Atheist Physics Teacher

Yeah, I know, I haven't been posting lately. I apologize. Bri and I went away for a long weekend, and since we've be back I have been working on getting ready for the new school year.

Until then, expect that there won't be too many posts. Once the school year starts, I will set aside some time a few days a week to keep posting.


Stay tuned for more Bad Religion Songs of the Week, Bible for Atheist chapters, and more. For now, keep yourself entertained by this webpage: Can Atheists Be Ethical. Also browse the rest of the site if you have the time and the inclination.

I'll comment on that page later. First I want to hear (read?) your opinions.

In Chapter 13 Abram and Sarai and Lot leave Egypt, and Abram realizes that the flocks of Lot and himself are too large to be grazing on the same lands, so Abram tells Lot that they should separate. Abram gives Lot the choice of where he will live, and Abram takes up some other land. When Abram gets there God tells Abram “all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted.” (Genesis 13:15-16, NRSV)

In Chapter 14 there is a big battle between a lot of the kings in the region that Abram and Lot are living. Lot ends up being captured and Abram takes his men (318 of them) to retrieve Lot.

When Abram returns he is met by King Melchizedek and Abram gives him one tenth of everything he had plundered. The King tells him to give him the persons, but to keep the goods for himself. Abram replies, “I have sworn to the Lord, God Most High, maker of heaven and earth, that I would not take a thread or a sandal-thong or anything that is yours, so that you might not say, ‘I have made Abram rich.’ I will take nothing but what the young men have eaten, and the share of the men who went with me.”

This is a good lesson for anybody, religious or not. Abram knows that the King might later ask favors of him in return for his generosity. Abram takes nothing that is not due to him, and will therefore be left alone in the future.

Skyscraper
Bad Religion
Recipe for Hate

Come let us make bricks and burn them hard,
We'll build a city with a tower for the world
And climb so we can reach anything we may propose,
Anything at all

Build me up, tear me down
Like a skyscraper
Build me up, then tear down
These joining walls
So they can't climb at all

I know why you tore it down that day
You thought, that if you got caught we'd all go away,
Like a spoiled little baby who can't come out to play,
You had your revenge

Build me up, tear me down
Like a skyscraper
Build me up, then tear down
These joining walls
So they can't climb at all

Well madness reigned and paradise drowned
When Babel's walls came crashing down
Now the echoes roar for a story writ
That was hardly understood
And never any good

Build me up, tear me down
Like a skyscraper
Build me up, then tear down
These joining walls
So they can't climb at all

If I was forced to make a list of hobbies, interests, or activities I would have to include going to concerts. I am sure there are people that go to more than I do, but come on, concerts are expensive.

I have been meaning to make a list, for myself, of all the concerts I've attended, so that I don't forget them. I figure this would be a good forum to share my favorite concerts. Right now I'm planning on recounting my 5 favorites (in reverse chronological order), and maybe more when I'm done.

While I certainly enjoy the music of all the bands I've seen, my Top 5 concerts are not of my Top 5 bands. The criteria for best concerts have a more to do with circumstances and environment than the music alone.

The most recent concert I've been to that I include in my Top 5 is the Good Rats reunion show at B.B. King's Blues Club in NYC. I was chilling at my computer around 10am one Saturday, and my dad came downstairs.

"What are you doing today," he asked.
"Nothing," I replied.
"Want to go to a concert?"
"Yes! What concert?"

As long as the price is reasonable, I will go to basically any concert that someone I know is going to. That's how I discovered Guster sophomore year.

My dad told me it was The Good Rats, who I had heard of, and that the ticket was free. He even offered to pay for my food and drinks as long as I paid for the train. I'm in!

My dad's friend Jeff picked us up and we shared a few beers and some stories from back in their day on the way into the city. B.B. King's Blues Club is a pretty cool place. It's not a theater, but it's not a club either. I've been calling it a supper club, like where Ricky played on I Love Lucy. It basically looked like a restaurant with a stage, and our table was right up front.

No opening band to put up with, I love it. During the show waiters come around to replenish beers, so you only have to get up to pee. The show was great. I didn't really know any Good Rats music, but I ended up buying a couple CDs because they are so good.

This one makes my Top 5 list for the following reasons: no opening band, uniqueness of the venue, quality/quantity of food & drink, discovery of a new favorite band.

I used to think that a blog had to be specialized; that I needed different blogs to present different ideas. Hogwash!

In my local paper, The Long Island Advance, there is a weekly (as is the paper) segments titled From the Archives of the Long Island Advance, in which they present some news clips from 100, 75, and 50 years ago. A lot of the news is so mundane that I find it to be very funny. I hope that you do too.


From 100 Years Ago:

• Charles F. McNeil fell from a motorcycle in the rear of Roe's Hotel and was bruised up a bit.
  
  
• Blanch, the 6-year-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Woodruff, was bitten by a dog, The wounds were cauterized and the dog was shot. The child is said to be out of danger
  
  
• Bonaparte Overton was thrown from his carriage on West Main Street, corner of West Avenue, and received a number of scalp wounds. He is now out again.
  
  
• John McVoy was arrested by Officer Smith and fined $5 by Justice Losee, the fellow being drunk and disorderly. McVoy was lying across the sidewalk on West Avenue, near Amity Street, partly dressed.
  

This just keeps getting bigger and bigger. This version extends to Lot, nephew of Abram. Also, I've added asterisks next to the names of people in the direct line from Adam to David.

Click the image below to view the full genealogy.

Half of Chapter 11 is very interesting, and half is a continuation of the genealogy. The first half, the interesting half, is the story of the Tower of Babel. I can only understand this story if God is weak, nervous, and jealous.

Here’s the story if you don’t know it. Everyone speaks the same language. They are all direct descendents of Noah so this makes sense. Humans decide to build a big tower “with its top in the heavens.” It seems that this tower is intended to be a symbol of their unity so that humans will not be “scattered abroad upon the face of the earth” (Genesis 11:4, NRSV).

This scares God. He is afraid that now “nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them” (11:5, NRSV) so God confuses the humans’ language and scatters them around the earth.

What the fuck?

Humans peacefully work together in the name of unity and they get punished for it. I’m done.

If you are interested in the story of Babel make sure to check out next week’s Bad Religion Song of the Week.

The first half of Chapter 12 describes Abram’s journey with his wife and nephew Lot, eventually leading them to Egypt. The Bible says that they took “the persons whom they had acquired in Haran” (12:5, NRSV). Does this mean slaves? Or does this mean people who joined their settlement? I bet it means slaves.

The second half of the chapter is interesting and confusing. There is a famine where Abram is living, so he takes his family into Egypt. Abram is worried that upon seeing his wife Sarai the Pharaoh will kill Abram and take his wife. To prevent this they lie to the Pharaoh and say that Sarai is his sister. Pharaoh does, indeed, take Sarai as a wife, and pays Abram in animals and slaves.

Consequentially, God gets pissed at Pharaoh for committing adultery (although there are no commandments yet) and afflicts his house with great plagues. Pharaoh calls Abram, gives him a piece of his mind, and sends him and his wife and his people away.

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely understand how Abram’s scheme was supposed to work, and it did! It just boggles my mind that Pharaoh is punished for committing a sin, that has not yet been prohibited, in ignorance, and Abram, who essentially whores out his wife to save his own life, gets off scot free. More than that, he gets a bunch of animals and slaves as a reward.

God’s idea of justice is twisted.

Who has the burden of proof?

Whoever is trying to prove something. If a theist is making the argument that God exists, they have to prove it. If an atheist is making the argument that God does not exist, then they have to prove it.

Any reasonable person, atheist or theist, must be agnostic when it comes to God's existence. If they are not then they are not reasonable.

I don't believe that God exists, but I would never argue that he is,indeed, nonexistent. I have no proof of this, so it would be ludicrous for me to presume to know any more than the theist I am arguing with.

This doesn't mean that I would not argue in support of my reasoning for not believing in God. I would even try to influence people to believe the same thing as me, but I would never claim to be proving anything.

Do What You Want
Bad Religion
Suffer

Hey do what you want, but don't do it around me.
Idleness and dissipation breed apathy.
I sit on my ass all goddamn day,
A misanthropic anthropoid with nothing to
Say what you must, do all you can,
Break all the fucking rules and
Go to hell with superman and
Die like a champion, yeah hey!
Hey I don't know if the billions will survive,
But I'll believe in God when 1 and 1 are 5.
My moniker is man and I'm rotten to the core.
I'll tear down the building just to pass through the door.
So do what you must, do all you can,
Break all the fucking rules and
Go to hell with superman and
Die like a champion, yeah hey!

I was browsing a website of humorous charts and graphs (yeah, I know, what a nerd) and I came across this gem. I don't really have anything to add. I think it is quite clear and I pretty much agree with the whole thing.


What do you think?

This is a big one. It includes the descendants of Noah, as listed in Genesis chapter 10. I can't make this one an image, it is just too big. Click the image below to view the entire table.

OK, I was right the first time. God did originally intend for humans to be vegetarians. In Genesis 1 God gives all the green plants to the humans and other creatures as food. Here in Chapter 9 God tells Noah and his sons, “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.” (9:3, NRSV) Take note that God does not mention any of the food laws that are to come.

God also tells them, “Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed; for in his own image God made humankind.” (9:6, NRSV) Is this a straightforward endorsement of capital punishment or a more philosophical statement along the lines of, “what goes around comes around”? Are we supposed to murder a murderer? That’s what it sounds like.

God makes a covenant with Noah and his sons, and the sign of this covenant? A rainbow! “I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clods over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.“ (9:13-15, NRSV)

I like this. Even without any religious connection I am awed by rainbows. Just imagine how the ancients who believed it to be a sign of the covenant felt.

The remainder of Chapter 9 is an unusual story that I think is not mentioned often in Sunday school. Noah plants a vineyard, drinks his wine, gets drunk and passes out naked. His son Ham sees his father and goes to tell his brothers. They bring “a garment” and shielding their eyes cover their naked father. When Noah finds out what Ham did, he curses Ham’s son Canaan rather harshly.

I am not really sure how to take this story. I figure the first part is about respecting your parents, which makes sense. But I am not sure what moral I am supposed to learn from the second part. Should children be held accountable for the sins of their parents? Maybe another passage in support of original sin?

Chapter 10 lists the descendents of Noah. The next version of the genealogy, to include this chapter, will be posted tomorrow.

Back to Noah’s mission. As we all know, God commands Noah to gather pairs of each animals, males and females together. Specifically God commands, “Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and its mate; and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and its mate; and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female , to keep their kind alive on the face of all the earth.” (7:2-3, NRSV)

My first thought about this passage was that maybe God wants the extra clean animals so that Noah et al. would have kosher food to eat for forty days and forty nights. Then I realized that the food laws haven’t been developed yet, but thought maybe God was just preparing them. We will soon see that I am still wrong.

The bible is very descriptive of when the rains started: “In the sic hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month…” (7:11, NRSV) Is there something important about this reference that I don’t know about or is it just another oddity of the bible?

I didn’t bring this up in the last installment, but they mention cubits again in Chapter 7, so I figured, “Why not?” In 7:20 the bible says that the mountains were covered fifteen cubits deep. According to Wikipedia, the most trustworthy source of information on the interwebs (am I joking? I don’t know.), a cubit was about 44 cm, so the mountains were covered by 6.6 meters of water. The ark was 132 meters long, 22 meters wide, and 13.2 meters tall. The maximum volume of the ark was a little more than 38 000 meters cubed. Enough to hold two of every animal (fourteen of some)? Probably not, but I am not up to the calculations right now, maybe another time.

In Chapter 8 the flood subsides. “And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided…” (8:1, NRSV) Did God blow the water into space? Or did the wind aid evaporation? Just kidding; it’s a metaphor!

Again in 8:3-5 and 8:13-14 we have very specific dates mentioned. Why?

When the flood subsides, Noah builds an offer and makes a burnt offering of the clean animals (that’s what they were for!). God smells the offering and says, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth…” (8:21, NRSV) This sounds like God is in support of the idea of original sin. We start off evil, and must become clean; not the other way around.

Destined for Nothing
Bad Religion
The Process of Belief

Who do you believe can put some meaning in your life
meaning in your life
meaning in your life
Who do you conceive to provide you guidance and light
guidance and light
guidance and light
Are they waiting for you in the by and by
Do you even have to try

Headed for eternity and destined for nothing
The future isn't difficult to see
It's easy to confuse grand design with life's repercussions
Lament not your vanquished fantasy
It's only destiny

Why do you consent to live in ignorance and fear
ignorance and fear
ignorance and fear
Ancient people succumbed to it can it happen here
can it happen here
can it happen here
Does it make you suffer cause you have to die
Is it best to live a lie

Headed for eternity and destined for nothing
The future isn't difficult to see
It's easy to confuse grand design with life's repercussions
Lament not your vanquished fantasy
It's only destiny

Why can't you see
there ain't no destiny
for you and me
there ain't no destiny
Why can't you see
there ain't no destiny
for you and me
there ain't no destiny

Headed for eternity and destined for nothing
The future isn't difficult to see
It's easy to confuse grand design with life's repercussions
Lament not your vanquished fantasy
It's only destiny

Modern Man
Bad Religion
Against the Grain

I've got nothing to say
I've got nothing to do
All of my neurons are functioning smoothly
Yet still I'm a cyborg just like you

I'm one big myoma that thinks
The planet supports only me
I've got this one problem:
Will I live forever?
I've got just a short time to see

Modern man, evolutionary betrayer
Modern man, ecosystem destroyer
Modern man, destroy yourself in shame
Modern man, pathetic example of earth's organic heritage

When I look back and think
When I ponder and ask, "Why?"
I see my ancestors spend with careless abandon
Assuming eternal supply

Modern man, evolutionary betrayer
Modern man, ecosystem destroyer
Modern man, destroy yourself in shame
Modern man, pathetic example of earth's organic heritage
Just a sample of carbon-based wastage
Just a fucking tragic epic of you and I

This one's a little more complicated...more to come.



The number in the right most column is the age at which the person "begot" his named son (and the age at which he died)

Chapter 5 of Genesis is strictly a list of Adam’s descendents down to Noah and his sons. These are the people that fathered children into their second century (Noah was actually 500 when his sons were born) and lived into their 900s. There isn’t too much going on in this chapter, but it is interesting how long these men are reported to have lived.

Let me start by saying that there is no way that these men physically lived 900 years. I think there could be several reasons why the men who wrote the bible inflated their ages by such a degree. The most likely is that these people were alive longer ago than any others, and often times details from long ago get exaggerated, i.e. Paul Bunyan.

I think that maybe another reason to inflate the ages of these men could be to increase the temporal distance from the creation. It is still only nine generations after Adam, but because of the years between generations the time that has elapsed amounts to 1556 years from the creation of Adam to the birth of Noah’s sons (which is already about 25% of the history of the earth according to some young earth creationists).

One last thought: During the time of Noah God decides he must destroy mankind because of how evil they have become. If the generations between Adam and Noah were, let’s say, 20 years, only 180 years would have passed. It might seem unreasonable for humans to have become so evil in so little time. In 1556 years, though, anything can happen.

Chapter 6 of Genesis is where the shit starts to hit the fan. But first there is an odd statement by God (at least one that I do not comprehend). “Then the Lord said, ‘My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh; their days shall be one hundred twenty years.’” (6:3, NRSV) I’ll admit that I peeked ahead to see how old the sons of Noah grow to be, and it is well beyond 120 years. Maybe he means that it will be 120 years until the flood, but he hasn’t even mentioned the wickedness of man yet. Maybe it is just a bit of poor editing.

God also says that, “The Nephilim were on the earth in those days…These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown.” (6:4, NRSV) The Nephilim might have beent very tall, very strong and resilient men. There are men like this in other cultures, such as the heroes of prehistoric Greece from the Iliad and the Odyssey. I am not an historian but I wouldn’t be surprised if there are men of this stature in many other cultures of the time. Now that I think of it, some of the heroes, Achilles for example, actually had divine ancestors, and another hypothesis for the Nephilim is that they are the offspring of fallen angels and human women.

So God sees the wickedness of humankind and he was sorry that he had made them. He decides that he will “blot out from the earth the human beings [he] has created – people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air.” Say what!?!? This is an excellent story, with at least an okay moral of how being righteous has its rewards, but taken literally this story is too farfetched. (I know that not everyone takes the bible literally but enough people do for me to get this off my chest.)

1) Why does God choose to kill the animals and creeping things and birds? Have they also become so evil that they must be destroyed?

2) Could Noah and his family have been the only eight people on the planet who deserved to survive?

3) God created the universe, or at least the earth, in just six days. If he wants to exterminate the evil humans why can’t he just make them disappear, or at least just drop dead?

Numbers one and two stump me, but for number three I think it could be that having Noah build the ark and gather the animals is one final test of his righteousness, proving once and for all that his family deserves to survive the flood.

Verses 11 through 22 of Chapter 6 are God’s instructions to Noah, about how the ark should be built and how Noah should gather the animals. While not the most intriguing passage of the bible it sets a precedent for the Old Testament of God relying heavily on very clear, specific instructions and laws. We will seeplenty of these in the books to come.

This is easy so far, but just wait until next time.

Ok, so everything was going great for all of two books, and then the serpent appears; the first, and one of the few, talking beasts in the bible. “The woman says to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’’” (Genesis 3:2-3, NRSV)

God is a liar. He tells the man and woman that if they eat fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that they will die. Then they eat of the fruit. Then they don’t die. One of the most important things I learned in the last year and a half of teaching is that if you want your subordinates to do or not do something you have to assign a reasonable punishment and then follow through. Death doesn’t seem reasonable and God doesn’t follow through. He is new at this, however, and perhaps this will be a learning experience for him.

The woman “…took of [the tree’s] fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.” (3:6, NRSV, emphasis added)

I always thought that she ate the fruit without the man knowing, and then went to him and was like, “Here, eat some of this fruit that I didn’t pick off the tree that God forbade us to eat from.” Au contraire! The dude was right there, and then when God gets pissed the man tries to pass all the blame onto the woman: “’The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate,’” (3:12, NRSV), and even worse, God buys the man’s B.S. and rebukes the woman and gives her painful childbirth. Gender equality: 1 (from 2:23-24), Patriarchy: 1.

Shortly after this God says, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” (3:22, NRSV) Who is God talking to? This is the first of many passages in the Old Testament that refer to other gods. In this passage God might actually not be talking to other gods, but he is at least talking to the cherubim or other order of angels. The issue of the existence of other gods will be more important in a few books.

The man and woman are banished from Eden and they “know” each other resulting in the fabled sons Cain and Abel. Abel offers to God the “firstlings of his flock” and Cain offers to God “the fruit of the ground.” For some unexplained reason God favors Abel’s offering and rejects Cain’s. This seems contradictory to God’s pro-vegetarianism statement in Genesis 1.

Once again God is acting unfairly toward one party. Each brother made an offering in his own kind, but God isn’t satisfied. The only explanation I can think of is that perhaps God was testing Cain, to see how he might react. I think it is fair to say that Cain fails the test. Then god exiles him, but bestows upon him a mark (the Mark of Cain) so that people will not kill him. Who are these people that Cain is afraid of, by the way? Cain is the son of Adam and Eve, the first and only people created by God. How could there be other people that might kill Cain? Did God only create some humans? Did God create other humans after Adam and Eve and we just don’t know about it? Either way it is obvious that we cannot take the bible to be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Finally, Cain’s great-great-great grandson, Lamech, “took two wives.” Gender equality: 1, Patriarchy: 2.

The following is a paper I wrote for an independent study from junior year. If you want to read the whole thing, download the PDF file linked to below the excerpt.


How many of us have wished we could go back in time to correct a mistake? Or visit the future to see our world 100 centuries from now? I bet we all have, and this is why time travel has become so pervasive in popular culture. If time travel were possible, we could travel to the past and visit the dinosaurs or witness the sermon on the mount; you could go back to last week and give yourself the correct answers for an exam; you could even travel into the future to a time where ears cars no longer run on gasoline, when we all have personal assistance robots, and when space travel is as common as driving to the market. It is this last possibility that is the most intriguing aspect of time travel, and is the focus of most time travel literature and film.

As we examine time travel in popular culture we will begin with early examples of machineless time travel, but our focus will be on time travel via time machine. Appropriately then, our first example of machine facilitated time travel will be H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, published in 1895. Since then stories about time machines have been bountiful, but we will look at the Back to the Future trilogy and Planet of the Apes. I have chosen these because the former is probably the most well-known time travel story, and the latter because it is one of the most scientifically accurate time travel stories.

Time Travel in Popular Culture

I went into the city ("the city" = NYC, of course) Monday night for Andrew's birthday. We met one of his Canadian friends in Washington Square Park, and there were some people standing around the entrances handing out flyers or something. This is common urban areas, so I just ignored them as I walked by.

After dinner (which was great, by the way - OTTO is one of Mario Batali's restaurants, and the gelato was crazy good)we walked back to the park to relax for a few minutes. I noticed that a lot of the flyers those people had been hanging out were scattered about (Mitch Hedberg joke - "Here, you throw this away"). I also noticed that there were puzzle pieces on the cards, so I thought it had to do with autism awareness. It is so much better than that.



There's nothing offensive about it. It's just a harmless advertisement for the Times Square Church. I like it because of the clever(?) title: "The Missing Peace". Becker suggested that this is like the bumper sticker "Know Jesus, Know Peace. No Jesus, No Peace."

Christians are good with puns.

Ah, creationism. I’d like this part of the bible more if I didn’t know that millions of people take this story literally. It’s a great tale. In fact, another interesting study (which I am sure someone has already done) would be to compare creation myths of various religions/fantasy literature.

There are two points I’d like to discuss about Genesis 1 and 2 – that man and woman were created equal, and that god created all animals to be vegans.

I’ve always thought that the creation story in Genesis supported a male dominated society, and I think this might be a common misconception. In the first creation story (that’s right, there are two creations, one right after the other!) god creates males and females at the same time:

“Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the Earth.’ So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:26-27, NRSV)

In this story, god creates man and woman at the same time and gives them dominion over the other animals. There is absolutely no indication a superior sex. In the King James bible god says, “Let us make man in our image,” but this certainly refers to human beings in general and not males specifically because this is following by, “…and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea…” (1:26-27, KJV)

The creation story in Genesis 2 describes things differently. After god created man (meaning a male this time) “from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (2:7, NRSV) he created the garden of Eden in which man should live. God decides that the man should not be alone and attempts to find him “a helper as his partner,” (2:18) so god creates all the animals and brings them to the man to be named, but none of them are suitable partners.

Here’s the story most people know: God puts the man in to a deep sleep, removes one of his ribs, and from that rib god creates a woman. At first glance this might seem to indicate that man is superior to woman because he was created first and she is made from just a small part of him. Keep reading.

“Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man this one was taken.’ Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” (2:23-24)

Finally the man has found a suitable partner. No other creature could be found to fill this position, until god created a creature made of the same stuff as man. Woman is the creature that completes man, the yin to his yang, the salty to his sweet, the Samwise Gamgee to his Frodo Baggins. Man “clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” That sounds like equality to me.

Okay, back to Genesis 1. On the third day god creates dry land on the earth and brings forth vegetation. On the fifth and sixth days god created all the animals including humans. God said to man, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; and you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” (1:29-30)

I know that very shortly god is going to give men all sorts of laws about food and that these will include what animals you can and cannot eat, but this first passage about what man, and all the animals, will have for food is a blatant endorsement of veganism. God does not mention the eating of other animals, as though this thought has not even crossed his mind. Perhaps when the man and woman eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they learn about eating animals, but I don’t remember that being explicitly stated. We may find out shortly.

I’ve been having lower back pain for a few weeks now. I believe it first happened when I tried the simplest yoga pose on the Wii fit, so that tells you something. It’s been really bothering me, it got worse the other day when I was moving some things around in the attic. I finally decided to go and get some acupuncture. I’ve seen the chiropractor and I’ve gotten a massage, to no avail. An episode of M*A*S*H reminded me of acupuncture so I decided to give it a shot.

I found an acupuncturist near home, only about 5 minutes away, on Google maps, and I went there for an appointment and I filled out the paper work like you always do. It started with a consultation type of thing. She explained how it works, double checked my problem, and had me show her where I have pain. What really got me was the explanation of how it works. Acupuncture is what, like, 3000 years old, and obviously it works because people have been getting acupuncture for 3000 years. How it works is something like the following:

Your body has things called chakras, different places in your body, and your body has an energy called chi. You have pain or you are ill because your chakras are blocked, and chi can’t get around your body. So based on what type of pain you’re feeling or what sickness you have they put the needles into the different chakras which unblocks them and allows the chi to flow.

That’s not what actually happens, because that’s not real. That’s not science. I like the explanation; it’s a great analogy for what probably happens in real life, scientifically, in your body. We know what the body is made of now; 3000 years ago that’s what they thought it was. Again, I think it is a good analogy for what happens in real life, which is something like this:

The ancient Chinese found important pockets of nerves in the body, by, I guess, trial and error. By sticking the needles into those nerve clusters you stimulate them, which I can see causing extra blood to flow to that area. When blood flows to the affected area it carries the toxins away, and the cells get healthier.

It works! I still have some discomfort in my back, but it’s feeling better, and acupuncture is absolutely painless. You almost don’t feel anything at all. I laid down, she tapped the needles in, and it only feels like a little pressure. It doesn’t even feel like something pointy going into your skin. She put a heat lamp over my back and I fell asleep for twenty minutes. Then she took the needles out, massaged the area a little, and put these patches on that supposedly contain Chinese herbs. They are like nicotine patches, I guess, but instead of nicotine, it’s, you know, Chinese herbs.

I’ve been there twice, and I am going two more times next week. If it’s not better by then I’ll probably stop going, as it’s costing me $55 a visit. So far, though, I’m liking it. Even if the Chinese explanation about how it works isn’t right something happens, and I like it.

Another post from the old blog that I just can't allow to gather dust:



Do you exhibit any of these symptoms?

• always so sad
  
• very grumpy
  
• bitter
  
• lashing out at children
  
• tricking people into neglecting God's Word
  

If you suffer from any or all of these symptoms you are probably an atheist, and require "advanced witnessing techniques." Sounds like the Bush administration is not the only organization that supports waterboarding.

Here is a post I made on an old blog from 2 years ago:

I have been swaying back and forth lately between saying "Bless you" and not saying "Bless you" when people around me sneeze. I NEVER say "God bless you" of course...that would be stupid.

Since I am currently working toward my teacher certification and Masters degree, I have been thinking about how things will be when I can a teacher. I certainly can't say "Bless you" sometimes and not say it other times, or students might think I am playing favorites.

I think the responsible thing for me to do as an atheist is to stop saying anything, but I am afraid people will find this to be rude. We need to come up with a new, secular phrase to use when people sneeze. Sometimes I tell people "Shut Up!" when they sneeze, but that's just plain mean.

As the title of my blog suggests, I have finished my education education (suggestions on something better to call that?) and I am now teaching physics at a high school on Long Island. The decision was easier to make than I thought - I just don't say anything. No one really cares.

Atheist Physics Teacher has been added to The Atheist Blogroll. You can see the blogroll in my sidebar. The Atheist blogroll is a community building service provided free of charge to Atheist bloggers from around the world. If you would like to join, visit Mojoey at Deep Thoughts for more information.

I am currently listening to the audio book Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible, by David Plotz. (I am literate, by the way, but it is unsafe to read and drive at the same time). This book originated as a blog series on Slate.com, which Mr. Plotz is currently the editor of. Plotz is a secular Jew, and he decided to undertake this endeavor when he was flipping through a Bible at a Bat Mitzvah and discovered an alarming story he had never heard of or read before.

The book is incredibly interesting. It is a reaction to the most widely read and translated book in the world by a normal, albeit well educated, man. It is intelligent and insightful without being academic and boring. I am not sure who his intended audience is though, and in fact it would seem that he has no particular audience in mind. Plotz relates a lot of what he is reading to Jewish culture and the current situation in the Middle East, but as an atheist from a Christian background I do not feel left out of the discussion.

Listening to this book has sparked my interest in delving into this incredible work once again. The first time I attempted to read the Bible, it turned me into an atheist. The first time I actually made it through the Bible in its entirety (I might have skipped a few “begots” here or there) it was for a class at Union called World of the Bible, which was an examination of the bible as an historical and cultural document.

This time through I want to read the Bible specifically from the point of view of an atheist. I want to see what a non-religious person might glean from this text. Just because I don’t believe in the existence in real life of the main character of the book and that I believe almost nothing written on its pages to be the literal truth doesn’t mean there aren’t ways a serious reading can’t be enriching. After all, I feel I have been enriched by reading many novels, notably The Lord of the Rings and the Ender series.

As I read through the Bible one more time, I will reflect on the things that even an atheist can take away from it. Our understanding of history, human behavior, morality, philosophy, and more will be improved.

Oh! How could I forget? Another thing an atheist might come away from a perusal* of the Bible with is an arsenal of contradictions and horrendous stories to use in the battle against the Religious Right.

I have to credit David Plotz for inspiring me to reread the Bible and share my own thoughts with you. I hope he will keep in mind that imitation is the greatest form of flattery.

* peruse – verb – to read through with thoroughness or care. Crazy, huh?

Coming Soon...

Wow, I thought I had given up on this blog. Guess not. Here is a sketch I did for a GURPS campaign I'm planning. Notice it has the mandatory multi-colored control panel and the green glowing windows into the nuclear reactor. That's how time machine work, right?

I have been putting off making a higher quality sketch of Becker for a few days because the first sketch I did turned out great and I wasn't sure I could do it again. He just has so many distinguishing features: the goatee, the glasses, the smug look of a douche bag, the huge forehead.

I don't know about you, but I think this looks just like him. Like, if Becker somehow got sucked into a cartoon this is exactly what he would look like. Especially if it was a cartoon drawn by me.

I hope he likes it.

Here is another Bri. I think this is the final version. I spent a lot of time and a lot of paper trying to work out the hair. I hope you will agree that this is a lot better than the mess of spaghetti on her head before.

I have preliminary sketches for Andrew and Becker and Meier, and those will be up soon.

I think that is all for now.

Here's another drawing of me. I think I will be focusing on drawing people's faces for a while, and just post those. Maybe next week I will just post drawings of people's legs. You can mix and match.

I am trying to sketch a lot of my friends but since the sketches are so minimalistic it is difficult draw someone who doesn't have distinguishing facial features. I will do what I can.

Check back occasionally for updates. Maybe I will draw you.

Becker stayed at my house until after 4:00am. Somehow we resisted the Xbox 360 with Burnout Paradise in the tray and just talked about stuff. Somehow we got on the subject of human evolution.

Will humans continue to evolve? Could human evolution possibly continue in the same way that got us to where we are now? Is it possible to prevent evolution?

Yes. No. No.

I envision a very distant future in which the evolution of technology has paralleled the evolution of man.

Imagine:

We develop technology such that most things have been automated (i.e. agriculture, manufacturing, cooking, etc.) and humans manipulate these automated systems via computers. Eventually we are no longer required to type commands because computers understand voice commands. Later we no longer have to voice our commands because the computers can read our brain waves.

Computer input does not evolve on it's own. Output evolves as well. Computers do not present information through peripherals anymore. The computer does not display an image of something on a screen which we view with our eyes; the computer sends the same signal our eyes would send to our brain directly to the brain. The same with the other senses.

Physically humans are diminished. We no longer need eyes, ears, taste buds, nerve endings to experience the world. Our technology can see and hear and taste and feel things for us, and send the signals to our brains.

This is not worse! It is better. Our current senses are limited to the area around our bodies because our sensory organs are attached, essentially, to our brains. In the future our "eyes" can be probes light years away; our "ears" can be speakers at the bottom of the ocean.

Our sensory organs are limited anyway. The human eye can only experience the electromagnetic spectrum between wavelengths of 400 and 700 nanometers. The human ear cannot sense sounds below 20 hertz or above 20 000 hertz. We currently have instruments that are more sensitive or are sensitive to a different range than human senses. If we could experience these aspects of the universe that we are missing in a more intuitive way, imagine how our understanding of the universe might progress.

By using technology as our senses, we would be able to visit distance galaxies and witness events such as the creation and annihilation of particle-antiparticle pairs. What could be more exciting or more beautiful than this?

I thought of another good name for the blog. The Proselytizing Atheist. I like it. More people should be atheists. I can make that happen. Can I change the name and address of the blog once it has already been published? Should I? Is there enough cream cheese on my bagel? We may never know.

Here's Bri. I think I did a pretty good job. I mean, I remembered that girls wear skirts instead of pants and have boobs. I am not sure about the hair though. If I don't draw enough strands, she looks like a chemo patient, but if I draw too many she looks like I poured spaghetti on her head.

Thoughts?

This is my first attempt at making a sketch of myself. The students in the club that I advise (the Graphic Literature Association a.k.a. Comic Book Club a.k.a. Nerdsquad) have inspired me to right write a comic.

I finally have something to base off of Becker's three utterances on a salvia trip.

(1) I've dreamed of this...
(2) Those poor people...
(3) Close the door...

I figure I can work those three lines into a comic about the zombie apocalypse. Right?

P.S. In the drawing I am wearing contacts. Also, I don't have any arms. Arms are hard for me to draw. Use your imagination.