Rick's Blog

When does pregnancy begin? Doctors disagree That a zygote is human does not imply that it is a person I really can't tell you when personhood begins, but I can say with absolute certainty that there's no consensus among scientists "When Does Human Life Begin?" Teaching Human Embryology in the Context of the American Abortion Debate I invite you to actually read these articles. Issues like this do not get resolved by quotes of a sentence or two in a Facebook post. The issue of whether something is life does not address this debate. By the simplest definitions of life, yes, a cancerous tumor is alive and has a different DNA than its host. That is why it spreads on its own. Yes, non-viable pregnancies that may or may not result in miscarriage can be considered life, and the natural conclusion should be that all women who have miscarriages are guilty of third-degree murder, negligent homicide or manslaughter, depending on the state laws. Obviously, this is nonsense, but i...

The Supreme Court of the United States appears to be on the precipice of making the most heinous, inhuman ruling of law since the Dred Scott case. There is no way to sugarcoat the gravity of the stakes. Restricting abortion rights denies a person of their humanity. Fundamental to issue of abortion rights is the concept of bodily autonomy. If a person does not have the right to dominion over their own body, which certainly must be denied in order to deny a pregnant person the right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, then truly, a person does not have any other rights at all. Without the self-evident right to bodily autonomy, a citizen of the United States loses all of the following rights which have been sacrosanct since before the Constitution was drafted, before the Declaration of Independence was signed: Freedom of speech Without control over their own body, a person does not have the right to articulate, write or type words. If the state has control over a person's body, the s...

My atheism has nothing inherently to do with my answer. What my answer does reflect is the lack of an answer provided by the magic or miracles of religions. My first response to the question “before the Big Bang?” is what does one mean by “before”? There was no before. Everything that we relate to as “time” began at the Big Bang. The “fourth dimension” of time may certainly be independent of our understanding of it (and likely is), but time as the means by which we detect changes of reality, i.e. the cause and effect phenomena, started with the Big Bang. So, in a manner that applies to everything other than theoretical math/physics, there is no “before” the Big Bang, and thus the question is nonsensical. That said, I think the actual question asked is What caused the Big Bang? My two meaningful positions on that question are as follows. First, while much of the math works, there are substantial problems with standard Big Bang theory. Inflation in particular not only makes no rational s...

The 2nd Amendment grants citizens the right to use a certain technology. It does not say "right to defend themselves" or "right to carry swords". It says "right to bear arms". The historically and contextually accurate interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is the states have the right to defend themselves against an aggressive federal government by using war technology which was, at the time of the drafting of the Bill of Rights, guns: manual rifles and hand pistols which could fire 1-2 bullets per minute. If the intent was enable states to defend themselves, then clearly they must have the right to match the war technology of the aggressive federal government against whom they have the right to defend themselves. The concept that the right is limited to guns is historically-bound and irrational, as it does not advanced through time along with literally every other right and law in the Federal Code. If the aggressive federal government uses technology to adv...

I am willfully ignorant of the process involved with kidnapping children, murdering people, etc., because I have no interest in those activities. More like anti-interest. That is different than wanting to hear your perspective on say abortion rights because abortion is wrong 100% of the time, end of story, my fingers are in my ears, la-la-la-la I can't hear you, you're wrong. In the latter, the person wants the other opinion to be wrong and so treats it with disdain in order to keep it in the "wrong" box. I would argue that is both willfully ignorant and stupid.

The wonders of the science-based understanding of reality are spiritual, not in the sense that there are ethereal entities out there or within, but in the sense that the improbabilities occurring over time and space such that we exist fill us with spirit, with spunk, with punch. The intimacy with the unfathomably large and the unfathomably small is found within us, truly the piece of the universe that managed to be able to reflect on itself. Understanding the ridiculously remote odds that we exist as individual minds should compel us on the level of consciousness in the direction of the course of action most likely to propagate our genes and assure the continuation of our offspring, the same biological driver as every other species of life on this planet.

I would argue that a spherical earth is in fact anti-(Abrahamic religions). There are several passages of "historical events" in the Old Testament that cannot possibly be true unless the Earth is flat and stationary. For example, Joshua stopping the sun in the sky for 12 hours and then starting it again. If Joshua had stopped the rotation of the spherical Earth, every object above ground, including the oceans, would have lurched forward at >1,000 mph, not merely killing almost all life on the planet but turning it to jelly. The story only works if the lightbulb is "out there" and we/Joshua are the ones who are stationary. Technically, yes he could have bent the light waves from the sun, but since the sun simply continued on afterward, that bending must still be in place today. The new curvature through space-time must have accounted for not only the sun but for literally every single light particle in the entire observable universe, because we are not physically ...

Religion at its best is nothing more than a means by which the less fortunate can place themselves on an equal playing field with the very fortunate. And by extension of that equal playing field and by its nature, the less fortunate can actually vote themselves over the very fortunate by judging themselves against the standard of that equal playing field. For example, in the religion of Christianity, the equal playing field is created by the belief that all people are sinners and therefore all people are unworthy in the eyes of God. Humans are made worthy because of the sacrifice of Christ. Through Christ, humans can please God by focusing on that relationship with him. So in the end time, those less fortunate who focus on their relationship with God will be considered greater than those who did not, including the very fortunate. So, for the less fortunate, you don't need their power, their money, their looks, their fame, their talents; all you need is to speak words to yourself wi...

Isaiah 44:24 (NASV): "Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, and the One who formed you from the womb" What exactly does it mean to be "formed from the womb"? Clearly a reference to birth and development, but when does that development begin, and what is being developed? Here's what we know: conception of all life on this planet is cellular in nature, whether that's fauna sperm and egg or asexual reproduction or flora pollen or seed or even just cellular division. It's cells, and we know how they work. Cells are made of multiple systems which exist on the molecular level, and molecules are made of elements, and we know how that works too. We can explain the whole process of how a human baby starts and grows, and it's basically the same process as exists in every other mammal or animal or plant species; there is nothing special about human development. So if that development, that "forming", starts at conception, what is being developed oth...

Not only no but of course not! The afterlife is a completely nonsensical idea, contrary to everything we understand about life, unsupported by multiple branches of science and is actually a dangerous idea: the 9/11 terrorists did what they did because they believed they were going to better life after this one. Consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. When the brain deteriorates, our consciousness deteriorates, and when the brain ceases to function, consciousness ceases to emerge. Done. 

The only things that control language are facts and evidence-based reasoning. 2+2=5 isn't a "freedom of speech" issue. It is wrong, and math based on it creates engines that explode. The reason language becomes narrow is because we don't tolerate ideas that cannot be justified. The earth is not flat. Germs, not demons, cause disease. Gender is a spectrum, not binary. All three statements are supported by overwhelming evidence in their fields. If you feel disrespected by science because it does not tolerate falsehoods and fantasies, that's a YOU problem.H

When one can reflect on the incalculable number of atomic occurrences, particles, compounds, self-replicating molecules, mitochondria, through the entire path of evolutionary development, it took to get here The gas clouds, the prior supernovas it took to create the higher elements, the Goldilocks zone, multiple mass extinctions, opposable thumbs, language And time, an unfathomable amount of time, in a functionally infinite universe To be this sentient being, to be the 'I' behind my eyes, to be the part of all that universe through which it analyses itself And to do so via the being that you are, the part of the universe that reflects not only upon its grandeur as a whole but also upon its own emergent quality Consciousness To be and to reflect on the self as the observant within that universe When one can just barely understand that, one can find all peace and beauty in reality, in life Because you are unique, in the truest definition of the word unique The c...

"100% of all climate change models have been wrong" Yes, in the same way that 100% of the directions of every airplane is wrong and does not lead exactly toward the proper destination. Flight is a constant adjustment and readjustment to a perfect, hypothetical flight plan from origin to destination which is to say that the actual flight plan is, by definition, a model . The actual flight plan based on that model is always wrong - due to wind, wind speed, weather patterns, the rotation of the earth, etc - which is why constant adjustment is required to reach the destination. Clearly, the general direction of the model is correct, evidenced by the fact that airplanes operated by professional pilots almost never mistakenly land at an improper destination. Likewise, no climate change model is going to be 100% accurate in its predictions, but clearly as every chart of any meaningful data shows, global atmospheric and oceanic temperatures are rising, the rise is caused by an unn...

This explains the current political wars of ideology. The non-engaged majority is simply being drowned out by the engaged minority with a bigger megaphone. This is a sign of the virus adapting to the evolutionary pressures of the modern consciousness environment. Yell louder. Dig your heels in firmer. Utilize fear over rationality. Because fear is what the virus is. That is the adapter that the phage engages to pass its code into a cell, just like fear of the unknown is the key to opening the door that unlocks consciousness to accepting the virus into its set of rules that are the basis for judging reality. This fear is the cause for the adherence to the ideologies of "going back to the safer times and ways of the past" and reluctance to adapt to change going forward. That reluctance to accept reality is what leads to rejection of reason and science, rejection of alternative genders, rejection of women having consent of their own bodies, and to embracing the illogical of the ...

It is a common practice for atheists to try and attach ID to some form of religion in hopes that their argument against religion will somehow apply to ID by association... This is done out of desperation, and yours is one of the most determined attempts I have ever seen to do that... It will not ever work... ever! Nice try though... I see that you believe that ID is not a religion. You clearly have not studied the issue objectively, because ID has been shown, even in a court of law, to be a form of religious ideology, not limited to fundamentalist Christianity. to sum up: 1) You are claiming to invoke a diety or supernatural intelligence - which is, as of today, completely undetectable by any means of measurement ever invented - deliberately manipulating the universe down to the quantum level to bring about desired changes, and 2) You think that the invocation of said intelligence is the more rational decision than assuming a natural cause for any changes. That's b...

Begin again. These might be the two most important words in my life, in the history of my life. Each moment of life is a new beginning, a chance to act, to be, to live. Realizing that moment is an experience of beauty for me, and my meditation practice helps me stay there in that present moment. Through my practice, I have come to a deeper understanding of why I hold that phrase and that concept so dearly. I hate myself. On some deep, fundamental, lizard-brain level, my brain, for whatever reason, is simply wired to make the most perfectly irrational conclusion it is possible to make as a sentient being: hatred of the self. I don't know why, I don't particularly care why. It just is. This self-hatred has played out in so many ways in my life: from not caring about school work to starting smoking to my devout religious days to suicidal thoughts. It spoke to tell me that I couldn't handle the schoolwork if I tried which made me not even start and then criticised me afte...

The things we fret over - our desires and aversions of the past, present and future - in our minds are not real. This is the simplest and most profound truth. But it is the depth to which they are not real that resonates with me the most. In all of the mind-numbingly vastness of space and reality, through everything we understand of the fabric of space-time and everything material and theoretical that exists within it, where physically is the future? If we could draw a map of the entire universe, could you point to a place on that map to locate the past? No. Why not? Because it doesn't exist. Time is nothing more than the measure of change in reality, and "when" is reality? Now. And now, and now. It is never "then". Nothing in the observable universe - no galaxies, no stars, no black holes, no physical entity that we have ever discovered - ever reflects anything more than what it is at the time of observation. Even the oddity of the double-slit experiment which ...

I certainly don't mean to suggest that I am enlightened in any way. I honestly don't think I know or have experienced enough to be qualified to determine if I am enlightened or not or to what degree I may be down the path, and given that fact, any consideration that I may be enlightened seems much closer to arrogance than to acknowledgment of truth. But the truth is I don't particularly care, and I think that is also kind of the point. To seek enlightenment is a desire itself. Enlightenment is not the goal; presence is the goal. Enlightenment is just the label we have applied to the experience of nothingness, no different than "rising"-"falling", "in"-"out", "lifting"-"placing"-"stepping". What I do know is that I am fundamentally different than I was six months ago, even three months ago, and different in an irreversible way. Living behind the waterfall is an appropriate analogy, but I resonate more wit...

The concept of nothingness and emptiness is also something I view as particularly aligned with the scientific method, and my dedication to (and even affection for) the scientific method provided me what seems to me to be an easier springboard for truly understanding - grokking - the concept and embracing it on a deep level. It is a misconception that we discover the truth in science. The reality is actually the exact opposite: we use the scientific method to discover what is  not  true, and then we move forward with those disproven claims and beliefs excluded from our concept of reality. I use the analogy of a pie. If we are given an apple pie and told there is a single cherry somewhere within it, how do we find the cherry? Do we point to some random area and declare Here it is!? No, we cut a slice out of the pie and investigate it, and when we find it does not contain the cherry, we repeat the process; we discover where the cherry, the truth, is not and exclude that slic...

I recently had two insights related to the concept of no wasted time . It is part of my 2018 goals to be more "productive" with my time, which is to say to be aware of the voice and the emotions that make me want to "turn off" and go veg out to tv, YouTube or Facebook instead of doing things that I will feel regret over in the future for having not accomplished. I realized a couple of weeks ago that spending an hour watching my DVR'd shows is not "veg time" or even wasted time; it is an explicit course of action, and not necessarily one whose intent is to ignore other tasks but to take that time to tune out and by passively entertained. The fault, if any, in that decision is not in the ignoring of other, higher value tasks but in the choice to withdraw from presence. The latter is accompanied by the ignoring of other, higher value tasks, but I was not making the choice with the intent of having lack of something but gain of something, and that gain w...