Church and Community

Every one of them needs three things: a friend, a responsibility, and nurturing with the good word of God.

--Gordon B. Hinckley

Gordon B. Hinckley was speaking about how to turn 'converts' into 'members' of the LDS church when he said this line. But I think he probably meant it applied to all members of the church, new or old. Community is a very important part of a person's conversion into Mormonism. Or really, any organization. People like to feel loved, safe, and similar to those around them. It forms a virtual security blanket that they can hold on to.

When I say people need community, some need it more than others. I feel much less need for community than many people I know. In fact, I would be completely content with one or two close friends. Beyond that, I just don't have the capacity for community. So I never fit into that part of church.

I had many responsibilities in the church when I was active, but honestly, I don't think this really helped or hurt my relationship with the church and gospel. I think this is the reciprocation of community; serving others. Okay, I admit it, I was always terrible at home teaching. :) But I did enjoy the opportunity to actually serve the families I was assigned to. Or others. Service is really one of the parts of church that I have no qualms with. I even told my bishop that I am willing to serve.

I really don't know where the nurturing part comes in. I mean after going to church for 30+ years I was to the point that the lessons I was hearing were so boring and old that I was not getting any new nourishment. It is like eating oatmeal three meals a day for a year; it may be good at the start, but it gets old. And ultimately, you need something else besides oatmeal. I went and found something else to nourish me. The only problem was that it turned out to be very incompatible with the church's teachings. Not only was it incompatible, but it felt better; it made more sense and required my brain to jump through fewer hoops to feel at peace. A whole new world was opened up to me when this box opened. I drank deeply from the firehose of 'the best books' but I admit that by this time I was really no longer learning by faith.

These three things probably would keep many of the new converts active. Was I was doomed from the start to fall away from the church because the three things that everyone needs just were not what I needed? Ho hum.

Beyond Mere Replication

We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination.

--Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

By nature, all organisms will tend to look out for their own (genes) best interest. That is what The Selfish Gene is all about. It is not about a gene that makes organisms selfish, but rather how the genes will ultimately program organisms to better replicate themselves. Not that genes have that kind of foresight, but it is more of a trial and error, feedback-reinforced cycle that we call natural selection. Basically, genes that fail to propagate to the next generation will not be seen again. Replicate or die.

In many cases this causes the organisms themselves to behave in rather selfish manners. This includes humans. But as humans, we are among the few species that might possibly rise above this selfish gene-level programming to be better individuals and better as a whole.

"I'm gonna tell Dad." "I share no kinship with that individual!"

--SMBC episode 3101 by Zach Weiner

Life as a 'higher' organism, whatever that may mean, implies to me that our concern should be more than just what our genetics would dictate. In the cited SMBC episode, the mother says that she has no kinship with her child's father. While she has no kinship with the father, she has a vested interest in keeping him around so he can contribute energy in ensuring success of THEIR offspring. But maybe it rings more true in this comic strip because the mother now has a cloned daughter that carries 100% of her DNA, so there is not as much need for the sexually produced daughter that only carries 50% of her DNA. We don't currently have a way for people to clone themselves commercially, so our most selfish of desires (to live forever, either ourselves or through our DNA legacy) cannot be fulfilled quite yet. But I digress....

Our legacy is carried on through our offspring which each carry 50% of our DNA. Because the portion carried may overlap, there is no way to guarantee that all of our DNA is copied into our children, but obviously the more kids we have the higher the probability that we have not missed any of our DNA. But what I would like to argue is that it is not just our kids that carry our DNA. Each of our parents shares half our DNA. And our aunts and uncles share a quarter, as do our grandparents and grandchildren. Our first cousins share one-eighth of our DNA. Or wait, they share 99.99% of our DNA. What am I thinking?!? We are all HUMAN, which means we all share 99.99% of our DNA. Hell, we share 99.5% of our DNA with chimpanzees, and we don't even count them as humans. What I am trying to get at here is that we have moved the US and THEM line too far up the tree. If we push it back just to the point that separates us from the rest of Mammalia, then that leaves a big US. Like almost seven billion of us. Say it again.... There are almost seven billion of *us*. You and I are one kind. You and I may not have the same mother, but we are siblings. Nearly identical in every way except those that don't count (hair color, skin color, eye color, height, weight, strength, etc.)

This is our chance to take that step, to learn ourselves what it means to be inclusive, to teach our kids to love humankind, each and every one. There is no reason for killing. There is not reason for violence. There is no reason for hurt. Realization of who we are (NOT sons and daughters of a vengeful god), brother, sister, mother, father, all of the same family, can lead to a world of peace, a world where we can grow and become much more than mere replication could have ever imagined.

In Science We Trust

How can you trust quantum mechanics, if you haven’t done the requisite experiments yourself? ... Or how can you trust that the government isn’t putting mind-control drugs into the fruit you buy in the supermarket, etc. etc.

--Scott Aaronson

Along these lines, how can we know that God exists? Or Santa, or the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy. If you were anything like me, you figured out that the latter three were stories that your parents told you when you were young because they were part of your culture. You may have asked the right questions to figure it out or maybe a friend or sibling dropped the bomb and your world kind of unraveled for a bit. You may have needed to push a little farther to see exactly how much of your life up to that point was merely a lie.


When all your friends at school forsake Santa, the first is seen as the smartest of the bunch because he or she figured it out. Yet when someone forsakes God, it is a different story altogether. Anathema. Dissociation of friends and family. What is the difference here? Is it that God really exists and Santa doesn't? How can one make that claim? Scott Aaronson hit on the answer that sounds reasonable to me:

So we’re extremely lucky that science hit on a solution to these problems—the only workable solution, really—back in the 17th century. The solution is to open up every question to scrutiny, discussion, and challenge by any interested person. Assertions gain credibility by surviving public criticism—and that’s just as true in math as it is in experimental sciences. I believe many theorems even though I haven’t checked the proofs myself, because I know that if there were an error, then someone else could’ve made a name for themselves by finding it.

I didn't figure out that God was no different than the Santa Claus, but why? Because everyone else around me believed in God too. Maybe they were Catholic or Presbyterian instead of Mormon, but it's the same God. I didn't figure it out so soon because early on, all my elders believed in God (but not Santa Claus) so it was acceptable (and somewhat expected) for me to believe. If I had been born in Iran, I would no doubt have believed the good word of Islam (one variety or another).

If you move a continent or two over, you will find that their God may not by your God. Since both are making the claim that they are the one and only true God (I mean really, who wants to worship a God that says other gods are cool too), at maximum, only one of them can be true. It is still possible that neither are true. If we take all the gods of humankind and sit them in a room with each other, then use this idea that only one of a pair of them can be true until we have reduced the room to only one god, which god would that be? Then we take it a step further and invite someone into the room that does not recognize that god as his or her God and suddenly there are no gods in the room. Just like with science, we crowd source the best solution by having all interested parties attempt to debunk and find holes in theories, we have used the people from all over the world to show that none of the gods are the one and only true God. What are we left with then? Teapots, flying high in orbit, painted with invisible unicorns.

What are we really left with if nobody can really show that any supernatural power exists? Nature. How do we explain nature? Science. How can we trust in science? Test it again and again. Poke holes in it and disprove it where possible. Every time we tear down a theory or hypothesis, we count down one fewer thing that might be true. As each theory and hypothesis is confirmed by another test, we put one more nail in the coffin of the gods. Because the theories are repeatable and not merely the 'revealed truth' from god, others can experiment and show that they are real. No religion can do the same for their gods or beliefs.

Thus, in science we trust.

Q.E.D.

American Gods

This is a bad land for gods.... The old gods are ignored. The new gods are as quickly taken up as they are abandoned, cast aside for the next big thing. Either you've been forgotten, or you're scared you're going to be rendered obsolete, or maybe you're just getting tired of existing on the whim of people.

--Shadow in American Gods by Neil Gaiman

American Gods was a really fun read. I like the strange world that Neil Gaiman came up with. Or was he just writing the reality that he saw? That is what I would like to discuss here. Ever since the possibility that God may not be what I think He is, I started to wonder why religion and gods exist at all. This story explains many of my thoughts in a very artful way.

Gods started out as a way to explain all the things.

 At some point in our prehistory, one of our ancestors found the mental capacity to think about something besides survival; food, protection, and reproduction. They had questions like: why lightning? or what after death? or cause of random event? Maybe the first questions were even more basic than these. "Some external power makes it so" seems to be a reasonable answer when you don't have any other answer. As one person told another person this idea, it spread like wildfire because there was no evidence to the contrary.

People believe. It's what people do. They believe. And then they will not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjurations. People populate the darkness; with ghosts, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe: and it is that belief, that rock-solid belief, that makes things happen.

--Shadow in American Gods by Neil Gaiman

We believe not because we want to believe, but because the evidence compels us to believe. It would have made my life a lot easier to just believe that God exists and not deal with the fallout with my believing family, but the evidence compelled me to believe that there probably (very, very, very likely) is no god, thus my exodus from religion. But when fire still seems like magic, and lightning can only be explained by supernatural powers, believing in a god only makes sense.

There are fewer things that need explaining.

 The gods (and mostly Yahweh, because he was the main God in the region at that time) started to loose their mighty grasp on the minds of their creators sometime around the Renaissance. People started to think, reason, and understand; science started to explain the mysteries of God. Copernicus, in my opinion, though he was a Christian, pried back the first finger of God, allowing later freethinkers to finish Him off. Stating that the earth is NOT the center of the universe starts one thinking about why God would have created humankind, the pinnacle of His creation, off to the side, putting the sun at the center of our galaxy instead. So maybe we aren't as important as we thought? As science and reason advanced, we found that lightning (and all weather in general) is not caused by a vengeful or loving god, but rather it is a natural part of the earth's ecosystem, water cycle, etc. The same goes for earthquakes and volcanoes, tsunamis and hurricanes. Not a vengeful god that is trying to punish us, but rather the earth, doing what it does without malice or forethought. Medicine has come a long way from humours and leeches to antibiotics and DNA sequencing. Thanks to Darwin, humankind no longer has reason to doubt that we are cousins to every living thing on earth.

Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.

--American Gods by Neil Gaiman

The gods are going extinct.

It would take hours to list all the things that were once ascribed to gods that we now have non-supernatural reasons for. The tenacious grip of god has turned tenuous. The gods of yesteryear are merely the stuff of myth and legend today. If it were not for the vast quantity of writing and digital caching of the Internet, they would fade away even faster. For this same reason, it seems that Yahweh (and Allah for that matter, though they are really just two names for the same God) have had a strong grip on the world because their stories are immortalized in the written word.

If it makes you more comfortable, you could simply think of it as metaphor. Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman, an ironist, a father....

--American Gods by Neil Gaiman

Someday, I expect, that even though it says in the writing that those books of scripture are the word of God written by his holy prophets, people will come to realize that it is just a story (and not a very good one at that). They will realize that religion is a metaphor, a tool that was used to calm the doubts and fears of the masses to allow civilization to flourish.

What is religion anyway?

Yes, I believe that we are genetically inclined to believe in religion. I think that Richard Dawkins has some great points in The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion.  I think that religion evolved as a social mechanism to help mankind form societies where intelligence, peace and prosperity could thrive, thus further separating us from our cousins and reaffirming the dominance of our species. But, as Dawkins says in The Selfish Gene, "Whenever a system of communication evolves, there is always the danger that some will exploit the system for their own ends." This is one of the dangers of religion: leaders wielding their power for their own ends, usually with detrimental effect to many others. Now that science has squeezed all the gods into the cracks of the unknown, another one of the issues I have with religion is that it reinforces ignorance and praises blind faith. I find it hilarious that many Mormons (members and leaders) are terrified of reading "anti-Mormon literature" because it can pull you away from the true teachings of the church. Yet, if there are things that are that dangerous to your "truths" you may want to examine those truths again to see if they match up with reality.

Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them. Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for a moth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses.

--The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

As terrible as the phrase sounds (and I think the pointed wording was on purpose, because we all know that Richard Dawkins is an ass), it really rings true to me. I believed as a child with all my heart in the truth of the gospel as taught by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I knew it was true because I was taught that it was true. I had become a carrier to pass it onto my children as well. And I did. Isn't that how viruses spread? Or how 'viral marketing' works? One person to the next because of how great it is. When you are a believer, your religion is the one true religion and it is great, so you want to pass it on. The newly indoctrinated take over the cause and make it their own.

Now if religion did no harm, I would not have so much problem with it. But you saw how the gods in American Gods fought each other. Their subjects do as well. They are commanded by their gods to conquer other unbelieving nations and impose the good word on the infidels. Nearly universally, they oppress women and homosexuals (and every other minority). Because of this, I am somewhat anti-religious. Yes they do great good, but until we can convince the leaders of these religions of the need for HUMANITY, that there is no "us and them," that we should not be fighting, but helping, lifting up instead of oppressing, most all religions should be torn down.

Now I get off my high horse.

100 Reasons Why Dr. Hovind is Stupid

Sorry for the title, I know that is a straw man attack, but in his own words, he should be calling himself stupid. Really, though, the things Dr. Hovind preaches are ridiculously stupid. All of this to prove that his book of scripture is true.

Recently, I watched 100 Reasons Why Evolution is So Stupid, a talk by Dr. Kent Hovind given in Coeur d'Alene, ID, sometime ago. What a joke! Apparently he thinks that if he makes stupid little jokes then people will believe whatever he says. Even as a lay person in the world of science (geology, biology, and physics), I was able to debunk almost all of his arguments as he brought them up. The things people will believe! People living alongside dinosaurs. Ha!

Then I read How Good Are Those Young-Earth Arguments? by Dave Maston. Now we have some real arguments.

I can't stand the way young earth creationists attempt to use "science" to prove their stance is correct. The biggest blunder is that they seem to cling onto the one, obviously incorrect piece of evidence that does not fit with the rest of the very cohesive mountain of evidence. My biggest laugh was all the incorrectly radiometric dating blunders; living mollusks that are millions of years old, etc.

Anyway, if you are up for a good laugh and have a bit of spare time, give those two a shot.

Root of All Belief

I am at root a physical thinker and learner, but when that is not possible, I think my next best learning language is visual. I can't listen to people drone on and expect to learn half of what is expected. I didn't have a physical representation of God, revelation, the spirit, priesthood, etc., to see how it all related, so how better to know what I believe that to map it out visually.

I planned this great little application (originally php, later javascript) that would allow me to add 'Tenets' and relate them to each other logically (IF -> THEN, AND, OR, NOT, etc.) to make a web of belief. It was a great idea, but really flawed at its root: I didn't have absolute knowledge of much at all in which to ground my beliefs; I really only had a belief with some certainty.

It turns out that I was not the first one to come up with the idea of probabilistic logic. When I read about it, I was amazed at how well it fit my problem. All I had to do was make my Tenets application into a probabilistic logic network. Then I could see how much I really believe.

By this time, I had already pretty much come to the conclusion that my beliefs were all rooted in the idea that God exists. If God exists, it would make sense that God would want to create wonders (earth, the universe, and mankind) and would want to talk to us through revelation. Mormon theology is deeply rooted in revelation; prophetic and personal. From there, we get all other manner of beliefs: priesthood, miracles, ordinances, church organization, etc. We can trace it all back to God. If God doesn't exist, then it is all moot. Thus my radical change from a believing Mormon to an atheist, agnostic, or whatever. It's not that I found a religion that explains my purpose better, it is that I don't believe in ANY religion. As Dawkins put it, I had already stopped believing in all the other gods (thought of them as nice, interesting, or weird myths) and just took it one step further to stop believing in the last god that I had held onto since my childhood.

Since I had ruled out the root of all belief, my religious views crumbled and I kind of found my Tenets application no longer necessary. But I was thinking that someday it might be nice to revisit and put scientific discovery in where God once was. How do I explain the universe now? Someday when I get around to it, I will dust off my javascript skillz and make something cool.

The Impossibility of Atheism

Emotionally I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time.

--Isaac Asimov

Logically speaking, it is impossible to prove the non-existence of something. Or is it? Where is the logical flaw in:

1. If A then not B
2. A
3. Not B

Where A is some natural phenomenon, B is the existence of God.

All we have do is find something that is incongruous with the existence of God and poof! God formally no longer exists. Philosophically speaking, I am in way over my head here.  People have been working on this problem for thousands of years. So really all this does is show that my thoughts really aren't any higher than your thoughts.

The book "36 Arguments for the Existence of God" gives way better proofs than I could come up with. Well, it rebuts all the proofs for the existence of God that are very clever, showing that none of them hold water. But still, none of them prove that God does not exist. It just shows how hard it is to prove that God does exist (even though logically speaking, that is supposed to be the easier case to prove.)

In the end, I don't think it is necessary to prove one way or the other. God has failed to give sufficient proof of his/her/its existence and science has done a great job of providing evidence that God did not take part in X physical law. Or more correctly, science has provided evidence that God was not required to take part in X physical law. When I look at the human eye, I see a very flawed, yet quite wondrous organ. But when a intelligent design believer looks at the human eye, they see the hand of God. We see what we want to see, believe what reinforces what we already believe and leave the rest of it outside our boxes.

So I think I will join Isaac Asimov and say that for all intents and purposes I am an atheist. If God really wants people to believe, he/she/it will have to do a lot better job of providing evidence of existence. And don't tell me that God can't provide evidence of existence without taking away our agency. An all-powerful, all-knowing, omni-present God should certainly be able to provide a way. If not, they lack the power to convince me.

You Can't Legislate Stupidity

Sometimes I have to step back and shake my head at the stupidity of some folks. Your boy is turning five years old this week, so what should you get him? Yup, that's right, a rifle. Not a BB gun or a pellet gun. A .22 caliber rifle. A killing machine. For a five year old. Huh?

I can't even begin to imagine the sorrow that is in these Kentucky parents' minds. This is a real tragedy that could have been prevented.

Ban assault rifles! Ban large ammo clips! Take away all the guns! Require background checks!

Back up. You can't legislate everything. You can't, for example legislate terrorism. Sure, you can say, "It's against the law to be a terrorist." But will that really stop anyone from being a terrorist? You can't legislate greed. But most of all, you can't legislate stupidity.

Sure, you can try. You are required to use this strappy thing in your car while you drive to help keep you safe. And yet how many stupid people do you see driving without seat belts? It's their neck on the line.

Would a law banning parents from giving guns to minors have prevented this tragedy? I doubt it. Because those same parents that are willing to give guns to minors are likely to also have unsecured guns around the house, which is just as good as a birthday gift. This poor girl was not the first child to be fatally shot by another child and will most definitely not be the last.

Let us all think twice about the wonder of life and how easily it can slip away. May we all take care to instill proper fear and respect of lethal devices into the minds of our children so they can discern between a toy and an implement of death. And until they can be trusted to know the difference, may we take extra care to keep them safe. This is just common sense.

What is a Friend

Friends are folks that despite yourself
Are beside you, buoyant as can be.
Like family, but not quite the same
'Cause they fell from a different tree.

No need to judge a friend or argue;
He's not your cousin or brother.
Accepting differences between you and me
Requires no common mother.

--Me

Sorry for the cheesy poetry. I occasionally get the urge to wax poetic and I am going to blame it on my gay dad. His execution is just more refined than mine.

I don't have a lot of friends. Well, at least not close ones. I did get an email from a friend that I haven't seen since I stopped going to church saying we should have lunch sometime. I was curious to know if it was because he missed our snarky conversations at the back of the primary room or if he was prompted by someone at church to reach out again to the less active. After I asked myself the question, I think I have to go with the former because he doesn't really seem the type to reach out if he doesn't want to.

Lunch confirmed it. He just wanted to say hi and catch up a bit. It was very nice and refreshing. Not to mention good food too. He didn't ask why he hasn't seen me at church more than twice in the last year. We talked about work, vacation, houses, kids, etc. All safe topics. I don't know if he was itching to talk about my apostasy or not, but this is a thank-you note because he didn't.

Leaving the church was a pretty easy decision for me. Once I made up my mind, I feel like I am fairly OUT. But telling people never really got easier. I haven't really told any of my friends that I am not that close to. Most of my friends from BYU don't know that I am an atheist (or agnostic or whatever). It doesn't really come up. And I don't feel it is really that important to our relationship (not that I am really *close* with most of my facebook friends). So I carry on not telling people. If anyone asks, I won't hold back, but not even friends from church that I have talked to ask. In a way, that helps me because our friendship should not be based on religion or theology. I don't ask any of them if they believe in the flying spaghetti monster. And I don't care.

Maybe it's not telling friends that is difficult. The hard part is bringing it up in the first place. Why is it so hard to talk about that 900 lb. gorilla that is standing next to me?

Comedy v. Tragedy

God's sense of humor is very different from our own.
He does not laugh at the simple
"man walks into a bar" joke. No, God needs
complex irony and subtle farcical twists
that seem macabre to you and me.
All that we can hope for is that God
God got his good laugh and
a tragedy such as this will never happen again.

--South Park (Season 7, Episode 10, Grey Dawn)

After I finished watching all 16 available seasons of South park, I thought I should mention one of the more striking quotes. When I watched season 7, it was much closer to the Newtown, CT, massacre than now. But I still think the quote is applicable. Trey Parker and Matt Stone both say they are not atheist, but they do freely poke at all things, including religion. I think that is a fairly healthy habit to do; poke and prod at things that don't make sense.

Anyhow, this episode was about old people driving cars and killing people. But really, any tragedy, disaster, terrorist attack, etc. will work fine in this situation. If you believe in God, it makes it very hard to explain some of these tragic events. How could a loving God allow that kind of stuff to happen to His children? The LDS theology says that He cannot interfere with mankind's agency, so bad things happen because of bad people. But that doesn't account for natural disasters. Do they happen because of bad people too? I suppose some of the stuff in scripture did. That does not sound like much of a loving God; vengeful, jealous, and hateful, more like. You know, the kind of God that this quote so aptly describes.

I personally reject the notion of a God that is just messing with us. I refuse to worship such a being. I also reject the notion of a God that supposedly loves us and yet allows such terrible things to happen. Hell, I am a mere mortal and can get my kids to not kill each other. I can teach them love, respect, honesty, and all manner of goodness BECAUSE I AM HERE. God would get a lot farther in His desires for all mankind to worship his great name if he were physically here doing good things for His children that He supposedly loves.

In the meantime, I will just have to give credit for all the terrible things that happen on this planet to the same place I give credit for all the wonderful things that happen: mankind. We as a species span the spectrum from unbelievably horrible to spectacularly wonderful. And I will attribute to any God the same credit I give to Santa Claus: nothing.

Caffè Lento

es·pres·so

/eˈspresō/

Noun

Strong black coffee made by forcing steam through ground coffee beans.

len·to

/ˈlentō/

Noun

Strong black coffee made by steeping ground coffee beans in cold water overnight.


I like a good espresso. I think I would LOVE a good sweet espresso from northern Italy. But I can't make espresso without a fancy machine. I don't drink enough espresso to make a fancy machine worthwhile financially (unless you count the plane tickets to Italy.) So I have had to take another path to extract that elusive coffee flavor from those tricky beans.

Words of Wisdom

Drinking coffee is contrary to the Word of Wisdom, which says 'hot drinks are not for the body or belly.' Modern prophets of the LDS church have said that Joseph really meant coffee and tea when he said 'hot drinks.' I disagree with that, having done my research into the life and times of Joseph. I would argue that he really meant hot drinks (water, coffee, tea, hot cocoa, soup, etc.) when he said hot drinks. This is because he believed that introducing hot liquids into your body was bad for your humors and lead to sickness. So according to Joseph's philosophy, an iced tea or an iced lento would be perfectly fine. Not that I need Joseph's approval of what I drink.

My solution: caffè lento. The opposite of caffè espresso, with regards to method, but the same in purpose. Espresso uses the perfect balance of heat, pressure, grind, roast, and bean to produce the pure essence of the coffee bean. Lento, on the other hand uses a cold-water extraction technique to pursue that same essence.

I start with freshly roasted beans. I think this makes the biggest difference. Beans roasted more than a week ago are too stale. Then I grind them with an espresso grind (pretty fine, but not quite turkish grind.) I am using a hand grinder that produces a bit of a range from fines to coarse. My guess is that even a turkish grind would do well in this. It does not seem to be as large a factor as the freshness of the roast. I grind daily in a single batch. Then add two parts water (by volume) to the ground coffee to my half-pint jar. The jar is nearly full by now; the coffee grounds don't really fit unless you pack them in a little bit. Put the lid on, shake several times over the next few hours and wait until the next day. In the morning, I take the brew, shake it, and pour it into my Aeropress filter and press the lento into my mug. I top off the mug with ice-cold milk and enjoy. This makes an iced lento. You can also use steamed milk if you want a hot lento.

The result is so smooth and flavorful without the bitter and burnt flavors that bad espresso has. I am still saving my pennies for that trip to Italy to try out a real, sweet espresso. But in the meantime, I have my sweet lento.

I used to say: I don't drink coffee, I drink espresso. Now my tune is: I don't drink coffee, I drink lento.

Telling Mom: Revisited

Mom, it's okay. I'm okay. I'm an atheist.

--The Thinking Atheist

This is the sort of conversation I had with my mother in person. It hurts more than words can say. People can say terrible thing (me included) in situations like these. I wish sometimes that it hadn't gone down like it did. I hope when my kids come to me with something, I can react differently.

Yes this is staged, but it rings so true.

Target practice

As the gun debate rages across the country, the snarky part of me says that we should forget about regulating guns because bad guys are bad marksmen.

Have you ever noticed in an action film that the villains have terrible aim? They don't seem to be able to hit the broadside of a barn at point blank range.

In real life, we now have an example of comic-book villains. A pair of thieves tries to rob a store. They have handguns. The owner has a baseball bat. The owner wins with only a shot to his LEG. One of the thieves was also hit (by 'friendly' fire?) Watch the video. Either the thieves are not trying very hard or they forgot that villains can't shoot.

The shop owner credits his survival to God's help. I credit the thieves for being idiots. Or maybe the mystical comic book power that makes villains unable to shoot straight. Either one is more likely than requiring a god to exist to save the man.  I mean really, what are the odds that a person is not killed by nine shots from less than 6 feet away? One in a million? One in a billion? I am pretty sure that the odds that a god exists are a lot longer.

Cell-icide: drawing a line in the sands of abortion

What bothers me is that if a rover
on Mars discovered a single cell organism,
the science world would be abuzz
about the discovery of life.

But discover a single cell organism
in the human uterus, and they refuse
to recognize it as life.

Hypocrites.

--Repeated again and again on the internet

I recently saw (for the thousandth time) this comment on Facebook. This pro-life argument lacks steam because it's not that I don't recognize the fertilized egg in a uterus as life, it's that I don't recognize that it is human. So terminating its life is no different to me than pulling a carrot from the ground, using anti-bacterial hand wash or squishing a mosquito. The true hypocrites in this are those that refuse an abortion to 'save a life' when the mother may die or the child, when born, may die an early death anyway from some terrible debilitating disease. Who are you to sentence a mother to death or another human to lead a life that he never would have chosen to live?

I think we can all agree that killing humans is bad. The big question then becomes, "What is a human?" The North Dakota 'Personhood Amendment' would define that a fertilized egg, or zygote, is human and therefore unlawful to abort. I think they could go farther. Even human egg cells are alive. They respirate just like any other human cell. Human sperm cells are alive as well. In some religions it is already unlawful according to God's laws to 'spill seed' or masturbate. Enlisting a federal ban on masturbation might help prevent killing all these innocent sperm. We should also take this procreation debate one step further and ensure that no human egg cells are wasted; we should ban menstruation. It would be required for all women of menstruating age to become pregnant to prevent the loss of the precious life of these human eggs.

Sound a little bit crazy to you? Me too.

I don't know a man alive who would vote on a *secret ballot* for a ban on masturbation in order to 'save seed.' Maybe publicly they would support a ban, but not when it comes down to the actual vote.  And I am sure that all pro-life women would support a ban on menstruation requiring them to be constantly pregnant to save their eggs from certain doom and destruction.

Let's get real. We need to draw a line in the sand, but let's do it with logic, not emotion; science, not god.

What IS the difference between the amoeba on Mars and a human zygote? Potential. The amoeba will not grow into a multi-cellular, intelligent, life form. I am going to pull a fast one and swap out that amoeba for a chimpanzee zygote. Now, both will grow into multi-cellular, intelligent, life forms. The only difference is that one will grow into a human and the other a chimpanzee. Since we kill chimpanzees all the time, it is okay to abort a chimpanzee embryo. Wait! We kill humans all the time too....

If we use DNA to compare the difference between the human and chimpanzee zygotes, we find that we share 98.7% of our DNA in common with chimpanzees. So we are really close. At the zygote, blastocyst and embryo stages, I am pretty sure that it would be impossible to tell a chimpanzee from a human. Well other than the obvious fact that chimpanzee embryos grow in a chimpanzee uterus. It should be possible to find some point at which it is obvious that a human fetus is really a human fetus by observation.

Just because it looks like a human does not necessarily make the thing a human. Can it sustain life outside of the uterus? If no, I would still argue that it still has a parasitic relationship with its host. Why didn't I say mother? Because theoretically we could come up with some machine that could serve as a host to a fetus. Doctors can already keep a fetus alive long before the 40-week mark.

We can take this too far in the other direction too, though. A one-year-old child cannot survive on his own. He requires food, shelter, protection, and love. That sounds like a parasitic relationship to me. So really only independent adults are human. You don't like your needy teenager? Abort him!

It turns out that we can really draw a line in the sand anywhere from pre-conception through early adulthood. Almost all using the same logic. The saddest part of this is that while we debate this, people are dying; people are getting killed. Abortion clinics are getting bombed. Teenage girls are dying from back-alley abortions gone wrong. Where is the humanity. I don't care if you believe in a god or not. Do you love your fellow humans? Maybe you don't believe that it is right to have an abortion. So don't have an abortion. But understand that maybe someone else has a different point of view on what a human is. Maybe you are not human to them.

Personally, I don't believe that abortion is a good practice. If you don't want to have a baby, don't have unprotected sex. But I can't fault a person for drawing the line at 10 or 20 weeks because I really don't know if that is a human yet. Because there is so much gray area in this matter, it is hard to say exactly where to draw the line. I don't want to snuff out human life, but I don't yet really understand what it means to be human. I am on a journey of learning to find that answer for myself. In the mean time, I don't plan on killing anybody: pro-life or pro-choice.

Green Tea and Nachos

We do not create our destiny; we participate in its unfolding. Synchronicity works as a catalyst toward the working out of that destiny.

--David Richo

I needed to use the facilities. I walk to the nearest location, but lo and behold, they are closed for cleaning.  I turn around and hit the down button on the elevator. I was planning on only going down one floor, but a lady walks up to use the elevator too. Guessing that it is more likely that she is headed to the ground floor, I press that button because there are facilities that I can use on the ground floor too, right next to the elevators.  Once I have finished with my business, I head to the café, thinking that while I am down there, maybe I can grab a cup of tea and let my brain unwind a bit. Tea instead of coffee both because of the hour and because if I choose green tea, it is zero calories instead of half-and-half plus sugar in my coffee. I get a cup of green tea (which tastes like alfalfa hay in my opinion,) and run into a co-worker while waiting for the tea to steep. We talk for 15 minutes, during which time I empty my cup. As we are leaving, it turns out that the café has out a table with complementary DIY nachos. I can't say no to free nachos. I get some. So green tea and nachos for me because I had to use the facilities at exactly the time they were closed and happened to have a fellow elevator passenger that was probably headed for the first floor.

Was I meant to get tea and nachos today or was it just a coincidence? No matter what you believe, I thought it was an interesting cascading chain of events.

Ethical Omnivore

I was poking around on the interwebs and found a New York Times article encouraging readers to write a 600-word essay on why eating meat is ethical.

I am only a year late for entering the contest, but I still felt compelled to write something.

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I was once a Christian who believed that God created mankind and gave us dominion over the beasts of the field.  We were to be good stewards over the earth; being kind to the animals and only using them prudently.  My family raised beef cows for food and as part of our family's livelihood.  There was nothing wrong with this picture.  When I grew older and realized that not all cows lead as happy lives as the ones I raised, I tried to buy meat only from local, more trusted sources instead of CAFOs.  I also started eating less meat when I realized how wasteful (in terms of energy) meat is compared to plants.  I was at peace with my food habits; eating mostly plants, but some meat too.

Then I lost God.

My basis of morality was suddenly no longer on the shoulders of an omniscient being; it was mine alone to bear.  When I realized that for the most part nothing changed, it was not too bad.  Then I realized that I am not a vegan.  I kill (or more correctly, pay others to kill) animals for my food.  Killing is wrong; that is one of my morals.  Knowing that my nine-year-old daughter has a way with reasoning, I put the question to her:  "Is it okay to kill animals for food?"  She answers without hesitation, "Yes.  They kill each other for food too."  So we can kill them, but they cannot kill us, I think to myself.  I ask, "Is it okay if an animal kills a human?"  Her head cocked to the side, with a quizzical look on her face, "Yes."  Obviously a stupid question.

From the mouth of my family's ethicist, it *is* okay to eat the flesh of other animals so long as they are allowed that same privilege.  When a mountain lion mauls your child and eats him for breakfast, there is no need for alarm.  Run!  Don't shoot unless you need to eat breakfast too.

Is eating meat unethical because it requires the death of another animal?  All animals die.  You are an animal and you will die too.  Eating plants requires us to kill living organisms too; does that make eating plants unethical?  A cow that lead a happy life, eating grass and resting in the shade of a tree does not care a whit what happens to his muscle tissue after he dies.  Really, what is so different between plants and animals?  We are all made of the same DNA.  We are all alive because of the energy of the sun.  We are all cousins; trees, fish, monkeys, humans, grass, lichens, etc.  If eating animal flesh is wrong, I would argue that eating plant flesh is every bit as wrong.

Or is eating meat wrong because we *kill* the animal?  If I were that cow, I would certainly rather die at the mercy of a gun than be torn apart by wolves.  Just because death by wolves happens in nature does not mean it is the best end.

I believe that you should be vegan not because it is more ethical, but because it is a more healthy lifestyle.

You know what really is unethical?  Treating animals poorly.  The pain and suffering that animals in so many CAFOs and slaughter houses go through is unethical.  A quick, painless death is not so unethical; it is the most that I can hope for when my time is at an end.

Coping With Death

Life ends with death. A cruel thought. But unless that thought can be sufficiently internalized, processed, and de-stigmatized, life itself can become very unbearable indeed. Enter religion.

The Mormon faith (along with many others) teaches of one form of immortality. The kicker is that if you are good here in this life, you have the chance to be with your loved ones for eternity. Now isn't that a nice idea? Very soothing. *If* you are good enough to merit it.... So don't you worry about your father, mother, son, or daughter, you will see them again. Don't cry, they have returned to live with God. Don't mourn, they are happy now and you should be too. Well, that all assumes that *they* lived righteously enough to merit living with God again. Live righteously and you will live eternally ever after with them.

I never really mourned for my grandfather's death. At the age of 14, I had a unshakable knowledge that all would be well. Sure, I missed him, but I don't even remember shedding a single tear. Not when I first heard the news, not at the funeral, not when I played Taps at the cemetery. He was my mentor in the wood shop and working there was never the same without him. But he lived on in my memory. Now that I no longer believe that I will ever see him again, I feel like my religion took from me the one thing that could help me more than anything else now: my chance to grieve.

I probably would not really be thinking about death too much (being in the prime of my life and all) but a very close relative (who we will call "J") died a few months back. Well, he should have been more close, but to be honest, my relationship with him was more "on paper only" than what one might call a real relationship. I would see him about once a year and that was just because he liked my kids. Yet, since his death, in the intervening weeks, I have, on more than one occasion, shed a tear for him. It's not so much that I miss him, but that it was a shame that he is dead and that the last few years were so hard for him.

To be honest, I can see a lot of his characteristics in myself. This would likely be a lot more scary if I wasn't married to such a wonderful wife, who helps mitigate a lot of my anti-social behaviors. But when I look back at his life and see how full of pain it was (and how different it could have been,) it is like a little stab in the heart. I wonder if this is my weird way of grieving for him.

The kids were pretty shocked when they heard of J's death. But then, given their ages, this is the first death of anyone they were remotely close to that they can remember. Sure, they knew about the death of two great grandmas, but they really hardly knew either one of them at all.

Given that death is such a huge part of life (you know, the part that ENDS life) we really ought to have a better relationship with it.  Many people are afraid of the 'unknown' and face death with a lot of fear and trepidation. Our species goes to great lengths to avoid death; it invented religion as one escape. Some religions offer a way to 'cheat death' via resurrection and 'living forever.' Is this really cheating death or is it merely cheating life because you are not living for today?

Death is inevitable and something that we should all be comfortable with at the least. We don't have to necessarily WELCOME death, but in some cases, it is a blessed release from the pains of this world. Death, according to me, is quite completely the opposite of birth. We had no existence before birth except maybe that twinkle in your Mama's eye; we will have no existence after death except for the memories that live on in the minds of others. But the end itself is not to be feared.

A Good Cup o' Joe

Coffee is some weird stuff.  It is the seed of a fruit that grows on a bush only in low latitudes, but sometimes at high elevations. We pick the berries, ferment them, gather the seeds, dry them and then ship them all over the world. Then we roast them until they are nearly black, grind them up and extract their very essence with near-boiling water. Then we drink it and say, "Mmmmm."

But it's so bitter, sour, and harsh all by itself. So we add milk, or cream, and lots of sugar, maybe cinnamon or chocolate so we can get it down. All for what? The caffeine? We can get caffeine from other sources that aren't so unpalatable. Like Coke.

I recently read an article about how too much of the world destroys coffee by roasting it too dark. We burn it to a bitter crisp, when we should really be savoring its truer flavors. The darkest standard roast is the Spanish roast. It is nearly just charcoal. Not even shiny from oils; they all burned away. I won't touch that roast, I promise. Next in line of the darkest roasts is the Italian roast. They invented espresso. Shouldn't they know how to roast coffee? Then comes the French roast. You can't tell me that the French don't know good food and drink when they see it. Four notches down from there is American roast. This is a medium-light roast. Probably more what the coffee snobs in the article were looking for. I would like to try some but it is hard to find because all the coffee shops do French or Italian roasts. I still don't have a clue where I stand on the blackness of my beans, but I do have strong opinions about good flavor. I won't say it's good until I have tried it.

But I just made a pretty good cup of Joe. It is a "Dark roasted Central American and Indonesian coffees" that I purchased. I ground it to fine with my new "Porlex JP-30" handheld coffee grinder. I added 25g of this fine-ground coffee to 2oz cold water and let that sit overnight. Then I filtered it with my Aeropress, resulting in about 1.5oz of a rich coffee extract. I topped off the mug with cold soy milk and had an iced espresso. It was delicious. Low sugar, low fat, and vegan!

I will certainly try that one again. As well as continue to sample different coffees and such. But at one cup a day, it takes a while to go through a pound of coffee beans.

The Book of Mormon Musical

A couple of weekends ago, I was able to attend a performance of The Book of Mormon musical. In two words, it was "f@ckin' awesome." That is not language that I normally use, given it is pretty offensive to many people, but Trey Parker and Matt Stone have no trouble using it when creating their shows. The show had some very offensive material in it, but it seemed to be more an integral part of the show rather than its actual content; like the makeup or costumes for the characters.

Of course, parody isn't reality, and it's the very distortion that makes it appealing and often funny. The danger is not when people laugh but when they take it seriously—if they leave a theater believing that Mormons really do live in some kind of a surreal world of self-deception and illusion

--Michael Otterson, Head of Public Affairs for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

I don't think that anyone who actually watched the show thinks that Mormons are that crazy, living in a world of self-deception and illusion, but the truth is that many people (not just Mormons) really do live in that world. What I take from his quote is not that the danger is believing that Mormons live that way, but really, actually living that way. Living in reality (whatever that is) rather than self-deception is the only healthy way to live. I believe that humor is also an important part of a healthy life. Being a post-Mormon, part of me really wanted to see the Mormons getting poked in the eye. And they did, but it wasn't so bad as it could have been. I actually think that Trey and Matt took an almost sympathetic and kind sort of poking at the Mormons (and really at religion on a larger scale).  As my wife said, "It was very crude, but also kind of sweet."

I watched the South Park: About Mormons episode way back when I was still a true-believing Mormon. I found it amusing to hear a complete outsider's view of my beliefs and had to laugh a little. I didn't find it offensive and it did not lead me to lose my testimony. I would have to say that same about The Book of Mormon. It was funny to see a slightly twisted view of what Mormons really do believe. It was a great satire. As such, it gave a lot of food for thought. Some that the LDS church could use to feed its fleeing masses.

I have maggots in my scrotum!

--Village Doctor, The Book of Mormon Musical

The points chosen for abuse were exceptionally well chosen.

1. How can a first-world raised, nineteen (and now eighteen) year-old young man even start to comprehend the problems facing an impoverished, third-world village?
• Unless you have health, food, shelter, and safety, spiritual things don't matter. How can the Book of Mormon (or any book of scripture) cure your maggots, feed your family, keep you safe, etc.?
2. Is not acting on homosexual tendencies really just lying to yourself? Because lying is one of the big Ten.
• The song "Turn It Off" was hilarious.
3. Sal Tlake a-City does not really exist; it's a metaphor!
• All religion should be taken metaphorically. Otherwise you get terrible stuff happening.
4. Some take a lot more time to grow up.
• Arnold learned quickly that it didn't really matter what he was teaching the people; the important thing was to help them—in ways that really mattered at their level.
• Keven, on the other hand took a much longer time to really love the people and see that the Book of Mormon really could not help them (or at least until he could cure AIDS, secure the food supply, guarantee safety, and remove all scrotum maggots.)
5. Mormon Hell was a funny place.
• It's true that Mormon's have a different view on Heaven and Hell than much of the rest of Christianity, but abandoning your mission companion does not put you in the same place as Hitler or Genghis Khan.
• Mormon Hell really is anywhere you are, knowing that you could be somewhere better. So the second level of the Celestial Kingdom of Heaven would be Hell, knowing that you weren't in the first level. But to someone in the Terrestrial or Telestial worlds, both are evidence that where you are is Hell.
6. How is your story really better than mine?
• We all live believing some stories. It is likely that none of the stories in anyone's head are true. So why is the Book of Arnold any less precious than the Book of Mormon?
7. "Hasa diga eebowai" is not a bad way to live, but a better way might be to embrace a way of life that does not depend on God in the first place.