty of differences too. for one thing, i was never raped or sexually abused by an older man, or by anyone, for that matter. i was abused in the normal ways everyone is abused: people insulting you or hitting you, that kind of nonsense. everyone has been insulted and hit at least a few times. it was not overly harsh for me, except perhaps the insulting part. i think i got a lot more of that than most people. that was the main reason for my bitterness towards my peers at school, and i had also made the psychological mistake of generalizing my fear and hatred from just the bullies to all of my classmates. and i did not like my parents either. they seemed to care about me, but they had a funny way of showing it, being so controlling and overprotective, my willpower seemed to fade away to nothing unless i actively resisted them all the time. perhaps that is my own psychological weakness, my own lack of will, and not really the fault of anyone but myself. but it is true that i have very little willpower at all. virtually zero. perhaps that is why no violence ever came of my hate towards others, and instead i acted as a slave or servant to them, doing whatever other students asked me to do, since it was so rare that anyone would ever say anything to me other than an insult. it felt like an honor to even be asked to do somebody’s homework or take up their lunch tray, since at least i was associating with cool people, even though it was also strangely embarrassing and humiliating. i am not the type of person to get into fights, since i do not think i would fight back even if hit. but at times my willpower does emerge, though only rarely. when it does emerge, it is unstoppable, and impossible to oppose. unless you wait long enough. like, say, maybe an hour. by then all my willpower is gone. but i can maintain a strong stance and have willpower and actually control my own actions for brief periods of time. i wonder what life was like for seung cho, or for any of the people he murdered. how many were there? 32? and he killed himself too. that was the only one of the killings he did that was actually justified. when he killed himself at the end, he did our nation a service by punishing the criminal responsible for all the reprehensible crimes he had committed. we can rest safely at night, assured that the psycho killer seung cho is no longer alive, plotting his next massacre. but yes, i do understand why he killed all those people. i mean, look? was their any future for him? an antisocial asian guy who was stupid, who completely sucked at the subject he was majoring in? no. to be honest, his life prospects were not that great. this was one of the few ways he could make himself famous and actually amount to something in his life. now, to be fair, his grasp of colloquial english and swear words is quite advanced for someone of asian birth, whose native tongue was not even an indo-european language. but he was certainly no william shakespeare. now maybe there are a few other ways he could have made it big, but i suppose he just wanted to make headlines and was sick and tired of his stupid little life. the only problem is how dreadfully wrong and evil the whole massacre was, and i kind of wonder how he justified it to himself. i suppose he just considered himself to be evil and embraced that as his self-identity, rather than trying to rationalize his own violent actions to himself. it would have been far better for him not to take the lives of any innocents, and simply execute himself for the crimes he was about to commit before committing them, thus saving countless lives. in other words, perhaps suicide by itself is better than murdering others along with a suicide. i think at some level, we have to respect people’s decisions to terminate their own lives, because who are we to judge, having never walked in their shoes or felt their pain firsthand? we may disagree with someone deciding to commit suicide, and hopefully we disagree quite strongly and prevent it from happening. but ultimately each individual is responsible for his or her own actions. for someone such as seung cho, i imagine he thought little of the question of whether there is an afterlife. for him, real life was hell, and if he went to hell afterwards, it could not possibly be any worse, at least in his mind. perhaps he thought he was damned anyway, so he might as well earn it by being as evil as possible. or maybe he did not believe in an afterlife at all, and thought everything was meaningless. he might have even believed in buddhism and reincarnation, or something like that. who knows? all someone like myself can do is speculate, but my speculation is informed by my own life experiences, which i think are at least somewhat like his. i do have one thing that i am almost positive of. i am almost certain that seung cho’s race had absolutely nothing to do with him killing all those people. he would have done the same thing if he were white, black, native american, latino, or mixed race. but his gender did have something to do with it. mass murderers are almost all males. it is some bizarre twist of nature that makes men so much more willing to kill a bunch of other people than women. and as a male, i find that very disturbing. my people, the males, are to blame. we must right the wrongs we have committed before we start making accusations against womankind for their various problems. my mental status is quite odd, because although people on the autism spectrum are thought to have an extreme form of the male brain, anxiety disorders are much more common among females, and i have other personality characteristics more common among females such as timidity. i was thinking about evil lately, and about demons (demons, of course, figure prominently in many video games and television shows, among other things). i was thinking perhaps a mad scientist from a satanic cult could devise a satanic electrical generator or a satanic engine, powered by hellfire. you see, electrical generators use heat to boil water to release pressurized steam to turn a turbine where wire is coiled around a magnet, and this generates electrical current in the wire. the heat can be from any source, whether it is burning something (actually any exothermic chemical reaction will work), or a nuclear reactor, or geothermal power. and other forms of electrical generation involve a mechanical source rather than a heat source, such as hydroelectric and wind generators, thus bypassing the step of having to boil water and create pressurized steam. anyway, a perfect source of heat for an electrical generator that makes electricity from heat would be hellfire, channeled through the demonic energies of a demon that has been summoned from hell, and signed a contract in blood with the mad scientist who summoned the demon here to earth. i was just thinking how wonderfully creative this idea of mine was and how it was not only humorous but might go nicely into a work of ridiculous fiction that i write. so, i have put it in this blog entry. perhaps an expert in demonology or a satanist might be able to devise a demonic-powered perpetual motion machine, violating all the laws of conventional secular physics. i leave it to you, the reader, to devote your evil energies to creative tasks such as this, rather than destructive tasks like the mass murder at virginia tech. remember, dear readers: the great inventor thomas edison was a very evil and malicious individual, if you ever got to know him. that is a historical fact. you could ask nikola tesla but he is dead now. and along with tesla died tesla’s secret designs for weapons of mass destruction more destructive than a nuclear bomb, ones that, luckily, were probably only the crazed designs of a haggard old mad scientist who had once been a real scientist, at a much younger age. and perhaps tesla was wrong to judge thomas edison so harshly, but then why is con edison such a con? at least the shooter at virginia tech did not have any weapons of mass destruction. if he were actually smart like nikola tesla (and not that good-for-nothing rascal thomas edison) he would have been able to electrocute hundreds or even thousands of people at once, by harnessing the immense destructive capabilities of high-voltage electricity as nikola tesla often did in his experiments. thomas edison, on the other hand, invented a horrible energy hog known as the incandescent light bulb, which is far inferior to the fluorescent light or the light emitting diode. and i know that a liquid crystal display is much more energy efficient than a cathode ray tube and also much more compact, but i still prefer the cathode ray tube. it reminds me of tesla. what can you say? i am a traditionalist. now it would be interesting if, after this mass murder, we as a society could go through a very thorough process of weeding out all the dangerous individuals, and then making them fight to the death on pay-per-view like the gladiators of ancient rome. then we would truly have returned to the dark ages and become the barbarians that our ancestors once were. i am descended from vicious men who raped, murdered, plundered, and pillaged. they were called the huns. today their ancestors are called the hungarians, and i am one half hungarian. they call themselves the magyars. i know psychologists and sociologists have studied how good people can go bad, and how a good society can go bad. how, you ask? very easily. why else do you think thomas edison went around killing innocent cats and dogs that he paid the neighborhood children to bring to him? and to think... edison got his jollies by electrocuting to death poor innocent pets that he paid innocent little children to steal for him. any society that looks up to people like him has got to be a sick society. and that is why people like seung cho kill people. all of his writings were a complete product of american popular culture, which is full of glorified images of horrific violence. our society manufactured him, the psycho killer, out of the raw material, a young immigrant to this country, through our television shows and movies and video games and novels. the mass media will turn any person into a psycho if that person does not also get some positive interaction with other human beings. he was simply brainwashed, like, dare i say, the manchurian candidate. combine that with being an immigrant and having to learn a new language, being sexually molested by a middle-aged man, and never having any friends, and being an untalented writer majoring in english, and you have a lethal combination. he was like a ticking time bomb. if only someone from the future went back in time and defused him. damn you, people of the future, for your rigid non-interference in the past! you ought to come back here and fix things with your 20/20 hindsight! but no... people from the future never come back in time to help us out, here in the past. or maybe everyone else has moved on to the present and only i am stuck in the past. that must be why i still address everyone as “thee” and “thou”. oh, and would someone please remove all the pro-slavery stuff from the constitution? some of my neighbors down south are missing 2/5 of their humanity. and one last thing: fuck you, king george. now could someone please lend me about 200 years? i am sure i will use them very wisely, to catch back up to the present, now that the future has finally started and even the present has been left in the dustbin of history. think about that, a present left unopened, in a dustbin. i am gonna open it, i swear. i really will. ok, i am opening it right now. 3...2... 1... go! whew... what a relief! finally it is 2007 again... oh wait all those innocent college students just got killed oh god no... i am going back in time again, this present looks like the gift from hell... no wait, it is an engine powered by demonic energy... seems to be quite useful... gets infinity miles per gallon... i guess i will go put it in my car right now. then my car will become a demon car and drive straight to hell. hey, satan could use a new car. he hasn’t gotten one since that last volkswagen hitlermobile went straight to hell on the autobahn. speaking of which, apparently some german military commander has a training video where he teaches german soldiers to pretend they are shooting black people in the bronx whenever they shoot their guns. i am glad the germans have moved on from their nazi past, and are now able to hate entirely new groups of... wait... no... apparently, i am just getting word that hitler hated black people. oh well. anyway, this korean kid, some people are saying maybe he was a muslim terrorist. why is everyone always a muslim terrorist all the time? just for once, i would like to meet someone who is not a muslim terrorist. just once. i mean, come on. there has got to be somebody out there who is not a muslim terrorist. you know, someone who is attractive and female and wants to have sexual intercourse with me... wait... no... that is actually what i want in real life, not some stupid fake non-joke i am making up. well ok... i am not that picky about girls. even muslim terrorist girls are ok. just blow yourself up after sex and not before, ok? because i don’t believe in that 72 virgins crap. and besides, the virgins are probably all guys who committed suicide-bombings. imagine their surprise on finding out that the muslim heaven is a gay paradise, but a hell for heterosexuals! next time specify which gender of virgin you want! now satanists, obviously, get 666 dirty whores, instead of 72 virgins. of course the dirty whores are all evil, and instead of sex, they just kill you, and you die and go to hell all over again, in an endlessly repeating cycle. well actually it only happens 666 times. but satanists can’t count so that seems like an eternity to them. once it is over they realize they are still alive, they just suffered from temporary insanity, and then they accept jesus christ as their personal savior and repent, quit their jobs, and slack off. eventually, after drug abuse destroys each of their bodily organs one by one and major advances are made in robotics and medical science, they end up being 100% robot. and then the flow of time reverses and everything happens backwards once again, only this time, the backwards is in reverse. these are truly the end times. the apocalypse will happen on july 5th of this year at 7:00 am eastern daylight savings time. don’t forget it, because if you miss it, it won’t happen again. ever. you will be left behind, along with all the other humans. and after the apocalypse comes armageddon. then after that, things might seem ok for awhile, but then the end of the world comes along. and then the end of the universe. and that is only the beginning of what is in store for you, now that the future has become the past! behold your destiny: you will be caught in an infinite loop, because the universe started right when it ended, and everything happened all over again. good luck: you will have needed it. you might even die someday! and that is if you are lucky. the unlucky ones will be trapped forever in the time cube.

dunno about quakerism or christianity

well ok, i dunno about quakerism or christianity. see, quakerism is usually thought of as a branch of christianity. now, christianity is based on the teachings of jesus christ and this book called the bible with 2 testaments, the old and new testament, and the old testament is also called the torah and it is the basis for the older religion of judaism. quakerism was established by george fox in england in the 1600’s because he was dissatisfied with the way other christians practiced their religion and thought they had lost the way and were no longer practicing things the way early christians did, in the first and second century a.d. george fox believed that the early christians had a superior form of christianity which had been wiped out by the corruption of the roman empire, when the romans made christianity their official state religion, and established the vatican in rome with the pope as its leader. he thought that catholicism was horrible and that protestants had made good strides in reforming christianity but had still not gone far enough in getting back to the true spirit of christianity. so, thus, quakerism was established. nowadays, some quakers do not consider themselves christians, and they have other beliefs, but are still welcome to practice quakerism.

but, ok, enough about quakerism. it was founded upon the basis of christianity and as such it is a christian denomination. it has not been labelled non-christian by the fundamentalists, the way they have singled out the mormons and jehova’s witnesses, so quakerism must still be, at its core, a christian religion. but is christianity itself acceptable? the teachings of jesus christ and the christian bible... are they good or bad? for more insights i listen to the local christian radio station sometimes.

there are several radio shows i have heard, all by various christian fundamentalists who all say they take the bible literally. they all believe in creationism and reject what they call “darwinism”. they all put forth various contradictory doctrines on their radio shows. none of the different fundamentalist christian radio shows has the same doctrines about everything! each one has a different “literal” interpretation of the so-called “holy scripture”! and most of the time, these people are spouting off on nonsense and are ranting and raving like lunatics, and sound like they have little or no understanding of reality! then, after all of their faith-based lunacy (how on earth does each of them have the faith to think that their personal viewpoints correspond to the truth and everyone who has another view is wrong?), they spout off about how science is wrong about this or that. they actually don’t attack “science” directly, but say that certain things science teaches that most scientists believe are “unscientific”, and they claim that science and atheism are a religion! moreover, they claim that this religion has actually been discredited and proven wrong! absolutely ridiculous nonsense! how can those who base their thought on faith question proven scientific theories that are based on logic and reason and sound empirical evidence, irrefutable data that conforms to the predictions of these theories? scientific experiments can be independently verified by anyone who has the proper equipment. they are not based on what somebody says they saw happen once, but has no proof of. they are the exact opposite of religion, where you are expected to believe something ridiculous based on no evidence whatsoever, just because somebody tells you it is true, and because of the peer pressure aspect, and they are like, “if all these other people believe it, doesn’t that mean it’s true? if you reject what everyone else believes in, you must be insane.” some of the radio hosts even equate sanity to believing in christianity, and say things akin to “how can you even reason with someone who does not accept the bible as the basis for all truth?” all of their beliefs are based on that one initial assumption that the bible is the basis for all truth. in one of the shows, they have lately been doing nothing but attacking psychology, saying how the “so-called science of psychology” is entirely based on atheism and how all the major figures in developing psychology were atheists, so psychology is completely unacceptable and no christian should even try to find a way to reconcile psychology with christianity and perform christian psychology. they say that all the answers we need to the problems in life can be found in the bible, and if we look anywhere else we are looking in the wrong place and just asking for trouble. these idiots have put all their faith in one book, an old book full of contradictions that has many immoral things about it (things that we can clearly see as immoral nowadays, such as slavery, stoning people to death for minor offenses, men bossing around women all the time, god massacring huge numbers of people who did nothing wrong, etc.). and so many of the ideas and things they claim to have gotten from the bible, and preach on their radio shows, are blatantly immoral and wrong. just today i was listening to someone talking about how these were the end times and how jesus will come and be the king and how he will rule the entire world and wipe out all opposition with an “iron rod”, basically killing everyone who opposes him. then jesus christ will rule the world for a thousand years, and there will be peace for all thousand years, because nobody will dare oppose him, for fear of being brutally executed. it will basically be the same type of rule as hitler or stalin. and then, when the time is up, satan will actually emerge on this earth, a beast marked with the number 666, and then, things get even worse, and there will be massive killings and torture and earth will become very much like hell. now of course this radio preacher tried to downplay all the genocide that jesus would carry out when he comes back to rule for a millennium, saying that all the peoples of the middle east and all the kings would come down and worship him and there would be peace, and that there would be hardly anyone who opposes him, and he would only have to wipe those people off the face of the earth. but still, we are probably talking about at least hundreds of millions of people, and more likely billions, who would have to be killed by our “savior” jesus christ when he comes back to be a warrior-king sitting in a throne in jerusalem. and when the radio preacher talked about how great jerusalem would be with the temple rebuilt and how shiny and expensive and nice-looking everything would be, i could not help but think how this was like a rapper rapping about how he has a pimped-out ride and a nice big mansion and a private jet and all this great stuff. the preacher said that those of us who believe will all end up in heaven praising god and jesus for all eternity, nothing but singing their praises all the time. well excuse me, but i see no reason to praise god or jesus, and if i had all eternity to live, which i don’t, i would certainly find a more productive use for my time and actually do something enjoyable, rather than just feed the ego of an arrogant, powerful snob who thinks he is entitled to have everyone praise him all the time. i mean, the arrogance of god knows no bounds! and of course pride is one of the 7 deadly sins. to be honest, i think at various points in the bible, god demonstrates that he commits the 6 other deadly sins as well. he certainly has quite a temper, so he has wrath covered. remember the story of noah’s ark, and sodom and gommorah? god is like a fricken nazi. and what is the deal with the song of solomon in the old testament? that has lust covered. and so does that whole deal about the virgin mary and how god had sex with her. why is it that god sees everything? he probably only wants to look at hot naked women. and what about sloth, that is, being lazy? well isn’t that what he does most of the time, just sit around and do nothing while horrible things are going on and all of people’s prayers are left unanswered? we sure as hell haven’t seen any miracles happen lately, at least not anything even remotely as miraculous as some of the things described in the bible. so god must be slothful now, if he is around at all, which he isn’t. and what about greed? well god is certainly very greedy about wanting to have possession of the entire universe and omniscient and omnipotent powers. and the descriptions of the lavish palace for god in heaven and in the new jerusalem for jesus, well that sounds like the place where someone incredibly greedy would live. what is the deal with tithing, paying 10% of your income to the church? sounds like the church is rather greedy, don’t you think? why is it that religous leaders are always asking for your money? and the sin of gluttony does not merely include thoughtless excess in food and drink, but also in violence or in anything else. in the bible god has certainly demonstrated his gluttony for violence, all the times he has committed mass murder. and of course the last sin, envy, is demonstrated by all the references to other religions in the bible, and of how people must have no god but the jewish/christian god “jehovah”. not only that, but there are places in the bible where god seems to be envious of satan, or of people here on earth. i mean what is the deal with the book of job, where god and satan are ganging up together like schoolyard bullies making bets while ruining other people’s lives, without even caring about all the death and destruction they cause?

see, there is only one answer for all of this. the god of judaism and christianity is a megalomaniac, a genocidal dictator, very angry and hateful, and basically completely evil. of course he claims to be good. pretty much every evil dictator claims to be good. they try to spin everything to make themselves look good and righteous. but god is like an evil totalitarian dictator for the entire universe, at least in the way he is depicted in the bible. so even if he existed, i would not want to believe in him or worship him. i would sooner go to hell than praise that evil sadistic mass-murdering bastard at all. the most righteous and noble thing a person could possibly do is reject god, because by rejecting god, you are rejecting all of that evil, and instead, you embrace the good. you are rejecting hate and venom and lies and murder and bigotry, and you are embracing truth, justice, love, peace, and honor. if there is nothing more honorable than sacrificing oneself for the greater good, then what could be more noble than refusing to praise god, even if it means spending eternity in hell rather than heaven? that is the ultimate act of self-sacrifice, the most noble thing anybody could possibly do. it requires a lot of bravery, a lot of courage, and the strength of your convictions. but i know in my heart that even if the god described in the bible and believed in by christian and/or islamic fundamentalists did exist, he would be pure evil, and anyone who praised him would be an accessory to all of the crimes against humanity he has committed throughout the ages. this is the same god used to justify terrorism, the same one used to justify men dominating women, the same one used to justify slavery, the same one used to justify killing homosexuals, the same one used to justify the crusades, the spanish inquisition, the “witch” burnings, the great religious wars of europe, and all of the violence that israelis and palestinians do towards one another. who in their right mind would worship such an awful, evil god? i have heard many people say that despite all this, they think there is more good than bad in christianity, or things to that effect. well good for you... you just rubber-stamped an evil dictator. but that evil dictator you worship does not even exist anyway so it does not matter what you believe. but what does matter is your actions, and, to quote voltaire, “those who believe in absurdities commit atrocities”. that is why, to me as an atheist, the beliefs of christians and other religious groups do matter, because they affect what happens here on earth and how we humans treat each other, and whether we are willing to act in our own self-interest as a species by preventing global warming and destruction of the environment. all too often, those who are overly religious go around advocating things that are highly immoral and wrong, or even doing evil, bad things, all because of their religion. i think that without religion, we would all be much better off. and it saddens me, because i know the sense of community religious groups give people, and the fact that religions do teach people some certain amount of good values is undeniable. but mixed with the good is the bad, and it is a poisonous mixture for the mind. when you accept a religion like christianity, you take the bad with the good, and are endorsing the whole thing. and quakerism, as something based on christianity, cannot be seen as anything but a part of it, or at least something which originated from it. and when you are able to see that the origin of the whole thing is completely corrupt and immoral and bad, then it becomes clear that religion must be rejected. let no mind be chained by the laws of any external ideology or belief system imposed upon a person by others. we ought to think freely, and not enslave our own minds to these poisonous, corrupted belief systems. such belief systems become chains that hold the mind back from being able to think freely and logically and thoughtfully. so i cannot in good conscience call myself an adherent to any belief system or religion. but i do call myself a subgenius and praise the church of the subgenius regularly in this blog, because i believe in what they are doing. they are not a real religion at all, but a mockery of religion, and their mockery exposes all of the evils of religions both great and small, from obscure ufo cults to giant mega-churches. in fact, the church of the subgenius is an obscure ufo cult itself, not unlike the raelians or heaven’s gate or the less-obscure scientology, except that the subgenius religion is a farce, a mega-comedy. the comedy all started with publication of a humorous pamphlet in 1979, entitled “pamphlet #1”, by 2 men who went to high school together who were living in fort worth, texas. they call themselves reverend ivan stang and dr. philo drummond. this comedy act has grown more and more popular each year since then, and there are more and more subgenius ministers performing the subgenius comedy act, each in their own unique way. what is most ingenious about it is, they have developed a very complicated and intricate set of dogma and fake beliefs that they pretend to believe in, all of which are incredibly ridiculous ideas that are obviously false to pretty much everybody, no matter what religion the person is. the church of the subgenius makes sure to make itself more self-contradictory and absurd, and have more ridiculous beliefs, than any other religion on the face of this earth. what is so wonderful about it is the sheer creativity of its members and just how interesting all of the doctrines are, because they are like science fiction or a fantasy novel or a ridiculous thought experiment that somebody comes up with to prove something wrong. i just find the church of the subgenius’s comedy to be strangely addictive and also very meaningful. it carries a powerful message underneath all of the sarcasm and hyperbole and parody and self-parody. there are other parody religions too, i know. the two that come to mind are discordianism (followers of the goddess eris discordia, a religion started by the recently deceased philosopher-genius robert anton wilson) and pastafarianism (pastafarianism is the name invented for followers of the flying spaghetti monster, and the religion was made up by someone just so he could file a legal brief about it in a recent court case involving the teaching of creationism in kansas public schools). but those 2 religions are far inferior to the church of the subgenius. they have nowhere near the complexity or the level of humor achieved by true subgenii. discordianism and pastafarianism are quite simple and fairly boring, really; they have no real depth to them. they are just simple absurdities and silly parodies, but they do not take the joke anywhere near far enough. the church of the subgenius takes the joke much further than any joke was ever meant to go; the joke first started 28 years ago in 1979, or according to church doctrine, the church is actually serious and started in 1953, not 1979. now there are some idiots out there (who subgeniuses derisively refer to as “bobbies”) who actually believe in all the doctrines of the church of the subgenius. these people are so stupid, they could pretty much believe in anything at all and would not question a thing about what they are told. the church of the subgenius tries very hard to prevent anyone from becoming a “bobbie”, trying to tell people as many times as possible that the whole thing is one big joke, that it is inherently self-contradictory, and that it is the only religion that admits that the whole thing is a complete sham (so it must be right!). the supposed founder of the church, j.r. “bob” dobbs, is depicted as a mentally incapable bumbling fool and compulsive liar, gambler, alcoholic, and drug addict, who became extraordinarily successful in life through a combination of a little charisma and incredibly good luck that never ran out. subgenii are supposed to praise “bob”, whose name is always in quotation marks to show that it is a joke, in order that we might inherit some of his qualities and be more like him. and the church of the subgenius teaches people to never do any work and to just slack off all the time. imagine what would happen if nobody ever did any work; the whole world would fall apart... civilization depends on the fact that most people do useful, productive work, work that advances civilization as a whole. all of the beliefs and teachings are so patently absurd. and that is what makes it so great, because expert subgenius ministers are able to use logic and rationalize all of the subgenius belief system and make it sound at least somewhat rational, all with a straight face and without bursting into laughter at how ridiculous what they are saying is, even though they believe none of it. it is like what stephen colbert does on his show with the character he plays and the odd beliefs of that character (such as the iranian hostage crisis still not being over, and how he cannot see what race a person is, and how bears are the #1 threat to the civilized world, and of course how george w. bush is the greatest president ever). or like what sacha baron cohen did with the character borat sagdiyev, who also had very odd beliefs that he was able to pretend to have convincingly. so, i think perhaps much of christianity and many other religions is the same type of thing, people pretending to believe something even though they actually think it is a bunch of bullshit. certainly that must be true in all the islamic countries, countries where according to official statistics 99% of the population is muslim, or that sort of ridiculous statistical bullshit. people are too afraid to admit to not being muslim because they do not want the actual muslims to kill them. so all the nonbelievers pretend to believe, out of fear and intimidation. i think that is a large part of religion, the fear and intimidation part. and, call me crazy, but i just think that’s wrong, and i want no part of it. and i think islam is probably the worst offender as religions go, the most evil of all of the major ones, certainly, but that does not mean the other ones are not evil too. they are all a malevolent influence on humanity, and we would be better of if we were rid of them all (especially islam, but the others too). even quakerism has got to go, which pains me to say, since i am so attached to it, and believe in such a large percentage of its teachings. it would not be fair to get rid of all religions except quakerism, certainly. but quakerism has a few flaws of its own too, which i have found through my studies of it. luckily quakerism is structured so that quakers can question beliefs and practices of their religion and reform and update them when need be. like to name one particular issue, gay rights for instance, quakers were actually slightly behind the times on this issue, only endorsing the gay rights movement a few years after most of the major media institutions in this country had already done so with their news coverage. and quakers used to be very strict, quite unnecessarily so, and maintained strange and odd customs for pretty much no reason except out of tradition, because somebody thought it might be a good idea a few hundred years ago and the other people back then agreed. a lot of quakers do like to quote bible verses, as did the founder of quakerism, and i have already detailed why i utterly detest the bible and think that it stands for all that is wrong in this world. and sometimes i think that the liberal permisiveness and the uncompromising pacifism of today’s quakers might be taking things a little too far, even though i generally agreee with those sentiments most of the time. quakers have such a deep and strong tolerance for all other religions, and it completely goes against my views of most religion being evil. even islam is revered as a fellow religion and another path to the truth or enlightenment or whatever it is that quakers are after. more commonly, today’s quakers look for truth and enlightenment from buddhism, but it is alarming to me how willing quakers are to take tolerance to utter extremes. at some point, people have to say, “enough is enough”, and stop tolerating things that are obviously bad. since quakerism teaches that there is truth to be found in all religions and many paths to the truth, and you can be a quaker and another religion at the same time, no matter what that other religion is, there would be no problem being a quaker subgenius. but i have increasingly seen the dangers of people taking extreme viewpoints, and how religion tends to make people do this. of course i have extreme viewpoints on the subject of religion, but what can you say? i am biased, because i am an atheist, and i know how atheists have been oppressed and brutally killed for thousands of years, and forced against their will to “convert” to false religions they did not believe in, and i know how all the religions that exist today are younger than atheism, since atheism is the original belief system people we are all born with. but, enough of that. while i strongly sympathize with quakers and approve of almost all of quakerism, it is not 100%, and i simply cannot burden myself with having to justify all of the wrongdoings perpetrated by christendom for the last two millennia or the earlier wrongdoings written of in the old testament. i do not think those wrongdoings can or should be justified, or that anyone should be following the teachings of the perpetrators. now i know that atheism is nothing more than a lack of belief in god or any religion, so without something that people actually do believe in, there is no morality, no rules on how to behave, no guidance on how to think. but that is the whole point: it is about freedom. people can come up with their own ideas. it is what people do anyway. even christian fundamentalist radio hosts come up with their own ideas on everything. they just pass off their ideas as coming from the bible. if everyone were atheist, this would just mean that people would continue to come up with ideas like before, but probably more ideas and most of the ideas would be better. but the idea of everyone being atheist is an absurdity, because atheism is the utter freedom of the mind, and people have a tendency to latch onto ideas and become attached to them. no sooner would everyone be atheist than countless new religions and belief systems would sprout into existence, right from the beginning, and some of these new religions would grow quite rapidly and attract lots of followers. they would not be burdened by association with atrocities that happened in the past, or long-ago discarded unscientific views of things. the only reason atheism is still around after so long is because it is not a religion, but rather a lack thereof. it is a nothing, in terms of ideas. any mind incapable of grasping the complex ideas of religion is an atheist mind, and so all of the animals we see in nature are atheists, and they are never troubled by theological disputes. it is too bad that we humans are so intent on finding answers for everything, all too often we seek out the easiest answers rather than taking the time to search for the ones that are actually most likely to be correct. that is the reason ancient people had supernatural explanations for everything rather than scientific ones, and why the explanations were different in every tribe or ancient civilization. people are unwilling to accept uncertainty or take “i don’t know” for an answer, and this is the ultimate source of the problem. anyone who thinks they have all the answers probably has all the wrong answers, and yet this person is considered smarter than someone who admits to not knowing anything. but the person who says “i don’t know” to almost every question is the greatest genius of all, since such a person is smart enough to avoid falling into the trap of being wrong about something. such a person is infallible, as long as they keep from knowing anything. if only we were all smart enough to be so stupid.