February 7, 2010

10 Reasons You’re Surrounded By Idiots

By wise sloth

Man laying in a hospital bed talking to a concerned woman says, "Doctor says it's because I'm surrounded by idiots."

 

1: Cultural Isolation

Great leaps in human progress have often come from the meeting of minds. The Crusades brought Europe out of the dark ages. Christianity would have never evolved out of Judaism were it not for the cultural diffusion the Romans brought to the Middle East.  The founding fathers of America based many of their political ideas on what they learned from thinkers all over Europe as well as the Native Americans.

The printing press made the ideas cheaper and easier to transport, and the internet has sped up the growth of human knowledge exponentially, but throughout history, our minds have been cut off from each other’s by physical, linguistic and political barriers… and they still are. If we had free energy, one language and no political barriers our knowledge would explode like an algae bloom in the ocean… but the people with the power to remove these stumbling blocks from our path fear change. So despite the globalization that is shrinking the world and bringing humanity together, all of our minds are still limited by the relative cultural isolation that remains.

 

2: Stress

The greater the disparity between the rich and poor becomes, the less wealth there is for the poor to fulfill their base needs/desires, much less achieve self-actualization. The harder and longer the poor are forced to work, the less time, energy, opportunity and motivation they have to turn their minds towards self-actualization and learning for the sake of learning.

Throughout history, the gap between the rich and poor has stretched and contracted in cycles, but the contractions have been few and far between. If human nature wasn’t to be so greedy, and the distribution of wealth had been more equitable all along, then the human race would have progressed at an exponentially faster rate, but since the vast majority of humanity has been poor and stressed throughout history, we’re suffering the compounded consequences of generations of ignorance.  Even today most people are still too stressed over their base needs/desires to turn their attention to becoming more complete people.

 

3: Peer Pressure

Humans don’t like it when people act differently than them. Our brains are designed to fear what they don’t know. It was a useful survival instinct for cavemen, but in modern society it mostly causes us to bully, insult, ostracize and find other ways to punish each other, for being different. One of the big reasons we’re all so dumb is because we’ve beaten the courage and inspiration out of each other.

Another consequence of fearing the unknown is that progress is by definition, deviant, which means humans tend to reject improving the status quo. History is full of examples of heroes who died trying to pull their fellow man out of the dark age, and humanity is still being dragged towards enlightenment kicking and screaming.

 

4: Media caters to the lowest common denominator

Mass media isn’t designed to enlighten its viewers. It’s designed to cater to its viewers most base desires: fortune, glory, excitement, sex, drama, and shiny things.  Mass media is puerile brain candy. If you always eat brain candy, and you never eat brain food, your brain regresses. The longer you stay in Stupid Land, the more you accept and defend stupid as reality.

 

5: Government doesn’t make education a priority

The world wouldn’t be so dumb if our governments devoted more resources to education than war. If we’d spent our entire war budget on education we could end the need for most of the world’s wars and prisons. Our leaders aren’t doing that though because it’s very difficult to exploit and manipulate highly educated people who are capable of solving all the world’s problems. The rich need the poor to stay poor, desperate and ignorant in order to exploit them. So they lobby our leaders to under-fund schools and over-fund the prison industry.

 

6: Academic philosophy has failed humanity

Ideally, school is supposed to teach students to be curious, to seek knowledge on their own, to ask questions and seek answers. Unfortunately, academia has suffered the same fate as any large, hierarchical bureaucracy that controls vast amounts of wealth and power. It has come to defend the status quo and ridicule, ostracize and punish deviant thinkers.

Universities rarely teach people to think for themselves. More often than not they teach students to think what their professors or the authors of their textbooks think. There are some good academic philosophy classes out there, but standardized tests don’t measure original thought. They measure memorization. So most curricula are designed to challenge students to study old thoughts and regurgitate them, which makes students experts at bragging about how much they know about the history of philosophy without doing much original or practical problem solving of their own.

 

7: Religion has failed humanity

There may be some force somewhere in the universe that fits some definition of the word God. There’s some evidence to suggest that might be possible, but there are mountains of evidence that all the religions humans have invented are mythologies. While these belief systems may make some good points and give people hope, there are catastrophic consequences to a single person, let alone entire world, of people basing their real-world decisions on a mythology-based understanding of reality.

History is full of examples of people hurting each other and discouraging progress in the name of religion. These aren’t anomalies. That’s what happens when you base your understanding of reality on mythology. That’s still happening, and it’s going to keep happening as long as people keep believing in mythology.

 

8: Our leaders don’t know what they’re doing, and they lie about it

Society is so lost we don’t even know we’re lost. This is true for the lowest street sweeper all the way up to the highest political leader. We have no idea what we’re doing, and we’re just guessing while putting on enough airs to make it look like we have it together.

In this kind of world, it’s natural to look to leaders for guidance, which wouldn’t be such a bad thing except that our leaders are just as blind as the rest of us. The only difference between us and them is that they’re better at lying. This causes two problems. First, when we attempt to emulate our leaders we end up emulating fools. The second problem is that our leaders are leading us in circles as our world becomes overpopulated and better armed.

 

9: Parents don’t know what they’re doing, and they lie about it

Nobody knows the meaning of life, and psychologists are still figuring out how what makes a mentally healthy human being. Most K-12 schools don’t teach philosophy, and I’ve never heard of one that teaches child psychology. Parents are mostly making up their parenting skills as they go along, but they still demand respect and obedience from the younger generation. So children are raised to look up to and emulate people who are doing their best at faking it until they make it. This haphazard approach to raising children into adults yields haphazard results.

 

10: Evolution has designed us to be stupid

All of these problems aren’t accidents or anomalies. They’re all inevitabilities considering how evolution has designed us. As surely as evolution gave us hands, feet, eyes, ears, and noses to help us survive it also gave us pain, pleasure, hunger, fear, love, greed and all the other emotions and base desires that steer us away from logical accountability. It also put shortcuts into our brains like cognitive dissonance, cognitive bias, schemas, trust for authority, fear of change, the fundamental attribution error and a slew of other mental processes that reduce our need to think about what we’re doing and encourages us to sleepwalk through life on autopilot.

The truth is ugly, but we have to face this demon in order to fulfill our potential. We were born to be stupid, and make no mistake, we are stupid. I don’t say this because I’m better than you. I’m no better than you. I’m stupid too. The big difference between me and the gangstas, rednecks, preps and religious fanatics that infuriate me day in and day out is that I’m afraid and ashamed of my stupidity whereas they celebrate theirs.

How terrified are you of your stupidity? Because the greater your terror is the more motivated you’ll be to do everything in your power to get unstupid. The more confident or even resigned with who you are the less critical of your own stupidity you’ll be and the more you’ll wallow in your own stupidity, infuriate the intelligent people around you (who you will have ignorantly mistaken for being stupid) and waste your life and lower humanity’s potential.

 

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February 7, 2010

16 Tips To Overcoming Writer’s Block

By wise sloth

A piece of paper sits next to a typewriter. On the paper are the words, "Stop the block!"

 

1. Know Thyself.

If you’re suffering from writer’s block it’s because something within your mind or your life is preventing the flow of ideas. The better you understand your motivation, strengths, weaknesses, resources, and your style, the better you’ll be able to use your brain to generate ideas effectively. In fact, I could end this list right now, because every other step boils down to self-awareness.

 

2. Analyze and reaffirm your motivation.

As a writer, if you truly loved to write then you would write no matter what. You might even write more often than is responsible. If you have to force yourself to write, then you need to seriously question whether or not writing is something you’re passionate about. If it’s not, that’s okay. Life is about defining yourself and exercising your free will. As long as you follow your passion you’re doing it right. If the only reason you’re writing is for fortune and fame, then even if you become rich and famous it will be because you’ve spent your life doing something you’re not passionate about, which is wasting your life.

If you do decide writing is something you’re passionate about, then you may want to write down why it’s important to you. If you ever get stuck or discouraged about writing, you can look back to your mission statement, your love letter, and remind yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. That alone may provide the motivation you need to get out of your slump.

 

3. Improve your technical skills.

Think of writing like baking a cake. There’s no right way to bake a cake, and if you make a career out of baking cakes by strictly following other people’s recipes, then your job will be as rote as any office cubicle job. So you may be tempted to get experimental and express yourself right from the beginning. However, if you don’t know how to bake a cake, you’re going to get very frustrated and discouraged when your experiments fail. If you would quit trying to be creative long enough to learn the core technical skill of cooking, then your job would be made exponentially easier, and you could modify the recipes quickly, creatively and effectively. If you’re having a hard time writing it might be because you don’t know how, and the only thing you can do to eliminate the frustration and discouragement you’re facing is to go back and study the fundamentals of how to write.

 

4. Improve your creative logic skills.

Typing is the final step of the writing process. 99% of the writing process is creating ideas. If you don’t know how to create ideas, then you don’t know how to be a writer. If you think creativity is magical, unscientific and can’t be taught, you’re wrong. If you want to write well, then you should study logic, the psychology of creativity and this blog: The science of thought/creativity

 

5. Have something to say.

If you can’t think of anything to say, then you should seriously question whether or not you have anything to say. Similar to point #2, if you have something so important and so vivid to say that you’d be saying it regardless of how well you’re able to express yourself, the words would just force themselves out of you. If you’re having a hard time writing, then put your paper down and turn off your computer. Spend some time thinking about what it is you have to say. If you can’t come up with anything, then writing well is the least of your problems. You need to go out and live life.

 

6. Live life, and observe it.

Your writing will only be as good as your comprehension of life, and in order to comprehend it, you need to experience it. If your writing is dull, it might be because it reflects the dullness of your life or your understanding of existence. The more you live, the bigger well of inspiration you’ll carry inside of you.

 

7. Resolve your problems in real life.

Writing uses all your mental faculties. Nothing ties up more of your mental capacity than stress. As a result, stress caused by real-life problems will stop your writing dead in its tracks. Likewise, happiness will give you energy and motivation to plow into your writing career. So in order to get back into writing, you need to solve your real-life problems, which are more important than writing anyway.

If there are problems in your life that are preventing you from focusing on your writing, you’re going to need to analyze and express them. Since writing involves analyzing and expressing life, you can kill two birds with one stone by writing about your problems. This also provides the added benefit of making your writing meaningful. Just be aware of the danger of getting locked into a cycle of wallowing in self-pity. This will make for boring, nauseating, melodramatic writing and won’t help you either.

 

8. Improve your health, or at least get some rest.

There doesn’t have to be anything wrong in your life in order to be depressed. In the same way that depression will sap your body’s mental and physical energy, an unhealthy lifestyle will also sap your body’s mental and physical energy. If you never seem to have the energy or motivation to write, it might be a symptom of an unhealthy lifestyle, and all the tips and tricks and how-to books in the world won’t help you until you start taking care of your body.

If you do live a relatively healthy lifestyle, you might just not be getting enough rest. Try eliminating some activities in your life that are stretching your time too thin and get some more sleep. Then you’ll have more energy to solve any problems in your life and clear up more time to get adequate rest and eventually to focus on your writing with a fresh, energetic mind.

 

9. Just say it.

Have you ever tried to express your feelings to someone you cared about, and after hours of trying to find the right words, you finally decided the only way to express yourself is to just blurt it out? That’s often how writing works. After you’ve blurted out what you had to say, then you can refine the details, but first, you need to create that solid, core expression.

This is also how you develop your own style: not by trying to perfect someone else’s art, but by saying what you have to say in your own voice. The only way you’re going to find your own voice is by saying to hell with everyone else and using your voice naturally.

 

10. Write crap.

If you’re getting frustrated and discouraged because nothing you write is perfect, then you should stop trying to write perfectly. Write crap. Have fun with it and actually get it onto paper. Then rewrite it. It’s like Nora Roberts once said, “I can fix a bad page. I can’t fix a blank page.”

 

11. Get in the mood to write.

If every time you sit down to write, you find that you’re not in the mood to, then you can either wait until you’re in the mood or you can get yourself into the mood. Any “how to write” book will tell you to get into a habit. Write at the same place, at the same time every day so your brain comes to associate that time of the day and that place with writing. Then your brain will automatically go into writing mode. You can further trick your brain by performing a ritual right before writing. It doesn’t matter what that ritual is, as long as it’s consistent. Eat eggs, take a walk, clean your room, wear the same hat, perform a séance. Once your brain associates this activity with writing it’ll put you in the mood to write.

You can take psychology one step further. Your brain is most creative when it’s in a relaxed state nearing mediation. This is why you hear many authors swear by drug use. Drugs force your brain into that alpha wave state of mind. However, drugs also burn your brain out over time. But you don’t need drugs to put your brain into its most creative state. You can do yoga before writing, lay down and rest, listen to music, read a book, watch a movie. Find some form of relaxation technique that will help get your brain into the right gear before trying to write, and you’ll find that writing will be that much easier to slip into.

 

12. Diversify.

Maybe you’ve tried to establish a pattern, but it worked so well that now you’re stuck in a rut. There may come a point where you’ll benefit more by diversifying your projects as well as your methodology. If you’re working on more than one thing at a time you can jump to another project when you get burned out on your current project. That will keep you working and allow you to come back to the burned out project with fresh eyes later.

Maybe all of your ideas aren’t waiting for you at your computer desk. Maybe some are at the park. Try writing in a notebook for a change. If you always write in a notebook try writing on a computer for a change. Try stream of consciousness writing, try brainstorming, try outlining. Try everything and figure out which combination works best for you. In order to be a good writer, you need to know what works for you. If you’re stuck in a rut it might be because you’ve neglected to figure out how you work best, and now is the perfect opportunity to finally figure that out by experimenting.

 

13. Reread your work.

One of the best ways to gear up for writing is to reread your own work. Don’t worry about fixing it. Just reread it. If you see a glaring error, go ahead and make that little change. Then keep reading. If you see another little error, go ahead and make that change. Don’t be surprised when an hour later you’re pounding away at revisions with the fervor of an inquisitor when all you sat down to do was read over your older work.

 

14. Start over.

If you can’t seem to get anywhere on the project you’re working on, then maybe the problem isn’t your methods. Maybe the problem is your project. Maybe you’ve just written yourself into a corner. I guarantee that eventually, that will happen. At that point, the only thing to do is start over. You don’t have to delete your old manuscript. Just save it and put it away. Then start over from scratch. This will be extremely painful and discouraging at first, but I guarantee your ideas will flow out better. You’ll say what you have to say better than you did before, and inevitably there’ll be segments that you can cut and paste back into your new version from the old version. So you won’t really have to rewrite it all anyway.

 

15. Don’t talk yourself into writing when you don’t want to.

This isn’t like one of those diet fad promises where I tell you that you can lose weight and eat anything you want. I’m not going to tell you the easy answer you want to hear: that you don’t have to work when you don’t want to. No. Eventually, you’re going to have to write when you don’t want to. And it’s going to hurt, but you’re going to have to do it anyway. However, the trick to doing that isn’t to talk yourself into it.

Think of it like cliff-diving. Cliff diving is horrifying the first time you do it. You may stand at the edge of a cliff 8 feet above the water and work up the courage for an hour before jumping. The secret to cliff diving isn’t to work up the courage to jump. The trick is to shut off the part of your mind that tells you not to jump. Eventually, that’s the point you’re going to come to anyway if you do reason with yourself. You tell yourself, “And that’s why I’m going to jump.” Then your brain clicks off and you jump while your brain is silent.

Writing is the same way. Don’t bother arguing with yourself or debating or working up the courage. Just tell yourself, “Brain, I know you don’t want to do this. So we’re not even going to talk about it. I’m just going to turn you off and sit down and write. I’ll pretend I’m not even here if that’s what it takes.” And when you do that you don’t have to be strong or brave or disciplined. You’ll cross the line without those virtues as surely as if they were there, and everyone who sees what you accomplish will assume you possess all of them and more because the result will be indistinguishable.

 

16. Quit.

If you’ve tried all of these techniques and you still can’t write, then maybe it’s time to admit you’re not a writer, which is fine. That doesn’t make you a failure. What would make you a failure is chasing after a dream that isn’t yours. Maybe you should focus your time on knowing yourself and figuring out what your passion really is.

 

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January 23, 2010

11 Ways Mainstream Academic Philosophy Has Come To Resemble Religion

By wise sloth

Collage of pictures and statues of many famous philosophers' faces

 

1. It has a set canon of books that are studied redundantly.

2. The canon has a few good ideas, but much of it is archaic, garbled, over-generalized, subjective, culturally biased and sometimes even flat out wrong.

3. Followers’ understanding of life begins and for the most part remains within the framework taught by teachers as opposed to each individual systematically figuring out life for themselves starting with what’s most important and working down from there.

4. Insanity and incomprehensibility are often mistaken for genius.

5. People who criticize the ideas taught in the canon are ridiculed and ostracized.

6. Any criticism of the canon’s shortcomings can be dismissed by saying, “You just don’t understand our ideology. If you were smarter and studied it more you’d get it.”

7. Winning an argument is more important than arriving at truth.

8. What cannot be disproven is given equal standing with what is provable… when it’s convenient.

9. The ability to quote great thinkers is mistaken for being a great thinker.

10.  The people within the group are considered the elite, chosen or ubber. People outside the group are considered unworthy, subhuman and not worth living.

11. Violently and dogmatically defending prepackaged beliefs is only viewed as being close-minded when someone outside the group does it.When someone inside the group does it they are viewed as strong.

 

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Leave a comment   |  tags: , , | posted in How to Think Like a Genius

December 22, 2009

Creativity Is Logic, Not Magic

By wise sloth

Thoughts follow the same rules of science as chemistry and physics. You can’t get a new thought from nothing. In order to have new ideas you either have to learn them from a source outside yourself or combine existing thoughts in new ways. Your thoughts will continue on the same trajectory until acted upon by a new thought.

 

 

Ultimately, thoughts are nothing more than mathematical equations. Every event that happens to you is a new variable for your brain to calculate and find a solution to, and there are so many variables involved in doing something as simple as crossing the street that if you gave your full attention to everything you did you’d never make it out of the house in the morning, but that’s okay because your brain is a cosmically powerful computer and can take simple tasks such as crossing the street and calculate them practically subconsciously, and it can do other tasks, like beating your heart, completely subconsciously.

Look at how these simple concepts make complete sense of the mysterious concepts of emotions, creativity, and inspiration. Our emotions are the product of our brain subconsciously calculating all the variables in our life. Falling in love seems so mysterious, but when you take a step back and tally all the variables it makes logical sense. The logic might not add up to a responsible decision, but when people make bad decisions it’s because they don’t have enough knowledge in their brain to calculate their decisions correctly. However, to them, it appears logical because they’ve come to the most logical conclusion based on the variables they have.

This is why psychologists have a bad reputation for asking people questions and never giving answers. If the patient knew all the variables in the first place, they wouldn’t have a problem because they could find the solution on their own. If the psychologist were to give them the answer, then the ‘patient’ would reject it because the correct answer doesn’t add up using the limited amount of variables they’re working with. So the only way for the psychologist to get the patient to see the correct answer is to walk them through the problem and let them solve it for themselves. The only way they can arrive at the idea is by someone walking them through the process of combining the ideas already in their head.

If you need more evidence that emotions are subconscious logic, then look at your own dreams. Psychologists are sometimes able to interpret dreams because they’re a logical representation of the variables in our lives even though they’re almost entirely the product of our subconscious. Sometimes the logic is obvious such as when a soldier has nightmares about war. Sometimes they’re mysterious, but even when they’re mysterious we know it’s not because they’re magical. It’s only because we don’t fully, consciously understand the variables in the equation.

 

 

Creativity is just a matter of combining variables in innovative ways. Sometimes the logic is obvious such as in the case of artists like M.C. Escher. While Norman Rockwell and H.R. Geiger may seem whimsically creative, if you walked through their childhoods you could identify all the variables that led them to develop the styles they chose. And neither of those two artists could have possibly arrived at the other’s style because the variables in their lives didn’t add up to the other’s conclusions.

Inspiration is the simplest of all. Whenever we all of a sudden have a brilliant flash of insight it’s because something caused us to combine the exact two thoughts in the exact way to come to a logical conclusion that we were previously missing a vital variable to arrive at.

 

 

Now let’s take this a step further. The sum of all your knowledge (aka variables) and thinking skills (aka formulas) yield your identity and your philosophy on life. The more variables you understand, and the better your thinking skills are, the more of a true individual you’ll be and the more successful your philosophy on life will be. The less you know, the less you can think. The less you’ve thought about the equation of life, the more incomplete of a person you’ll be and the worse your life skills will be.

 

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3 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in How to Think Like a Genius

December 11, 2009

What do Agnostics believe about God?

By wise sloth

Picture of a beautiful galaxy in space above the words, "Agnosticism: There is more going on than we are fully aware of, but only the arrogant claim to know precisely what it is and only the ignorant dismiss it without consideration. There is no truth, only human opinion."

 

Life is a mystery that each of us is confronted with at birth. The quality and meaningfulness of your existence will be directly proportional to the extent to which you unravel the mystery of life. Choosing not to even attempt to unravel the mystery cedes all control of your fate.  Choosing to put a halfhearted effort into unraveling the mystery will result in a life half lived. Choosing to devote your life to understanding life will result in a life well understood… or at least, a life as well understood as possible, and that will result in a life lived as well as possible.

If you want to understand anything, the best place to start is usually the beginning. Applying that simple rule to understanding life will take you all the way back to the beginning of time where you’ll find a pivotal question: What created the universe?

We know the universe began with the Big Bang (though you can call it whatever you’d like), but what catalyst set the Big Bang in motion? Was it simply the nature of the universe or was it caused by the action of a sentient entity? This question makes all the difference because the implications build up exponentially to the point that the question is as important as life and death.

So let’s take an objective look at the issue. On one hand, the universe exists, and its structure and function are both marvels of perfect mathematical elegance. It’s been argued that if you find a watch in the desert you can assume that there must have been a watchmaker who designed it. A valid point except for the fact that we’ve explored all the deserts on earth and peered across the boundaries of our galaxy, but we haven’t found a watchmaker anywhere. At this point, it’s reasonable to assume that there might not be a watchmaker anywhere to be found.

However, you could take the watchmaker analogy a step further and say that we’ve found intelligent beings (ourselves) and that the existence of an intelligent being necessitates that an intelligent creator predated the intelligent creation. That’s possible, but it raises the question, if we needed an intelligent creator to create us then wouldn’t the original creator require an intelligent creator Himself?

Eventually, both sides of the argument cancel each other out. The only way a creator could exist is if He existed forever or He created Himself, but if you can believe that then it would take an equal amount of faith to believe that the universe either existed forever or created itself.

You could continue making logical arguments for and against the existence of God all day long, but the fact remains that we don’t know what happened before the Big Bang. Ultimately we don’t know how or why the universe was created. So we can’t say for certain that God does or does not exist. To declare either side true or false would be an act of speculative faith.

So where does that leave us? Well, the fact of the matter is that we’re still alive, and the quality and meaningfulness of our lives still depend on understanding life as well as possible. Just throwing our hands up in the air and quitting will still only result in ceding control of our fate. So the only real option is to proceed cautiously and objectively with what little information we have. In other words, the best thing we can do at this point is to make both assumptions: that there is a God and that there isn’t.

The universe may have been created by a sentient being, but if it was, that being has chosen not to show Himself to us or communicate with us. So we have no idea what that being’s nature or intentions are.

To assume the existence of a being we know nothing about would be pointless. So if we’re going to assume the existence of a creator we need to take the next step and make some kind of assumption about His nature and intentions.

There are 3 ways we can proceed with making these assumptions:

 

1. Trust other people’s statements about God.

There are a few points to take into consideration before trusting other people’s statements about God. First and foremost, we need to ask ourselves what makes anyone an authority to speak about God? Before you answer that question though, don’t ask it with only one religion in mind. This question applies to all religions and prophets. This is a vital and fundamental issue that believers of any one religion tend to dismiss with a shamefully irresponsible lack of due diligence. If you don’t apply the question, “How do we determine which prophet (and thus, which religion) truly speaks for God?” objectively to every religion then you end up turning a blind eye to certain religions and give them a benefit of the doubt they don’t deserve. Ultimately that means you give certain religions power over you that they don’t deserve. You owe it to yourself to think about this question seriously.

Anyone can claim to be an authority on God, but what gives their claim authenticity? A personal claim is satisfactory if you’re taking advice on which vacuum cleaner to buy, but when it comes to speaking for the creator of the universe and decreeing how we should live our only life we need more evidence than that, especially since every prophet’s claim has to compete against every other prophet’s claim.

Exercising Godlike power would be pretty convincing, but nobody can do that. There are stories about this happening in the past, but none of those stories come from sources that pass even the minimum reputability test of a mere professional scientific journal. At any rate, there are stories from competing religions in which competing prophets claim to have used the power of God. How do we reconcile these competing claims? We could assume that they’re all true. We could assume that they’re all false, or we could assume that none of them are reliable enough to take into consideration.

The fact that no miracles have been recorded since the invention of modern recording devices points directly to the conclusion that no miracles have ever happened. However, even if we do give the benefit of doubt to the existence of miracles, we still have no reliable way to tell which ones actually happened. So the only logical conclusion is to dismiss them all as valid evidence.

If we can’t determine which prophet speaks the truth by their actions we can at least measure which ones speak falsely by their words. It’s reasonable to assume that any prophet who speaks with the authority of the creator of the universe wouldn’t make any faulty statements about the nature of the universe. Unfortunately, every religion makes shamefully amateur inaccurate statements about the scientific nature of the universe.

Another fact that should raise suspicion about the authenticity of a prophet is if his/her moral codes can be directly tied to the moral standards of the society that produced the prophet. Again, this is something every prophet in history is guilty of.

Another major warning sign that prophets aren’t reliable spokesmen for the creator of the universe is if a prophet’s teachings result in him/her fulfilling base, human desires for things such as money, power and/or prestige. Again, every prophet in history has reaped these convenient rewards from their ministry. Sure, some of them died penniless, but to a megalomaniac, that’s a small price to pay to be worshiped for centuries.

Here’s what it boils down to. In the universe we live in, the simplest answer is usually the correct one. The simplest, most elegant, most reliable explanation of every religion men have written books about is that…they were written by men…just men…relating their limited understanding of the universe and their personal and cultural biases while hiding their ignorance and their selfish motives behind terroristic threats and unaccountable promises.

 

2. Trust your own intuition

If trusting other people’s statements about God is unreliable, we can still rely on our intuition. However, there are several problems with feeling “led” to the one true religion. First is the inconvenient fact that people have felt led to believe in every opposing religion. So how can you be sure that everyone else was led by a deceiving force and you were led by a reliable force? You can’t.

The simplest, most elegant, most reliable explanation for why God abandoned everyone but you is that your emotions were the force that led you to your beliefs, not God. If you look at yourself introspectively and honestly enough you’ll find familiarity, anger, fear, anxiety, hope and a selfish desire for security led you to your decision to pick one religion over the others. Familiarity, anger, fear, anxiety, and hope aren’t good reasons to pick a vacuum cleaner much less a scientific explanation of the physical universe and a moral code that will control your entire life.

Still though, you might stand firm in the belief that you felt something so real and powerful that it couldn’t be anything other than the power of God at work in your life. To that, I would reply that Friedrich Nietzsche put it best when he said, “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.” You could also compare feeling led to your religion to the single-minded irrationality of the first time you were in love. The first time you had a junior high crush didn’t you believe with all your heart that you felt something so strong it had to be the most real thing in the world? Our minds are designed to latch onto ideas that make us feel good in the moment despite the reality of the situation. For all these reasons, intuition doesn’t qualify as valid evidence for anything other than our ability to delude ourselves.

 

3. Draw conclusions from physical evidence.

The only logical way to make any assumptions about the nature or intentions of God is to draw conclusions from the physical evidence, which is to say, the physical universe. All we have to understand the Watchmaker who left His watch in the desert is the watch itself…that and the fact that the Watchmaker is nowhere to be found.

Here are a few things we know about the universe:

There’s no physical evidence of divine intervention in the form of rewards, punishment, protection or favors. There’s no physical evidence of magic or other nonphysical powers. There’s no physical evidence of angels or demons. There’s no physical evidence of God speaking through prophets, and if there is a God, He doesn’t reveal Himself in any way that’s recognizable, which we assume He could do if He chose to.

Here are a few more things we know:

The universe operates according to cause and effect. The universe is designed mathematically. Human beings possess the capacity for logic. The circle of life is that all living things are born, grow and die.

All of these facts point to the conclusion that God has left us to stand or fall on our own. From one point of view this makes God seem callous and uncaring, but from another point of view, it makes sense.

Before I guess why that may be, I need to start with this observation: An all powerful being doesn’t need humans for anything. We can’t do anything for Him that He couldn’t Himself…except be ungrateful. So it’s unlikely that God created us for His sake. If God didn’t create us for Him then He must have created us for us. Furthermore, from a purely scientific point of view, what would change in the universe if all life disappeared all of a sudden? Nothing. The universe would go on spinning without noticing a difference. So if we don’t serve any purpose outside of ourselves in the physical universe then why do we exist? If the only thing our existence benefits is us then we must have been created for our own sake.

God might have created us for our sake. Great. If God cared about us to go through all the trouble to create us, then why didn’t create us in a universe with no pain or sadness? You could also word that sentence this way: “Why is God such a dick?”

God gets a lot of criticism from people who want their asses wiped for them, but what happens when human adults coddle their children? Their children grow up weak and can’t survive on their own much less grow up to fulfill their full potential. The freedom to make your own choices gives meaning to your success, but it also carries the burden of suffering the consequences of your choices.

Let me make this absolutely clear: Bad things happen to good people because shit happens and nobody is going to wipe your ass for you. This doesn’t necessarily mean God is spiteful or indifferent. God probably loves us. After all, He went through the trouble of creating and sustaining us. God just loves us enough to let us grow up on our own. And if we view life from this perspective there’s no need for God to reward or punish us for our choices. Our successes in life is its own reward, and our failure is its own punishment.

This raises the question, what are we supposed to do now that we’re here? What constitutes success and failure in life? Well, let’s look back at the watch and see if we can use it to reverse engineer an answer to the question, “What use is this piece of junk?”

What does any life form do? All life is born, grows and dies. We don’t have any control over when we’re born. There are limits on how much control we have over when we die. Between those two points, the question of life is, “To grow or not to grow.” The only difference between plants and humans is that humans have the added burden/blessing of growing their minds as well as their bodies.

Think about it, don’t human parents love their children and want them to grow up and live a successful life? Yes. Would a good parent kill their child for doing poorly at life? No. Would a good parent torture their child or allow their child to be tortured for doing poorly at life if the parent could prevent it? No. Life is about growing up. It’s not about being judged and punished.

Now, you’re never going to be able to grow to your potential as an individual unless you accurately understand reality. That means figuring out truth…for yourself. Look at the universe. It was designed by a stoic mathematician who gave you a mind capable of critical thinking. If you want to walk the path of God then do what you were designed to do and think for yourself.

Here’s something else to think about: If God is truth then wouldn’t anyone who speaks objective truth arrived at through logical thought be speaking with the authority of God? If so then that would also mean that anyone who opposes critical thinking (and thus opposes truth) opposes truth opposes God. It could be so, but don’t get carried away with this and assume I’m saying that anyone who took Intro to Logic should walk around congratulating themselves as a saint and a prophet. From a scientific point of view, we can’t know when we’re speaking truth. Einstein put it best when he said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right. A single experiment can prove me wrong.” We can never be sure we know the truth about anything, but we can be sure we’re wrong when sufficient evidence is presented. So even if we speak the truth we would be fools to claim to speak with the authority of God.

But that doesn’t mean we should just give up and shit in our hands. You can do something. You can learn something. You can figure something out. That means you should try, because trying to arrive at truth translates into trying to live. The more truth you understand the more you’ll grow. The more you grow the more truth you can understand.

So if there is a God then you should seek to understand the universe. You should seek to understand yourself. You should seek to understand what you can be come and then seek to become that. Do those things and not only will you live a quality and meaningful life but you’ll fulfill the purpose for which your Parent gave birth to you. Aside from that, help others to do the same, and don’t hinder anyone from fulfilling their potential. Aside from that, exercise your free will to choose how you want to enjoy life without worrying about the haphazard moral standards of any archaic, brutal, tribal, warring theocracies that heaped untold wealth, power and prestige on their scientifically ignorant leaders.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Agnosticism 
Atheism
Secular Living
Islam
The Bible is mythology
Christianity is Harmful to Society
Preaching, witnessing and arguing with Christians
Christian Culture
My Tweets About Religion

 

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December 11, 2009

How can the universe and life exist without God? What’s the purpose?

By wise sloth

Agnostic Atheist = I don't believe any God exists, but I'm not claiming that I might be wrong. Gnostic Atheist = I don't believe any God exists, and I know they don't exist. Agnostic Theist = I believe there is a God, but I'm not really sure. Gnostic Theist = I believe there is a God, and I know God exists.

 

Can the universe and life have meaning if there’s no God? If there is, the only way we’re going to find it is by analyzing the physical universe and seeing what clues it holds.

In this universe, everything happens because of cause and effect, and every naturally occurring event can be broken down into mathematics. Thus, every cause in nature can be viewed as an equation, and every effect in nature can be viewed as the solution to that equation. Now, if we trace the cause and effect equation of the universe all the way back to the beginning I suspect the equation will reduce itself to the simplest mathematical equation possible: 1 or 0? You could also represent the equation as, “on or off?” If you want to be poetic about it you could represent the equation as, “To be or not to be?”

If that was indeed the original equation, we know the answer was 1. If the existence of the universe was the solution to a mathematical equation, then the structure of the universe would also be the solution to a mathematical equation, though the solution to that equation is as extensive and intricate as the universe itself.

But how could this be? Wouldn’t God need to exist in order to formulate these equations, to solve them and to apply the solution? Well, wouldn’t 2+2 still equal 4 even if nobody were there to ask or answer that question?

Let me propose a radical theory. Try to imagine the universe before the Big Bang where nothing, not even the laws of nature existed. The only thing that existed was potential. That potential begged the question of existence, and the mere possibility of the question’s existence made the question a reality. Once that question came into existence it begged the next question, and then the next and then the next. In a moment or possibly over the course of infinity (which would have been impossible to distinguish the difference between at that “time”) every possible equation came into existence. After every possible calculation unfurled an answer was reached. Then, by its mere potential to exist it became a reality…and there was a Big Mathematical Bang that unfurled a big, mathematical universe that reflected the mathematical nature of its origins. On a side note, I can also imagine that just before the final answer was reached an infinite number of potential universes flickered in and out of existence as all but one solution were posed and then ruled out by the inherent mind/program/nature of the universe.

Now, based on the scenario I just proposed, you could infer that the calculation of the universe was the mind of God at work, and surely, if you make the definition of the word “God” vague enough and reverse engineer its definition to fit the evidence at hand then yes, you could say that God created the universe. However, this is more of a problem for traditional theists than it is for atheists because this God doesn’t leave you with anything to worship other than impersonal mathematics. It doesn’t leave you with any source for moral codes other than your own logic, and it doesn’t leave you with anyone to be held accountable to other than yourself. In fact, the concept of God becomes completely redundant.

I’m not saying that this is the Great, One and Only Answer to All Things. What it is, is a theoretical explanation for how the universe could have come into existence without the presence of a traditional God. And even if the creation part of this scenario doesn’t pan out to be true, the picture of the universe it paints after the Big Bang fits all the evidence we’ve observed in nature.

Now, with a mathematical view of the universe in mind, let’s look at the question of life. The first thing that must be said about life is that in a mathematical universe in which nothing happens outside of cause and effect, the existence of life couldn’t possibly be an accident. If we assumed that it was then we may as well also assume that the freezing point of water accident and the rotation of planets are accidental. However, everything that happens in the universe is bound by the laws of nature. It would fit the scientific nature of the universe more elegantly to assume that the existence of life was the solution to a mathematical equation that fits into the inherent mathematical design of the universe that has existed (at least) since the Big Bang.

I believe scientists will eventually reverse engineer our DNA to the point where they can unlock the equation of how life exists. Once we do that, we’ll be able to engineer (“engineer” would be a more accurate term than “create”) new life forms out of inanimate matter. There are some exciting implications to that statement, but the main reason I bring that up is to point out that answer the question “How was life created?” is just a matter of details. The big question is “Why was life created?”

If God existed, we could learn about Him by listening to His self-proclaimed spokesmen or try to deduce clues to his nature and motives by analyzing the universe He created, but in the end, all our theorizing might be completely wrong. There’s no way to know for sure. If the universe we live in is absurd, romantic or nihilistic then all our theories about the meaning of existence would be equally void. The best case scenario to build a reasonable theory about the meaning of existence is in a mathematically designed, scientific universe in which God does not exist.

It just so happens that all the empirical evidence points to the conclusion that we live in a mathematically designed, scientific universe. Immediately that tells us that life has some kind meaning because nothing happens in this universe without a cause, and there can’t be a cause without some sort of reason.

What makes deducing a logical explanation for the meaning of life is its simplicity, not its complexity. If you want to understand the purpose of life then just take life out of the equation. What would change if life didn’t exist? Nothing. We serve no purpose outside of ourselves. So our purpose must be to accomplish something that serves no other purpose outside of us.

It would be illogical to conclude that the meaning of life is to reproduce. If the meaning of your life is to have a baby, and the meaning of that baby’s life is to have a baby, and the meaning of that baby’s life is to have another baby then the process keeps delaying purpose to infinity. So the purpose of our existence must be something immediate. Also, mathematically speaking, every human being is the same. The reason for one person’s existence must be the same as everyone’s. More to the point, mathematically speaking, every living thing is the same. So the reason for one living thing’s existence must be the same as every other. So the meaning of life must be something personal, immediate and universal.

On one level, we can say the meaning of existence is to exist, which is to say, existence is not a means to an end, it’s an end in and of itself. You’re here to experience existence. What does that mean you should do with your life though? Sit on your roof and stare at the clouds all day? Not necessarily, because the more your mind and body grows the more acutely you’ll be able to experience existence. This goes for all living things. Everything is born, grows and dies. The big difference between humans and other living creatures is that we can choose whether or not to grow. That’s your freedom, but choosing not to grow will defeat the purpose of existing. And if all this work went into creating this incredible universe to give you the opportunity to grow we can deduce it must be a very important goal, the accomplishment of which is its own reward.

So what does this mean? That there’s some ghost in the machine that has decided to create living beings who can experience their own existence out of the goodness of its computation? That’s one possibility, but remember that we sprouted from the universe and are made of the same stuff the rest of the universe is made of. We’re not children of the universe. We are the universe. The matter in our bodies has existed since the Big Bang, and the logical structure of our bodies that allows us to be self-aware was formulated before the Big Bang. We’re the spirit of the universe. We’re the eyes and ears of the universe.

We exist because we’re the fulfillment of the universe’s calculation that it is good to be alive, aware, and possess an individual identity with individual wants. “We” have been working on fulfilling the meaning of life since before the Big Bang and through the cooling of the universe. We finished 99% of the work when we were born. Now, all we have left to do is grow and be ourselves. See, that wasn’t so complicated.

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Agnosticism 
Atheism
Secular Living
Islam
The Bible is mythology
Christianity is Harmful to Society
Preaching, witnessing and arguing with Christians
Christian Culture
My Tweets About Religion

 

 

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Agnosticism

December 11, 2009

What do you do if you can’t know the meaning of life?

By wise sloth

Picture of a cat below the words, "Nihilist in the streets, existentialist in the sheets."

 

Even if God exists, He’s left us to stand or fall on our own. Since we’re not living with God in any practical sense, then for all practical purposes, there is no God.

This isn’t a comforting idea except in the sense that we don’t have to fear being punished by a psychopathic tribal God who sets flippant and unachievable demands on His own children only to torture them for eternity for losing at a game He set them up to fail at and that only took a few moments to play and that they didn’t even agree to play in the first place. Aside from than that great relief, it’s frightening not to have a coddling parent to wipe our asses for us, but if that’s the conclusion the evidence points to then that’s the reality of the situation, and wishful thinking isn’t going to make it any different. In fact, denying reality will only cripple our ability to arrive at any truths we could glean from objectively analyzing the evidence around us.

A lot of Atheists get hung up at this point. They conclude God doesn’t exist, and then they sit back like they’ve won, but coming to a conclusion on the existence of God is just getting out of the starting gates. There’s still a lifetime of questions you need to figure out to ask and then figure out how to answer after that.

The big question now is, “If God didn’t create us then why are we here?” The big question is not,  “How did we get here?” because that answer lies in some physical process…which, except for the first step, would be the same process as if God had created us. The point is that how we got here is just details. The big question is, why?

This is the most important question anyone can ask themselves because it indicates what we should do with our lives. Unfortunately, just as you can’t prove whether or not God exists you also can’t prove why the universe was created. As a result, intellectuals have become just as divided and dogmatic over this question as they have over the existence of God. Some people assert with absolute certainty that life has no meaning. Others assert with absolute certainty that they’ve found the one true answer. People have come up with all sorts of convoluted and/or convincing arguments for their side of the debate, but the fact remains that unless you were present before the universe was set in motion you don’t know for a fact why it was set in motion.

So what do we do about this? Shit in our hands and give up? No. Even if we can’t answer the question of whether or not life has meaning, the fact of the matter is that we do exist, and we still need to figure out what to do with our lives.

Let’s start figuring this out by making the assumptions that life has no meaning, there’s no absolute value to anything, and there are no absolute truths… other than that there are no absolute truths.

This relieves us of any responsibility to search for any kind of greater understanding of existence or to follow any particular moral code. However, the fact remains that we’re here, and unless we’re just going to kill ourselves we need to figure out what to do with our lives.

If we decide not to kill ourselves then that means we’ve decided to survive. If we’ve decided to survive then we’ve defined at least one goal to accomplish during our lifetime: survival. Once we’ve set a goal we should follow the best practices for accomplishing that goal. This means that if nothing else, the nihilist should strive to master the art of survival, which is to say, responsibility. I won’t get into the skill of responsibility here, but suffice it to say that responsibility involves making decisions based on a cost/benefit analysis of what will benefit you the most in the long run.

Aside from survival, we have no other obligation to do anything else in particular…with one exception. At this point, we can choose to do nothing or we can choose to do something. Either way, we still must make a choice. That translates into exercising our free will. That means we must exercise our free will, if in no other way than to surrender it.

If we choose not to exercise our free will then there’s really no reason to continue surviving except out of fear of death, but in that case, we’re really not living for anything. So we’re as good as dead anyway. If we choose to live then the only course of action we can pursue that is even relatively meaningful is to continue exercising our free will.

However, if we choose to exercise our free will then we’ve defined a goal, and once we’ve set a goal we should follow the best practices for accomplishing that goal. In order to maximize our free will e need to define our wants while freeing ourselves from any evolutionary or socially influenced desires.

In order to do that, you need to study your body, your mind, and your society. Ultimately this path will lead you to what psychologists refer to as self-actualization and what Buddhism refers to as enlightenment. It’s going to take your entire life to accomplish. So, far from being an escape from responsibility, Nihilism should ultimately lead you down the hardest, most responsible path a human being can take…unless you decide to just kill yourself.

 

If you liked this blog, you may like these:

 

Agnosticism 
Atheism
Secular Living
Islam
The Bible is mythology
Christianity is Harmful to Society
Preaching, witnessing and arguing with Christians
Christian Culture
My Tweets About Religion

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Agnosticism

November 23, 2009

6 Reasons Not To Let Your children Read/Watch Twilight

By wise sloth

I usually don’t talk about pop culture, but Twilight is too big and too wrong to let off the hook.

The target audience of Twilight is young girls between the ages of 9 and 20.  This demographic is extremely impressionable, and as with anybody, they’re most likely to be influenced by those they respect and admire. If your child owns a Twilight poster with Edward and Bella’s faces on it, they obviously look up to those people even if they’re fictional characters…especially since children have a hard time distinguishing between reality and fantasy. So of course children are going to be influenced by the role models of Edward and Bella.

As a parent, it would be irresponsible to allow your children to read and watch Twilight because it’s chalked full of themes that provide horrible influences on young, impressionable girls. None of the things I’m going to say here haven’t been said somewhere else 1000 times, which is all the more reason why you should be ashamed of yourself for failing your children if you’ve encouraged their exposure to Twilight.

1. Twilight says that Pedophilia is acceptable.

Picture of Edward Cullen from the movie "Twilight," below the words, "Could use time being immortal to research cancer. Goes to high school a billion times and seduces a 17 year old girl."

Edward is 109. Bella is 17. This is the definition of pedophilia, but in the story, it’s okay for them to have this relationship because Edward looks 17. In real life girls idolize Edward. They want to fall in love with Edward. Since they can’t have Edward they need a substitute: someone real who is much older, wiser and stronger than them. The only stipulation is that the older person has to look young. Twilight drives home the theme that pedophilia is okay by the fact that Edward is a monster who society won’t accept, yet his affair with Bella (which he has behind Bella’s parents’ back) is portrayed as a beautiful thing. This might seem like anal nitpicking to an adult, but what does it look like to an impressionable, hormonal teen following the lead of her idol?

2.Twilight says girls are incomplete without a man…or at least, it’s of the utmost importance to be in a relationship.

Obviously, this message sets women’s lib back 20 years, but that’s so obvious I’m not even going to talk about it. I want to talk about the more subtle message that it’s of the utmost importance to be in a relationship at all. There’s a lot to be said for relationships and marriage, but those are adult themes for the adult phase of your life. Tween and teen girls need to be focusing on finding themselves and establishing their independence so that when it comes time to date they don’t become codependently attached to the first guy who tells her he loves her to get into her pants. Barraging young girls with the message that their life isn’t worth living unless they’re in a relationship cripples them for life.

3. Twilight says that rushing into a committed relationship is virtuous.

This is similar to #2, but a little different. Twilight shows that it’s not just enough to lock yourself into a relationship with someone you barely know, but you should do it as quickly as possible. If you can’t understand why that’s bad then you don’t deserve to be a parent. Then again, maybe that’s why you’re a parent.

4. Men have to be superhuman.

Picture of Barbie next to He-man, with the words, "This is Barbie. Throughout the years, she has been the center of much controversy because feminists claim she represents an unrealistic and unfair standard of beauty, leading to a crisis for young girls and their self-esteem. This is He-man." He-man looks like he's on steroids.

Edward is portrayed as not only super strong but also super refined, super selfless and super courteous. Twilight is setting young girls’ expectations at this standard. That’s not to say that men shouldn’t be strong, refined, altruistic and courteous, but nobody is perfect…especially not teenage boys. This unrealistic standard is setting up young girls for heartbreak because they’ll never find a boy who lives up to their fictional expectations. I guarantee you that before this whole Twilight fad is over it will have caused someone to commit suicide. Even without that, it’s going to stress out already overstressed teen boys, and it’s going to send girls into adulthood resenting men for not being perfect.

5. Twilight overlooks the fact that love leads to sex.

Picture of Bella from the movie "Twilight" above a picture of a coach pointing at the viewer. Bella says, "I had sex, got pregnant and almost died." The coach says, "What did I tell you?"

Bella and Edward stay celibate in the movie, but in reality, there’s no such thing as vampires or celibate lovers (with the exception of religious extremists). Every male “player” knows that the quickest way to sleep with a girl is to tell her you love her. The reason this works is because girls want sex to mean something. So if a man tells her he loves her, then she views it as meaningful and thus it’s okay. Twilight tells girls they have to fall in love…immediately. It also says you need to prove your love.  Every other show on television says sex and love go together. What do you think is going to happen in real life once your daughter falls in love with a stranger and she wants to prove her love?

6. There are better books/movies your children should be reading/watching than Twilight anyway.

The simple fact that they’re occupying their time reading/watching Twilight means they’re wasting irreplaceable time during their formative years that they could be using to read good books and watch good movies. That’s reason enough to keep them away from Twilight.

But then again…children are going to be exposed to the same destructive themes that are in Twilight in other places. So as a parent you need to talk to them about these issues sooner or later. Maybe you should watch Twilight with your children for the express purpose of using as an instruction manual for how not to live.

Picture of Edward Cullen and Bella from the movie "Twilight" sitting a smiling. Behind them stands Blade, the vampire killer from the movie, "Blade."

 

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1 Comment | posted in Movies and Television

November 23, 2009

10 Tips To Being A Better Christian Witness On The Internet

By wise sloth

Picture of Liam Neeson from the movie, "Taken," above the words, "I don't know who you are, but I will find you... and I will preach to you."

 

1. Don’t be mean.

Long before the Internet was invented Gandhi said, “I like your Christ. I don’t like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” I don’t know if the disconnect between Christ and Christians has gotten worse since the invention of the Internet or it has just become more apparent. Either way, Christians have earned a reputation on the Internet for being sarcastic, petty, condescending and spiteful (to say the least).

It’s mind-boggling that this even has to be pointed out, but being mean isn’t going to convince anybody to join your group or accept your ideology. It’s going to accomplish the opposite. It’s going to build resentment for your group and close people’s minds to your message.

2. Know your theology.

Before the invention of the internet, you might have been able to defend Christianity without going to seminary. However, with the amount of information freely available to anyone able to type a keyword into a search engine, every twelve-year-old can argue on a doctoral degree. Then again, you never know who you’re talking to on the Internet. There are a lot of atheists who understand the Bible better than a lot of Christians. It doesn’t take many apologetic mistakes to destroy your witness. So if you’re going to profess your beliefs on an open forum, you’d better know what you’re talking about or you’re going to get torn to shreds and the only thing you’ll convince anybody of is that Christians don’t even understand their own religion.

3. Pick and choose your battles.

Non-Christians don’t believe in Creationism. They do believe in evolution. They also believe that Creationism is a monument to illogical thinking. Regardless of what you believe, the reality is that harping on evolution is going to cause people to dismiss you almost immediately. Maybe the Bible says homosexuality is bad. Maybe it was taken out of context. It doesn’t matter. The reality is that a lot of people see gay rights as equivalent to women’s rights and anti-gay propaganda as the same as racist propaganda. Regardless of what you believe, the reality is that harping on homosexuals is going to cause people to dismiss you as a close-minded bigot almost immediately. And these issues are irrelevant to your purposes anyway. The most important message is love. So preach love and acceptance like Jesus did or you’re not worth listening to anyway.

4. Understand the difference between arguing the existence of God and the validity of the Bible as God’s word.

Even though there’s no difference to you, there is to everyone else. Proving the Bible is true would prove that God exists, but proving God exists wouldn’t necessarily prove the Bible is true. At any rate, you can’t prove God exists using the scientific method, which is the atheist’s measuring stick for truth. So theological debates about the existence of God are practically guaranteed to be a waste of time. Focus on studying and sharing the Bible instead, but don’t try to use the Bible as proof that God exists. Regardless of what you believe, it won’t work.

5. Don’t copy and paste huge articles.

This is the age of Twitter and 5 minute YouTube videos. The only thing that moves faster than life is information. Very few people read long articles. If you want to convince somebody of something you need to do it quickly and poignantly. Posting huge articles is a waste of everybody’s time. Plus, when somebody with a handle like “SilverSurferExtreme1989” posts a doctoral level essay it’s obvious that he plagiarized it. That means he doesn’t know enough to hold a conversation on his own, and he’s lying by passively taking credit for someone else’s work. For both reasons, he’s not worth listening to.

6. Use proper grammar, and ditch the emoticons.

If your message isn’t valuable enough to express using proper grammar then people are going to assume it isn’t worth listening to. Also, if you fill your messages with funny little emoticons people are going to assume that your message is meant for children and not meant to be taken seriously by adults.

7. Don’t tell people they’re going to Hell.

Imagine if an atheist came up to you and shouted in your face, “IF YOU WON’T STOP BELIEVING IN GOD THEN FUCK YOU.” That might have even happened to you before. If it did, how did it make you feel? Did it change your mind or close it to their message? Because when you tell nonbelievers they’re going to Hell, all they hear is, “I represent a hateful ideology that you need to stay as far away from as possible.”

8. Don’t just bust into a forum or thread and shout, “The Bible is the word of God. Praise Jesus,” and leave it at that. Similarly, don’t just bust into a forum or thread and shout, “Your arguments are stupid. You’re all wrong. God is great,” and leave it at that.

While your enthusiasm and courage are bound to impress the choir, it does absolutely nothing for unbelievers. To them it just makes you look like a fanatic who has nothing of substance to relate. This kind of witnessing will only push people farther away.

9. If you don’t have an answer to a tough question, don’t tell people, “You just have to have faith.”

From their point of view, no, they don’t just have to have faith. From their point of view, you just have to have an answer. “You just have to have faith.” is code for, “I don’t know.” You may as well have just said, “There’s no point in listening to me because I don’t know what I’m talking about, and my ideology isn’t even important enough to me to take the time to understand.”

10. Don’t tell people to read the Bible or pray to God for answers.

If a Muslim told you to read the Koran or pray to Allah, would that convert you? No. Absolutely, positively not. Non-Christians aren’t going to go to the Bible or God for answers. They’re going to go to you. It’s your responsibility to provide them with guidance. If you need to tell people to read the Bible or pray to God you may as well just tell them, “There’s no point in listening to me because I don’t know what I’m talking about, and my ideology isn’t even important enough to me to take the time to understand.”

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Agnosticism 
Atheism
Secular Living
Islam
The Bible is mythology
Christianity is Harmful to Society
Preaching, witnessing and arguing with Christians
Christian Culture
My Tweets About Religion

 

10 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Preaching, Witnessing and Arguing with Christians

November 17, 2009

8 Simple Formula Plot Templates

By wise sloth


ACTION STORY TEMPLATE

 

 

ACT 1

SEGMENT 1

The story begins by introducing the protagonist in a way that reveals his defining characteristics, strengths, weaknesses, life circumstances, motives, and goals. SEGMENT 1 also establishes the setting and tone.

SEGMENT 2

Something happens to the protagonist that is out of the ordinary (for the protagonist, not for you). The event should be as apocalyptic as possible. This event throws the protagonist out of his comfort zone. The more disastrous it is for the protagonist the higher the stakes are. The higher the stakes are the more interesting the story will be.CH

SEGMENT 3

The protagonist weighs his options. He decides he can not ignore the event that has thrown his life off track. There is either too much at stake or the event has irrevocably closed the door on his previous life until he confronts the issue.

ACT 2

SEGMENT 4

The protagonist makes a plan of action to address the source of the conflict. The event that threw him off course has given him 1 clue as to where to start finding answers or he knows the first obstacle standing between him and the resolution of his conflict.for

The protagonist executes his plan and succeeds, closing the door on the antagonist’s original plan. Not only does the antagonist not achieve his goal he was hoping for, but the exact opposite of what he intended happened and the door he was trying to go through is now closed. The protagonist learns more about the antagonist, himself and the antagonist’s motives/goals. Based on this new information the protagonist makes a new plan to get closer to the antagonist.

SEGMENT 5

The protagonist, enabled by his previous success, sets in motion the second part of his plan to accomplish his goal.

SEGMENT 6

The antagonist has to adapt to the new circumstances created by the protagonist’s success and devises a new plan.

SEGMENT 7

The protagonist executes his new plan and fails. Not only does he not achieve the goal he was hoping for, but the exact opposite of what he intended happened.  The door he was trying to go through is now closed.

SEGMENT 8

Despite the protagonist’s failure he has learned something new about the antagonist. He uses that information to create a new plan to approach the conflict from a different angle.

SEGMENT 9

The protagonist executes his new plan and succeeds.

Note: You can repeat SEGMENTS 4-9 as many times as logically needed to fully develop the characters and the conflict.

Also

There’s no set rule for how early or how late you should reveal the antagonist. It just needs to be logical and provide maximum tension.

SEGMENT 10

The protagonist’s success places him in a position to confront the antagonist directly, which he does. This is the Battle of the Bulge. The protagonist has made it to/into the gates of the antagonist’s lair and must directly battle all of the antagonist’s signature strengths with his own signature strengths.

SEGMENT 11

The antagonist has the protagonist cornered. The protagonist is at his weakest point and all hope is lost. The antagonist is one step away from accomplishing all of his goals and defeating the protagonist.

SEGMENT 12

The protagonist uses his signature strength and attacks the antagonist’s signature weakness to defeat him.

ACT 3

SEGMENT 13

Having defeated the antagonist the protagonist finally takes possession of the object of his quest.

SEGMENT 14

After the protagonist takes possession of the object of his quest he must do what he planned to do with it.

SEGMENT 15

The protagonist, having accomplished all of his goals must choose what to do next or with the rest of his life.

SEGMENT 16

The denouement tells what lies in store for the protagonist, any supporting characters or the world in general.

 

A VERY COMMON SITCOM TEMPLATE: 

THE TRAGIC OPPORTUNITY

 

SEGMENT 1

A sitcom episode does not need to begin by introducing the protagonist at length since his character has already been established in previous episodes. However, the first segment of an episode should begin by revealing the protagonist’s primary motive/goal for that particular episode. In a sitcom Segments 1 and 2 can be combined often within a single sentence of dialogue.

SEGMENT 2

The protagonist finds (or is presented with) an unusual (for him, not for the audience) opportunity to attain whatever it is he values (usually money, fame, sex, love, freedom, leisure, etc.).

SEGMENT 3

The protagonist pursues the opportunity and becomes involved with it.

SEGMENT 4

The opportunity turns south. Not only does it not help the protagonist achieve his goal, but it actually prevents him from achieving it and results in him attaining the thing he was trying to avoid.

SEGMENT 5

The protagonist tries to free himself of the situation he’s gotten himself into but fails.

SEGMENT 6

The opportunity, being faulty, ends up destroying itself and spitting the protagonist either right back where he started, farther behind, or miraculously ahead in some unexpected way.

SEGMENT 7

The protagonist learns a valuable lesson.

SEGMENT 8

In the final scene it is explained how the resolution of the conflict will affect the character’s life in the future.

 

THE SHERLOCK HOLMES MYSTERY TEMPLATE

 

SEGMENT 1

Introduce the detective. Arthur Conan Doyle usually just showed Sherlock Holmes in his home office and said, “This is Sherlock Holmes. He’s a genius detective.” Just to prove the point he would sometimes have Sherlock Holmes make genius deductions about his sidekick based on his appearance.

SEGMENT 2

Introduce the harbinger. Someone walks through the door and tells the detective they have a case they need solved. Then the detective agrees to hear the case. If you want to rub in what a genius the detective is then you can have him make deductions about the harbinger based on their appearance.

SEGMENT 3

The harbinger explains the case as they understand it. They leave out the critical details necessary to solve the plot. However, they give the detective all the clues he needs to solve the case. These clues are laid out in plain sight, but they’re presented alongside superfluous details so that it’s impossible for the reader to guess which details are the true clues.

Note:

If the crime was murder then the harbinger must be someone who has a close connection with the murder victim, and the harbinger will tell the victim’s story. If the crime was theft, blackmail or manipulation then the harbinger can be the victim, and then they will tell the story of their own victimization.

The harbinger will relate their story to the detective in this general order:

1: Give a general description of all the characters involved in the crime. The harbinger explains who the characters are, where they came from, what they do, what their greatest hopes and fears are (to establish their motives). For example: “My father was a gold hunter in Australia, and he retired in England with his partner who was a bastard.”

2: The harbinger relates the significant events that happened to the victim leading up to the day of their victimization that set the stage for the crime committed against them. For example, “My father started receiving strange letters that freaked him out.”

3: Next the harbinger relates the specific details of the crime as they happened on the day of the crime. This part reads like a police report. (Studying how to actually write a real police report will help you write detective fiction.) For example, “My father was last seen by the lake arguing with his business partner’s son.”

SEGMENT 4

The detective identifies the vital clues in the harbinger’s story and asks the harbinger to elaborate on them.

SEGMENT 5

The detective leaves his office and finds the proof necessary to validate his theory.

SEGMENT 6

The detective catches the antagonist and explains how he solved the mystery.

NOTE

The key to plotting a mystery is to understand that a mystery story is really three stories: The story of how/why the antagonist committed his crime, the story of how/why the crime affected the harbinger and the story of how/why the detective solved the case. The easiest way to weave these together is to write them in this order and then splice them together in the format explained above.

So the first thing you need to do is to write a dark crime story starring the antagonist, which you do like this:

SEGMENT 1

Introduce the antagonist.

SEGMENT 2

The antagonist has an opportunity to attain or defend what he wants most in life (usually a lot of money or a lover)…at the expense of someone else.

Segment 3

The antagonist finds a way to attain/defend what he wants in a way that nobody else can trace the crime back to him.

Segment 4

The antagonist commits the crime but unknowingly leaves one or more vital clues that can trace the crime back to him.

Segment 5

The antagonist goes on about his life hiding his secret.

Once you’ve written this relatively simple, strait-forward crime story, then create a mystery out of it is just a matter of plugging the details into the detective formula.

 

FABLE TEMPLATE

 

SEGMENT 1

The story begins by introducing the protagonist in a way that reveals his defining characteristics, strengths, weaknesses, life circumstances, motives, and goals. SEGMENT 1 also reveals the setting and tone.

SEGMENT 2

The antagonist appears and poses a moral quandary to the protagonist.

SEGMENT 3

The protagonist chooses a course of action he believes is most desirable based on his values.

SEGMENT 4

Protagonist executes his decision, and the antagonist reacts accordingly.

SEGMENT 5

If the protagonist chose wisely it has positive consequences for him and negative consequences for the antagonist. If the protagonist chose unwisely it has negative consequences for him and positive consequences for the antagonist.

SEGMENT 6

The lesson to be learned from the protagonist’s decision is explained.

 

GROUP JOURNEY TEMPLATE 

(FOR CHILDREN’S STORIES)

 

SEGMENT 1

Introduce the protagonist, describe the protagonist, explain the protagonist’s backstory.

SEGMENT 2

Something terrible happens to the protagonist, and he has to embark on a journey to get something that will fix the problem.

SEGMENT 3

The protagonist sets out on his journey and runs into his travel companions who each have personalities, values and/or skills relevant to the quest. Explain each supporting characters’ backstory and their incentive to join the protagonist.

SEGMENT 4

Explain the first obstacle the characters must surmount to resolve their conflict. The characters must draw on their combined resources (mental and physical) to overcome the obstacle.

SEGMENT 5

Explain the second obstacle the characters must surmount to resolve their conflict. This one must be more difficult than the first, and the characters must overcome it or work around it.

Note: You can have as many obstacles as are logical, but they must keep getting progressively more difficult.

SEGMENT 6

After surmounting all the obstacles between the characters and their goal they (or just the protagonist) face the antagonist head on. Describe the antagonist, Explain the antagonist’s backstory. Explain the antagonist’s motivation to oppose the protagonist. The protagonist (possibly aided by his/her friends) defeat the physically superior antagonist by outwitting him/her.

SEGMENT 7

Denouement

 

THE SEINFELD/SNATCH TEMPLATE

 

This template uses 4 main characters, but the template is easily adjustable to use more or less main characters.

SEGMENT 1

Introduce all 4 characters in one location. “Seinfeld” uses a diner. “Friends” uses a cafe. “The IT Crowd” uses a work office. “The Big Bang Theory” uses communal living space. “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” uses an Irish pub. You get the idea.

In the introduction segment, each character expresses some goal they want to achieve. Reverse engineer what goal each character would most likely want to accomplish based on their distinctive personality. Primetime television leans towards using petty, idiosyncratic, common, day-to-day goals like trying to get a bowl of soup from a mean chef. Or you can go the “Snatch” route and have them trying to get something extraordinary…like a gigantic diamond.

SEGMENT 2

The characters go their separate ways, and each of them either encounters a problem that prevents them from achieving their goal or an opportunity opens up that allows them the chance to attain their goal given that they complete a task relevant to the goal.

SEGMENT 3

Each character does something that commits them to accept the challenge before them. They could simply declare that they’re going to achieve their goal like making a vow to get laid on prom night or they can do something they can’t back out of like making a deal with a mobster.

SEGMENT 4

Each character steps up to the plate and takes their first swing at their problem. They go on the date. They go to the job interview. They steal the beer. They steal the diamond. Remember that they engage their challenge in a way that reflects their distinctive personalities and values.

SEGMENT 5

Up until this point, it doesn’t matter if each character’s storyline intersects or affects any other characters’ storyline. Whether or not that happens up to this point just depends on what moves your particular story along. Having reached this point though, the storylines have to start weaving together. Here’s one way to do that:

Character #1 will succeed or fail at his goal as is typical for his character. His success or failure will directly influence the situation Character #2 is in when he takes his final stab at achieving his goal. Character #2’s success or failure will then affect character #3, and character #3’s success or failure will affect character #4. This is a simple domino progression that looks simple in outline form, but when your story is fully fleshed out it’ll look genius.

The big question is how each character’s storyline affects the next character’s. You can psych yourself out by trying to preplan this, but you don’t need to. Simply get each character to the second to last step of their journey and then reverse engineer a way to connect the dots from there. Your characters may end up miles apart with no obvious way to connect them, but this just means you’re going to have to do something absurd and nonsensical to connect them. This may seem like a cheap deus ex machina trick when you look at your outline, but when your story is fully fleshed out your reader will be amazed at how creatively you managed to connect 4 seemingly unrelated events.

SEGMENT 6

After each character succeeds or fails they end up back where they first met in SEGMENT 1 and lick their wounds and/or celebrate their victory.

 

THE “HERO YOU WANT TO BE” TEMPLATE

 

Answer the following questions and you’ll have written a complete story. Your outline will “tell” what happens. Based on that outline write a story that “shows” what happens.

ACT 1

SEGMENT 1

Name your 3 favorite characters from your favorite books or movies. Note: They don’t have to be from your favorite stories. They just have to be your favorite characters. Now combine yourself and those characters into one person. That’s who your protagonist is.

Next, name your three favorite stories. Now combine the setting/environment in those 3 movies into one place.  That’s where the protagonist lives. Write a short narrative about what that protagonist’s daily routine is like. Have him engage a conflict that is typical of his life, and succeed or fail as would be typical for that character.

SEGMENT 2

What is the one thing you want most in the universe? Who/what is the most likely agent in the story setting you just created to have the power and the motive to take that away from you?  What is the most logical obstacle that would prevent you from stopping this agent of loss from taking away the most valuable thing in the universe from you? That agent takes your thing away and you fail to stop it from happening.

SEGMENT 3

What’s the first thing that would go through your mind after the traumatic loss? How do you react to the loss?

ACT 2

SEGMENT 4

What would it take to get your very important thing back? What would be the first logical thing you would do to get back your very important thing given the strengths/weaknesses of your protagonist and the specific nature of the agent that took it?

SEGMENT 5

What’s the most logical reason why that wouldn’t work? Because it didn’t work, and that’s why. So where does that leave you now?

SEGMENT 6

What would be the most logical way for you to get your very important thing back from the agent of loss now? You do that, and it almost doesn’t work, but you do it a little more and it finally works perfectly. (Or fails miserably if you want your story to be a tragedy.)

ACT 3

SEGMENT 7

What’s the first thing you would do after getting your very important thing back?

SEGMENT 8

And what would that accomplish? What’s the biggest effect that would have on your life and/or the world?

SEGMENT 9

Once that happens what does the future hold for your character and/or the characters left behind in the story environment you created?

 

 THE “IT’S LIKE THE AUTHOR UNDERSTANDS ME” TEMPLATE

 

Answer the following questions and you’ll have written a complete story. Then go back and change enough details to hide the characters’ true identities and make the story flow. Remember, critics say good art reflects life, and good artists say the key to creativity is hiding your sources. Mark Twain said, “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

ACT 1

SEGMENT 1

Who are you? What is your day to day life like?

SEGMENT 2

What was the biggest personal problem or tragedy you had to overcome in your life?

ACT 2

SEGMENT 3

How did you figure out the solution you ultimately used to solve (or at least cope with) the problem?

SEGMENT 4

What steps did you take to solve/cope with the problem?

SEGMENT 5

How did the final events that brought closure to the issue play out?

ACT 3

SEGMENT 6

How did the initial recovery period after that go? What was it like adjusting to life after having gone through what you went through?

SEGMENT 7

Where are you now? What are doing with yourself these days? How is life going for you? Have the old wounds healed?

SEGMENT 8

What are your plans for the future, or are you just living for the moment right now?

 

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also like these:

 

Screenwriting for Movies
Screenwriting for TV
Short Stories
Erotica
Choose Your Own Adventure
Movie plot break downs
TV plot break downs
Free story prompts
Writing tips
Blogging
Art

 

18 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Formula Plot Templates