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.