God feels no sentimental value for Earth

Theists claim atheists have nothing to live for yet they themselves often believe in a religion that predicts the end of the world by their God. How can someone say that someone has nothing to live for when they themselves believe the whole of human civilization will end thus rendering everything they’ve done in life meaningless?

 They would say that they trust God so much they think heaven will be so much better that blowing up this world won’t matter, and that they’ll go there ‘cas they believe in God & Jesus. If either of those 2 conditions is false then we will all cease to exist (not because of a cosmic accident, but because of the deliberating plotting of a genocidal cosmic Hitler), or hell awaits. It’s utterly incomprehensible.

Of course blowing up the rock we live on “very soon™” is a huge waste of committed time and resources. God did say we were special. But even if there were other worlds that were more worth saving, it shouldn’t render us irrelevant.

I think it would be admirable if God/the gods choose to protect a place that wasn’t particularly extraordinary, like biologists or archaeologists who try to preserve historical things. It’d be like if a god choose to protect a barren asteroid from being destroyed by Satan simply because he had memories of meeting someone he loved for the first time there.

Pure sentimentality would justify it, if God felt anything had sentimental value. The fact he doesn’t care about our homeworld implies he doesn’t really love humans or his creation that much.

If he truly loved humans (at least as much as he loved the dinosaurs), then he would at the very least do his best to protect the place where he had many memories of us, (even after we’re gone.)

It’d also be the compassionate thing to do, like saving a wounded kitten (or putting it out of its misery) when you’re not obligated to go out of your way for someone else. There’s really just so much wrong with saying we’re special, and then destroying our homeworld with the same haste that a kid knocks over a sand castle.

Snapshot of Armageddon. It will be just as lame. Satan isn’t even in the picture, ‘cas he’s been defeated; it’s just God, Jesus and pitiful little you.

Love thy enemies

I just saw a crime solving show where a guy had a father who was in jail for over 20 years for homicide. Then he finds out he is innocent, and his mother had been the killer, and she had even framed his father and lied about everything.

His response? “I still love my mother. I can hate the things she did, but I can’t hate her.”

I had that same Christian logic pounded into me as a child. My grandmother who taught me me that same line word for word, said she was told it by a pastor in the Great Depression when her father (who had a mean streak) used to beat her. She said she hated her dad, but she lost her anger when the pastor told her she could hate the things he did but still love him.

Wtf. It’s justified to hate someone because they are the cause of actions that do you harm. You’re gonna hate them for it anyway even if you pretend you don’t. It’s justified to not love your enemies, and to hate scum bags. Christian logic: “It’s okay to hate the things Hitler did, but remember to love him too, as Christ would.”

Suddenly interested in cavemen

Does human evolution interest you? As a kid I thought looking at ape skulls was boring, and anthropology really started to interest me once I was an Atheist. (Keep in mind that I didn’t believe in evolution for most of my life.) It’s depressing that humans spent tens of thousands of years doing the same old, and nothing important. It is frightening to consider how close we are to stupid apes.

It would be much more reassuring to have evolved millions of years from now, when your evolution adapted you for technology and the needs of a futuristic wired society in outer space. Instead of still being evolved to fight saber-tooths, and each other for unexceptional females.

I’ve been reading a lot more about human timelines now, trying to answer the question of when we hit certain milestones, and why it took so long. It’s fascinating now. There is so much to learn, and now suddenly I love knowing that X plant came from X continent, or that an animal evolved from various intermediary stages over a long period. It really makes you appreciate everything we have.

That new respect for neolithic anthropology is totally unlike when I was a kid. My grandmothers and my father told me not to believe we evolved from apes, and I was always suspicious of the propaganda in my history text books which said cave paintings were found over tens of thousands of years ago in Europe (which couldn’t be right according to the bible’s ancestry charts.)

Of course I thought the cave paintings were laughably primitive, and thought I could paint better. I thought the stonehenge was lame too, because a handful of giant rocks couldn’t compare to the pyramids of Giza in size or grandeur – when you have the shallow mind of a kid, size is all that impresses you! Nevermind how rare the materials, how old, or how artistically designed for the era – I only cared about civilizations that left the biggest monuments- ancient wonders which would be impressive even by modern standards.

More over, I thought savages were boring. That’s why I found cavemen paintings and the flint rock tools uninteresting. I wasn’t very interested in learning about Native Americans either, when there were more sophisticated cultures that left the big monuments that can still be traveled to today. In a sense, I had a smaller imagination as a kid. Today I could probably go to an empty field with the knowledge of history, and imagine how awesome a city was, or how unique a village’s society once was, but as a kid I would not have bothered.

To be fair, I did start to come around when I entered college. I wondered why there weren’t more advanced civilizations in North America. I concluded it was because they stopped hunting-gathering later, since they had to cross not only from Africa, but also the Bering Straight during the ice age, 13,000 years ago. (By then I had pretty much given up on finding any other explanation for how they got to North America, and I remember googling about it over summer vacation.) My resistance to the immediate dates gradually began to wear away too, and when I took biology again, I had to accept that we evolved from other simian ancestors. That’s how the lives of our ancient cavemen ancestors came to mean a lot more.

I really hope that I’ll be able to impart the same interests I have to kids someday. Nevermind my knowledge – I just want them to be so interested in learning that they won’t stop where I stopped, citing “boredom” or “irrelevance.” If I had been allowed to believe in evolution, and persuaded to accept it at face value sooner without so much resistance, then I’d probably have been interested in those cavemen sooner. I’d probably have studied African civilization and Native Americans more, and overall I’d have a lot richer set of thoughts to muse over. Who is to say that I wouldn’t have gone to a natural history museum and been so spellbound that I’d have become an archaeologist or even taught this stuff at a university?

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Anyway, I know my posts aren’t always as detailed as they are when I started this blog. I think my peak posts were around August 2015. I’ve become lazier and have been leaving shorter and shorter posts, which barely record an idea or link to some religious absurdity that I discover or think of. I don’t think I’ll ever leave the path of researching religion, mythology, or talking to Atheists, but scribbling down every single thought is rather time-consuming.

Sorry, but it’s all downhill from here folks! I don’t see how I’ll ever write so many long posts about religion in a short period again, but I hope I’ll occasionally leave a few gems. Maybe someday I or someone else will stumble upon something I said, pick up the pieces I’ve gathered, follow my leads, and develop a useful tapestry.

Drugs for operant conditioning

Here is a question. Would you consider it ethical to give high-dopamine drug to kids that was highly addictive, and then only allow them more if they studied science hard and passed tests?

Drugs could be a great motivator if used for positive reinforcement, rather than creating sex addicts in erotica stories. Just imagine how many kids could become accomplish great things if a benevolent university administered drugs which could only be attained there.

Future problems with Islam and Qibla

What direction does a Muslim astronaut pray in if he’s on Mars? If Earth is straight up that’s gonna strain your neck. Why don’t Muslims ever pray straight down? How do you determine qibla if you’re in a wormhole?

Praying in a direct line to Mecca when off Earth, and praying in a curvilinear line while on Earth is inconstant to begin with. Jupiter and Hydra have ten hour long days, so you have to wake up to pray more right? Hydra has a tumultuous chaotic orbit – every time you pray you’d need to figure out your bearings because up and down change constantly. Imagine if there’s ever a major nuclear war and Muslims emerge from a fallout out shelter after 40 years, to find they lost track of time and were praying in the wrong direction.

Good luck finding which way Mecca is let alone Pluto.

I want to see Muslims on an astronomical body that rotates hundreds of times in 24 Earth hours. And if there was no relativity then following Salah (prayer) times on a ship closely orbiting a millisecond pulsar would kill Muslims with insomnia.

> Astronauts will eventually use an atomic clock that’s adjusted to account for the current time in Mecca.

Now what about the effects of relativity? Days on high gravity bodies take longer. Are muslims gonna stop praying if they live by a blackhole and days stop progressing? Will the new plan to pray according to local times on a clock, not the sun? Or suns? You won’t be able to follow Mecca time when weeks of of your life equal a day on Earth.

What about if the sun or Earth die? Will they pray towards the dust? Do astronauts adjust the prayer times in accordance with the local sun(s)?

But here’s another one: how do you get buried facing Mecca on Hydra, much less Mara?

So here’s the problem with prayer times. Either:

1. Follow time in mecca

2. Follow a system clock

Trouble is you can’t do both with relativity. Time dilation messes it all up. How many days on Earth pass for years lived by a black hole. Suspended animation on a colony ship also would result in sleeping through prayers towards mecca. Traveling close to the speed of light would make days in mecca speed by in hours or minutes on your ship.

For number 2, every single ship in the universe will wind up with its own time. All clocks tuned to absolute mecca time will glitch up and require offsets as the ships start accelerating and decelerating around stars. Two ships that left Earth at the same time traveling to the same destination at different speeds will still quickly develop different “Mecca clocks” and would pray at different times. If one crashed and had to be rescued by the other, the clocks would not agree and the crew would all pray at different times.

Praying together as one quickly becomes impossible in space.

Here’s another astronomy one. A fatwa was recently issued barring all Muslims from going to Mars. Would that stop you from going if the chance were there? Supposing even that space travel was a one way trip?

Not that I expect answers to those questions since Quranic thinking says the Earth is flat.

Deicide

I just love this word. Really rolls off your tongue, and you see it all the time in fiction.I tried to make a list, but then I realized TVtropes has done a thorough job. But I’ll highlight a few example anyway.

Xenogears:

I wish Xenogears had stayed true to the original vision and made the final boss named “Yahweh.” Fucking self-censorship. Square didn’t mind killing god in fantasies in FFX, but they have to euphemize everything because of our sacred cows. I wonder if they write these stories to try and wake up Christians, I mean Metal Gear Solid is more popular in America and it has a pretty anti-America universe.

http://kotaku.com/5794922/how-one-man-stopped-square-enix-from-letting-gamers-kill-yahweh

Final fantasy X:

Same company. It declares the way to defeat the final boss (a god) is to slowly cut off the foundations of a powerful belief systematically, like cutting off one artery at a time. Only when there is nothing left to stand on will all the cultists know to abandon a false promise.

Shin Megami Tenmsei

God is an autocratic facist tyrant who leads the forces of light. Satan is an anarchist/libertarian who is trying to resist him and empower humans with free will. The best path is a neutral one that requires you to work with members of both sides to create a better world. Wiki has the plot.

Japanese fantasy writers are really good about attacking the concept of Yahweh! I often have wondered if creative writers are more likely to recognize religion is bullshit and like to embed that message in their works. At least Japanese seem to recognize foreign religion is probably bullshit, even if they’re still mired in their own spooks.